Was the holiday hell at Channel ports down to French bloody-mindedness over Brexit or just incompetence?

French farce

WAS the holiday hell at Channel ports down to French bloody-mindedness over Brexit or just their incompetence?

The rush of UK tourists to France at the start of the school holidays is as predictable as a French air traffic control strike at the height of summer.

Chris Eades

British travellers had to suffer a third day of chaos[/caption]

It happens every year.

Thanks to the backlog from French border police failing to turn up for work on Friday, British travellers had to suffer a third day of chaos at the Channel yesterday — this time more at Folkestone than Dover.

The French authorities, just as they did after their hopeless marshalling of the Champions League final in Paris in May, were quick to blame anyone but themselves.

But to suggest this weekend’s problems were down to Brexit is nonsense.

Passport checks are only a problem if border police make it so. And they do.

You would think that with 13million UK visitors spending more than £5billion each year in their country, the French would welcome our holidaymakers with open arms.

But it seems they have used up all of their red carpet — laying it down for illegal migrants leaving France for Kent.

Cash for failure

HOW badly do Civil Service mandarins have to perform to lose their fat bonuses?

Last week it was the most senior civil servant at the Home Office getting a lucrative pat on the back in spite of record Channel migrant crossings.

Alamy

Foreign Office chiefs were handed up to £10,000 despite the withdrawal from Afghanistan last August being branded ‘a disaster’[/caption]

Meanwhile bosses at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency trousered tens of thousands in spite of a huge driving test backlog.

Now we reveal how Foreign Office chiefs were handed up to £10,000 despite the withdrawal from Afghanistan last August being branded “a disaster”.

And the top boss at the Parole Board, which recently freed Baby P’s monstrous mum, has been handed a performance-related windfall.

Homes England bosses who have missed house building targets will get up to £25,000, and those at the Competition Markets Authority, which has not stopped petrol pump rip-offs, have been handed up to £20,000.

Government spending is already too bloated.

These rewards for failure are a scandal.

Duke of hazard

PRINCE Harry — currently suing the Government for refusing to let him pay for police protection when he is in the UK — has now got security problems at home.

US police have been called out six times in 14 months to the mansion where Harry lives with wife Meghan and their kids in California.

AFP

US police have been called out six times in 14 months to Harry and Meg’s mansion[/caption]

No doubt he’ll be making a sizeable donation to the local police benevolent fund to thank them for their vigilance.