Just another example of their desire to do stuff without oversight. But it'll be alright if you are law abiding, of course.

Anyway, they have already effectively confiscated my passport by holding it up for security checks, the nature of which they are not allowed to tell me.

As for absent fathers not paying up, what is the problem with stopping hte money at source anyway? None that I can see.

I read your post about the passport thing; that seems totally irrational.

Just phoned them again, the guy at Peterborough sounded exactly like one of them smug jobsworths that should be taken off and tarred and feathered. So around 2nd week in January is the expected arrival.
This is of course too late. I shall have to alter my travel plans accordingly. Allegedly these are normal checks, but they are taking longer than normal. My opinion is that either they are short staffed, (Although he denited it) or their much vauinted computer systems are knackered, which seems very likely.

My guess is that they're short-staffed and their computer system's knackered. Which is a disgrace.

Here's a (hopefully) relevant quote:

"In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have."

-- Harry S Truman, 1950, resisting an equally vile piece of legislation just a couple of months earlier. Congress, which had passed the "Concentration Camp Act" that Truman was referring to, overrode his veto. Over the next few years, the Act was dismantled as unConstitutional and thereby illegal. Nothing like it was to resurface until . . . well, hello there, Il Buce and Signore Darth.