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End of "holiday" season with the help of the MoD

It's hard to know whether to be more angry with the Ministry of Defence than with Google; or the other way around. All I wanted was a passport. And to do that, I needed the UK Passport Office.

What I should have done, was dial Directory Enquiries on 118 500 and asked for the passport office. What I actually did was to Google it. And when that failed, I reverted to what I knew would work: go to the passport office on foot, and stand in a queue.

On balance, I think I blame Google. I mean, you wouldn't expect the Ministry of Defence to be helpful. You would, however, expect a search for "passport office" on Google to find the passport office, rather than a bunch of 0900 scam sites.

The MoD seems to have a very simple approach to "information" - it calls it "intelligence" and assumes that if you don't know it, you probably shouldn't know it. So perhaps that explains the "helpful" legend [image right] on the "map" the MoD gave me yesterday.

I know what the map says, because I spent nearly an hour working it out. Here's a clue, in case you'd like to tackle the problem yourself: the map, [image left] of which that legend is a part. Click the image to get a full size version...

How did I get that map? Easy: I mistakenly assumed my ten-year-old knowledge (of how to get a replacement passport quickly) was still valid. Anybody who has a ten year old passport will have to replace it, and in the olden days, it was simple: you went to Petty France in St James Park Tube area, and sat in a queue.

But the old passport office has been moved, and the system rationalised! And the old office is now the MoD. So I went into the MoD and asked if they knew where the Passport office had moved to. And the correct answer is: In Globe House, Bridge Street, which runs along the East side of Victoria Station.

So, understandably, they didn't tell me that.

Oh, they did a pretty good impression of "someone who'd like to be helpful" but the basic assumption in the MoD is still: "If you deserve to have that intel, you should already have it." So eventually, they admitted that it "wasn't far away" and that they had "a map" - which they showed me. Oh, dear, how I wish they hadn't!

The list of things wrong with the map would fill an encyclopaedia, starting with "illegible" and "upside down without a compass rose" and moving through "missing essential data" right through to "just plain wrong!"

To get "north" at the conventional top of the page, you have to turn it through 180 degrees. Normally, this would be a terrific handicap, because then you couldn't read the words... as you can see, that's no problem at all, because the words have been copied from copies of copies for several generation, using very dirty Xerox machines.

Here's the Streetmap version of the area [image right] which reveals the awful truth:

What the map doesn't show (to be fair, no map seems to show this) is that Bridge Place isn't connected to Vauxhaul Bridge Road at all. If you walk along Vauxhall Bridge Road looking for Bridge Place, you'll get to the Thames and the Tate Gallery at Pimlico.

What I should have done in the first place, I now did: I pulled out my mobile and dialled Directory. They explained the new system: you don't stand in a queue any more; you just make an appointment. Then at the right time, you show up with a form and some documentation, and they take money off you.

Google was exactly no help at all:

Don't go there. Not one of those is the UK passport office. All they have in common is a premium-rate phone number, and a long and rambling introductory message so that you can't even get through without adding several pounds to their income.

And sadly, I have to tell you that the genuine passport office is an 0870 number, also with a long and rambling introductory message so that you can't get through...

Moral: go to a Post Office, pick up a form, and send it with a cheque a month before you need the new passport. It costs half the price of an urgent one. And you avoid the insanity of MultiMap, the MoD, and Google searches...