Quote:
Originally Posted by Walkabout
Broadly true and, unfortunately, totally necessary these days; funny how times change but Mollydog is remembering the good old days when there was a balance of power in the world and everyone toed the line; now there are lots of folks out there who have no experience of that world and who demand their rights to rule the world by whatever means.
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I'm not convinced it's that necessary tbh. Nobody stops me when I drive from France to Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy or Spain (or any combination thereof). Their societies are not falling apart (any more than ours anyway) because of open borders and it's not as if we don't have any experience of it - you can go from the Republic of Ireland to the UK (Northern Ireland) and all you see is a signpost. If terrorism was the major concern you'd think that would be one border where everyone was strip searched.
It's just island mentality. We (They) keep track of everyone's movements and cross reference travel documents (like ferry bookings) with actual movement because they can - it's easy with only half a dozen ferry routes and a few airlines. It wouldn't be so easy if there were a thousand roads over a land border with France.
What Shengen Europeans think when they arrive at Dover God only knows. Not only does the place look like a Borstal as built by Top Gear, they're treated as guilty until proved innocent by a bunch of grim faced prison guards.  For the sake of the tourist industry I can only hope some of it gets lost in translation.
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