[OT] Customs

[Kay C Lan]

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 7:23 AM, Mark Smith <lists at futilism.com> wrote:

> Richmond, as you probably know, british customs & excise have all sorts of
> powers that might not generally be considered consistent with a modern,
> democratic civil society.
>
> Don't know why you'd single out British Customs, such powers are pretty
typical for all Custom Services the world over. My own experience is that
although the British Customs at time can be a little tedious I've never
really had a bad experience, on the other had I've witnessed the following -
I won't mention the particular cities because I don't believe it's relevant
as I truly believe this could happen pretty well anywhere in the world.

I've personally witnessed a Customs/Immigration Officer:

spend over an hour reading the contents of an individual's day planner or
diary.

a passenger who on being told that he would have to pay duty on the big (2L)
bottle of alcohol, argue with the C/I Officer and then eventually smash the
bottle and pour the contents all over the tarmac. The C/I Officer then
politely pointed out that the passenger had still imported the alcohol into
the country and was still liable to pay duty on it.

a diplomatic courier of some sort with a 'official' locked bag end up in an
argument with a C/I Officer over his need to inspect the contents of the
bag. The courier remained remarkably calm and politely kept pointing out the
the C/I Officer had no right and no need to inspect the contents of the bag.
The C/I Officer's blood pressure just kept going up and he demanded that he
had every right to look into the bag, was not going to read any documents,
just confirm that the bag just contained documents and nothing else. The C/I
Officer sent a lackey to collect the bolt cutters. As the C/I Officer moved
to use the bolt cutters the courier produced a firearm and made it very
clear he was going to shoot!!

the use of strippers to distract C/I Officers so that they weren't too
interested in carrying out baggage inspections. No the girls didn't strip
but they certainly exposed enough of their skimpy underwear to be very very
distracting. Not really a story about frustrating C/I Officers but I figure
Richmond if you really really don't want to have your laptop inspected for a
lengthy period, if it's true about what's (not) worn under the kilt you
could go for something similar, well maybe the polar opposite, that they
become so disgusted that they don't want to go near you ;-)))))