Judging by the comments from our original post about West End actor Michael Sheldon, who was rejected as a passport cosigner because “acting is not a proper job,” many of you found a lot of humor in the situation.
Nonetheless, one person who didn’t find the situation very funny was Malcolm Sinclair, the president of Equity (the UK’s actor’s union), who wrote a letter to Home Secretary Theresa May wondering why the government of the United Kingdom, land of Shakespeare, did not recognize acting as a proper job. The incident was even brought up in the House of Commons, with current Leader of the House of Commons Sir George Young saying, “Acting is a proper job, and many members in the house prove that on a day-to-day basis,” and adding that acting is an “important invisible earner of foreign exchange.”
Well Equity has since received a formal apology from Alan Brown, deputy director of policy for the Identity and Passport Service. In the letter, Brown says, “I share fully concern about the remark made on the status of acting as a suitable occupation for passport purposes. That is both inappropriate and inaccurate. Please accept my apologies for the offence this has caused.” He also promised to reiterate organizational rules focusing on “the importance of treating all customers with respect.”
Now that the apology has made, governments all over the world can go back to not solving the world’s problems. Until the next petty distraction, that is.
