Telegraph: a passport to misery

Sunday Telegraph: A passport to misery, if you ask me…

Jenny McCartney, in today's Sunday Telegraph, on the bureaucratic nightmare that the British government's demand that all new passport applicants attend a face-to-face interview at one of twenty interviewing centres (at their own expense, of course). Among those to be asked is when, precisely, they moved into their present address, something I could not answer off the top of my head. I know it was in the second half of September 2001, but that's about all. A few weeks ago, of course, they used the excuse that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing – now they are telling us that people renewing their passports will have to do the same from 2009.