What's the story at the Home Office?
Naturally, we don't expect a Home Office run by Charles Clarke and employing Hazel Blears to be totally in touch with reality, but recent events do tend to suggest a dangerous degree of detachment. What else can we make of the following train of events?
1) They force through a compulsory ID database involving rounding up everyone in Britain over 16 and marching them to biometric 'enrollment centres', on pain of large fines, there to be fingerprinted and catalogued as if we're common criminals, not innocent 'hard-working decent families' to quote Blair about 900 times. You can't be trusted with your own identity, so let the professionals at the Home Office take care of it, is the message.
2) They admit to keeping the DNA profiles of 186,000 innocent people, including 24,000 children and, in total, far more DNA profiles than any other country in the world, and are now listening to calls for retention of samples from innocent people merely questioned.
3) They prosecute people for innocent, peaceful and legitimate protests. landing them with a criminal record and fines,
4) They deport, often violently and abrubtly, innocent asylum seekers and their families who have lived here for years and committed no crime beyond earning the ire and disapproval of the xenophobic right-wing press.
5) They rearrange the visa and work permit rules for innocent foreign (non-EU) doctors, (thousands of whom have been encouraged to come and live in the UK, working hard to deliver the big NHS figures for Tony and Patsy to boast about), throwing them out of work and into destitution, and mucking up the practices where they've been an essential part of the team.
source 1
source 2
6) They portray 'feral' children who lack 'respect' as the root of all evil in this country, leading to absurdities like a 3 year old being threatened by a housing trust for innocently playing football in the street (a little known new lunacy is making landlords responsible for anti-social behaviour by tenants).
7) They bring in tough anti-terror legislation and use it against innocent actors,journalists and protesters
9) However, when you've actually committed a crime, and the Judge has recommended that you be deported at the end of it, there's a high likelihood you'll just be allowed to go and live back in the community, no questions asked. Even when the Home Office get to hear about this practice, it's just allowed to slide while they get on with the really important stuff like criminalising the innocent.
Am I the only one who sees the priorities slightly iffy here? Or should we just have a whip-round and send them a plushly bound set of dictionaries with the words 'innocent', 'guilty', 'criminal', 'resign', 'you', 'idiotic', 'safety' and 'elephant' highlighted in fluorescent marker?
re a three year old feral
re a three year old feral yobbo - do we really need the MI5? those vigilant truth seekers peeking from behind lace curtains don't need to be paid from the public purse.
Don't forget that National
Don't forget that National Audit office say their accounts don't add up when compiling the increasingly long list of shame:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2019250,00.html
"It is the first time in modern history that the nation’s Auditor General has delivered such an indictment on the financial records of a key government department."
Apparently its due to that timeless old classic - the introduction of a new computer system. This was, and I quote, "intended to bring greater efficiency and control to the finances." Well, as usual, it didn't.
Martin
It doesn't exactly breed
It doesn't exactly breed confidence when one sees where the 3 key civil servants have been moved to:
"Top officials at the time Sir John Gieve, now deputy Governor Bank of England; Martin Narey, now chief executive of Barnardos; Leigh Lewis, now at the Department of Work and Pensions."
Especially Sir John Gieve, sacked for f*cking up the accounts;
"He left the Home Office in December to join the Bank of England as Deputy Governor in charge of financial stability."
Heaven help the pound.
One thing that I haven't
One thing that I haven't seen being reported on, is a possible reason, if you could call it a reason, for the cock-up. Mr Clarke from July the 8th 2005, got his head stuck into the nu labour project of ID cards. This was More important to Mr Clark as it gave 'good' headlines than say working on keeping an eye on to be deported criminals. But there you go, that's what happens when you start to believe your own hype. I could also add it happens when you can't tell the difference between your arse and your gob, they are both full of shite.
You might want to look at
You might want to look at our blog project. We're aiming to give details of all of the children's databases and 'assessment tools' over the next couple of weeks. www.databasemasterclass.blogspot.com