Deborah Hobson
Ten thousand passports handed out to bogus applicants, including alleged prominent Al Qaeda members. Dangerous foreign criminals on the run in Britain. A state of panic over asylum seekers.
Now two indiscreet management consultants travelling home on a train this week have spilled the beans about the dire financial state of Home Secretary John Reid's embattled government department. An alert citizen journalist from The-Latest overheard the pair, on a Sutton-bound train from London, Victoria, talk darkly that the Home Office is 'fifty million pounds' in the red.
And that this could be accounted for by the £60m spent on a special team whose job it is to round up failed asylum seekers. Chartered planes used in the clandestine operation were mentioned. The consultants said, intriguingly, that one of their successes was building better relations between the Home Office and the Department of Health …
They were keen to get an extra £50,000 from Comrade Reid to continue advising him until next month, when apparently their consultancy contract runs out. So, if Lord Turnbull, the former top Treasury civil servant is to be believed about Gordon Brown, it is not just the Chancellor who favours advice from dodgy private consultants over fellow Labour ministers.
The 'Trusted Borders' consortium, led by Raytheon and including Serco, was short-listed in Novemberfor the next phase of the UK Government's 'e-Borders programme' Home Office Minister Joan Ryan said: "This technology will help transform our immigration controls. E-Borders will play a vital part in safeguarding our borders - enabling us to track all those who enter and leave the UK while facilitating efficient and secure passage for legitimate travellers."
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Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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