South Western Ambulance Service
The South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is the organisation responsible for providing ambulance services for the National Health Service across South West England. On March 1, 2011 SWASFT was the first ambulance service in the country to become a Foundation Trust; the Trust acquired neighbouring Great Western Ambulance Service on 1 February 2013. SWASFT serves a population of more than 5.47 million, its area is estimated to receive an influx of over 17.5 million visitors each year. The operational area is predominantly rural but has large urban centres including Bristol, Exeter, Bath, Gloucester and Poole; the headquarters for the service is in Exeter and the service has 96 ambulance stations and 6 air bases. The Chief Executive is Ken Wenman, appointed on 1 July 2006 on creation of the trust, having served as the Chief Executive of the former Dorset Ambulance Service NHS Trust; the Trust’s core operations include: Emergency ambulance 999 services Urgent Care Services – GP out-of-hours medical care NHS 111 call-handling and triage services Tiverton Urgent Care Centre.
It is one of ten Ambulance Trusts providing England with emergency medical services and employs more than 4,500 clinical and operational staff. In addition there are around 3,200 volunteers including community first responders, BASICS doctors, fire co-responders and patient transport drivers; the Trust is one of the largest in England. It covers 827 miles of coastline. In 2015/16 one in eight 999 calls to South Western Ambulance Service were treated over the telephone. "Hear and treat", where the patient receives clinical advice over the telephone, accounted for 12.7% of calls. For 36.4% of incidents the patients experienced "see and treat", when the patient receives treatment or advice at the scene of the incident. In a further 7.7% of incidents, the patient was taken to a non-emergency hospital department such as a community hospital or minor injuries unit. The remaining incidents resulted in a patient being taken to a hospital emergency department, thus the majority of incidents resulted in a patient not being conveyed.
SWASFT is the best performing ambulance service in the country for non-conveyance rates. In addition 62% of patients taken to hospital are admitted – this is again the highest performance for an ambulance trust in the country; this means that when SWASFT takes a patient to an emergency department they are to be admitted, not treated and discharged, therefore confirming, the right place for them to receive the care they need. There are 96 ambulance stations, six air ambulance bases, three clinical control rooms, two Hazardous Area Response Team bases and one boat across the South Western Ambulance Service operational area. In 2016 the Care Quality Commission told the South Western Ambulance Service to make significant improvements in the NHS 111 service; the inspection of the trust in 2016 identified several areas. In 2018 the trust said it would need an extra £12 million a year to meet the new ambulance performance standards; the number of compliments received by the Trust in 2014/15 increased by 41% to 2,055 while complaints rose by 20% to 1,268.
The Trust is split into three divisions: West Division: covering Devon and Cornwall, including its Headquarters at Exeter East Division: covering Somerset and Dorset North Division: consisting of the footprint of the former Great Western Ambulance Service as well as the Burnham-on-sea and Shepton Mallet stationsThe Trust has 96 ambulance stations among the counties that it serves: Cornwall Devon Dorset Somerset Avon Wiltshire Gloucestershire 306 - 999 Emergency Ambulances 57 Patient Transport Ambulances 234 Rapid Response Vehicles 7 Rapid Response Motorcycles 5 Bicycles 2 Hazardous Area Response Teams 1 Boat – ALN 043'Star of Life’ Wave Saver 1000 Class Ambulance Boat SWASFT provides the non-emergency 111 helpline and triage service for Dorset. In May 2014 the Trust won a contract to run a doctor-led minor injuries unit at Tiverton and District Hospital, open seven days a week. Patients do not need an appointment to visit the centre, which provides treatment for minor injuries and ailments including: Cuts and wounds.
Torpoint Ferry
The Torpoint Ferry is a car and pedestrian chain ferry, connecting the A374 road which crosses the Hamoaze, a stretch of water at the mouth of the River Tamar, between Devonport in Plymouth and Torpoint in Cornwall. The service was established in 1791 and chain ferry operations were introduced by James Meadows Rendel in 1832; the route is served by three ferries, named after three rivers in the area: Tamar II, Lynher II and Plym II. Each ferry carries 73 cars and operates using its own set of slipways and parallel chains, with a vehicle weight limit of 18 tonnes The ferry boats are propelled across the river by pulling themselves on the chains. An intensive service is provided, with service frequencies ranging from every 10 minutes at peak times, to half-hourly at night. Services operate every day, with service frequency never falling below half-hourly; the ferries, along with the nearby Tamar Bridge, are operated by the Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry Joint Committee, jointly owned by Plymouth City Council and Cornwall Council.
Tolls are payable in the Torpoint to Devonport direction only, except for motorcyclists who pay westbound only. The toll is £1.50 for cars and motorcycle riders are charged 30p. Frequent users can reduce the fare by half by purchasing top ups online for a machine-readable windscreen-mounted digital payment tag, called Tamar Tag, usable on the bridge; the toll increase of 50% in March 2010 was the first rise for nearly 15 years. A ferry route between Torpoint and Plymouth Dock was created by an Act of Parliament in 1790 and the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe began to run ferries the following year. In 1826 the ferry operations were taken over by the Torpoint Steamboat Company, which built landing piers on both sides of the Tamar; the company built the steam ferry Jemima which entered service in 1831. The steamer was unable to hold a course in the strong tidal flow of the Hamoaze, so it was soon withdrawn and the older ferryboats returned to service; the steamboat company approached James Meadows Rendel in 1832 and asked him to design a steam-powered floating bridge for the route.
Two ferries were built in 1834 and 1835 and provided a continuous service, operating in alternate months. The tolls varied between 2d for a horse and 5s for a coach with 4 horses, with a double fare charged on Sundays; the original ferries were replaced by two new ferries built in 1871 and 1878. As a result of increasing traffic the ferry company investigated twin ferry operation in 1905. Both the Admiralty and Devonport Corporation opposed this as the company would need to expand the landing beach in Devonport. An experimental two ferry service with the existing shore installations had to be abandoned due to the strain on the equipment. A supplementary steamer service was introduced in 1902, with the Volta and Lady Beatrice linking Torpoint to two locations in Devonport on a triangular route. Cornwall County Council acquired both the ferry and the steamers in 1922 for £42,000; the Volta was sold for breaking and two new ferries were ordered, which entered service in 1925 and 1926. These were the first ferries on the route designed to carry motor vehicles and could carry 800 passengers and 16 cars.
Land was acquired on both sides of the rivers to lay a second set of chains and expand the landing beaches. A third, ferry was ordered and modern shore facilities were built and twin-ferry operation began in July 1932; these changes made the supplementary steamer redundant and the Lady Beatrice was sold. Motor traffic using the route increased after World War II, two new ferries with a capacity of 30 cars each were introduced by 1961. A third ferry entered service in 1966 and a marshalling area was built on the Torpoint foreshore, relieving congestion in the centre of Torpoint; the landing beaches were expanded further in 1972 allowing all 3 ferries to operate simultaneously. The three ferries were refitted in the 1980s and were stretched so that they could carry 50 cars. After the refit, they were named the Tamar and Plym; these remained in service until 2005. All three ferries, Lynher and Tamar were sold in 2004 for recycling by the company Smedegaarden located at Esbjerg in Denmark, they had the vessels towed across the North Sea and recycled during 2005.
Cremyll Ferry Official Torpoint Ferry site
Antony, Cornwall
Antony is a coastal civil parish and a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. The village is situated on the Rame Peninsula about three miles west of Torpoint and has a shop, a pub and a garage. Antony parish is bounded to the north by the tidal River Lynher and to the south by the English Channel coast. To the east, the parish is bordered by Torpoint and St John parishes and to the west by Sheviock parish; the parish is in the St Germans Registration District and had a population of 436 at the 2001 census, increasing to 500 at the 2011 census. Apart from the church town, the only settlement of any size is Wilcove. Scraesdon Fort and Antony House are in the parish. At the time of Domesday Book the manor of Antony was held by Ermenhald from Tavistock Abbey; the medieval parish church is located in Antony at grid reference SX 399 547. Dedicated to St James, the church includes structural elements from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries; the church houses memorials to members of the Carew family of Antony and a large monumental brass to Margery Arundell, 1420.
Francis Vyvyan Jago Arundell, antiquarian and Anglican clergyman lived in Antony from 1809 until his death. Richard Carew, author of The Survey of Cornwall Antony is twinned with Benodet in Brittany, France. Media related to Antony, Cornwall at Wikimedia Commons Antony in the Domesday Book Antony Parish Council
Plymouth
Plymouth is a port city situated on the south coast of Devon, England 37 miles south-west of Exeter and 190 miles west-south-west of London. Enclosing the city are the mouths of the river Plym and river Tamar, which are incorporated into Plymouth Sound to form a boundary with Cornwall. Plymouth's early history extends to the Bronze Age; this settlement continued as a trading post for the Roman Empire, until it was surpassed by the more prosperous village of Sutton founded in the ninth century, now called Plymouth. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers departed Plymouth for the New World and established Plymouth Colony, the second English settlement in what is now the United States of America. During the English Civil War, the town was held by the Parliamentarians and was besieged between 1642 and 1646. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, Plymouth grew as a commercial shipping port, handling imports and passengers from the Americas, exporting local minerals; the neighbouring town of Devonport became a strategic Royal Naval dockyard town.
In 1914 three neighbouring independent towns, viz. the county borough of Plymouth, the county borough of Devonport, the urban district of East Stonehouse were merged to form a single County Borough. The combined town took the name of Plymouth; the city's naval importance led to its being targeted by the German military and destroyed by bombing during World War II, an act known as the Plymouth Blitz. After the war the city centre was rebuilt and subsequent expansion led to the incorporation of Plympton and Plymstock along with other outlying suburbs in 1967; the city is home to 263,100 people, making it the 30th-most populous built-up area in the United Kingdom and the second-largest city in the South West, after Bristol. It is represented nationally by three MPs. Plymouth's economy remains influenced by shipbuilding and seafaring including ferry links to Brittany and Spain, but has tended toward a service-based economy since the 1990s, it has the largest operational naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport, is home to the University of Plymouth.
Upper Palaeolithic deposits, including bones of Homo sapiens, have been found in local caves, artefacts dating from the Bronze Age to the Middle Iron Age have been found at Mount Batten, showing that it was one of few principle trading ports of pre Roman Britannia dominating continental trade with Armorica. An unidentified settlement named TAMARI OSTIA is listed in Ptolemy's Geographia and is presumed to be located in the area of the modern city. An ancient promontory fort was located at Rame Head at the mouth of Plymouth Sound with ancient hillforts located at Lyneham Warren to the east, Boringdon Camp and Maristow Camp to the north; the settlement of Plympton, further up the River Plym than the current Plymouth, was an early trading port. As the river silted up in the early 11th century and merchants were forced to settle downriver at the current day Barbican near the river mouth. At the time this village was called meaning south town in Old English; the name Plym Mouth, meaning "mouth of the River Plym" was first mentioned in a Pipe Roll of 1211.
The name Plymouth first replaced Sutton in a charter of King Henry VI in 1440. See Plympton for the derivation of the name Plym. During the Hundred Years' War a French attack burned a manor house and took some prisoners, but failed to get into the town. In 1403 the town was burned by Breton raiders. On 12 November 1439, the English Parliament made Plymouth the first town incorporated. In the late fifteenth century, Plymouth Castle, a "castle quadrate", was constructed close to the area now known as The Barbican; the castle served to protect Sutton Pool, where the fleet was based in Plymouth prior to the establishment of Plymouth Dockyard. In 1512 an Act of Parliament was passed for further fortifying Plymouth. A series of fortifications were built, including defensive walls at the entrance to Sutton Pool. Defences on St Nicholas Island date from this time, a string of six artillery blockhouses were built, including one on Fishers Nose at the south-eastern corner of the Hoe; this location was further strengthened by the building of a fort in 1596.
During the 16th century, locally produced wool was the major export commodity. Plymouth was the home port for successful maritime traders, among them Sir John Hawkins, who led England's first foray into the Atlantic slave trade, as well as Sir Francis Drake, Mayor of Plymouth in 1581 and 1593. According to legend, Drake insisted on completing his game of bowls on the Hoe before engaging the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World from Plymouth, establishing Plymouth Colony – the second English colony in what is now the United States of America. During the English Civil War Plymouth sided with the Parliamentarians and was besieged for four years by the Royalists; the last major attack by the Royalists was by Sir Richard Grenville leading thousands of soldiers towards Plymouth, but they were defeated by the Plymothians at Freedom Fields Park. The civil war ended as a Parliamentary win, but monarchy was restored by King Charles II in 1660, who imprisoned many of the Parliamentary heroes on Drake's Is
Cable ferry
A cable ferry is a ferry, guided across a river or large body of water by cables connected to both shores. Early cable ferries used either rope or steel chains, with the latter resulting in the alternate name of chain ferry. Both of these were replaced by wire cable by the late 19th century. There are three types of cable ferry: the reaction ferry, which uses the power of the river to tack across the current. Powered cable ferries use powered cogs or drums on board the vessel to pull itself along by the cables; the cables or chains have a considerable amount of slack built into them, in order to sink below the surface as the ferry moves away, allowing other vessels to pass without becoming grounded, snared or trapped. Where a ferry carries both passengers and vehicles the car deck occupies the centre and two passenger areas are at the sides, over the tunnels for the chains and the engines; as the ferry cannot steer, a ramp is built at both ends and there is a set of controls facing in either direction.
Cable ferries are common where there is little other water-borne traffic that could get snagged in the cable or chains, where the water may be too shallow for other options, or where the river current is too strong to permit the safe crossing of a ferry not attached to the shore. Alignment of the platform at each end of the journey is automatic and for vehicle ferries, safer than a free-moving ferry might be in bad conditions. A special type are electrically powered overhead-wire ferries like Straussee Ferry, which have an onboard propulsion unit and can float free, but are connected to the overhead wire for power supply, using an electrical cable that slides along the wire as the ferry moves. Cable ferries have been used to cross rivers and similar bodies of water since before recorded history. Examples of ferry routes using this technology date back to the 13th century. In the early 1900s a cable ferry designed by Canadian engineer William Pitt was installed on the Kennebecasis River near Saint John, New Brunswick in Canada.
There are now eight cable ferries along the Saint John River system in southern New Brunswick. In Canada a cable ferry is proposed to transport automobiles across the Ottawa River in Ontario. There are several in British Columbia: two on the Fraser, one at Lytton, one at Big Bar, three on Arrow Lakes. A suspended cable ferry worked until the 1980s in Boston Bar. A small seasonal reaction ferry carries cars across the Rivière des Prairies from Laval, Quebec to Île Bizard. Cable ferries were prominent in early transportation in the Sacramento Delta of California. Dozens of cable ferries operated on the Columbia River in the US northwest, most have been rendered obsolete by bridges. A suspended cable ferry for railway cars crossed the American River in Northern California. Most of the road crossings of the Murray River in South Australia are cable ferries operated by the state government using diesel engines; the platforms at the ends can be moved down according to the water level. At one time, cable ferries were a primary means of automobile transportation in New South Wales in Australia.
In Tasmania, for a century before 1934, the Risdon Punt at Hobart was the only fixed method of crossing the Derwent River within Hobart city limits. In the fishing village of Tai O on Lantau Island, Hong Kong, the Tai O Ferry crossed the Tai O River before a bascule bridge was built; the largest and busiest cable ferry is the Torpoint Ferry in England. It was first converted to cable operation in 1831 and operates 3 ferries, carrying 8000 vehicles per day; the earliest punts were owned by local landowners, charged a toll. As governments started to build roads, they started to operate punts as required. Private punts might be made to impose more standard tolls. Mannam punt torn by broken cable, cast adrift. Blanchetown punt out of use due to low water level in river. Duplicated punts can be provided. Twin ferries allow one to operate. Current cable ferry routes include: Butrint Ferry, across the Vivari Channel near Butrint Berowra Waters Ferry, at Berowra Waters in New South Wales Blanchetown Punt Cadell Ferry, across the Murray River at Cadell, South Australia Daintree River Ferry, across the Daintree River in Queensland Hibbard Ferry, across the Hastings River near Port Macquarie, New South Wales Lawrence Ferry, across the Clarence River in New South Wales Lower Portland Ferry, across the Hawkesbury River near the village of Lower Portland, New South Wales Lyrup Ferry, across the Murray River at Lyrup, South Australia Mannum Ferry, across the Murray River at Mannum, South Australia Moggill Ferry, across the Brisbane River near Ipswich, Queensland Morgan Ferry, across the Murray River in Morgan, South Australia Mortlake Ferry, across the Parramatta River in Sydney, New South Wales Narrung Ferry, across the Murray River at Narrung, South Australia Noosa River Ferry, across the Noosa River in Queensland Purnong Ferry, across the Murray River in Purnong, South Australia Raymond Island Ferry, chain ferry from Paynesville to Raymond Island in Victoria Sackville Ferry, across the Hawkesbury River near the village of Sackville, New South Wales Settlement Point Ferry, across the Hastings River near
Sister city
Sister cities or twin towns are a form of legal or social agreement between towns, counties, prefectures, regions and countries in geographically and politically distinct areas to promote cultural and commercial ties. The modern concept of town twinning, conceived after the Second World War in 1947, was intended to foster friendship and understanding among different cultures and between former foes as an act of peace and reconciliation, to encourage trade and tourism. By the 2000s, town twinning became used to form strategic international business links among member cities. In the United Kingdom, the term "twin towns" is most used. In mainland Europe, the most used terms are "twin towns", "partnership towns", "partner towns", "friendship towns"; the European Commission uses the term "twinned towns" and refers to the process as "town twinning". Spain uses the term "ciudades hermanadas", which means "sister cities". Germany and the Czech Republic use Partnerstadt / miasto partnerskie / partnerské město, which translate as "partner town or city".
France uses ville jumelée, Italy has gemellaggio and comune gemellato. In the Netherlands, the term is stedenband. In Greece, the word αδελφοποίηση has been adopted. In Iceland, the terms vinabæir and vinaborgir are used. In the former Soviet Bloc, "twin towns" and "twin cities" are used, along with города-побратимы; the Americas, South Asia, Australasia use the term "sister cities" or "twin cities". In China, the term is 友好城市. Sometimes, other government bodies enter into a twinning relationship, such as the agreement between the provinces of Hainan in China and Jeju-do in South Korea; the douzelage is a town twinning association with one town from each of the member states of the European Union. Despite the term being used interchangeably, with the term "friendship city", this may mean a relationship with a more limited scope in comparison to a sister city relationship, friendship city relationships are mayor-to-mayor agreements. In recent years, the term "city diplomacy" has gained increased usage and acceptance as a strand of paradiplomacy and public diplomacy.
It is formally used in the workings of the United Cities and Local Governments and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and recognised by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. A March 2014 debate in the British House of Lords acknowledged the evolution of town twinning into city diplomacy around trade and tourism, but in culture and post-conflict reconciliation; the importance of cities developing "their own foreign economic policies on trade, foreign investment and attracting foreign talent" has been highlighted by the World Economic Forum. The earliest known town twinning in Europe was between Paderborn, Le Mans, France, in 836. Starting in 1905, Keighley in West Yorkshire, had a twinning arrangement with French communities Suresnes and Puteaux; the first recorded modern twinning agreement was between Keighley and Poix-du-Nord in Nord, France, in 1920 following the end of the First World War. This was referred to as an adoption of the French town; the practice was continued after the Second World War as a way to promote mutual understanding and cross-border projects of mutual benefit.
For example, Coventry twinned with Stalingrad and with Dresden as an act of peace and reconciliation, all three cities having been bombed during the war. The City of Bath formed an "Alkmaar Adoption committee" in March 1945, when the Dutch city was still occupied by the German Army in the final months of the war, children from each city took part in exchanges in 1945 and 1946. In 1947, Bristol Corporation sent five'leading citizens' on a goodwill mission to Hanover. Reading in 1947 was the first British town to form links with a former "enemy" city – Düsseldorf; the link still exists. Since 9 April 1956 Rome and Paris have been and reciprocally twinned with each other, following the motto: "Only Paris is worthy of Rome; the support scheme was established in 1989. In 2003 an annual budget of about €12 million was allocated to about 1,300 projects; the Council of European Municipalities and Regions works with the Commission to promote modern, high quality twinning initiatives and exchanges that involve all sections of the community.
It has launched a website dedicated to town twinning. As of 1995, the European Union had more than 7,000 bilateral relationships involving 10,000 European municipalities French and German. Public art has been used to celebrate twin town links, for instance in the form of seven mural paintings in the centre of the town of Sutton, Greater London; the five main paintings show a number of the main features of the London Borough of Sutton and its four twin towns, along with the heraldic shield of each above the other images. Each painting features a plant as a visual representation of its town's environmental awareness. In the case of Sutton this is in a separate smaller painting showing a beech tree, intended as a symbol of prosperity and from whi
Smuggling
Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations. There are various motivations to smuggle; these include the participation in illegal trade, such as in the drug trade, illegal weapons trade, exotic wildlife trade, illegal immigration or illegal emigration, tax evasion, providing contraband to a prison inmate, or the theft of the items being smuggled. Smuggling is a common theme in literature, from Bizet's opera Carmen to the James Bond spy books Diamonds are Forever and Goldfinger; the verb smuggle, from Low German smuggeln or Dutch smokkelen a frequentative formation of a word meaning "to sneak", most entered the English language during the 1600s–1700s. Smuggling has a long and controversial history dating back to the first time at which duties were imposed in any form, or any attempt was made to prohibit a form of traffic. Smuggling is associated with efforts by authorities to prevent the importation of certain contraband items or non-taxed goods.
In England smuggling first became a recognised problem in the 13th century, following the creation of a national customs collection system by Edward I in 1275. Medieval smuggling tended to focus on the export of taxed export goods — notably wool and hides. Merchants however, sometimes smuggled other goods to circumvent prohibitions or embargoes on particular trades. Grain, for instance, was prohibited from export, unless prices were low, because of fears that grain exports would raise the price of food in England and thus cause food shortages and / or civil unrest. Following the loss of Gascony to the French in 1453, imports of wine were sometimes embargoed during wars to try and deprive the French of the revenues that could be earned from their main export. Most studies of historical smuggling have been based on official sources — such as court records, or the letters of Revenue Officers. According to Dr Evan Jones, the trouble with these is that'they only detail the activities of those dumb enough to get caught'.
This has led him and others, such as Prof Huw Bowen to use commercial records to reconstruct smuggling businesses. Jones' study focuses on smuggling in Bristol in the mid-16th century, arguing that the illicit export of goods like grain and leather represented a significant part of the city's business, with many members of the civic elite engaging in it. Grain smuggling by members of the civic elite working with corrupt customs officers, has been shown to have been prevalent in East Anglia during the 16th century. In England wool was smuggled to the continent in the 17th century, under the pressure of high excise taxes. In 1724 Daniel Defoe wrote of Lymington, Hampshire, on the south coast of England "I do not find they have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and roguing; the high rates of duty levied on tea and wine and spirits, other luxury goods coming in from mainland Europe at this time made the clandestine import of such goods and the evasion of the duty a profitable venture for impoverished fishermen and seafarers.
In certain parts of the country such as the Romney Marsh, East Kent and East Cleveland, the smuggling industry was for many communities more economically significant than legal activities such as farming and fishing. The principal reason for the high duty was the need for the government to finance a number of expensive wars with France and the United States. Before the era of drug smuggling and human trafficking, smuggling had acquired a kind of nostalgic romanticism, in the vein of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped: "Few places on the British coast did not claim to be the haunts of wreckers or mooncussers; the thievery was romanticized until it seemed a kind of heroism. It did not have any taint of criminality and the whole of the south coast had pockets vying with one another over whose smugglers were the darkest or most daring; the Smugglers Inn was one of the commonest names for a bar on the coast". In Henley Road, smuggling in colonial times was a reaction to the heavy taxes and regulations imposed by mercantilist trade policies.
After American independence in 1783, smuggling developed at the edges of the United States at places like Passamaquoddy Bay, St. Mary's in Georgia, Lake Champlain, Louisiana. During Thomas Jefferson's embargo of 1807-1809, these same places became the primary places where goods were smuggled out of the nation in defiance of the law. Like Britain, a gradual liberalization of trade laws as part of the free trade movement meant less smuggling. In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt tried to cut down on smuggling by establishing the Roosevelt Reservation along the United States-Mexico Border. Smuggling revived in the 1920s during Prohibition, drug smuggling became a major problem after 1970. In the 1990s, when economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia, a large percent of the population lived off smuggling petrol and consumer goods from neighboring countries; the state unofficially allowed this to continue or otherwise the entire economy would have collapsed. In modern times, as many first-world countries have struggled to contain a rising influx of immigrants, the smuggling of people across national borders has become a lucrative extra-legal activity, as well as the dark side, people-trafficking of women who m
