Compulsory UK licensing for boat owners to reduce illegal immigrants

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penfold

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Given their propensity for shooting each other and the lack of universal health care I'd say they haven't left barbarism behind yet.
Say what you wish of the UK, but I don't think the only Country in the history of mankind who went from barbarism to decadence skipping civilization in between is a so much better benchmark.

PS: assuming that by "America" you actually meant the US of A, as most folks there normally do.
If by chance you were actually talking of Canada, or any other Country in Central or S America, forget my comment.
 
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James L

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Yes we had them in and they had a list !
A few years ago revenue in Ireland spent a couple of days watching my boat (it must have looked a lot more expensive from across the bay).
Apparently they were investigating someone whose house was just above my mooring and assumed the boat must have been his.
Good thing he didn't call out to say hello :)
 
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Sailfree

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In yet another 'you couldn't make it up moment' there is a report in today's Times saying that the Home Office is considering making it mandatory for anyone buying a boat in the UK to have a boating licence. Apparently this is in order to discourage people buying boats to carry illegal immigrants across the Channel ?

Quite how making boat owners in, say, Wales or Scotland have a licence will discourage illegal immigrants is beyond me. Lets hope that Patel gets the boot in the much mooted forthcoming cabinet reshuffle and this crass idea gets the kicked into the long grass

IMG-1209.jpeg

This does not sound logical.

Why buy an boat in UK to take to France to bring back illegal immigrants. I thought most came in inflatables with outboards.

Or is this initiative intelligence lead and there a lot of hard up MoBo owners supplementing their income by bringing in illegal immigrants and arriving UK registered boats attract less attention?

Alternatively is this a case of appearing to solve a problem that does not exist being used to introduce more government control
 
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As it happens, I have a friend who works for Border Force out of Folkestone chasing migrants and I sent him a copy of the Times article too. He says all of the boats they've stopped have been stolen in France, Belgium or Germany and he is mystified by this proposal

So yes this does tend to support the notion that this licensing idea is more about control and potential future taxation than it is about migrants
 

nicho

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It’s more likely an HMRC investigation with owners admitting they can afford to purchase and run such an expensive toy .

I remember being told many years back when they investigated a very well known south coast marina , they walked in and demanded the Client list , inspected quite a few boats , that’s when shall we say the crap hit the fan for a lot of people .

I know of a few that ended up paying back massive chunks of money back from the likes of Benefit kind laws.
You have been warned.
Some years ago, sat on our boat in Chichester Marina, we were approached by a couple of uniformed personnel, who asked to come aboard. They told us they were from HMRC, and investigating VAT avoidance. They were only interested in boats of £250k +, and asked if we would point out any boats considered to be over that value. They also checked our proof of VAT payment, even though it’s value was under the £250k. Very polite, they accepted a cup of tea, over which they claimed to have recovered over £1.5 million in VAT avoidance.
 

Alicatt

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HMRC or Inland Revenue as they were back then decided that we were on the fiddle somewhere and started an investigation, we were building a house in the country and also at the same time building an extension on to our hotel.
The inspector cam through and examined the books, he was expecting an offsetting the VAT from the new build with the build of the extension as one was liable to VAT and the other not. After about a week he had narrowed the VAT fiddle down to one re-occurring thing: we claimed the VAT back on the dog food for our black Labrador dog and he said looking at the big black lump laying there "That the dog was not a working dog so we could not claim it back", that was the only thing he could find in our books.
The next day when he came in through the front door without knocking mum issued the command to the dog and the dog pinned the inspector up against the wall growling and snarling at him - she wouldn't bite but she did make a good show of it :) the outcome of that was that we did get the VAT back on the dog food and the rest of the books were fine.
As we found out, the Inland Revenue have a lot more powers that the police have.
 

James L

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HMRC or Inland Revenue as they were back then decided that we were on the fiddle somewhere and started an investigation, we were building a house in the country and also at the same time building an extension on to our hotel.
The inspector cam through and examined the books, he was expecting an offsetting the VAT from the new build with the build of the extension as one was liable to VAT and the other not. After about a week he had narrowed the VAT fiddle down to one re-occurring thing: we claimed the VAT back on the dog food for our black Labrador dog and he said looking at the big black lump laying there "That the dog was not a working dog so we could not claim it back", that was the only thing he could find in our books.
The next day when he came in through the front door without knocking mum issued the command to the dog and the dog pinned the inspector up against the wall growling and snarling at him - she wouldn't bite but she did make a good show of it :) the outcome of that was that we did get the VAT back on the dog food and the rest of the books were fine.
As we found out, the Inland Revenue have a lot more powers that the police have.
I was audited years ago because I had a lot of travel expenses, I think they went through 6 or 7 different inspectors, every time one went through the books and found nothing wrong they were replaced. Luckily I had been meticulous in keeping everything.
One of them eventually told my accountant that they were told they had to get something. Took nearly 3 years before they finally gave up.
Second guy was very put out that I could claim for stuff that he couldn't. Pretty sure he went back to his boss looking to be allowed claim it as expenses.
 

oldgit

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Much like firearms legislation post-Dunblane it would just serve as an impediment and cost to the law-abiding; legislating by tabloid fiat is a terrible idea.


There has never been anything close to Dunblane incident since the legislation was passed. ?
Within a year and a half of the Dunblane massacre, UK lawmakers had passed a ban on the private ownership of all handguns in mainland Britain, giving the country some of the toughest anti-gun legislation in the world. ... The public generally supported the ban, with most saying they saw no need for guns.30 Jan 2013

Hungerford.
The Act was passed in response to the Hungerford massacre of 1987, where sixteen people had been killed by a man using two legally owned semi-automatic rifles (M1 Carbine), (Type 56), and a handgun (Beretta 92).


Item on our local TV news area ,which covers most of those handy little beaches and nooks and crannies to land your self loading cargo on the south east coast.
Subject of the report was "Just a word in the ear" that some of the dinghies used to bring in some folks to the land of the free, were being purchased in the UK.
Basically if any purchaser of your lightly used rib pays with large bag of cash can you please let Border Force know ASAP and not just stuff the money under the mattress.
Have no doubt at all the honest coastal folk of Kent ,Essex and Sussex will be straight on the blower.
 
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Portofino

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HMRC or Inland Revenue as they were back then decided that we were on the fiddle somewhere and started an investigation, we were building a house in the country and also at the same time building an extension on to our hotel.
The inspector cam through and examined the books, he was expecting an offsetting the VAT from the new build with the build of the extension as one was liable to VAT and the other not. After about a week he had narrowed the VAT fiddle down to one re-occurring thing: we claimed the VAT back on the dog food for our black Labrador dog and he said looking at the big black lump laying there "That the dog was not a working dog so we could not claim it back", that was the only thing he could find in our books.
The next day when he came in through the front door without knocking mum issued the command to the dog and the dog pinned the inspector up against the wall growling and snarling at him - she wouldn't bite but she did make a good show of it :) the outcome of that was that we did get the VAT back on the dog food and the rest of the books were fine.
As we found out, the Inland Revenue have a lot more powers that the police have.
Did you use the same builder ?
 

Alicatt

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yep, we ken that was why it raised a red flag with the IR.
For us it was kept by separate accounts for the two jobs and both were well documented.

Brother of one of my work colleagues was the head of the investigation dept. of the local DSS, he had quite a distinctive car, you could spot his yellow and black Avenger Tiger a mile away and he was seen taking pictures of the workmen working on the house.

We wonder if this is why the house ended up with a priest hole in it, under the floor behind the fireplace/chimney. I found it many years later when I was running cat5 cable and noticed some of the concrete blocks on the founds were slightly different and when I opened it there was a 2m x 2m "room" behind the chimney, there was a stash of empty beer cans in there too.
 

volvopaul

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Some years ago, sat on our boat in Chichester Marina, we were approached by a couple of uniformed personnel, who asked to come aboard. They told us they were from HMRC, and investigating VAT avoidance. They were only interested in boats of £250k +, and asked if we would point out any boats considered to be over that value. They also checked our proof of VAT payment, even though it’s value was under the £250k. Very polite, they accepted a cup of tea, over which they claimed to have recovered over £1.5 million in VAT avoidance.
Did you give him the funny handshake when they left ?
 

penfold

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There has never been anything close to Dunblane incident since the legislation was passed. ?
Within a year and a half of the Dunblane massacre, UK lawmakers had passed a ban on the private ownership of all handguns in mainland Britain, giving the country some of the toughest anti-gun legislation in the world. ... The public generally supported the ban, with most saying they saw no need for guns.30 Jan 2013

Are firearms offences significantly less likely today than they were pre-95? Not really; gun crime has fluctuated up and down several times since, suggesting that gun crime was not significantly affected by the law, other factors having much more effect. The main effect has been to eliminate death by suicide with a handgun, which previously accounted for a handful of deaths annually, gunshot death was and is a very uncommon cause of death. I don't feel any safer but tens of thousands of people had their hobby taken away and quite a few firearms dealers were relieved of their livelihood. Still, you can't be too careful! Mindless authoritarianism peddled by poltroons and tabloid newspapers. There wasn't a plebiscite so what the public thought is unknown.

Don't misconstrue me as some kind of gun nut; I've never owned a gun, but the law is absurdly restrictive. Pistol shooters(including olympians) cannot practise their sport in the UK and all because Tony Blair was a meddling twit who pandered to the tabloids and especially to Murdoch, large calibre handguns had already been banned but he couldn't resist the temptation to show the public he could be more authoritarian than the tories and banned handguns outright.
 

Seven Spades

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There is one major floor in this proposal. If people were trying to flee the U.K. to France or Belgium it might work, but they are coming away.

In all seriousness , I can’t see how licences would help, people smugglers would just get a licence.
 

Jim@sea

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In yet another 'you couldnt make it up moment' there is a report in today's Times saying that the Home Office is considering making it mandatory for anyone buying a boat in the UK to have a boating licence. Apparently this is in order to discourage people buying boats to carry illegal immigrants across the Channel ?

Quite how making boat owners in, say, Wales or Scotland have a licence will discourage illegal immigrants is beyond me. Lets hope that Patel gets the boot in the much mooted forthcoming cabinet reshuffle and this crass idea gets the kicked into the long grass

IMG-1209.jpeg
I suspect that there is an agreement in place that despite Brexit we have agreed to conform to many of the regulations which are in place in Europe. I.E, were we not considering moving our MOT requirements to the first one at 4 years then every 2 years. And having for Income Tax "worldwide assets" Out boat trailers are now being built to European Specification. The French way of making anyone who has a boat have a licence is quite good. Although it was dropped were they not trying to bring in a "House Sellers Pack" In France a house seller has to have an Electrical Safety Inspection whereas in the UK (at the moment) its only Landlords who have to supply one. In France you have to have an Asbestos Survey and a Lead Survey. I Imagine that there will be many more. PS. European Harmonisation is also why we cant buy a 3 kilowatt fan heater any more.
 
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