h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.


I should be planning my summer hols and a trip to Ol’ Blighty. My ancient mama would like to the return hospitality that Fatima accorded her when she came to Morocco and it might be nice for my old lady to meet those members of the family that are still on speaking terms with me.

I am not – for the simple reason that it is quite impossible to get through all the red-tape.

To start with, it transpires that we are not legally married even though in 2000, the British Consulate in Casablanca were VERY quick to relieve me of £66 in return for a piece of paper that said that we were. That particular document is – apparently – only valid here (valid for what purposes they couldn’t tell me as for anything remotely connected with Morocco, if you marry a Morocccan woman, a Moroccan marriage certificate is required).

I am not quite sure whether this is simply post-911-paranoia or some kind of diplomatic practical joke (like the Embassy in Yemen selling my entire worldly possessions and then showing me photographs of the French consulate in Aden to prove that they didn’t – that really was a cracker).

Muslim marriages are not – I am assured – recognised as legal in the UK as they may be – in their eyes – bigamous. Of course, if you are Sowdee princelet visiting Baloney Tare to be rubbed down with dollars, you can bring as many wives, mistresses, concubines, eunuchs and slaves as you like – all on one-nice-neat ‘family’ visa.

But, and with their infallible and unfathomable logic, the staff at the foreign and commonwealth office argue that because we are not (in their eyes) married but have been living together for over eight years ‘in sin’, there is a distinct probability that Fatima is a terrorist and would therefore have to be ‘vetted’. As she has already gone through the menopause, I don’t think that this is entirely necessary. However, someone VERY helpfully suggested that she could go to Algeria or Egypt and apply for a visa there.

So, the dear old lady is officially branded as an ‘out-of-work, single Moroccan with no formal education’ and as she has no relatives in the UK, she needs an ‘invitation’ from a ‘sponsor’ (my, my aren’t we picking up some lovely Middle Eastern customs quickly) in order to even start the process of getting a visa.

Out-of-work, single Moroccan with no formal education’ and with no relatives in the UK are NOT permitted to set foot on the hallowed shores just because they feel like visiting the country.

Unfortunately, I cannot invite her as ‘an accompanied guest’ to my own country – as I have not lived in the UK since the 1980’s and do not have a house there, in excess of £45k in a current UK bank account and a spare £1,000 to deposit with the immigration officials on arrival. This sad state-of-affairs is compounded by the fact that I don’t have what they regard as a ‘proper job’ here and, even though the Moroccan authorities have issued me with a residence permit until 2012, I am – in the eyes of my embassy, working here ‘illegally’ and have no visible means of support (by which they mean an employment contract registered with the Ministry of Works and the British Chamber of Commerce).

But – and on the bright side – they did tell me that if a member of the family were be able to fulfil all the financial stipulations AND convince the immigration authorities in the UK that they have ‘good and justifiable reason’ to invite an unrelated sixty-year-old, out-of-work, Moroccan spinster with no formal education, to their house it would NOT actually be ‘impossible’ to fill in the reams of paper that make up the current visa application.

However, even my going to visit my nonagenarian mother now appears to be unlikely. My passport has expired. Getting this renewed is no longer the routine formality it was last time I did it, just over ten years ago, in Oman. Now, in order to renew your passport (for what will be the seventh time, in my case), you have to produce – in person - your birth certificate. Now my birth certificate is NOT one of the documents that I ever considered necessary to have about my person at all times. I do not have it here and haven’t the foggiest idea where it icould possibly be as – as far as I can recall - I have not seen or needed it since I first applied for a passport in 1967!

This is entirely my fault – I have been told by the ever-helpful Embassy – because I should have known about a new regulation. It is – I am told - to prevent people from obtaining passports fraudulently.

When I enquired how I went about getting a copy (assuming that the original has disappeared off the face of the earth), I was blithley told that I can get a certified copy of my birth certificate if I send an e-mail to the registry office in the town where the original was issued. The logic of this is just a smidgeon beyond me but it unwise to get stroppy with the F&CO.

Even if I managed to get there, I could not hire a car as my driving UK driving license was stolen some time ago. I contacted the DVLA (or whatever it is now called), and I got a nice friendly computer-generated reply from them within seconds saying that my enquiry might – or might not – be dealt with within three days and:

“Please Note:
If you do not appear to have received a reply within 3 days, it would be advisable to check any 'Junk Mail' or SPAM filters, which may be installed on your system, prior to any further contact, as our replies may be blocked by such software.”

Eventually they informed me that my driving license most certainly CANNOT be replaced as I do not live in the UK permanently, leaving me with the distinct impression that I had done something wrong and that I should have handed it in when I first went to work overseas. Eventually I managed to get through the blank negative wall of obscurfution and was told that if I were to live in the UK and have a registered address there, they could consider renewing it provided that I could prove that it had been stolen. This – they told me was not impossible. All I needed to do was to find the thief and get him (or her) to make a sworn affidavit at the British Embassy in Rabat, to the effect that he or she had in fact stolen the license.

Of course, I could try and use a Moroccan driving license but I wouldn’t get my hopes up as there is almost certainly some regulation that states that only Moroccans can use Moroccan driving licenses to hire cars in EU countries. On second thoughts, that’s far too logical.

So - I decided to stay in Morocco – it is far more simple and sane here.
It was therefore, with no surprise at all that I read that, according to the British Chambers of Commerce - so it MUST be true - red-tape now costs the UK’s domestic businesses £66 billion a year, a figure that has doubled every three years since 2000 and now happens to stand at nearly50% more than Ol’ Blighty’s entire defense budget, and that includes the backhanders paid to Sowdee princlets.

My immediate reaction was along the lines of ‘golly gosh – how dreadful’ but, when I thought about it, I realised that I was wrong, especially with the war on terrorism being what it is.

Nobody in their right mind (or out of it) would even contemplate invading the UK because it would be impossible to complete all the necessary paperwork.

You know, you could have caught the thief years ago.
There's no excuse for such laziness.

Actually you are right and I know perfectly well who robbed our flat. There is though NOTHING I can do about i, nothing to do with red tape though.

Oh, I had no idea.

Have you considered going to Spain and visiting England from there?

YB

Yes, I have but it makes me irrationally angry that I should even have to consider such nonsense.