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- Xref: sparky alt.peeves:17353 soc.culture.british:16122 soc.culture.greek:10694
- Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!uknet!edcastle!jeremy
- From: jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk (Jeremy Henderson)
- Newsgroups: alt.peeves,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.greek
- Subject: The Scarlet Letter
- Message-ID: <28405@castle.ed.ac.uk>
- Date: 19 Nov 92 13:25:37 GMT
- Organization: Edinburgh University
- Lines: 34
-
- On the off chance that the AppleOfOurEye might like to accompany us
- on trips abroad, I called the Passport Office to ask about adding her
- name to my passport. Apparently this is impossible because a) her
- mother is Greek and b) we are not married, and hence she is not a
- British Citizen. The passport people suggested that she could become a
- British Citizen by ``registration'', but when I called the Naturalization
- Office (or whatever it's called), they told me that she couldn't register
- as a British citizen because she was born ``out of wedlock'' (their words,
- not mine). The only thing to do was to get married and ``legitimise'' the
- birth. Now I may be wrong, but I thought that Queen Victoria had been
- off the throne a good many years now, so I'm surprised to hear this
- terminology, not to mention the disgusting holier-than-thou morality it
- conceals.
-
- In order for the child to have a Greek passport, the Greek embassy claim
- that the mother must personally go to register the birth in Athens,
- filling in ``unknown'' in the space reserved for ``father's name''. They
- would then issue her a SEPARATE passport. That should prove pretty useful
- for her on those occasions when she has to dip across to the States for
- a business meeting without her parents. But it does raise the question of
- how to sit her in the Photo-Me booth, particularly since she is less than
- three weeks old and can't support her own head. And should the photo be
- with, or without nappies? I'm sure there's an EC regulation on this.
-
- If anyone has any ideas on how to circumvent this Kafka-esque situation,
- I'd be glad to hear from them!!
-
- (before hitting the F key, look at the ``newsgroups'' line, which I claim
- is a first in bizarreness!!)
- --
- ===Jeremy Henderson===jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk=
-
- "I have to scan these posts in case Jeremy includes some line
- out of context in his .sig" - FriendOfFernandoKhomeini.
-