Cattle trains

If Chancellor George Osborne is looking for a popular measure to save money, he might like to consider the farce that is the Border Agency at the two ends of the London-Paris Eurostar line.

One can travel from Portugal to the north of Sweden without once having to bother showing one’s passport – or anything else, for that matter.

However, to travel from Paris to London, as I discovered recently, involves being herded like cattle through restricted areas with platforms protected (from whom I do not know) with razor wire and the like.

What the cost of these installations is I do not know but they cannot be insignificant.

As far as I can see, nothing is achieved except the delaying of trains and the irritation of those who pay for this nonsense: the taxpayers and travellers.

bRANISLAV SUDJIC

Hunter Street

Kirkcaldy, Fife