Talk:British passport

Copyright

Mjb1981 has published today three images of current passport covers, claiming in one case that its reproduction is permitted by the British Government's Open Government Licence. It is not. I repeat my warning of a year ago (Archive 1, #50 Copyright):

Query the copyright status of copies of passport covers, at least those less than 50 years old. The British government's Open Government Licence specifically exempts (excludes) from the licence "identity documents such as the British Passport". Errantius (talk) 12:56 pm, 27 December 2019, Friday (1 year, 19 days ago) (UTC+11)

The cover of the post-Brexit British Citizen passport has been reproduced here, but it seems ok for copyright since it is from a Home Office website. However, as to "own work" photos of earlier covers, I repeat my warning—with quotation from the Open Government Licence and with my emphasis in the last item:

Exemptions

This licence does not cover:

• personal data in the Information;
• Information that has not been accessed by way of publication or disclosure under information access legislation (including the Freedom of Information Acts for the UK and Scotland) by or with the consent of the Information Provider;
• departmental or public sector organisation logos, crests and the Royal Arms except where they form an integral part of a document or dataset;
• military insignia;
• third party rights the Information Provider is not authorised to license;
• other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade marks, and design rights; and
• identity documents such as the British Passport [my emphasis]

Errantius (talk) 00:48, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I have reverted my changes following this clarification.

Mjb1981 (talk) 12:42, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merger with other pages on British passports

I've seen a proposal to merge the pages of differing other forms of the British passport (e.g. those issued by Overseas Territories or special types of Passports, such as the BN(O) Passport) into this page. That proposal has been active since July but not acted on? Is it still an issue for discussion or should I go ahead and close it by deleting the proposed merger notice? The Historian (talk) 13:23, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

• Merge, all Overseas British Passports to one page titled "Overseas British passport"/s, however, Oppose merging it to this page since the United Kingdom proper is distinct from it's overseas territories. PyroFloe (talk) 00:40, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree - the UK is separate from its Overseas Territories, so while it might help to declutter the encyclopedia if all the Overseas Territories' passports were merged into their own page, their status in international law differs from that of the UK, both in terms of their status and rights as subjects of international law and the rights of their citizens in comparison to UK citizens. The Historian (talk) 12:23, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose (the merger) - In the case of Jersey, Jersey-variant British passports are distinct entities from other issued British passports and there is enough information for them to have their own article. Jèrriais janne (talk) 23:32, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

@Thehistorian10: I originally proposed the merger but there didn't seem to be enough feedback to act on it. The current and archived responses disagree on whether to merge all of the other pages into this page. Any thoughts? Horserice (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

@Horserice: Were the discussion to occur today, I would probably Oppose. To go off of what Jèrriais janne explains above, the various jurisdictional differences between territories justifies the division of these various passport types into different pages. The privileges and rights of the various passports differ sufficiently for the articles to be separate, not to mention that the authority by which they are issued is slightly different for each. I also believe that including all the different types of "British" passports in a single article would make for a bloated article indeed Booksworm ^Talk? 11:02, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Booksworm: While I agree there are substantial differences in rights between the people of each territory, those rights come from their nationality status and not the passport itself. The passport is just a booklet with slightly differing text depending on the circumstances of issue. Where I think I disagree with you right now is that those circumstances should go in the articles covering the different nationality classes and not in any of these articles on the passports themselves.

Let's use the British National (Overseas) and British National (Overseas) passport articles as an example. From the properly cited information in the passport article, what information isn't just repeated from the nationality article or can be easily covered there as well? The entire endorsements section is also already covered in the main British passport article. The same is generally true for most of the other articles on BOT variant passports. Horserice (talk) 20:35, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Merge All British passports are exactly what they are called: British passports. The article would simply need to be detailed enough to explain the different varieties of British nationality and belonger status. The United States also classifies its nationals into both "Citizens of the United States of America" and "US Nationals", yet this distinction did not require the creation of two articles. I think making one single article for all the types of British passports would give readers a clearer understanding of the situation. Île flottante (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Oppose Muzi (talk) 16:05, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Idea - Why not merge all content about all types of British passports now and see how much each section develops. If a particular section is developed to the point where there are Wikipedia:Undue weight considerations, split off the section again (say for instance if there is a lot of development on the particulars of BNOs) WhisperToMe (talk) 21:35, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Colour

I understand that the British Government maintains that the passport is "Navy Blue", but I've just got one and it's indisputably black. The picture of a passport on this article page is black. There are numerous online sources which refer to the issue including the BBC. Should we have a section "Colour dispute over new passport" or something of that nature?Bob M (talk) 11:22, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

edit request - passport gallery inaccuracies?

the image in question

An IP editor made an edit that looks like it could have some useful info, although inappropriate good-faith as edited at the time. I'm not sure how to validate/source it or what edits even need to be made, so I'm just leaving this here as a comment instead - hopefully somebody more knowledgeable will pick it up... EditorInTheRye (talk) 08:56, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Amongst the images of British passport covers shown here, there is a problem with the one described as "1920s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland passport" The image shown is not genuine. Ignoring the blanks where the passport number and holder's name would appear, the cover of the document is wrong. In particular, the words 'UNITED KINGDOM' should not and did not have their own separate line on the British passport cover. The layout is such that the country name (because of its length) is always shown over two lines, and from the inception of the booklet style of British passport in 1921 the wording was split thus: 'UNITED KINGDOM OF / GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND' and in 1928 this was amended to read 'UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT / BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND' In the 1920s the Royal Coat of Arms should also bear the letters 'G R', indicating the reign of King George V. This feature is missing from the Wikipedia image but in fact the motif only disappeared in 1936 with the death of George V. It is not clear where the image in question came from but perhaps it was a mock-up that was never officially used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.149.139.214 (talk • contribs) I reverted it because I wasn’t quite sure whether any of it could be validated by any official or historical sources. The Historian (talk) 14:21, 28 February 2021 (UTC)