Question 1.

On Page 57 of the Conservative Party Manifesto 2010 (Invitation to Join the Government of Britain) it says “we will create a dedicated border Police force“.

Using a blank IPSA claim form and a slide rule work out how long it took to stitch Brodie Clark up like a kipper.

Apparently Scumeron is organising an urgent meeting with health professionals to discuss the future of the proposed reforms. That’s after the House of Lords eviscerated them, of course.

Invited to the meeting are the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Paediatrics & CH and the NHS Federation.

All these bodies tolerate the Bill in some respect.

Not invited to the meeting are the Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Nurses, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Faculty of Public Health.

All these bodies have called for the Bill to be dropped.

Blinkers, anyone?

Thought I’d better grab a screeny before it disappears.

Mind you – it’s been there for three weeks!

There’s a dull rumbling coming from just east of here! It’s the local worthies of the Tory party in our neighbouring constituency waking up to the realisation that their new(ish) MP was bought off the shelf from Rentaquotes ‘r’ Us. (Actually, he was one of an emergency short-list imposed on the local association by Tory Central Office because they didn’t have enough candidates in safe seats from “non-traditional backgrounds”.)

Sam Gyimah, for it is he, appeared in a debate on BBC Radio 5 Live earlier in the week. Clicky. He was challenged to go to Salford and live on benefits for a week. If you bother to watch the video you will see him duck the question with a completely amateurish deflection. (Mind you – Salford on 65 quid for a week? I’d have told the guy to fuck off straight away, but then I don’t have to try and convince anyone to vote for me!)

Sam was probably wise to back away from the offer. The precedents are not good.

Remember Edwina Currie? She of the eggs and “chips and telly”? Back in the 80s she took up the benefits challenge and failed miserably after blowing half her budget on courgettes and grissini sticks. Coincidentally, Currie was also on Five Live this week, reducing a young mother struggling with debts and unemployment to tears.

Since they banned fox hunting it seems that mocking the poor is the only fun these privileged, rich Tory bastards get.

It is 37 years since I left school and went to work. In all that time I’ve been unemployed for about two months. In all that time I have spent 16 years in the private sector and 21 years in the public. In all that time I have never had a bad report, I have never been disciplined and I have never been on strike. Until today!

When you join the civil service you realise very quickly that the world and his wife think that you owe them something. Everyone is an expert on your job and everyone thinks that all you do all day is The Times crossword and drink tea. Nothing could be further from the truth . The vast majority of public employees are competent, hard-working and dedicated. Yes, it’s true that we get things wrong and when that happens it hits the headlines. We’re human and we can drop a few clangers. The redtops scream about the one in a thousand case that goes tits up, but are oddly silent about the other nine hundred and ninety-nine when we get it right! Continue reading All Out →

Just over five years ago John (now Lord) Reid infamously described the Home Office as “not fit for purpose”. He proudly announced that the Immigration and Nationality Directorate would be hived off to form an executive agency. This was in the wake of Charles Clarke having been dragged kicking and screaming out of Marsham Street having failed to fall on his sword over the foreign national prisoners scandal.

This country used to have an honourable tradition of government ministers resigning when things got a bit shagged up on their watch. It’s difficult to remember the last time that happened and you really have to go back to 1982 and Peter Carrington’s resignation over the Falklands for a proper object lesson in ministerial responsibility. He didn’t personally screw up, but he was the man in charge and took the kicking for it. Nowadays, it seems, the buggers have to be crowbarred out of the ministerial Jaguar.

We must wait until tomorrow to find out what the Home Secretary has to say about this latest debacle. The current signs are that she’s going to try and hang Brodie Clark out to dry, which would make sense, for otherwise what is agency status for but to distance ministers from operational decisions. That said, please don’t try and convince me that Damian and/or Theresa don’t have SOME input as to who sits on the UKBA board.

I have yet to see David Cameron expressing full confidence in Green and May (makes them sound like they make organic chocolate!). Only when that happens will we know for certain that blaming the officials aint gonna work.

This week’s subject on which everyone can be a resident expert is – <drumroll> – IMMIGRATION !! (Again!!)

Just out of curiosity I’ve been reading some of the comments from the web pages of the Daily Fail about this week’s events in the shining halls of Marsham Street. (In case you missed it, Brodie Clark and a few other senior officers of the UK Border Agency are being allowed time off to do some late autumn pruning.)

It just so happens that I do know quite a lot about immigration and UKBA. But, even knowing as much as I do, I wouldn’t describe myself as an expert. (Incidentally,  if you think I’m about to let you in on some naughty secrets you can sod off right now ‘cos that aint never gonna happen. )

No, this one is about the “person on the Clapham omnibus”.

It is an interesting fact of life working in the civil service that almost everyone considers themselves qualified to comment on your job. They’ll tell you what you should be doing, how you should be doing it and that, generally, you’re overpaid for doing it badly. Out come the bromides about jobs for life, the gravy train, tea swilling bureaucrats  and gold-plated pensions. Suffice to say here that, having worked in the public and private sectors in more or less equal measure, neither one has a monopoly on efficiency and effectiveness. There are good and bad civil servants just as there are good and bad in any job or profession.  The majority of the people I now work with are genuine and hard-working, many of them putting their personal safety at risk every day.

So, what is it that makes everyone an expert on my job? It’s the “I pay your wages so, therefore, I’m your boss” syndrome. My stock answer to that is that you don’t and aren’t. It’s a bank manager in Droitwich who pays for me – you pay for a PCSO in Sidcup! And my boss sits over there in the window seat.

I have absolutely  no objection to the public commenting on what we do. I just wish it was from a position of knowledge and understanding. More often than not it isn’t. Take, as just one example, the far from uncommon comment I saw this morning which runs something along the lines of “we’re an island, it’s the easiest thing in the world to close our borders”. Oh, is it really? Yes, this is an island, but it has 30 major and 27 minor airports along with more than 400 airfields, aerodromes and heliports. We have more than a hundred operating seaports and hundreds more small harbours, jetties and slipways. We have over 11,000 miles of coastline. To close that little lot to every potential illegal entrant would require a border force very many times the size we have or could afford.[pullquote]Plus ça change[/pullquote]

Sweeping statements made without a proper understanding or, worse, on the basis of “common sense” solve precisely nothing. Unfortunately, our politicians behave no better. Some of the comments passed over the last few days have been simplistic drivel – nothing more than opportunistic point scoring – blame and counter-blame in the never-ending game of party politics.

Oh well, Plus ça change, as they say in Coquelles!

If ever there was a need to demonstrate the paucity of thought and ideas amongst our political classes then yesterday Chris Bryant MP more than fulfilled it.

This week the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee released a report which was highly critical of the UK Border Agency. Amongst other things they raised was the fact that the Agency has lost track of about 124,000 applicants and their files have been sent to a “controlled archive”.  Bryant, who is Shadow Minister for Immigration,  went straight out on the appearance fee trail and gave us this offering on Aunty’s Breakfast:-

[youtube width=”212″ height=”172″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCpmhu4DgnE[/youtube]

You will note that, several times, he was asked how he would go about tracking the missing and each time he ducked the question. Rentaquote, at its worst, despite the rather sycophantic praise for this pathetic offering that he subsequently tweeted.

I have to admit that I know rather more about this than your average Joe Soap. That 124k represents less than 0.2% of the country’s population. Some of them will have left the UK, some will have settled in a different identity, some will be dead. Needles and haystacks!

I was, therefore, interested to know how Bryant would go about tracing them all. So I tweeted him:-

“@ChrisBryantMP Just exactly how WOULD you go about finding all those missing people, Chris?”

Remarkably quickly a reply came back:-

“@nokhbi For a start I wouldn’t decide to stop looking for them and secondly I wouldn’t cut staff by 5000, 20%”

Now, that really doesn’t answer the question, does it? So I tweeted him again:-

“@ChrisBryantMP Yes, but HOW would you find them?”

And answer came there none!

It is infantile to suggest that the problem of the missing can be laid entirely at the door of the present government. It goes way back through all three terms of the Labour government and, in fact, has its origin under John Major’s Tory administration.

Bear in mind that, if the coalition falls apart and if there’s a general election and if Labour win (rather a lot of ifs!) this man would be measuring for curtains in Marsham Street. He would be responsible for setting the policy of the UK Border Agency. Imagine the scene:-

Whiteman (for it is he!): “Yes, Minister, we appreciate that you want the missing applicants traced. Could you suggest some methods we haven’t already tried?”

Bryant: “Err …”

It’s very easy to stand on the sidelines and jeer, but if you aspire to high office you really ought to have something better in your ideas box than “do better”!

Further to my earlier post I received the following tweet from GypsyMessages Gypsy Message Board:

“@nokhbi thats not Mary Flynn its Mary MacCarthy! cant get ya facts right!”

I’m happy to be corrected if, indeed, that is the case.

However, the photo was lifted from here. Also see here, here and  here.

I note that they didn’t dispute any of the rest of it.

Last night the BBC justified the licence fee! (In my opinion, anyway.)

Panorama is the longest running current affairs documentary programme in the world. It has an honourable record of investigative journalism which stretches back more than five decades. Last night they added another powerful and important chapter.

For those who didn’t see the programme it’s been difficult to avoid the fallout.

It brought to light the abuse of patients with learning disabilities at the privately run Winterbourne View in Bristol. I have long since ceased to be amazed at the human capacity for the inhumane, but I found the programme extremely harrowing. Bullying, abuse, physical and verbal assault are not easy things to watch, especially when perpetrated against those least able to defend themselves. Continue reading B@st@rds from Bristol →