Thursday, December 13, 2007

More Home Office Incompetence

So, what am I bid? 5,000? 10,000? Ok, 11,100 to the Home Secretary. Going... Going... Er, no actually, they're staying.

The Home Secretary came clean this morning and admitted that the Home Office's latest guess official estimate of the number of illegal immigrants working in the security sector is a whopping 11,100. Only a few hundred have been identified and had their accreditation withdrawn.

Is there any government statistic which the public will ever now believe? And why didn't Jacqui Smith disclose all this when she first knew about it in July?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least 2 more years of this....Dear God...

Anonymous said...

Its not just the Home Office that's incompetent. Every single arm of government national or local is incompetent. And not just incompetent. Anyone unfortunate enough to come into telephone contact with either national or local government employees is subjected to an appalling level of ill-manners and rudeness for no reason at all. Rudeness and incompetence is the default mode of all NuLabour civil servants, especially the underlings.
And if anyone from the provinces is thinking of coming to London for their Christmas shopping, don't bother. We used to have cheery jokey Cockney bus conductors but we now have morose monosyllabic foreigners. We used to have delicious shops selling special treats and presents but now, even on Oxford Street, we have overpriced Rubbish R Us sold by the same cheerless foreigners.
Its no wonder there's so much binge drinking. How else can anyone anaethetise themselves against the hell of life in Gordon's fantasy world.

Newmania said...

Whjen you look at the way they arrive at figures for immigrants they are really only good for adjusting trends , there was along article about it in prospect and a few dotted about the Press.

This being the case with the rapid surge even the upwardly revised figures are probably far below the truth

( Bit off topic I know )

Anonymous said...

With all these cock-ups, why aren't we 21 points ahead, not 11?

Anonymous said...

Desperate Dan said...
"Its not just the Home Office that's incompetent. Every single arm of government national or local is incompetent. And not just incompetent. Anyone unfortunate enough to come into telephone contact with either national or local government employees is subjected to an appalling level of ill-manners and rudeness for no reason at all."

What a stupid generalisation. I work in local government and can assure that you the section I lead operates very efficiently and, in dealings with the public, my staff are almost always polite and helpful. This applies to many other departments within my Authority (admittedly not all).

Incidentally, an equivalent to my service operates in the private sector. Therefore, we can cost the efficiency of our work, using comparable private sector rates. On this basis we would be highly profitable if we were operating commercially.

Anonymous said...

dd: absolutely spot on - couldn't agree more.

The other legacy of the incompetent governance of the last 10 years is that nobody in government will accept any responsibility or fault. Any complaint is met with denial, buck passing and even the reversal of blame - "our system cannot be at fault, you must have done something wrong". This is endemic from the prime minister down to the lowliest local government clerk.

Anonymous said...

Loath as I am to give Broon any comfort, I must put in a good word for the Passport Office (or whatever it's called these days - something nasty, involving "Identity" I believe).

I recently renewed the passports for all 3 of my children. The new passports arrived within 3 working days of my posting off the forms (and I hadn't paid for any fast-track processing).

Anonymous said...

'With all these cock-ups, why aren't we 21 points ahead, not 11?'

Two reasons:

1) The Consveratives aren't really saying that would do anything different, just better. They can't really do this until closer to the election, as you dont give away all your policys unless you have to. Although i would like to see more clear blue water between Lab and Con, escpecially on areas like tax. (see the recent capital gains stuff, and now income splitting of small busineses).

2) The economy is still ok, although lurching towards trouble.

Actually Iain, on that issue of income splitting, could you give a post on how awful the recent proposed changes will be. Its something which won't get much attention, but is just indictative of how Labour operate, and its getting the backs up of pretty much every accountant in this country.

I know its dry stuff, but it's pretty dame important.

Hazel Bridges said...

Does anyone know how the accreditation process actually works? Does it involve a criminal record check etc. I am interested to know just how this went so horribly wrong.