I am now one step closer to making a new life in the US with Erin. I got a phone call from my dad on Sunday saying that he had found someone to countersign my passport application for some reason. It’s a friend of my dad’s that happens to be a engineering officer for P&O Ferries. He has already filled out his part of the form and needs to sign one of the photos that I had taken on Monday. I have already filled out the rest of the form; then after the photo has been countersigned I can go to the Post Office and hand over 79 pounds, then hopefully two weeks later I will have a shiny new passport. This was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to me travelling to the US; but now this is no longer a problem unless the petty bureaucrats in London refuse me a passport. When it comes to government agencies I wouldn’t trust any of them as far as I could throw them. So suddenly my move to the US is becoming real and the nerves are starting to kick in; but I want to do this and make it happen more than anything. I believe that everyone only has one chance to find true happiness and I am not going to pass up the chance of finding true love and happiness. It just seems to both myself and Erin that we were meant to meet and spend our lives together. I’ve never got on with someone so well in my whole life, it almost feels like it’s me catching up to where I should be at the age of 31, a life partner (soon to be my wife, hopefully) and a 3 year old little boy who is already starting to get attached to me. Of course there is a part of me that thinks I must be completely nuts; I haven’t even met this woman and we are making plans for marriage and our future together, but it feels so incredibly right, so I am keeping those feelings under control. I know that those negative feelings will go away once we meet for the first time; the question is; can we keep our hands off each other long enough to get home from the airport? 14 hours on a plane to think about meeting Erin will drive me nuts as anyone that knows me will know I analyse everything to death!
While we are on the subject of bureaucrats; I read on the BBC news website today that two discs containing the personal details of 25m people claiming child support benefits went missing in the post! The discs contain such details as name, address, national insurance and banking details. The police say that there is no evidence that the data has fallen into criminal hands but the people affected should regularly check their bank accounts for fraudulent activity. The first question is how on Earth does 25 million records of personal information just disappear. Apparently it was not sent by recorded/registered delivery, just standard courier delivery by TNT to the National Audit Office and it seems that no-one knows where the discs went, or even if they arrived at the Audit Office. Frankly it disturbs me that my personal information is sent from department to department in such a way; with today’s technology why on Earth send anything by post; high speed dedicated secured lines could and should be used to transfer data between departments, then this sort of screw up would have never happened. I accept that there is no true secure way of sending data; but seriously sending it through the post; they might as well popped it into a post box with a first class stamp on it! You imagine what would happen if banks transferred huge amounts of cash in suitcases internationally through the post or courier, it’d be chaos; it’s all done by secured lines and the data is only transferred if both networks are convinced that it’s talking to the right computer on the other end. Obviously this isn’t foolproof but it’s better than putting sensitive data in the post. That just about sums up idiotic bureaucracy!
Missing HMRC child support discs turn up on eBay… – Absolute comic genius!