Random thoughts and pictures

At the end of March, I applied for a provisional driving licence. This involved sending my passport off to the DVLA so they could check I was who I said I was. Fair enough. In these times where the government likes to keep us in fear of whatever, and with the introduction of biometric passports, fingerprinting at airports and having to have your photograph taken when you want to fly to Scotland from England, you can see why a government agency might want proof of someones identity. When I hadn't recieved my passport (but my licence) at the end of March, I emailed (as suggested on the DVLA website.) And told them that the problem lay with the format they used for my address, and even suggested what may have happened. 20 days later I got a reply. It thanked me for my email and said it would reply within 3 days. 3 days, obviously on top of the 20 it already took for an automated response. I duly got my reply telling me I should wait 10 days from receipt of my licence to get my passport back. So this by now was, by their own timescale, 2 weeks later than I should have got my passport. So I did what any normal person would do and phone them. At least 24 days so far that my passport has been missing. Amongst the unhelpful phone monkeys' explainations as to why I hadn't recieved my passport were that I didn't know my own address, I entered my address wrongly and that as I had received one piece of wrongly addressed mail, then it was obvious that I should have received all wrongly addressed mail. Oh yes, and now of course they have no record of my email. So, what should I do? They refuse to accept that I am sain enough to know my own address. I know my address was entered correctly. Should I cancel my passport and get a new one? I travel abroad in 2 months. Apparently that would be my decision and only after investigation would they be able to tell me if they would compensate me. This was no good to me as I know how it would turn out. I explained that if they did not make a decision soon and I had to cancel my trip they would be faced with an even bigger bill. But still they would not commit. Today I called again to see if they got my letter - apparently I had to put something in writing before they would do anything further. And today I found out just how "urgent" the DVLA consider urgent, and how much importance this government agency puts on a passport missing for, by now, over a month. This is so important to the DVLA that they can't be bothered for another 3 days. Really. There's nobody dealing with things until Tuesday. They are willing to risk another 3 days closer to my trip being cancelled and another 3 days where someone could be pretending to be me for whatever fearful purposes are in vogue just now. One thing from today though was an almost hint of an admission that what I wrote in an email over a month ago might just be what actually happened. But of course, they can't be bothered for another 3 days...