Bureaucracy: aargh!
Man, I hate bureaucracy. I know it's essential, but still. I assume it's because the change in social mores means we have the freedom to change our minds and break our promises, so nobody's word is worth anything anymore. So we document everything because we, as a society want accountability in our governments and businesses and our dealings with each other. And they in return want arse-covering and revenue raising and the ability to say no to people and go mwah-haa-haa! :)
I'm a law-abiding person, but I also believe that if it is difficult to obey the law, people are less likely to obey it.
I thought the process of registering my SA car in NSW was bad enough:
http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/registration/getnewrego/interstatevehicles.html
Heaven forbid if you lose one of the aforementioned documents, as I did...
But what really got my goat was finding out some legislating %$@^! so-and-sos have cottoned on to a great revenue-raising scheme: car registration renewal not being allowable until compulsory yearly safety checks for every vehicle more than FIVE years old have been done. What's even more ridiculous is that, until recently, it used to be for all vehicles more than THREE years old. WTF mate?!
Because everyone knows just how unroadworthy a 5 year-old vehicle is likely to be! Riiigghhtt...
Anyway, now I am faced with renewing my passport. Aside from the RFID tag that I DO. NOT. WANT. but must have in the new one regardless, (the convenience is for Big Brother's benefit, NOT mine) is how bloody convoluted the process is.
There is a big push to force people to deal with bureaucracy online and make it difficult for them NOT to do so online, which is stupid, IMNSHO. Internet connectivity is not a given for 99.9% of Australian households like having a phone is.
And the government's bloody online service will not even allow you to renew your passport; you have to provide a certain amount of info to pass security checks just to DOWNLOAD the form that you then have to lodge in person!
And online services are not intelligent enough to deal with exceptions like the subtleties in recording non-Anglo-Saxon names. If a name was originally in a language that uses a non-Roman character set, you're probably screwed.
Making one's mother's maiden name a compulsory, non-negotiable security check across all sectors of society is a pain in the bleeding arse for people in my situation. (Smeg knows how people who don't know their mother's maiden name deal with that problem!)
Firstly, I don't know why, but over the years my mum has used as her maiden name her father's first name AND her father's surname interchangeably. Since my Australian citizenship and first Australian passport was done through her because I was underage at the time, I have to hazard a guess as to which name she wrote down over 25 years ago.
Then I have to guess what phonetic spelling of the name was used to approximate a translation into English. (Greek has many more vowels and vowel combinations than English and some of the consonants don't translate exactly.)
And then there is the fact that in Greek, surnames ending in 'ou' or 'os' are interchangeable so she could have used either suffix.
So of course, the passport.gov.au website locks me out after I guess her maiden name wrong too many times and tells me to contact Australia Post.
So I find a local post office that is large enough to offer passport services only to find they don't have passport renewal forms, only passport application forms and I have to call the 13 number and talk to the Passport office.
I call the 13 number, and try to explain to the (Aussie) guy on the phone about the maiden name business, which again is COMPULSORY and NON-NEGOTIABLE information for me to convince him I am who I say I am.
So he tells me to say it rather than spell it. So I start trying permutations hoping that he will agree the names I'm saying and what is written down match sufficiently in his non-Greek-speaking opinion. I get it right eventually, though he doesn't tell me which one was correct. Grr! (Because, hey, I might not be who I say I am even though all the other info about ME was correct!) Then he tells me I can have a form mailed to me.
All this rigmarole just to get a bloody blank form!
Why do they not just leave the forms with Australia Post?! If it's OK for them to leave passport application forms with AP, why not passport renewal forms? And if I have to lodge the form in person, why not let me pick up a blank one in person or publish the link to it on their bloody website? Gaahh!!
Don't even get me started on my opinion of the concept of maiden names. That's another rant in itself.
-----
Quote of the Moment:
Q: What is the best way to begin a strongly worded message to a retailer who has wronged you?
A: I'm a ninja.
-- AANQ17: Ninja Omnibus
I'm a law-abiding person, but I also believe that if it is difficult to obey the law, people are less likely to obey it.
I thought the process of registering my SA car in NSW was bad enough:
http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/registration/getnewrego/interstatevehicles.html
Heaven forbid if you lose one of the aforementioned documents, as I did...
But what really got my goat was finding out some legislating %$@^! so-and-sos have cottoned on to a great revenue-raising scheme: car registration renewal not being allowable until compulsory yearly safety checks for every vehicle more than FIVE years old have been done. What's even more ridiculous is that, until recently, it used to be for all vehicles more than THREE years old. WTF mate?!
Because everyone knows just how unroadworthy a 5 year-old vehicle is likely to be! Riiigghhtt...
Anyway, now I am faced with renewing my passport. Aside from the RFID tag that I DO. NOT. WANT. but must have in the new one regardless, (the convenience is for Big Brother's benefit, NOT mine) is how bloody convoluted the process is.
There is a big push to force people to deal with bureaucracy online and make it difficult for them NOT to do so online, which is stupid, IMNSHO. Internet connectivity is not a given for 99.9% of Australian households like having a phone is.
And the government's bloody online service will not even allow you to renew your passport; you have to provide a certain amount of info to pass security checks just to DOWNLOAD the form that you then have to lodge in person!
And online services are not intelligent enough to deal with exceptions like the subtleties in recording non-Anglo-Saxon names. If a name was originally in a language that uses a non-Roman character set, you're probably screwed.
Making one's mother's maiden name a compulsory, non-negotiable security check across all sectors of society is a pain in the bleeding arse for people in my situation. (Smeg knows how people who don't know their mother's maiden name deal with that problem!)
Firstly, I don't know why, but over the years my mum has used as her maiden name her father's first name AND her father's surname interchangeably. Since my Australian citizenship and first Australian passport was done through her because I was underage at the time, I have to hazard a guess as to which name she wrote down over 25 years ago.
Then I have to guess what phonetic spelling of the name was used to approximate a translation into English. (Greek has many more vowels and vowel combinations than English and some of the consonants don't translate exactly.)
And then there is the fact that in Greek, surnames ending in 'ou' or 'os' are interchangeable so she could have used either suffix.
So of course, the passport.gov.au website locks me out after I guess her maiden name wrong too many times and tells me to contact Australia Post.
So I find a local post office that is large enough to offer passport services only to find they don't have passport renewal forms, only passport application forms and I have to call the 13 number and talk to the Passport office.
I call the 13 number, and try to explain to the (Aussie) guy on the phone about the maiden name business, which again is COMPULSORY and NON-NEGOTIABLE information for me to convince him I am who I say I am.
So he tells me to say it rather than spell it. So I start trying permutations hoping that he will agree the names I'm saying and what is written down match sufficiently in his non-Greek-speaking opinion. I get it right eventually, though he doesn't tell me which one was correct. Grr! (Because, hey, I might not be who I say I am even though all the other info about ME was correct!) Then he tells me I can have a form mailed to me.
All this rigmarole just to get a bloody blank form!
Why do they not just leave the forms with Australia Post?! If it's OK for them to leave passport application forms with AP, why not passport renewal forms? And if I have to lodge the form in person, why not let me pick up a blank one in person or publish the link to it on their bloody website? Gaahh!!
Don't even get me started on my opinion of the concept of maiden names. That's another rant in itself.
-----
Quote of the Moment:
Q: What is the best way to begin a strongly worded message to a retailer who has wronged you?
A: I'm a ninja.
-- AANQ17: Ninja Omnibus