Keep yer hand on yer ha'penny in Paris

[Old Greg]

That would have required an air of authority that you simply do not possess though OG.

I'm guessing you're easily fooled.

[sasguru]

Some irrelevant bollux

So to summarise this thread. A slack-jawed cretin and his wife stupidly have a passport stolen abroad due to being a bit thick. And then have the bare-faced gall to come and moan on here when they are charged a perfectly reasonable stupidity tax to get home. You couldn't make it up.

Move along nuffink to see here, innit.

[shaunbhoy]

I'm guessing you're easily fooled.

I expect you apply a lot of guesswork to your daily routine.

[shaunbhoy]

Lots of hot air deleted

[shaunbhoy]

[cailin maith]

On a similar note, returned from Brussels yesterday. Quite an enjoyable trip marred by the fact that on sunday Mrs SB had her purse nicked from her bag, with about £140 in it as well as her passport!! (I know, don't start me on "WTF were you doing with it in there?")
Our Eurostar back was mid-afternoon, so we spent an exciting morning traipsing from one Police Station to another getting pointless paperwork, for the British Consulate to marry up with their own collection of pointless paperwork!!
All this in order that they could charge us 116 Euros for an "Emergency Passport" that was only any good for getting us back across the Channel!! Rip-off city! And the Consulate were trying to suggest we "Book an appointment and come back in a few days!"
I mean, just what is the point of a Consulate if not to be there to offer assistance to Brits when incidents like this occur?
Useless bunch of self-serving c0cksockets living high on the hog from proceeds of the Public Purse!

Gah!!!

My aunt and uncle live in Brussels at the moment (they are on their 2nd stint there) and they say the pickpocket malarkey is crazy!

Not good but at least you managed to get home.

[b0redom]

What confuses me is why you needed a document to travel at all. After all you're a Brit inside the EU. Surely there's no restrictions on travel, no?

[stek]

What confuses me is why you needed a document to travel at all. After all you're a Brit inside the EU. Surely there's no restrictions on travel, no?

No restrictions on travel no but as UK and Ireland are not in Schengen zone you have to prove your Nationality, otherwise Bob on a Uk Tier 1 could just wander over to Europe and claim Human Rights where the benefits are better. Actually...

[doodab]

Not really, they issued an "Emergency Travel Document" that was considerably more expensive than an actual 10-year Passport, and was only any good for one journey. And they only did that under sufferance.
The amount of time it took I can't see why they could not just have issued a replacement 10-Year Passport. I would not have minded paying a bit over the odds for that. They obviously had access to all the information they would have required.
Does anyone have any idea just what their core function actually is? Other than providing a nice cushy job for underperforming former Public Schoolboys/Girls?
Aside from attending countless garden parties of course.
Maybe they have been infected by the sort of Brussels Gravy Train fever that afflicts the thousands of MEPs that infest the place!!

They can't just hand out passports willy nilly. That's a job for the home office.

[KaiserWilly]

This shows the madness of ending border controls for Romanians and Bulgarians. Nah, the madness is to be in an "union" with Romania and Bulgaria.