Cheers!

The UK Border Agency has confiscated over 80,000 litres of Italian wine, 14,000 litres of vodka and over 300,000 litres of beer with a total value of more than a million pounds all of which was illegally imported into Britain recently.

The alcohol will now apparently be turned into fertiliser and the packaging recycled.

I suppose the UKBA is right to put illegally imported items to some other use but, at the same time, one wonders why all this booze couldn’t just be recycled at a profit through the supermarkets.

What I’d like to know is: What is to be grown in the fields fertilised by wine and vodka, and where can we buy whatever is produced in them?
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Not So Quick Please

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At a time when officers from the UK Border Agency found cocaine worth £1.7 million inside an HGV trailer coming into Harwich from Holland, I’m not sure I’d be too quick to criticise those members of the UKBAs staff who received bonuses totalling £295,000 last year.

As well as finding illegal immigrants stowed away in lorries and trucks, the UKBA people that work our ports and airports do sterling work and we often hear of the huge drugs and other illegal hauls they detect.

Sure, the immigration side of the UKBA is in disarray but, as I understand it, their staff can be posted to ports and airports to detect illegal hauls as well as to desks to sort through immigration issues or check passports, etc.

I, for one, wouldn’t want to work for the UKBA. Not unless a bonus was guaranteed!
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Unfathomable & Inconsistent

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The mind of the UK Border Agency is unfathomable and inconsistent.

They have just refused visas to the Lahore Pipe Band who were going to compete in the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow. It didn’t seem to matter that this pipe band has competed in the same competition for the last four years!

They also knocked back most of a trade delegation from Lahore even though the British High Commissioner in Islamabad gave them his recommendation. Perversely, they agreed the Mayor of Lahore could visit, but not his wife!

Glasgow MSP Anne McLaughlin said members of Lahore Pipe Band faced problems in securing visas to visit Scotland last year before they were eventually granted and added, ‘For this to happen once was bad enough, to repeat it this year is a disgrace’.

I have every sympathy for the Scottish Culture Minister, Mike Russell, who said:, ‘The Scottish Government is in touch with the UK Border Agency to discover the details of the case and we will do everything we can to help.’

I wish him well for, if he can improve the workings of this arcane government agency, he will be doing all of us a favour!
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