Border Force Talk - Saturday 22nd March

wingdiver

wingdiver

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Fox's Marina Yacht Club are hosting a talk from Border Force on Saturday 22 March at 2pm, at The Outlook, Fox's Marina, IP2 8NJ, where teas and coffees will be available. We would like to invite members from outside our club to attend, as we hope it will be of use to everyone.

The representatives from Border Force will be covering the following:
  • An introduction to Home Office Intelligence, who they are and what they do
  • Who Border Force are, their priorities and an overview of the local Border Force team
  • An explanation of the equipment used by Border Force
  • The Maritime Command within Border Force, including the cutters
  • An explanation as to why they need the help of the Maritime community
  • Things we as water users should be aware of when on our travels
  • Smuggling trends and recent examples
  • How to report any concerns
  • The opportunity to ask questions of the team
If anyone is interested in attending, they are welcome to just turn up on the day, but it would be helpful if they could email info@fmyc.org.uk or sign up for the event using the link Border Force Event - Fox's Marina Yacht Club
 
Without objective evidence (which is unlikely) surely you shouldn't be making such a slanderous statement, when you know a reply is impossible. Perhaps you worked for Fujitsu?
 
ex-Gladys said:
There's an oxymoron... "Home Office Intelligence". I was an IT contractor for that august organisation, and can confirm it has none...
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I have had an 'interesting' career (somewhat in the Chinese curse sense!), that involved variously practical, technical, intellectual, professional and managerial work in a very diverse series of fields, and encompassing the private, voluntary and public sectors.

I struggle to think of any of the dozens of organisations, large and small, I have worked for and with that did not suffer from at least some serious dysfunction, whether that be from a rigid bureaucracy, the capricious owner of a small business, or whatever. (As Donovan so succinctly put it, 'Organisations ain't really organised'!) Yet in every field, and absolutely certainly every sector, I found amazingly clever, dedicated and hard-working people doing impressive and useful things despite it all (often alongside others who were a waste of space!).

I have no direct experience of the Home Office, but I have worked closely with civil servants and political leaders in other government departments, and despite frustrations have generally found them to be really impressive and highly motivated to do the best possible for the public, despite their organisation being inherently vastly more complex - conflicting objectives and multiple lines of accountability, for example - than any private organisation. The notion the private sector would be better at such challenges is laughable (and anyway significant private sector experience among the workforce and board members haas long been the norm, and an awful lot of the subsidiary activities have already long been privatised).

I don't believe for a moment that the Home Office is perfect, nor that it does not have a lot of highly intelligent people and organisational capabilities to do its vital but highly contentious work.

It's easy to knock an organisation like the Home Office - indeed politicians often do (Home Secretaries themselves have described it as e.g. 'Not fit for purpose'). I notice, though, that decades pass, governments come and go, without anyone coming up with something radically better to do its thankless tasks.

It's also rather easy to knock the IT contracting and consulting industry!

In order to improve something, you need to have a clear idea what its shortcomings are. The statement that the Home Office has no intelligence strikes me as, well, unintelligent.
 
Debennut said:
Without objective evidence (which is unlikely) surely you shouldn't be making such a slanderous statement, when you know a reply is impossible. Perhaps you worked for Fujitsu?
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It would be libel not slander. Truth and honest opinion are not defamatory. Pretty sure its been established that hyperbole for comedic or literary effect are also not defamatory if the reader could be reasonably expected to understand that it should not be taken literally! No need for "evidence" as such.
 
ylop said:
It would be libel not slander. Truth and honest opinion are not defamatory. Pretty sure its been established that hyperbole for comedic or literary effect are also not defamatory if the reader could be reasonably expected to understand that it should not be taken literally! No need for "evidence" as such.
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The old libel and slander have now been rolled into one offense of defamation. There's a very interesting YouTube channel called Art Of Law. Alan who runs it is a barrister who does a lot of defamation work and covers the subject a lot. The plaintive has to show that significant damage has been caused to their reputation in the eyes of the general public. I don't think a joke about a government department would cross that threshold as people a) understand that it's just a joke and b) generally don't have a particularly high opinion of such organisations anyway. Debennut's remark attempting to tie ex-Gladys to Fujitsu might be considered defamatory given how far down the toilet that company's reputation is as a result of the revelations from the PO scandal inquiry so attempting to associate a person with that company could be seen as harming that person's personal and professional reputation.

As an aside some people in the public eye are held in such low regard that you'd have to falsely accuse them of some utterly heinous crime in order for the public to form a lower opinion of them. Politicians fall into this category.
 
One word - BT.
Great people, terrible systems and proof that Skynet will one day send the terminator to kill us and no-one, (no matter how capable, dedicated and personable they be) will be able to flick the off switch without it popping back on because the computer said ‘no’ ten minutes after the (latest) call to customer service. Just saying.
 
Quite some years ago 2 border force men were standing at the hard to our sailing club. Being me I thought I would approach them for a chat . They were just standing there looking at everyone sailing around. They were very grumpy so I left them to it . Didn’t see any action or arrests so don’t think they were too busy to talk. Maybe I was wearing scruffy clothes?😊 One Home Office establishment (an average one , nothing special or high priority) I visited had the most pristine toilets I have ever seen , marble and stuff. Most cars except mine were luxury types too.
 
Years ago when Burnham Week was a busy event, we were heading out to the starting area when a customs launch came alongside.
"Where are you from?"
"Priors"
"Destination?"
"Pile House, round some buoys and back to Priors"
"ETA?"
"Don't know but we'll be as quick as we can".
All dutifully logged, vessel interrogated. Existence justified.
 
What do border force do if a boatload of illegal immigrants land ashore and border force are at the scene? I didn’t go to the talk obviously.
 
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