The UK's Disgraceful Treatment Of Its Iraqi Interpreters

Emulating their exemplary record (ha! ha!) in relation to the Gurkhas, the UK Government has treated its Iraqi interpreters with similar disdain. Or, as a friend commented to me 5 minutes ago, "like shit."

Her ex-husband was in the army for 22 years and was treated abysmally by the Ministry of Defence. She says that the treatment of the Gurkhas and the Iraqi interpreters is simply par for the course so far as the MOD is concerned. They use you and throw you away.

My friend has particular experience relating to the Gurkhas, who she describes as wonderful, friendly people who were prepared to lay their lives down for this country. They are also an elite force and the treatment of them by this country is therefore doubly disgraceful.

This post is simply to pay tribute to Deborah Haynes of The Times who has won an Amnesty award in relation to her reporting of the Iraqi interpreters case. Well done and well deserved. See the title link.

The Easy Solution To The Banking Crisis

It's obvious! Suck the bankers' brains out and recondition them so that when we re-insert them bankers behave like normal human beings with human emotions and a sense of morality.

House of Lords Condemns Kafkaesque UK Government

Mrs Chikwamba was ordered to go back to Zimbabwe and apply for entry clearance even although everyone accepted that the application would succeed and the requirement would have no beneficial effect for anyone. The the uk government could hardly deny that there would be serious deleterious consequences for her, her husband and her young daughter.

It was a jobsworth application of the rules that would have lead, in the words of Lord Scott of Foscote, to something that should not be allowed to happen. He said:

"...policies that involve people cannot be, and should not be allowed to become, rigid inflexible rules. The bureaucracy of which Kafka wrote cannot be allowed to take root in this country and the courts must see that it does not."

Remembering that the Court of Appeal had upheld the uk government's Kafkaesque approach, we must be very grateful that we have the House of Lords who unanimously cut through the crap. Lord Scott also thought that the lower courts (including the Court of Appeal) had approached the matter in a manner that was "clearly unreasonable and disproportionate" and was amazed that the application had got this far.

LORD BROWN OF EATON-UNDER-HEYWOOD (who has defeated my attempts to find a photograph of him) giving the lead judgment said this:

"Let me now return to the facts of the present case. This appellant came to the UK to seek asylum, met an old friend from Zimbabwe, married him and had a child. He is now settled here as a refugee and cannot return. No one apparently doubts that, in the longer term, this family will have to be allowed to live together here. Is it really to be said that effective immigration control requires that the appellant and her child must first travel back (perhaps at the taxpayer's expense) to Zimbabwe, a country to which the enforced return of failed asylum-seekers remained suspended for more than two years after the appellant's marriage and where conditions are "harsh and unpalatable", and remain there for some months obtaining entry clearance, before finally she can return (at her own expense) to the UK to resume her family life which meantime will have been gravely disrupted? Surely one has only to ask the question to recognise the right answer."

The appellate courts are clogged up with immigration appeals. Sometimes these appeals are hopeless. But sometimes, as here, it is the government decision making process that is utterly hopeless. A rational government would not pursue such matters and its Kafkaesque approach in this case should cause it shame. Fat chance!

See the title link for the full decision and backward links to the Court of Appeal decision.

But, another bloody nose for the uk government and its sychophantic, idle, gutless and anti-freeddom civil servants. Not a spine amongst any of them.

Bureaucracy For The Insane: No Smoking At Rampton Not A Breach Of Human Rights

Rampton Hospital is a high security psychiatric hospital in the UK. It is an alternative for prison where a criminal is insane.

Residents or former residents applied in this case to be exempted from no-smoking regulations.

For instance, "normal" prisoners are exempt and can smoke in their cells.

Certain persons suffering an acute psychiatric state can be exempted at mental health hospitals. The rules for this are, however, so bizarre that they probably make the exemption pretty worthless to the beneficiaries. We will come to those in a minute.

The result of the case was failure. No-one at Rampton gets exempted. And the court has effectively decided that is ok. This is not what interested me in this case so go to the main title link if it interests you.

What interested me was the regulations that do apply if you get an exemption or, more specifically, the mind of the person that drafted them. Here they are:

"5.9 The patient may only smoke outdoors. The location to be chosen should be discrete as the sight and smell of a patient smoking may upset other patients.

5.10 The Nurse will retain the cigarette until the patient has been safely escorted outdoors, when the cigarette will be given to the patient and then lit by the Nurse who will retain the ignition source.

5.11 When the patient has finished smoking the Nurse will ensure that the cigarette is extinguished in a suitable ashtray and disposed of safely in an appropriate bin.

5.12 The staff and patient will return to the ward.

5.13 Once the decision has been made for the patient to stop smoking then the remaining cigarettes will be returned to the [patients'] Shop for destruction."

QUIZ QUESTION: What kind of mind devises such a regulation or would want to devote a single minute of their working life to drafting it?

My answer is that it is the kind of person who themself requires psychiatric help and may well be criminally insane. Mind you, they probably have a double first and flew through the civil service entrance proceedure.