Our adventure at the BTCO

I just got back from the British Cultural Office. The interview for the Dragon's settlement visa was, well unsettling. I spoke to the immigration officer on the phone to arrange an interview. She is nothing like she sounds. She's a middle aged woman, slightly overweight with a large bruise over the bridge of her nose and one eye. It looked like she had been hit in the face with a brick. I don't think we should hold that against her however.

I made the decision to keep quiet and let the Dragon answer the questions. It was ostensibly an interview with her afterall. One of the first questions was, "Why do you want to settle int he UK". I wasn't expecting this. It seems like such a stupid question. The Dragon wasn't expecting it either. She replied that she wanted to be closer to my parents who were getitng older. We were then told that it was not a good answer. That answer was a good reason for me to go back, but not my wife apparently. This floored the Dragon for a second but she recovered and replied that she would obviously want to be with her husband who wanted to be nearer his parents. So immigration lady wrote down, "To be with husband" on her paperwork.

So... Apparently "to be with husband" is a perfectly acceptable reason to want to settle in the UK, despite the fact that her husband has not been resident in the UK for four years; but "wants to be closer to husband's family" is not. I questioned this and got a very vague answer. I wanted to make it quite plain that we were intending to move back because we made a decision together that it would be nice to be closer to my family. She then made a big deal out of the fact that many Taiwanese women want traditional post natal care and move back to Taiwan when a baby is born. I can't see why that is relevant. We are applying for a settlement visa because we want to settle. If our plans change or don't work out and we move away again, what does it matter?

She then asked about how we would support ourselves in England. I made a mistake here. I was keen to indicate that I would be looking for a job as soon as I could, but that I was not going to be a father who never came home. So I said that I had no job to walk into and I was thinking that I might get something not very taxing for a while so that I had more time with my family. This prompted a barage of questions about how I would make ends meet. This ended with me pointing out that I would have to work but that I had some savings that would last a while. This didn't appear to satisfy her. I should have just said I was actively looking for a job in the tech writing field.

She now needs a letter from my parents to confirm that we can stay there until my place is vacated by the current tennants. I also need a letter from my current business confirming how long I have been working there. Why do they need that?

It will take a few days for the application to get processed now. I'll keep you posted.

The insidious ID card scheme has just scraped through the House of Commons in Britain with a tiny majority and now heads for the House of Lords where it is expected to be mauled. I do hope so. It bothers me that it managed to get this far.

I keep hearing about a raid on a "massage parlour" in Britain, somewhere in the Midliands. Police apparently stormed the place and "rescued" 19 women whom they claim were victims of human trafficing. It seems however that nobody has been charged with trafficing and that the six women still being held are claiming that they were in no way forced into the industry, kept there against their will, beaten, blackmailed, or otherwise badly treated by the management of the establishment.

Much is often made of human traffic and the sex industry, and as usual I have an opinion. How do you keep 19 women in a public service industry imprisoned in the sex trade against their will? I'm assuming that this "massage parlour" had a front door through which clients could enter and presumably workers could leave. I'll bet there was a telelphone and windows that gave access to the outside world. If the workers were so anxious to leave I think they could have, or called the police while their minder was taking a pee. On top of that, these women are prostitutes. They have clients whom they see again and again. How could you possibly stop women from telling their clients about maltreatment? I'm not saying that trafficing doesn't happen, but to get 19 women together and stop them from blowing the whistle is pretty nearly impossible I would have thought.

Ken Clarke has been forced out of the Tory leadership race. This is good news I think. I want to see an anti-Blair Euroskeptic right winger in there.

Yes Mr Cat6, David Blaine is treated like Jesus by some people, but he does do some pretty amazing stuff. Or pretty stupid depending on your point of view.