Passport woes!

@garymarsh6 (23785)
United Kingdom
August 5, 2025 10:08am CST
ACTUAL PASSPORT LETTER: This, apparently, is an actual letter received by the UK Passport Office. The hoops we have to go just to get a new passport! No wonder he was furious. (NB: I have removed most of the swear words.) Dear Sirs, I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe how is it that Sky Television has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a bleeding satellite dish from them back in 1988, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was bloody born and on what date. Do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have on my pension book. It's on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30 years. It is on my National Health card. My driving licence. My car insurance. On the last eight damn passports I've had. It's on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the plane over the last 30 years. All those insufferable census forms. Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Mary Anne, my father's name is Robert and I'd be absolutely astounded if that WOULD ever change between now and when I die!! I apologise, I'm really peed off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough of this bull nonsense! You send the application to my house & then you ask me for my bleeding address!! What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthal aholes working there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for goodness sakes. I just want to go and park my ar*e on some sandy beach somewhere. And would someone please tell me, why would you give a damn whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, you'd be the last people I'd want to tell! Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to the other end of the poxy city to get another copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of £30. Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? Nooooooooooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then We have to find some idiot to confirm that it's really me on the damn picture - you know, the one where we're not allowed to smile?! (Bureaucratic morons). Hey, do you know why we couldn't smile if we wanted to? Because we're totally peed off! P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it's me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1500’s I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had full security clearances over 25 of those years enabling me to undertake highly secretive missions all over the world. However, I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am - you know, someone like my doctor . WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN FRIGGIN` PAKISTAN! Signed An Irate Citizen
9 people like this
9 responses
@Tampa_girl7 (53096)
• United States
5 Aug
This would be humorous if it wasn’t such a frustrating thing to have to go through. I had a crazy encounter with Social Security. They had the month that I was born wrong. I got that corrected. Then they screwed up where I was born. It was a typo of a non existing city. I have my original birth certificate, but the lady keep telling me that the birth certificate was wrong. She told me that I was answering her questions wrong. It was a ridiculous meeting. I thought that maybe a prank was being played on me. I think that I got it resolved. I have been hesitant to check into it again. I haven’t recovered from my encounter with the psycho lady yet.
3 people like this
@Tampa_girl7 (53096)
• United States
14h
@garymarsh6 it was an absolutely insane encounter.
@garymarsh6 (23785)
• United Kingdom
5 Aug
Probably your description of being a greak controlling psycho is very accurate. Even when presented with documentary proof she is still acting like an idiot!
2 people like this
@LadyDuck (480991)
• Italy
5 Aug
Mary Ann, that is Anna Maria in Italian, that is my full name Gary. Those forms are so silly and I had to fill so many because of our move from Switzerland to Italy. It's also ridiculous that they ask for a birth certificate "not older than 3 months"... Where is the problem? Can my birth certificate change in their opinion? They make me crazy.
3 people like this
@garymarsh6 (23785)
• United Kingdom
5 Aug
I often sign peoples passport photos. You have to write so small to get all the words to fit on the back of the photo. This is an example: ‘I certify that this is a true likeness of [title and full name of adult or child who is getting the passport].’ You must add your signature and the date under the statement.
3 people like this
@LadyDuck (480991)
• Italy
5 Aug
@garymarsh6 Oh my goodness, at least we are only required to sign the photo on the back.
1 person likes this
@snowy22315 (194034)
• United States
5 Aug
Bureaucracy is a Insert B word here.
1 person likes this
@DaddyEvil (156016)
• United States
5 Aug
I've never needed a passport but, I actually agree with the man! There's no reason to make people jump through hoops when our governments already have all this information on file about us. I had to pick up a copy of my birth certificate for something a couple of years ago. They couldn't accept a picture of the one I got when I was born or make a copy of it. I had to get the copy I paid $25 for notarized to verify the person had looked at my driver's license before handing me the piece of paper I'd just paid for! We have morons in this country, too!
2 people like this
@garymarsh6 (23785)
• United Kingdom
5 Aug
It is great that our countries are filled with such morons. We can share the pain!
2 people like this
@DaddyEvil (156016)
• United States
5 Aug
@garymarsh6 The whole world already knows we have morons here, they see the results of our last presidential election!
1 person likes this
@xFiacre (14066)
• Ireland
5 Aug
@garymarsh6 My family would believe that I’d written that, but honestly it wasn’t me. Maybe Victor Meldrew. What he needs is to get a nice Irish passport. As a retired gentleman of the cloth I have been asked to countersign many passport application forms. The Irish ones are the best. When I do one I can be sure that I’ll get a phone call from the Dublin office with a very apologetic person asking “Would that be the Father so?” I lie and say yes because it takes too long to explain the difference between a Catholic priest and a Presbyterian minister. Then they ask “And does his reverence know big Seamus McGuigan at all?” Yes, people address me in the third person. I say “yes, I know him well, and his mammy. Oh Nora was a great woman”. And that’s the security check done and dusted.
3 people like this
@garymarsh6 (23785)
• United Kingdom
5 Aug
Hilarious. I thought I had kept you completely anonymous!
2 people like this
@JudyEv (360062)
• Rockingham, Australia
14h
I really, really hope that guy felt just a tiny bit better after writing this.
@celticeagle (177969)
• Boise, Idaho
16h
Things sure can be crazy. Hopefully finding someone won't be too hard. Hope you get it all done soon.
@Juliaacv (54191)
• Canada
21h
Oh boy, passports are never fun to renew and always a bit on the pricy side.
@Fleura (32245)
• United Kingdom
22h
I know how annoying it is. But you would think he would know that insurance companies are nothing to do with the government passport office. And the questions about farms presumably relate to biosecurity and the risks of transmitting devastating diseases like foot and mouth.