As you leave your plane,ship or train, you will be
required to pass through the Customs area of the arrival
terminus.
Most UK ports and airports have three exits or 'channels',
while some have only one exit, with a red point phone for
declaring goods. If there are three channels:
Use the Red Channel or red point
phone if you:
Remember! If you have goods to declare,
you must speak to a Customs officer!
If you are planning to travel into or out of the UK, there
are rules about what goods you can bring with you without
paying duty or VAT in the UK. Some goods are also banned
or restricted by law.
HM Customs
and Excise has a duty to protect the UK from drugs,
firearms and other harmful goods, and to stop smugglers
evading taxes that fund vital public services. To do this
they carry out random checks on some travellers. If you
are stopped and asked about your baggage, please co-operate
as they need your help to prevent smuggling.
From 1 May 2004, ten new countries joined the EU.
Special rules apply if you bring cigarettes and some tobacco
products into the UK from some of these countries.
There are heavy penalties for smuggling, so:
Never carry anything into the UK for someone else.
Never bring banned goods into the UK.
If you are driving, make sure that everyone travelling with
you knows what goods are banned or restricted. If you smuggle
goods in a car, the car may be seized by Customs.
If you are in any doubt, speak to a Customs officer in the
red channel or use the red point phone.
A pet may be tame, but rabies is a killer. Don't even think
of smuggling an animal into the UK. It could be carrying
rabies and the consequences could be disastrous.
For more details on any of the above subjects please go
to the *HM Customs & Excise website.
As you may or may not know, the world's time is measured
in relation to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) - the time at Greenwich,
London. Greenwich lies on the prime meridian, an imaginary
line dividing the world into the western and eastern hemispheres.
Although you might expect the time at Greenwich to dictate
what the time is in the UK, daylight saving time confuses
the issue slightly, so even the UK itself is an hour ahead
of GMT from late March to October. A guide to some of the
World's time zones relative to GMT is given below.
Hong Kong: plus 8 hours
Moscow: plus 3 hours
New York: minus 5 hours
Paris: plus 1 hour
San Francisco: minus 8 hours
Sydney, Australia: plus 10 hours
For more information check out the World
Clock.
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