Peter wrote:
mostly… this family got hit after landing at EGKA from NL. Luggage opened… I met them afterwards. They looked rather frazzled
I had this happen to me this a few months ago. Landed at Denham and 4 guys ran towards the plane before I could even get out. The reason they took notice was that
So I guess they were just looking for drugs, and I would imagine any flights from the Netherlands is going to be high on their list. After initial tensions were diffused it was all good and we talked about bitcoin. When I went up to the tower the guy was like “what the hell did you do???”
Shows how simple their intelligence is. I once got picked up by the BF after a flight from San Seb where a bomb had gone off, and the police more or less asked me if I had something to do with it.
I got stopped at Manchester Airport train station by a non-uniformed police officer – I was on my way to retrieve my aircraft from Northamptonshire after its annual, and so I had my flight stuff with me (including a handheld radio in the side pocket of my bag). He stopped me because I was looking around at things and walking quickly. The “things” in question were the train information boards and the “walking quickly” was to try to get to the other platform where the train was about to depart in 2 minutes, two entirely normal things in a train station! No one in Manchester airport (or my departure airport) had even cared about the radio, but to this guy it made me look like a terrorist.
The police officer asked me all kinds of questions, including where I was going – either he was trying it on, or his knowledge of English geography was lamentably poor as I had to describe in more and more detail where my destination was. Fortunately he had heard of Leicester. To be honest I had started to wonder if it was really not a plain clothes officer but someone trying to get me to be careless with my bag so he could run off with it.
At least missing the train I was walking quickly to catch didn’t mean I missed my connection at Manchester Picadilly, even if it did mean I had to walk quickly again in Manchester and hope there wasn’t another of his ilk!
A non-uniformed PC is supposed to show you his ID. Otherwise he could be anybody…
Well he did show ID.
But how many people actually know what a genuine police ID looks like?
If it’s worth it: https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/complaints/submit-a-complaint which I believe they take seriously nowadays. There’s a range of desired outcomes ranging from ‘staff learning’ to ‘criminal prosecution’.
This is quite interesting…
Looks like the sGAR site was developed by an outfit called Zaizi PDF and they get good money PDF for this work.
At the same time, as the PDFs show, they struggle with developing a website which can be printed 
The sGAR site will look very familiar to anyone used to completing a UK income Tax return.
Visually it looks similar and the design philosophy is the same. So I imagine it was developed by the the same company (or it was spec’ed by someone in great detail who also spec’ed the HMRC site).
Yes – same look.
One big difference is that the GAR site uses an email to authenticate you (which can take some time to arrive, if indeed it does, due to spam filters) while the personal and corporation tax etc sites use SMS which is arguably more reliable, but there should be the two options.
I doubt the govt will change anything though. They are the “police” and have zero interest in improving usability. The various points (like a checkbox for a “return GAR” done in one go) have been made to them multiple times.
EuroGA admin was recently contacted by a UK Border Force officer who wanted to engage with the GA community. I said that EuroGA is a pilot community and suggested that he signs up here. He doesn’t appear to have done so (this was weeks ago) and I suspect that – like with nearly all manufacturers of equipment – engaging on social media is against policy.
All electronic, Peter
