Just been reading the Hungary thread…
How does Croatia manage to run its islands with just one policeman, or (last time) a very smart looking young lady, doing the whole lot?
The probable answer is that if you are smuggling 100 AK47s, or a plane-load of Vietnamese/[whatever the current people-smuggling option is] the policeman will likely notice 
And if you are smuggling gold jewellery, etc, why should they care?
Once you take out job creation / union-driven job demarcation out of this job, it isn’t rocket science…
If somebody dodgy wants to arrive or escape the country, they will use…. a boat!
Any country with a substantial coast cannot ever be secured unless you also own the other side of the water. If you look at the old Czechoslovak border, where it bordered with the Imperialist Decadent West, there were a number of lakes there. If you look closely, you find that the border was on the far side of the lake, so that swimming / scuba diving across it would not work. Yugoslavia never had a secure option, short of mining the whole coast from Pula to Dubrovnik and close all the islands to public access.
So, why do we get all the hassle in Europe?
It must be just, as I say, job creation/protection and, on the larger scale, political posturing.
Peter wrote:
It must be just, as I say, job creation/protection and, on the larger scale, political posturing.
I believe you’re (generally) overstating the job creation bit. I think it more a case of “we’ve always done it that way” and “we know what we have but not what we’ll get”.
Peter wrote:
So, why do we get all the hassle in Europe?
We don’t, 80% of us enjoy free travel in Schengen/EU. The hassle is mostly for people on the island which is 100% self inflicted.
And if you believe that is hassle, try flying to the US from any neighboring country. I don’t believe there is another region on this planet where crossing country boarders is so easy. Croatia are on a track towards Schengen membership at which point they might actually tear down that expensive police hut on the islands…
Airborne_Again wrote:
I believe you’re (generally) overstating the job creation bit.
I’m with Peter on this. The whole of Government is full of job creation schemes. I know one, not aviation related, Government function that is staffed by c.5,500 people. In my opinion it needs only 50. Jobs are routinely, and unnecessarily – unless your goal is job creation – carved up into niche tasks with each task allocated to a different job role.
Unfortunately, for the people who have to pay for all this inefficiency, public sector job creation schemes are a very real goal of many Governments.
Look at how decentralised most branches of Government have become in the UK and Ireland (I don’t know about the rest of Europe, but I suspect it’s the same). At one time, most of those functions would have been performed in the capital, but now they have been sent to the regions to replace jobs lost as industry moved out and agriculture became more mechanised. No Government wants to grasp the nettle by slimming their ranks because it alienates too many voters.
80% of us enjoy free travel in Schengen/EU
The other 20% can go to hell, IOW.
That would explain why GA in Europe is in such a mess…
Croatia are on a track towards Schengen membership at which point they might actually tear down that expensive police hut on the islands…
And screw themselves, by excluding a lot of high spending visitors (there is money outside Europe too). Luckily I expect they won’t be that stupid. Also an airport needs security of some sort, otherwise anybody can go there at night and vandalise aircraft; easily done in subtle ways. My earlier point was that Croatia manages to use the same police person to do that and all the other tasks, so how do they do it when it is supposed to be so hard and needs such special skills?
Unfortunately, for the people who have to pay for all this inefficiency, public sector job creation schemes are a very real goal of many Governments.
The GAR form comes to mind
The GAR system is brilliant in the way it allows travel between any farm strip and anywhere in the world, but the 12hr notification for Ireland etc is pointless and probably protects just some very specific police jobs.
Peter wrote:
And screw themselves, by excluding a lot of high spending visitors (there is money outside Europe too). Luckily I expect they won’t be that stupid.
A lot? I’d say more than 90% of the aircraft on LDLO’s apron would not require any customs/immigration processing post Schengen.
Peter wrote:
The other 20% can go to hell, IOW.
No, they should join the system. “splendid isolation” is not all that splendid I’d say but that’s the choice of sovereign nations.
With most immigrants in Europe heading for the UK, the UK is not going to join Schengen, ever. Anyway, that wasn’t my question…
Peter wrote:
With most immigrants in Europe heading for the UK, the UK is not going to join Schengen, ever. Anyway, that wasn’t my question…
A very right wing theory and not supported by numbers… anyway your question was why it is such a job creation scheme and my answer was that it’s getting less and less. Germany has had major difficulties finding uses for the thousands of former border protection agents. With Schengen/EU covering most of the continent, immigration at GA airfields is becoming less of an issue.
A pan-European GAR would be nice but what I wrote above plays against it — only a small minority actually need an immigration process so it’s becoming a less and less pressing issue on the pan-European scale.
Finners wrote:
The whole of Government is full of job creation schemes.
There are more governments in the EU than the UK one.
If there’s a “light” Government somewhere in the EU, I would love to know where it is.
