Published yesterday, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration David Neal's report on Suella Braverman's Home Office operations to effect the removal of Foreign National Offenders. The Foreword on page 8 summarises it nicely: "To provide just one illustration of the shortcomings of the data being used to manage criminal casework, this inspection found that the only way for the Home Office to identify a nationality cohort awaiting deportation was to manually trawl through multiple spreadsheets. For an operation of this size to be run like this is unacceptable. For any operation to be effective, there needs to be a single version of the truth, and for FNOs it does not exist. Worryingly, I found no evidence of a strategy to build one. Moreover, there is insufficient information to effectively identify which FNOs could be removed from the country today. The Home Office does not have an overarching view of its caseworking system. In order to establish the current state of a particular case, case owners have to manually interrogate individual case records. This is no way to run a government department." I for one am not exactly surprised... https://assets.publishing.service.g...n_National_Offenders_Oct_2022_to_Feb_2023.pdf
All of this stuff about Farage having his bank accounts shut down is nothing new. About thirty years ago, I had a trainee who found out that he could buy very cheap cans of beer in Calais, because the expiry date was only a month away. Along with a couple of mates, he would go back and forth buying it up, then selling it on in the UK. All the proceeds went into his bank account, but then Barclays noticed unusual activity, and denied him access to his accounts. They wouldn't tell him why, or give him any information about their investigation. It was about four months before they unfroze his funds, as he had done nothing illegal. All of this came to light when he came to me asking if I would pay his wages in cash, telling me about the whole enterprise. After that there were no more trips across the Channel. All very small scale in comparison with a rich man's dodgy dealings.
Vilified by many over the years, and he admittedly deserved it more often than not, but he was spot on with this speech.
Flipping Facebook - hopefully better luck with Instagram... https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtqaVhPulVZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Health Minister Steve Barclay now the MP for Scurvy and Rickets? https://archive.is/2023.07.10-08272...r?shareToken=5344c9dc98f82745c8dd243ff4e20dc8
Some terrible reading for anyone with a mortgage. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1679079534673444864.html
The government are going to have a proper revolution on their hands if they don't sort this mess out.
While I have been hard at bramble removal, Mme has been talking to our daughter in Gloucester. Daughter's sister-in-law came home on Sunday with a pain in her stomach, that by Monday was unbearable. She was advised to go to her A&E, where they diagnosed appendicitis, and said she would need an operation. Since Monday midday, she sat in a waiting room as they didn't have a bed for her, until 11.00 am today, Wednesday. The surgeons are working until midnight in an attempt to reduce the waiting lists, and she may have her operation this evening, so no food just in case. Just how bad does it have to get?
They certainly are. I read an estimation of how much this would remove from mortgage holder's pockets annually - a staggering £6bn. The flow-on effect of losing that much would be disastrous for everyone - people and businesses alike. It begs the question too - where does all that £6bn end up, and why? Fat cat bankers are the only ones to benefit from this as far as I can make out - and probably many an already-rich MP. Little wonder they've been busily introducing anti-protest legislation...
Perhaps this money could be better spent in the NHS? The Health Secretary is resorting to giving patients virtual reality tours of the promised 40 new hospitals as they haven’t actually been built. Steve Barclay is putting on roadshows across the country to give the public the chance to put on headsets and pretend they’re getting treated in the new facilities.
China’s state institutions are aggressively targeting the UK, putting the country on course for a nightmare scenario that represents not just a commercial challenge but an existential threat to liberal democratic systems, parliament’s influential all-party intelligence and security committee has found. The inquiry – launched in 2019 and subject to various delays was completed in May – is scathing about the failure of the UK to wake up to the scale of the systemic challenge posed by the Chinese government’s “whole of state” assault on the British economy, politics, civil infrastructure and academia. Saying that until recently the UK government was willing to accept Chinese money with few questions asked, it claimed “as a consequence the UK is now playing catch-up and the whole of government has its work cut out to understand and counter the threat from China”. The failure to respond to the economic threat posed by China, and to put in place a way of protecting UK assets “is a serious failure and one that the UK may feel the consequences of for years to come”, the parliamentarians found. The committee said: “There is no evidence that Whitehall policy departments have the necessary resources, expertise or knowledge of the threat to counter China’s approach.” The government’s focus, the report said, was still dominated by short-term or acute threats. “It has consistently failed to think long term unlike China, which historically has been able to take advantage of this.” In a scathing assessment of British academia’s willingness to accept Chinese research grants, the report said, that “while some have expressed concern others seem willing to turn a blind eye, happy simply to take the money”.
British people consistently taken in.... and then they complain about the yellow jackets demonstrating in France
