Re: uk passports
Count yourself lucky. You might have had to renew one as an expat living in Western Europe since they consolidated the whole shebang in Paris and then outsourced it to a bunch of complete and utter fucking thieves!
So a "where's my fucking passport, you useless bastards?" question now costs you whatever the maximum a premium rate number is allowed to charge per minute in your country, plus 2EUR a minute charged to your credit card.
Then it gets sent to you at the sort of eyewatering rates a courier company usually reserves for having someone carry it personally door-to-door.
Then you find they've hiked the *renewal* cost to well over 100 quid on top of that. Obviously they don't do new issue, but I'd hate to think what they'd charge if they could.
Now I guess this outsourcing may well save the FO money, but it's at the expense of handing a right, royal arsereaming to the likes of us.
If I *ever* find out who was behind this idea I'm going to pour a gallon of unleaded on the miserable bum-sucking git and chuck a lit match after it. If any other expats want to tip up for that, I'll bring marshmallows too.