OK, this is not about Indonesian or Thai matters directly, but it is about these countries, especially Indonesia in the third party. Currently I am working hard to have the British Foreign Office guarantee me that they will file what is called a “State-to-State” complaint at the UNCHR if I file an International human rights complaint with the Department of Justice and Human Rights [sic] in Jakarta. You see, if I file now, I can not file again in the future and Indonesia have said they will sign up to the Rome Convention (where such human rights complaints go to Rome, not Jakarta) next year. As Indonesia currently file 13’s all human rights cases, there is no point in my doing so before the sign up to the Rome Convention unless the British Government guarantee they will force Indonesia to comply with their International obligations.

This is something I think should be automatic “Of course we will do this for one of our citizens if some country outside their International obligations against them”, but the Brits and their damn foreign policy of “sucking up to” and rubber stamping the back pocket gratuity system needed by their unalwfully acting major corporations and do not want to rock the corrupt boat with such a thing. So I have an ill opinion of the British Foreign Office to start off with. Now, after several evasions by them, they have at least ascertained and confirmed, sort of (not actually stating it that way) that the Balinese police are holding unlawful investigations against me and have likely abused my human right by putting my name on Interpol’s automated watch facility as a suspected insurgent so they can pass details of my movements and locations around the world to someone who wants to shoot me. So I am beginning, I hope, to get there; we will see. So my story now on has some connection with Indonesia.

On Thursday I had multiple reminders of the true effects of British (as well as US and Australian) foreign policy when I visited the British Consulate / Embassy in Lisbon.

My wife is an Indonesian citizen unfortunately in several respects but the greatest problem in day to day life is the need to get visas and carry ID for wherever she goes. We can not wait until she qualifies to apply for Portuguese citizenship. OK, she has Portuguese residency, but this is no good for travel to the UK for example, just Portugal and other “Schengen agreement” EU states. So she needs a visa to go toe England, which we are doing this year for a family reunion.

When we lived in Phuket, we did everything with the British Consulate in Bangkok by mail, except for her residency interview (she had residency for the UK once), but now things have changed. Because of the increased security risks and to co-operate with the US scheme and regulations, the British Government now issues biometric visas only, which means you physically have to go to the consulate. Problem for us is the only consulate in Portugal with this biometric equipment is in Lisbon, the capital, 5 hours drive from our house. Aaaagghhh, I hate driving and taking a flight is just as bad by the time you drive to Porto, park, check in, embark, fly, land, go to the car rental counter, etc. It is a toss up between taking an expensive taxi with a Portuguese driver who clearly is unaware of the fact Portugal has the highest road death and accident rate in western Europe plus thinks it is OK to sit 1 meter behind the vehicle in front going 140 kilometers per hour, or drive all that way myself and then navigate (pah) Lisbon to find the British Embassy; for anyone who is unfamiliar with Portuguese cities, you can see where you want to go but never get there and it seems a band of road sign thieves removes one in two direction signs. So we went with the taxi and my right foot got cramp from pressing hard on the imaginary passenger side brake!

The British Embassy is in an old area of the city with some great architecture, just around the corner from the Park of rats, hmmm. Upon arrival I immediately saw the eye-sore which is now the embassy; barricades, those car electronic in the road car things, police men armed with sub machine guns, it looked like someone had taken a scene from some war zone part of the world and placed it in the heart of a lovely, culture rich, peaceful (traffic excepted) European city. My God, Portugal is one of the world’s safest places and Britain’s greatest allies, yet even here there is fear born from British foreign policy. I got out the car to ask the security staff where we could park. I was told to stand behind a natural pre-existing kerb stone line. “But I just want to know where to park!” “You’ll have to wait your turn behind the line sir!” which was weird as people not going to the British Embassy / Consulate walked past between the line and the door, so the line was just for embassy visitors. So I asked a few others just sitting there and found out there was a public car park round the next corner.

By that time the security guard (he was so puny he couldn’t stop a moth) asked me what I was there for, so I advised him my wife had an appointment at 11.15 and needed to know where to park. He said he did not know but to come back with my wife no earlier than 11.00. It reminded me how conflicts and unrest give powers to strange little people who come up with a set of rules which they can apply to you, while others not under their control make the rules a nonsense! My taxi driver was able to stand in the area visitors to the embassy were not and smoke his cigarette!

We had to book the appointment online in advance. You fill out forms, a series of questions. You enter in details such as the purpose of your visit, which we did, a holiday to meet with my family. You specify previous visas held, their numbers, the dates you previously entered / stayed in the UK; we did all this. You specify which visa you want and the validity, we did this; we put down for a 2 year multi-entry visa. It then gives you an appointment and tells you what documents to bring plus tells you the fee; in our case it said “free”. Three of the items needed were any old passports with British visas in them (if you have any), your original marriage certificate and a copy of the form you just completed; it has a print function so you can print it up.

We were there at 11.00 and had to stand behind the line in the street of course. When my wife was called I was told I could not go in with her for security reasons. After a while my wife came out and I had to go in anyway as they wanted some details about what I did for a living, even though this was not specified when we applied online. So I went in after all anyway. After I told the girl behind the bullet proof screen that we were not asked to provide this information online or pre-advised to bring it, I went on to give her the details anyway. Then I asked her if it was possible to get a visa longer than 2 years as my wife has been to England several times and even had residency once. The girl then told me she had put my wife down for a 6 month, not even a 2 year visa already and it could not be changed as she had already submitted the application electronically (memories of Little Britain; “The computer says ‘no’”).

It transpired the consulate staff did not reference the form we completed online and brought a copy of with us, so why the hell did we have to do it! It also transpired she assumed my wife would speak more Portuguese than English, did not ask her which, and was interviewing her in Portuguese, which my wife only has basic skills in. As a result, when asked in Portuguese what the purpose of her stay was, my wife replied “holiday”. Her last passport was in view of the interviewer, the interviewer had our printed form, she also could easily see the unmistakable British marriage certificate, but see told me she thought my wife had never been to England before so she thought she would put her down for the basic 6 month visa! Problem is, when asked to change it, computer says “no”, you need to make another appointment. “But we specified a 2 year visa!”; “Sorry”. “But we bought the form with us specifying previous trips and a 2 year visa”; “Sorry”. “But you can see my wife’s British marriage certificate and previous passport with residency in it”; “Sorry, computer say ‘no’, it is too late because I have already pressed the button. That will be 98 Euros please!”

“What?! The online service and advice note said it is free!” “Oh yes, but that is if you apply for a family visa, you have applied for a holiday visa and that cost 98 Euros!” “No, we applied for a 2 year family visa, you made a mistake and put my wife down for the wrong one”; “Sorry, but once the visa application is submitted there is nothing anyone here can do, you will have to write to the Foreign Office in London explaining!” Basically, unless we paid the 98 Euros we would not get any visa; sheer blackmail! And all this because their workload is now greater because of the extra security precautions and I was not allowed in initially to spark the notion in this consular staff’s mind that not everyone without a previous visa in their current non-British passport means they do not read what is in front of them and makes them assume they have to interview that person in Portuguese!

But my reminders of the consequences of British foreign policy and the ill-effects it has on British citizens and others did not end there. While I was waiting outside the embassy after my wife was initially allowed in on her own I sat down and talked to the taxi driver about the ugly barricades outside. He said that most Portuguese resent what the British Government are doing as it impacts them as well; “Guilty and deserving of terrorism by association”. Of course British people were not to blame but their government was. I found this interesting, that the British people were not to blame but when it came to the USA, he did not stop at their government and said that Americans were to blame. He did not make the differentiation consciously, but it told me of a sliding scale of discontent by other nations and that if an every day and thoroughly decent Portuguese man albeit subconsciously said Americans were to blame for US foreign policy, this told me how far down the scale Brits must be in the eyes of other nationals and how easily people like bin Laden convince people around them that killing Americans, secondly British and thirdly Australians is not just justified but something that needs to be done. I used only these three countries in this not because other nationalities are free from risk, but because of the general readership of these forums.

Then yesterday I wondered if this was all somehow worth the “War on terror” (soon to be renamed I understand), “Iraqi invasion to rid Saddam of weapons of mass destruction” and nasty duplicitous corporate policy (as in major US, British and Australian corporations such as Rio Tinto, BAE, Freeport, BHP Billiton who make billions out of the likes of Indonesia most would say unfairly and corruptly) was all worth it. Living in Portugal we have an excellent lifestyle and are bless with lack of crime and comparative lack of risk of things such as terrorism. But now we have to go to and stay in England, we become more susceptible to violent crime. Because I and my children have British passports, we are more of a bone fide target. But let us say, as I expect we will, get to and come back from England without such event, will and do we and other “Brits” benefit or lose from Britain’s foreign policy? I think not I do not think the everyday people of Britain benefit at all from the crooks in government who commit their crimes overseas away from much of British legal jurisdiction.

The money that our major corporations earn does not seem to benefit everyday Brits, just people with major shareholdings. Sure wages in England are so high but they need to be based on the ridiculous cost of housing food, etc. It is a fact that in most parts of England policemen, nurses and firemen can not afford now to get onto the property ladder. I actually truly respect these people in the UK, I believe them to be the finest in the world. But when they can not even own a house from their wages, it brings up the specter of what will happen to them; will they leave the service or worse become corrupt to make ends meet? When I think I am going to be paying four times, yes four times as much in England for many of the main food items, I know the government Page Ranking “You have never had it so good” is utter krap (Fio, you ca spell it like that and not get it filtered out!).

The very recent elections in the UK had the Scottish National Party beat King Tony Blair’s “Labour” party, a so called socialist party that is now right of the Liberals, north of the border. I wish the SNP were in England too; I’d vote for them. Since “Mingey Campbell” took over the Libs, Tory carbon by the ton green advocate David Cameron, King B liar ruled over the UK and now wants to pass everything to the man that destroyed, wrecked our manufacturing base and pensions, Gordon Brown, there isn’t a rat in the pack except the SNP that seems to be on the right track, and I wonder just how much of the Scottish vote is about foreign policy; I know a lot because SNP leader Alex Salmond made it an election issue. My God, I want to be Scottish and independent! I know the Americans and Australians have similar problems too.

I am proud to be English, but even prouder to be European. However when I qualify, I will apply for Portuguese citizenship. I will not renounce my British or other citizenship (I am already a dual national) so I can continue to vote the way I believe is best for England, which unfortunately I seem to be in the minority on at the moment. But if I obtain Portuguese citizenship as I intend and if it came down to only having one nationality, one passport, it would be a European one, not British!

God bless the EU.

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I could right pages on the topic of the Embassies we British have to put up with. I've lived abroad as an expat all my adult life and really think it's one of the worst and least helpful embassies in the world. Their main function seems to be to extract as much money as they can from you and anyone else they can think of. The security obsessed Americans can add pages to a passport, we can't, we have to buy a new one. They are very resistant to actually forking out dosh compared to other countries when British citizens find themselves in a pickle abroad though. The British Embassy in BKK remained closed for "normal business" for months after the tsunami...too much work for the poor things no doubt. Other embassies managed to do it somehow, but not the Brits. They have also recently sold off prime land which used to be the embassy grounds for a fortune...I've a feeling the Brits never actually paid for that land, it was a gift I think.

And that's just the Embassy in Thailand ... other ones I've had to deal with in Africa, Europe and the Middle East were just as bad....worse sometimes.

I'm stuck with a British passport but I'm not particularly proud to be British at all. I don't miss the UK and have no desire to ever live there again. A European passport would be better but I'd rather have world citizenship. passport!

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“Not all those who wander are lost.” Tolkien.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

You can see I knew you would know and not be able to resist!

I think the UK staffs the embassies with OK Henries and Harrietts who couldn't quite make the polo club darling! It is like going back in time!

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There are two categories of travellers, those that experience a country and those that take their home with them wherever they go.

Be warned, as with any forum, picking a fight with the admin guy is not recommended!