The second law

This morning both the second and the third law of passports were invoked

The second law states that it doesn't matter how good you passport photo is it will always be questionable

The third law states that once they've started finding mistakes they will go on finding them until you capitulate

And capitulate we did! New Photos, new witnesses, an hour longer than had been allowed and finally it was accepted.

At what point will the question be asked about whether this system actually works or not. It no doubt saves someone (the Department of Foreign Affairs?)time. But like all "time saving" the time that is saved is not saved but shifted. So where it might be reasonably expected we could have spent, say, an hour filling in and lodging forms I have probably spent about 4...and worse to say there is still one more to do.