School ski trip cancelled due to chaos in Dover - fuck the tories

[TheColourofspring]

My 15 year old son has just spent 17 hours in a coach in dover waiting to go on a much anticipated ski trip. It’s cost us over £1500 over a year and we hoped, given everything our kids lost over covid, it would be a positive experience.

The school just notified us to say that now- due to health and safety, drivers hours etc- the trip needs to be cancelled and the kids are on their way back from dover.

Absolutely FUCK the lying Tory cunts - they ruin everything. They try and blame the French yet all of this lies at their door. Fuck them all for ruining 100 kids trip (and probably thousands more) and ruining everything they touch with their stinking corrupt lies and their lies about brexit.

My son was in tears.

You know the government is in charge of the border, right? This sort of mess is literally their job to prevent.

Hey, remember when the EU said we could leave the EU but still have an open border for goods and people, and Theresa May said yes but Boris Johnson said yes but then changed it to “no” because he knew that way she’d lose her job and he’d get to be PM?

A huge, huge amount of Britain’s current troubles were caused by Boris Johnson smashing up the country on his way to the top. He had no other path to power, certainly didn’t get to be PM on talent or by working hard.

Fuck you Johnson and every one who colluded in your shitty rampage.

All this froth. Who caused the ferries' fiasco is a moot point. The point is the Uk now is not part of the EU. Ergo the French presumably know - unless they are very stupid - that they are going to need a load more border staff than they did when we were in the EU.

They presumably want UK citizens to spend their money in France and the rest of the EU. They know it's Easter. They presumably know the number of coaches expected to arrive.

For the love of God, unless they are deliberately mis-managing the situation to 'teach us a lesson' why are they so utterly incapable of adapting to the new status quo?

And why are we blaming everyone and everything instead of whoever decides the amount of border staff needed? Because they are the ones whose heads need to roll.

@Janiie The difference may be that the majority of passengers flying through Milan are EU citizens and so don't need any checks at all, whereas at Dover every passenger needs to be checked.

That or Italians have better systems for drinking essential alcohol at work than the French do?

How many British flights land at the same time compared with coaches arriving at Dover?

The laws regarding our borders are being enforced.

People don't become refugees until they have claimed asylum and been granted refugee status, which can take well over a year. They cannot claim asylum until they are in the UK.

It is perfectly legal to arrive here and then claim asylum. The relevant international law is the 1951 UN convention on refugees and the UK was very heavily involved in drafting it.

And as mentioned upthread, we threw away the UK's right, under the Dublin agreement, to return asylum seekers to the any other EU state they passed through prior to arrival, when we left the EU.

Anyone who objects to the arrival of asylum seekers on our shores who also voted for Brexit only has themself to blame. The fact that leaving the EU would mean that the UK would no longer have Dublin agreement rights with regard to asylum seekers was discussed at the time, and dismissed as Project Fear.

Anyone who voted for Brexit also voted for people crossing the channel in tiny boats and the govt having no legal powers to stop it. They need to own it.

"Ergo the French presumably know - unless they are very stupid - that they are going to need a load more border staff than they did when we were in the EU."

Who was stupid?
https://www.ft.com/content/2a6662a0-975e-4bcd-9f5b-e241256db4df

The UK cabinet office has rejected a £33m proposal to double the capacity for French government passport checks at the port of Dover, raising the prospect of long delays for passengers after the end of the Brexit transition period. The English Channel port, which handles 2.2m passenger vehicles every year, had requested the funding as part of the £200m Port Infrastructure Fund announced by the government in October to pay for additional border facilities required as a result of the UK’s departure from the EU. According to a person familiar with the matter, Dover applied for £33m to double the number of French government passport booths from five to 10 in anticipation of more stringent requirements including stamps in passports after January 1. The application was rejected, however, with Dover receiving just £33,000 for an unrelated project, according to a list of the PIF awards seen by the Financial Times. Dover has repeatedly warned that it will need to substantially boost capacity for French controls, which under a reciprocal bilateral agreement enables passports to be checked before boarding the train or ferry to France in order to ease traffic flows.

TBF it's not all "French stampers", you can get inbound through the handful of French airports I'm most familiar with quickly most days but you can get hung up if you disembark behind other non-Schengen zone arrivals.

From comments/links provided by previous posters it does look like there's a Dover factor.

'Do tell which ports and their volume of traffic'

Hmm well you match your staff to the demand, it's simple staff management I'd have thought. So a quiet port with 5 buses a day, 5 staff. A busy port with 50 buses a day has 50 staff <for example.. I've no idea what the actual ratio for 5 buses is but my point is the more volume the more staff>.

I'll maybe have to give the French border manager a ring and instruct him on these most very basic management and staffing strategies.

No problem,
just trying to inject some logic into an emotive free-for-all. 🙂

you are funny

@Janiie Will there be space for all this additional staff to have their essential wine and cake parties? Have you factored that into your plans? In can be very difficult for people to work in old buildings that were not designed for the demands of the modern age.

Caused by the government. Of course they are to blame!

Given the Port of Dover Harbour Board is own by the government and its borad members are appointed by the Department of Transport it is a little difficult to argue it is not the responsibilty of the government.

Although I expect that @ThunderDad will be along shortly to tell us that like the BBC Chairman and Director General the Board has been infiltrated by left wingers.

Sorry if it’s already been discussed, but a solution might be for a second driver to be sent to take the coach forward.

I can't believe that isn't already law, if not common sense.

@Pottedpalm an excellent suggestion.

During lockdown I learnt that the army employs thousands of doctors and nurses just waiting to be called upon in a time of need. The rest of the time they get on with their knitting.
The French border agency apparantly similarly have plenty of spare border staff just waiting for their chance to stamp a passport. Whether they knit or not is not clear.
I have no doubt there is also a knitting crew of coach drivers just waiting for their chance to rev an engine.

Another sensible post that won't fit his narrative.

@Janiie Can these spare coach drivers, take part in the essential business of drinking alcohol at work while they wait in case a coach gets delayed?

Move on? I would bloody love to move on, but we can't, can we? The country voted for the shitshow that is Brexit, so we now have no choice but to deal with the awful consequences.

Or did you mean that we should just stop talking about Brexit and pretend that none of our current difficulties have anything to do with it?

What problems?

I had really hoped we had dealt with the illegal asylum seeker lie a few weeks ago, goodness that thread was exhausting.

I mean supposing the driver is unwell and they all got stranded? Every bus trip I've ever been on there was a spare.

Honestly, you pay £1.5k for a dc to get the bus for a trip and they don't even have a relief driver. I'd blame the school if it was me. Piss poor planning imo but let's blame The Shit Show That Is Brexit and throw in BJ's rogue cake eating too for maximum froth.

'Fuck you Johnson and every one who colluded in your shitty rampage'

Darkened room that way >

The idiots who are supposed to know what is going on, supposed to think ahead and supposed to plan ahead didn't clock onto the fact that this is prime school coach trip season which was going to cause problems.

Prime coach season hasn't happened since Brexit because trips had to be cancelled due to
Covid, and then last year few schools felt confident enough to plan trips as the travel situation was still precarious (and places like France had very difficult testing requirements).

They didn't plan for this or put additional measures in place because they don't know what they are doing and are incompetent.

I'm furious on behalf of all the people kept waiting on coaches. Not good enough. Shambles.

I've just checked my emails and we paid £1350 for the week including flights from Manchester to Milan.