Without frontiers
Following our visit to the Netherlands and Belgium a couple of days ago, and today’s examination of the (non-existent) threat of border controls between an independent Scotland and the rUK, we thought it’d be nice to finish the week with a whistlestop tour of some more of our favourite international borders.
It’s perhaps worth noting that several of these are between EU and non-EU countries, or even between two non-EU countries. The one above, though, is Denmark/Germany.
Ireland/United Kingdom
Belgium/France
Portugal/Spain
Spain/Portugal
Norway/Sweden
Germany/Luxembourg
Poland/Belarus
Netherlands/Germany
Austria/Liechtenstein
Spain/Portugal (again)
Switzerland/France
Russia/Poland
Italy/Slovenia
Germany/Belgium
Brazil/Uruguay
France/Monaco
Czech Republic/Poland
Belgium/Netherlands
Hungary/Austria
Germany/Poland
Not long now.
Brilliant. I’ve long cited the non-existent Irish border, but you more you see the more you wonder if the No campaigners are malicious or just deeply misinformed.
Scary border guards for Austria/Liechtenstein
Just shows the twats we are dealing with!
There is one bit of the border between the Irish Republic and the UK controlled area where in the space of a few miles you wander in and out without any sight of a border guard or even any barbed wire.The only way of knowing is the colour of the lines at the side of the road.
Huh, call themselves borders! We at least have potholes to prevent foreigners from entering the Kingdom of Fife.
There shouldn’t be any borders apart from the one around Margaret Curran so she can pretend she isn’t in an independent country.
Aye but….naw….drive on wrong side of road……naw….but….There aw furriners
Margaret from Glasgow you’re this weeks ARSE of the Week 🙂
All Together Now
Jeux Sans Frontieres, jeux Sans Frontieres, Hans plays with Lotty and Lotty plays with Jane etc
and no Stuart Hall jokes please
When I was young and travelling a lot I hated it if I wasn’t stopped at a border. I always wanted those trophy stamps on my passport. Despite years of meandering around I never managed more than half a dozen, if I don’t count the Incredibly Strange States of America with its endless supplies of ink and stamps.
Malta used to be great, for a wee place – you couldn’t cross the street but they had to stamp your passport. Coming in from Sicily one time with my sister and being exasperated by the queue, I told customs that my suitcase contained hand grenades and I was going to sell my sister into prostitution. I was eighteen at the time. They weren’t at all interested. My sister was pretty angry.
On a light hearted note – Many years ago while crossing the Hungarian/Romanian border packed with supplies donated by Scottish people the gun-toting border guards saw the Saltire, Lion Rampant stickers on the Transit and shouted…….Johnnie Walker, Glasgow Rangers etc and waved us through with big smiles. That made me proud to be Scottish !
Loved the Norway-Sweden one.
In the meantime, Big Brother is truly watching.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22673156
The bill, allowing the monitoring of all UK citizens’ internet use, was dropped after a split in the coalition.
But Lord Howard said David Cameron had “to act in the national interest” following the Woolwich murder.
Labour leader Ed Miliband has said that “if he [the PM] wants a communications bill, we’ll help him get it through”.
Time to get out, and quick. Capitalism invariably leads to authoritarianism, as typified by the police state. The increasingly few doing well out of it must protect themselves from the increasing majority suffering under it. This is not about a couple of nutters in Woolwich.
You’ll note that no one has been able to explain how the communications bill is in the national interest or what it could have done to prevent Woolwich.
HandandShrimp says:
26 May, 2013 at 7:34 pm
There shouldn’t be any borders apart from the one around Margaret Curran so she can pretend she isn’t in an independent country.
Maybe there is a border around Stair Heid and it is a existential bubble in which lives her London Labour World, completely oblivious to reality, especially a Scottish one.
They need PR people and spin doctors to tell them what to think, what to say and when to do so.
Magz has just lost the plot; she still thinks she live in the East End of Glasgow amongst her non Foreigner constituents.
When I go walking or skiing in the Jura you never really know except maybe by GPS whether you’re in France or in Switzerland or some local knowledge. Poor old Insular “Brits” trying to scare the ignorant.
I would strongly support the re-emergence of an independent Northumberland. I think we might be able to negotiate rather less cluttered signage, though.
Better Together is merely a rebranding of Dungeon of Doom from WCW. Here is Darling from earlier today warning of a total eclipse of the sun.
An outstanding post, it doesn’t need a big write up because the pictures say it all. I shall be sharing this.
We are living in ‘The Village’
When I crossed over from Austria to Slovenia, they took my passport for checking, but never stamped it…BWAAAAHHHH!!! I had never been abroad before and wanted some stamp marks.
When I wor a lad, we had proper borders. When you went to West Berlin on the train through East Germany, you’d have an AK 47 pointed at you sometimes – that really made you focus on the situation in hand. I once spent an hour locked in a little room in the East German side of Checkpoint Charlie because the East Germans were annoyed that a West German political party was due to hold a conference in West Berlin later the same week. It was January, and more than a little chilly. Nowadays, It’s a different world – haven’t Labour noticed?
The major truly unpleasant immigration experience left is the weirdness than can attend a visit to the US, where all foreigners are automatically viewed as potential killers. Mag Curran would feel right at home there as a delusional xenophobe.
Note how several of those roads also show clear signs of cross-border cooperation in regards to road maintenance etc. As a result, you can barely tell there’s a border in most of those – some of them look less like a border than the current border between Scotland and England (because let’s not forget that there is in fact already a border! )
I don’t fancy trying to get past those Liechtensteiner border guards though. They look pretty beefy…
When I went to Lichtenstein, I wanted a stamp in my passport. I got one from the library eventually.
@Richard Lucas
I served in Berlin in 1973 / 74 and I agree that was a border and a half. Much fun was had at the expense of the East German border guards. But that is another story.
On the other hand almost forty years ago I was also stationed in W. Germany. The drive home on leave was usually undertaken at night to catch an early morning ferry from Zebruge. Leaving Germany the autobahn split into about eight lanes each with a sort of tollbooth arrangement at each lane. Late at night only one booth was open indicated by a green light as opposed to red for closed. As you approached the booth you would slow down much to the annoyance of the wee man in the booth who would have to look up from his book to wave you on. This was in the early seventies.
For those of you bemoaning the lack of passport stamps, my better half keeps a diary when travelling and whenever possible buys a postage stamp, sticks it in her book and gets the local Post Office to stamp it.
BTW, wake up Ms Curran, you are not doing yourself any favours.
I was in Toru? in Poland when they joined the EU, so because I entered a non-EU country, I got a nice stamp in my passport, but when I left five days later, I was travelling between EU countries, so stamps were not available. The result is that I’ve got a stamp saying I’ve entered Poland, but none to say I ever left again…
When I went to Kazakhstan the first time (’98) I didn’t get a stamp in my passport to say I’d entered the country as the plane arrived late. Customs at Aktau airport (on the Caspian) was deserted. A table-tennis table was set up in the arrivals hall between the customs desks, but the guards had obviously given up and gone home. It caused trouble when I left as there was no stamp to say I’d entered the country…..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-22694624
Narrow Water bridge funding approved
Funding for a new £14m cross-border bridge has been given the go-ahead by Finance Minister Sammy Wilson.
The Narrow Water bridge is to link the counties of Down [N. Ireland, UK] and Louth [Republic of Ireland] across Carlingford Lough…
…The majority of the funding for the project is coming from Europe, with the Department of Finance contributing £2,691,880 and the Republic of Ireland providing £781,962.
very late comment, I know, but you might be interested in checking out the towns of Haparnada and Tornio and the Sweden/Finland border as well.
or HaparandaTornio as they market themselves…
http://www.haparandatornio.com/en
from the Swedish-language site:
“Vår gränslösa tvillingstad HaparandaTornio”
meaning
Our borderless twin city HaparandaTornio
@handclapping says: 26 May, 2013 at 7:24 pm:
“Huh, call themselves borders! We at least have potholes to prevent foreigners from entering the Kingdom of Fife.”
Aye! An no jist atween Kelty an Keltybridge aither.
But! But!
That last photo can’t be right – the sign says it is 30 miles to Hadrian’s Wall and everyone knows that Hadrian’s Wall is the Scottish/English Border.
That Hadrian chappie was the Westminster Government’s Minister of Transport that built it.