Tell Them Lies

Our new immigration rules will have to be revised if we do not want to endanger our collaborative research culture, warns Mathias Brust in the Times Higher Education - academics, as well as artists, from outside the EU prison-fortress, are now having difficulties getting into the UK

Matthias' experiences of the Soviet era stood him in good stead and provide a useful tip for travellers:

Owing to a couple of early childhood experiences of travelling from one side of the divided Germany to the other, I must have developed an intuitive knack for border crossings. This may explain why I lied the last time a British immigration official wanted to know my reason for coming to the UK. Rather than admitting that I was a professor of chemistry at the University of Liverpool and owned a house in this country, I said I was coming here to visit friends of mine.

That there was wisdom behind my spontaneous lapse I learnt last Sunday evening when I received a phone call from Immigration at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. They had detained a "female" and wanted to know if her claim that I had invited her to conduct ad honorem research in my laboratory was correct.

With New Labour it would only be a matter of time before it became difficult to get out of the UK. When telling the truth in New Labour Britain gets you into trouble, then lying becomes inevitable and necessary.