UK Ferry Tickets

At a time when hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are allowed to go about their business untroubled by the rule of law, the spin-doctors at number 10 have come up with an extraordinary plan to appease an outraged public.

Why not hammer ordinary, law-abiding citizens with a huge increase in the cost of buying a passport?

While illegals have no trouble for such documents, the rest of us will, from October, have to pay £66 for a new adult 10-year passport (up from £51) and £45 for a child’s passport (up from £34). That’s £222 for the privilege of new documents for a family of two adults and two children.

This is nothing less than a tax on holidaymakers. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised. Whenever this government thinks of a new way to raise revenue, it invariably turns to the travel industry. As well as the passport increase, we’ve had airport and airline taxes and are soon to be hit by a bed levy.

Small wonder the holidaymaker is a sitting target. We are in a golden age of travel; there are a similar number of packages available as there were six years ago and we now have the added bonus of around 50 million no-frills airline seats to choose from.

We’re supposed to be a nation of adventurers, but we’ve had little encouragement from this government.

What’s your view?

Guest Article by Jeremy Skidmore

Saturday, July 7th, 2007