Labour Forced to see Commonsense Over Common Travel Area

Was it a clever way for Big Brother Labour to get hold of my biometric data once my passport comes up from renewal? We may never know.

The government wanted to shelf quietly their U-Turn over plans to make residents in the Common Travel Area that included Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man to produce a passport on coming over to the fourth component Great Britain. Yeah all of you who know how pedantic this Northern Irish man is will know when I say Great Britain I'm not including all of the United Kingdom. Labour had planned for me to have to present my passport to go from my house in Bathgate to visit my family in another part of the same UN, EU and IOC recognised country.

Thankfully the Lib Dem and Conservative amendment to the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill got rid of this ridiculous step back 80 years in time. But consider this as a British Citizen my catching a ferry to Belfast does not cross any borders, I'm not emigrating or immigrating anywhere. Of course by using the Airports and Ports of Ireland as a line of defence the Labour control freaks thought they had a way to control terrorist from entering the UK easier than by sealing up the UK-Ireland land border, which course they failed miserably to do when there was a real terrorist threat from over said border.

That one time teacher of mine Sammy Wilson MP had said:

"This Bill would have radically changed the United Kingdom's borders. In effect it would have placed a very tight border around Great Britain but would have left Northern Ireland exposed and isolated to those involved in international terrorism.

"From day one I told the Government that it was unwise, would be ineffective for the United Kingdom as a whole and treated Northern Ireland people as second-class citizens."

Of course all this brings back memories of travelling between Northern Ireland and Scotland by ferry to get to University. There as the troubles were on passengers were often asked for spot checks of photographic ID. So out popped all the Northern Irish Driving Licences, but back then the Great British ones didn't have photographic elements, so the English, Scots and Welsh were disadvantaged in travelling to Northern Ireland.