A bonzer idea from Oz

2013-01-07 12:14

Chris Moerdyk 

I would, for a brief moment, like to break from the time-honoured South African tradition of bashing Australians to give them a resounding round of applause for a damn clever idea.

Very simply, what they have started doing is instead of taking up an entire page of your passport with a visa they simply register the fact that you have a valid visa online and give you a separate letter to carry as backup.

How indescribably simple.

There is nothing that irritates me more than when those stupid Poms and arrogant Europeans not only make you have a visa for every separate trip but insist on taking up a whole page in your passport. Which means that even if you travel only modestly your passport will be full before it has even vaguely reached 10 years old.

I am not going to get into the need for visas right now because that discussion just spoils my year, but suffice it to say that if countries like the UK insist not only on visitor's visas but those iniquitous transit visas as well, then at least they could use what little intelligence they have to do everything online.

Actually they have it all online anyway and I have to say that the number of times I have gone into countries where they don't even look at the visa but rather just swipe the barcode of my passport and hey presto, all the visa details come up on their computers anyway.

So come on you dumb Poms and incredibly arrogant Europeans who insist of those foul Schengen visas, you can at least stop cluttering up our passports with your fancy stamped visas that you never look at anyway?

And as a result you can drop that even more arrogant insistence that you won't give us a visa unless our passport has six empty pages. Why six empty pages for crying out loud?  You only need one for your silly little visa.

And while I am at it stupid Poms and silly Schengen people, why don't you do like the Americans and give us a 10 year visa?

Why do you have to keep reinventing the damn wheel? What's worse is that if I go to say Germany for three weeks they will give me a three week Schengen visa and then if a month later I go to France, they repeat the whole time-consuming and iniquitously expensive exercise all over again.

Can't they talk to each other for crying out loud?

So, bloody well done Australia for a bonzer idea. I now like you more than the Poms and Europeans and almost as much as the New Zealanders who of course, don’t require us to have a visa at all.

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