UKBA 35% increase in boardings!!!!

Keen_Ed said:
Well, I for one believe that the state shouldn't be doing anything without due cause. So I want to know what justification they have for increasing the boarding by this huge number. And if they're just fishing trips, hoping to catch somebody on the offchance, then I believe we should know. And they should stop.

This is a bit OTT, but the sentiment is right, IMHO. We should all be keeping an eye on what the state gets up to in our name, and we should absolutely hold them to account.

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
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They are not taking you away, they are boarding your yacht to make sure you are not smuggling people or drugs, and in my experience they have left 5 minutes after they arrived.

Do you also object to walking through Customs at as Airport? Do you not think we should protect our Borders against drugs?
 
chanelyacht said:
but personally I would have no problem if every vessel in UK territorial waters was boarded.
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Well, I would have a HUGE problem if every boat was being boarded.

It's not for the state to give us permission to do things. It's for us to give the state powers to restrict our behaviour when necessary. It's for the state to have to justify when it's taking such powers - every single time.

If a significant porportion of boats were carrying contraband, then I could see the justification. But seeing as I have yet to hear about a single example of a random boarding resulting in the discovery of a significant amount of contraband, then I fail to see the need.

And given the "we're coming to get you" tone of the adverts about benefit fraud and TV license evasion, how come the UKBA don't take out "we caught x yachts full of drugs last year. don't try it, because we will catch you" ads in mags? They don't because they don't catch people like that. They catch people through intelligence - all the yacht stories I've seen have been along the lines of "big drug shipment caught, we were monitoring them all the way from their departure, we knew what they were up to." OK, so crims might not read YM/YW, but sailors do, and it would go a long way towards getting the general sailing public onside re random boardings.

I would love to see a UKBA story "we jumped onboard this boat, searched it and found all this. what a catch" story. But I've never seen one. It would be a significant justifiction for random boardings, IMHO.
 
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Obviously there have to be Customs' cutters dotted around the coast to catch smugglers identified by intelligence. And, presumably, these need to be crewed and capable of putting to sea at short notice because, I assume, not all intelligence arrives days in advance. So, that is a lot of expense tied up in the infrastructure and manpower.

What should they do when they don't have leads to follow? Sit in port and wait for the 'phone to ring?

Given that this is my tax bill they are spending, I don't believe so. For the modest incremental cost of putting to sea, I think they should be out there making there presence visible and making random stops every now and then to act as a deterrent.

Ok, the numbers being stopped are large, but I can't figure out in my mind whether this is a significant number of all Channel crossings. I am certainly not suggesting that they should stop every boat crossing the Channel, which they don't anyway, but I haven't got a problem if they make themselves very visible and cause us a little inconvenience along the way.

That said, I have never been boarded. The closest they have ever come to me was a couple of miles away and on a reciprocal course. Perhaps I might feel differently if they came alongside in their rib and left a big black mark along my topsides!
 
Angele said:
What should they do when they don't have leads to follow? Sit in port and wait for the 'phone to ring?
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No, they should be getting out there and making it more likely that the phone will ring. Wandering around marinas on a weekend, letting people know that they appreciate all the help that they get. Winning hearts and minds. Making people think positively about them, and therefore more likely to report suspicious behaviour.
 
Keen_Ed said:
Well, I would have a HUGE problem if every boat was being boarded.

I would love to see a UKBA story "we jumped onboard this boat, searched it and found all this. what a catch" story. But I've never seen one. It would be a significant justifiction for random boardings, IMHO.
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If this comes to pass, some would say it's just a question of when", we can expect a real upturn in boardings, delayed departuers and the rest. Far better to deter today than to have to succumb to major persistent checking in the future.

I have sailed European waters since 1987. I have found continental surveillance quite a lot ahead of ours: look up when next you cross the Channel from France. Bet you there's a spotter plane there, French normally! We are just catching up in my view!

PWG
 
Keen_Ed said:
No, they should be getting out there and making it more likely that the phone will ring. Wandering around marinas on a weekend, letting people know that they appreciate all the help that they get.
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There should be a shorebased bunch that do that. The ones that haven't been given the expensive sea training (or who don't have the required sea legs).;)
 
Angele said:
So, that is a lot of expense tied up in the infrastructure and manpower.

What should they do when they don't have leads to follow? Sit in port and wait for the 'phone to ring?
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No, they can and are 'gainfully' employed rummaging anchored and passing merchant ships for a few fags not held in the bond store.

But yes, I agree with other posters, they should be conducting a vigorous hearts and minds campaign in marinas and yacht clubs to get the leisure boaters to be their eyes and ears on the ground.

A bit Stasi-ish, I know, but probably very effective in building intelligence profiles.
 
I too looked at the UKBA press releases when this subject was running a couple of months ago. I was looking for any support for the wild unsupported statements made by UKBA about their activities. I too was surprised by the complete lack of any cases involving yachts given the impression that UKBA want to create.

I am pleased to see that an FOI request has been made and not surprised they refused to provide the information. This is either because they do not know (which would be surprising) or more likely they do know and are afraid to tell.

As I also pointed out in an earlier thread, random searches are a complete waste of time if the objective is to catch smugglers. The number they actually board - even if all the c2000 were randomly boarded yachts is tiny in comparison with the total number of yacht movements. The proportion of all yacht movements that would involve smuggled drugs is very small. So the chances of catching one is even smaller. For example if there are 100000 yacht movements a year around the UK and 100 carried smuggled drugs, there is a 0.1% chance of catching one (that is you would have to search on average 1000 yachts to find one). If only 2000 were searched the odds would rise to 0.2%. In other words they might get 2 a year on average.

All the court cases that I have seen involving drugs smuggled by yachts have been the result of intelligence. Of course casually observing court cases through the press is not definitive, but commonsense tells you that intelligence is the way to go.

We should demand better of our public servants and not just accept that they are right. It is all too easy to accept their unwarranted intrusion into our private lives on the basis that they have a job to do when they are unable to properly explain the benefits their intrusion brings - never mind explaining how and why they are spending such large sums of our money.
 
Angele said:
There should be a shorebased bunch that do that. The ones that haven't been given the expensive sea training (or who don't have the required sea legs).;)
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There used to be. Remember when most decent sized harbours had a local Customs man, and when part of their job was to patrol their patch? All dismantled in the interests of "efficiency" of course.

The UK border system is a joke, about as secure as a colander. Contrast this with the position over the water in France, where the coastal stations have full radar coverage and liaise properly with customs and navy vessels, as well as a proper fishing tracking system.

The problem is, as ever in the UK, that the system has been set up not to do the job, but to ensure no-one can be held to account when it doesn't work, and to justify as many empire builders as possible, hence having the UKBA, the MFA, and HMCG, and local sea fisheries vessels - rather than one integrated service.
 
In 13 yrs I have been boarded only once and that was in UK waters. I have sailed to Spain and regularly go to France.

I do not object to their right to board but I am concerned if it turns into an Industry employing another 1% of the population.

I just get the impression its a job to do and the 99.9% (or even higher) of all searches of private boats find nothing. If we complain I am sure they will be more thorough in checking documentation and finding infringements to justify their existence.

The UK does have a habit of over enforcing rules and as a person that suffers from allergies I now have to seriously evaluate the risks if struck by a sneezing fit of pulling over and stopping on a double yellow line and be done by a camera for illegally stopping or using a hankerchief and only having 1 hand on the steering wheel for which a number of people have been done.

The risks this days of living in the UK and avoiding any form of fine are not to sneezed at!!

Now where is my self assessment tax return. Repeat after me three times - I am a criminal and must pay my fines etc etc etc!!!
 
Tranona said:
...For example if there are 100000 yacht movements a year around the UK and 100 carried smuggled drugs, there is a 0.1% chance of catching one
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Even then you're assuming that a search of a yacht carrying drugs would find anything. I found an old bosuns chair on our little thirty footer a full 2 years after buying her. It would take several people a full day of fairly destructive searching to find something that someone could have spent weeks concealing.
 
I have one of those cynical suspicions that much of the increase in boardings is not due to them trying to be more effective at controlling immigration/smuggling, rather that their political masters are demanding that they take action that the public sees so it appears as if they are doing more.

The reality is that every boarding of an innocent is a failure, if they are as they claim working on intelligence led policing (that is why they took away the small port Waterguard stations). If they were doing better and working effectively a far higher proportion of their actions would result in exposing wrongdoing.
 
I applaud Keen Ed for putting in his FOI request and posting the result here. Of course the RYA should really be doing this but they have chosen not to. After all they wouldn't want to upset any of their mates in Government would they?
 
rallyveteran said:
I applaud Keen Ed for putting in his FOI request and posting the result here. Of course the RYA should really be doing this but they have chosen not to. After all they wouldn't want to upset any of their mates in Government would they?
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No, they probably realise it is a waste of time as UKBA refuses to answer the questions as illustrated here.
 
Ruffles said:
Even then you're assuming that a search of a yacht carrying drugs would find anything. I found an old bosuns chair on our little thirty footer a full 2 years after buying her. It would take several people a full day of fairly destructive searching to find something that someone could have spent weeks concealing.
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That reminds me of the good old days when all we had to worry about was IRA bomb scares. Had one in our factory. Had to search the vast parts warehouse and I remember telling my MD we could never find things in there we knew that were there (according to our computer) - so what chance did we have of finding a bomb we did not know was there!.

That site is now inevtably a Tesco superstore - bet they don't lose very much.
 
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