Where did we go wrong?

Yesterday I mentioned as a footnote that the 5th Silage cut of 2018 has now happened, the farmers enjoying another wonderful few days of over 25°C and Blue Skies.

The girls went out for a hack mid-morning, almost too late as it was getting very hot but MrsMY had to wait a bit for a child sitter before she could come over.

After a while, I got a call: "come and collect Luna at MrB's bee house, we want to do some speed work in the cool of the forest". Despite her visible anger as I drove up, Luna did agree to be loaded in the car and seemed well exercised.

The two of us set off to the parish council offices in the capital, Sontheim as I had received a letter on Saturday saying my new and first German ID card could be collected, 10 days after making the application.

Took just a few minutes as I had to wait for the parish clerk to finish her "cash book" accounting. It was close to lunchtime and as the offices close for the day at midday, I suspect my handing over €28.80 (£25.69 / $33.49)  probably meant she had to do some overtime to restart the procedure.

The ID cards are now standard credit card sized with all sorts of holograms and coded stripes and according to the leaflet with a 13.56  MHz RFID chip, whatever that is. The letter also contained several foil-covered lottery scratch patches which I was told was not my chance of winning €1 million but a PIN and a PUK if I wanted to use the card for internet online identification although "nobody bothers with" was added. Apparently, I can "activate" this at any time from home.

So after 28 years of officially being registered as a resident, and never having been asked for an ID, I am now legal. The ID will not only allow me to travel throughout the EU without a passport but also to:

Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Andorra, Monaco, Lichtenstein, Vatican, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldavia, Kosovo, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, North (Turkish) Cyprus, Monserat and the French Dependencies.

That will take care of most of my possible, if unlikely, needs for the next ten years. I do of course have my awful burgundy coloured UK passport which would cover the "Rest of the World" and the UK.

A German passport costs €60 (£53 / $70) and I doubt that in 2026 I will bother renewing my UK passport which currently costs €85 (£75.50 / $99). And anyway, the German passport allows me to travel to more countries without a Visa than the UK passport. Germany has just lost its long-held place as #1 ranked passport to Singapore and Japan whose citizens can travel to 180 countries, one more (Uzbekistan) than Germany at #3 with 179. The Brits are  #4 at 177 countries and the US at #5 with 176.

While checking the latest UK cost on the Government website, it was interesting to see that not even they can decide what colour the old UK passport was:
"....if the last passport you had was an old black or blue passport."

In the extras, a selection of UK passports and licences including a lovely blue one but it's not a human one! To counter the claims of my faking the colours in PaintShop, I have set them alongside a screwed up packet of British L&M cigarettes that I found on top of the ATM machine in the village this morning when I stopped to pick up cash to pay for my German ID. And yes: to salvage the last remnants of any remaining UK reputation, I removed the evidence to dispose of it properly as one would expect from any visiting Brit.

What a waste of time, effort and money this whole Brexit thing is.
Mr Blue Sky please tell us "Where did we go wrong?"