Not your friend.

Whether they're granting themselves powers to spy on you or enriching themselves at your expense, or simply assuming that everyone is a complete mong and unable to make the simplest decision for themselves, governments are good at providing evidence that they are not your friend. The latest, and one of the most glaring examples, comes courtesy of the French government.

The ban on flights in European airspace - which itself might be a huge overreaction according to at least one big mouthed journo and some airlines - has left a lot of Brits crossing Europe overland only to get stuck in France because all means of getting across or under the English Channel are now booked solid. This might be a good thing for those who are fans of the wine and cheese but a pain in the arse for people who just want to get home. So, in the Dunkirk spirit and coincidentally just a few weeks before the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, TV historian Dan Snow planned to get a few boats and make five trips across the Channel to take people back to the UK on a first come first served basis. He'd set it all up via Twitter, had arranged unpublicised rendezvous points to avoid lots of people turning up that he couldn't possibly take back, and organised the immigration details. Hard to say how much more responsible he could have been really so you'd think the French government would be happy that some private citizens were stepping in to help, even if it they could only cope with 42 people per trip.

And you'd be wrong. AFter getting barely two dozen people onto three boats the French government put a stop to it.

Asked why the operation had been halted, Snow said: "They didn't like the idea of all those RIBs turning up and taking Brits back.
"They just told us they didn't like us doing it and said it was bad competition for the ferries."

Do fucking what? This was only happening at all because everything else was either grounded or fully booked. With all the extra revenue they were getting with the airlines out of the way who the fuck could possibly imagine the ferries and Eurostar services would even notice the loss from a couple of hundred people going home on some kind soul's RIB? Not just wrong but retarded.