"Dear SH, thank you so much for your help. My wife and l have just returned from holiday and when we arrived at East Midlands Airport where stopped by Customs. We bought 25 sleeves of Silk Cut (mine) and 15 sleeves of Menthol Superkings (hers) which will last us both for about a year. The officer asked us if we had any tobacco or cigarettes and we replied yes. He started to ask more questions but stopped when l handed him our statement of truth as advised by you. He started to read it and asked why we had done this and l said because we had been advised to. He then told us to wait and then went off with our statement of truth. We waited for about 20 mins and when he returned he just said we can go and tried to hand me back our statement. l told him that that copy was his and would he please sign to say he'd received it but he refused and put the statement on the table in front of me. l took his number but he would not give me his name. We then left and left the statement on the table. Other holidaymakers that had been stopped at samie time as us were still being questioned and if it wasn't for you we would have been to.Thanks again for all your help and we shall sing your praises to all our friends.
Mark and Kathy ********* "
We are really happy for Mark and Kathy but feel we should add a cautionary note. We cannot guarantee that the Statement of Truth will always give this result. This is because you can and do get UKBA Officers that will confiscate your goods no matter what. lt once happened to Zaphod and the UKBA Officer that was
interviewing interrogating (if that's possible) him simply refused to look at any of Zaphods documents or evidence. This officer was confiscating Zaphods goods and nothing was going to stop him. Zaphod did get his goods back on appeal.
So, be aware of this and don't panic if they do this to you. Stay calm, stick by your Statement of Truth and do NOT sign their notebook! Make sure all your goods are documented correctly on the C156 Notice you must receive and all the UKBA Officers details are there too incl the appeal address.Go home and put your appeal in as soon as possible. We have never lost an appeal.
Enough of that, back to Mark and Kathy .....
Off topic but l 've got to put it somewhere.
ReplyDeletel have 2 wonderful daughters but one of them (the youngest) l have not seen for about a year now. This is because she is a photographer on cruiseships sailing from the USA. My daughters are very close and this weekend it was my eldest daughters birthday.
The present and card from her sister did not arrive till today. What was it? ... flight tickets to the USA and a week on the cruiseship my youngest has her studio on.
Think l've got smoke in my eyes :)
"l took his number but he would not give me his name"
ReplyDeleteDoes say it all doesn't it?
Anyways 'YAY!' for Kathy and Mark and 'Awwww' for your daughter!
About a week ago I sat on a rather grubby ferry sipping a surprisingly drinkable 'Latte' (always amuses me because it's also the German word for an Erection. Yeah ok, I'm a sad sad man) and filling out the blanks on my SOT by hand.
ReplyDeleteThe SOT really does seem to be 'the answer' or as much of an answer as we're gonna get this side of a judicial review/disbanding of the UKBA.
It is a nice feeling to walk through the Sked Shed with a comprehensive SOT in one's back pocket and I feel the SOT's single major advantage is that it FOCUSES one's mind. If you're sitting there doing the math, filling in the blanks and checking that all the other evidence is included then you are prepared, mentally and physically.
SH, a direct link to the SOT muster on the ' front page of this blog would be a good idea. You know a large hi-gloss 'DOWNLOAD HERE clickable thingy?
SH, in your guide you mention some of us are now using covert cameras and i wanted to show people what sort of quality of image one can get.
ReplyDeletehttp://2khh4.blogspot.com/2011/06/for-nothing2declare.html
That was taken with one of my covert cameras. H O W E V E R inorder to upload it before next michaelmas i've converted it from avi to flv. The video's 'blockyness' is due to that, in the originally gig and a half avi the quality is stunning. I also removed the sound for reasons of my personal security because no one needs to hear my underbreath insane ramblings while walking trough the skid shed.
Camera was angled downwards incase I was stopped and wanted to show things on the bench/desk without obviously bending over it.
SBC .... good man! Excellent! l'll create a link as soon as l can along with re-jigging and updating our site. The info for Cross-Border Shoppers need it because of all the things we've learnt in the past year. l really need to do some research into cameras. Could you e-mail me your recommedations?
ReplyDeletejust wanna say that this site is bloody fantastic!
ReplyDeleteSH, email sent, check bin :P
ReplyDeleteNot sure if the vid is worthy of a direct link though, hopefully soon someone will do one that actually shows an encounter with the UKBA.
No it would be foolish to show the Skedites what to look for. Thanks for the info ... will investigate further. :)
ReplyDeleteBloody marvelous
ReplyDelete