Nanny Bans Shoulders

You know how these days when having your passport photo taken, you are meant to look face on into the camera and not smile?

These rules are all part of Nanny's extra security measures to guard us from the "crescent of evil", that she believes threatens us. Smiling, side ways pictures are apparently a security threat.

Anyhoo, Nanny has come up with another issue with regard to passport photos; that of bare shoulders.

She has banned them.

What?!! I hear you ejaculate (can I say that word on a website?)

Yes, bare shoulders; apparently they are offensive to Muslim countries.

Specifically, bare shoulders of five year old girls.

That at least is what the Sheffield Post Office clerk told Jane Edwards (mother of five year old Hannah) as she presented Hannah's bare shouldered photo for a passport renewal.

The photo was taken at a photo-booth at a local post office for a family trip to the south of France.

The family were told by the jobsworth clerk that it would not be accepted by the Passport Office.

Seemingly, if the clerk was to be believed, she was aware of at least two other cases where applications had been rejected because a person's shoulders were not covered.

Mrs Edwards said:

"I was incensed.

I went back home and checked the form.

Nowhere did it say anything about covering up shoulders.

If it had, I would have done so, but it all seems so unnecessary.

This is quite ridiculous,

I followed the instructions on the passport form to the letter and it was still rejected.

It is just officialdom pandering to political correctness.

It is a total over-reaction.

How can the shoulders of a five-year-old girl offend anyone?

It's not as if anything else was showing,

the dress she wore was sleeveless,

but it has a high neck."

Seemingly though the Post Office has it wrong, a spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service said that it was not its policy to reject applications with bare shoulders.

Quote:

"The guidance set out on the application form doesn't include it,

this picture should have been absolutely fine.

If people follow those rules there should be no problem.

The Post Office obviously has its rules and we can't comment on that.

We are aware of a case in the past where an error was made involving similar circumstances,

although I don't know the exact details.

Staff should be aware of the rules."

We shouldn't be so hard on the Post Office, it is used by Nanny as a sort of day care centre these days for the elderly, insane, drunk and unemployed. The staff there have enough to worry about.