Passengers who had been warned of lengthy delays at Heathrow due to striking workers today said border controls were 'better than usual'.
As Border Agency bosses were forced to take on regular airport workers to man passport control, delighted passengers said queues had been shorter than normal.
The situation was echoed at Dover too as passengers faced apparently normal travel conditions with ferry services 'running well and to time' this morning.
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William Hague has demanded the immediate closure of the Iranian Embassy in London and ordered all its staff to leave the country in retaliation for an attack on the British Embassy in Tehran. The Foreign Secretary has given the Iranian diplomats just 48 hours to get out the UK, he told the Commons today.
It comes after hardline protesters stormed the British Embassy in Iran yesterday and tried to take staff hostage. All British staff have been safely evacuated, Mr Hague said.
Today Mr Hague told parliament: 'The Iranian charge (d'affaires) in London is being informed now that we require the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London and that all Iranian diplomatic staff must leave the United Kingdom within the next 48 hours. We have now closed the British embassy in Tehran. We have decided to evacuate all our staff and as of the last few minutes, the last of our UK-based staff have now left Iran.'
Today the speaker of Iran's parliament criticised the UN Security Council over its condemnation of the embassy in Tehran and said the resolution, passed unanimously on Wednesday, put global security at risk.'The hasty move in the Security Council in condemning the students' actions was done to cover up previous crimes of America and Britain while the police did all they could to keep the peace,' Ali Larijani told parliament in an address broadcast live on state radio. 'This devious action will lead to instability in global security,' he said.
So, how many of the 'students' have been arrested for their actions, Mr. Larijani? Isn't that what a thug state generally does when 'students' act contrary to the wishes of the regime?
Today Mr Hague also announced that Iranian ambassadors had been summoned in countries across Europe to receive strong protests over the storming of the British embassy. 'If any country makes it impossible for us to operate on their soil they cannot expect to have a functioning embassy here,' Mr Hague said. 'This does not amount to the severing of diplomatic relations in their entirety. It is action that reduces our relations with Iran to the lowest level consistent with the maintenance of diplomatic relations,' he added.
Hague said it was 'fanciful' to think the Iranian authorities could not have protected the British embassy, or that the assault could have taken place without 'some degree of regime consent'.
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It is gratifying to see President Barack Obama condemn the disgraceful storming of the British Embassy in Tehran by thugs acting at the behest of the Iranian regime. After all, Obama has been notoriously slow in the past to criticise the brutal actions of the Iranian government after initially extending the hand of friendship to it. But did he really need to make another embarrassing foreign policy gaffe while doing so?
In a press conference this evening, the president referred in stumbling fashion to the English Embassy in Iran instead of the British Embassy. One can only imagine the kind of howls of derision that would greet any presidential contender if that kind of basic error were made before, say, the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In case the president is unaware, England forms part of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, though not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. There is no such thing as an English embassy anywhere in the world, and there hasnt been one for several centuries.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
