THUS Magazine

. . .and we’ll all get rich spying on each other, apart from the UK, who prefers to outsource its spying to Johnny Foreigner.

by John J Kelly

The government’s bailout plan for threadbare foreign technology and data collection corporations is gathering pace, despite the fact that like Iraq, the Dome or the Special Relationship, the majority can’t see the point of the drastic plastic Identity Card project and doubts that any good will come of it. But the UK government is determined to finish what it started – the Balkanisation of civil liberties and UK Plc. (in Administration). Apologies if I’m sounding a tad Monday morning, but I’ve just noticed that the overwhelming majority of the (estimated) £19 billion of UK taxpayers’ money earmarked for this flawed project will be spent on contractors such as EDS (Ross Perot’s liberal US behemoth) , IBM (US company who needs no introduction), Siemens (Germany), Fujitsu (the only Japanese company daft enough to buy ICL), Thales (a French water company) and a carpetbag of ‘international’ consultants (I’m only guessing, but CapGemini (Fr) surely loom large). We all know that the costs will balloon (even more), the project will have deadly security flaws and these foreign companies will repatriate our cash while remaining embedded in our national security in a deadly embrace. In a bizarre turn – file under ‘you couldn’t make it up’ – Jacqui Smith’s Home Office is seeking special powers to search the homes of UK employees of these companies for the next 20 years without recourse to search warrants (in the event of theft or, more likely, sensitive policy leaks). Yet we are told that there is absolutely no danger in assembling this database.

We already know that the government’s (largely outsourced) security vetting procedures led to up to 5000 illegal immigrants working in government departments. We suspect that the Damian Green farrago (Thus passim) has a lot to do with pathetic attempts to stymie more embarrassing leaks of that nature. But we need more police and government control over our lives. Not on my street we don’t. We’ve already got a hatful.

London, May 2008. Nearly 600 police in riot gear goosestepped up MY road scaring off Muslims and showing off their helmets when Brown showed Sarkozy and Carla round the Emirates Stadium, before I'd even started publishing THUS. This is not a fake picture.

Today, Gordon Brown is meeting a coalition of willing idiots (Sarkozy and Barroso, but not the sensible Mrs Merkel, leader of Europe’s largest economy) to tell them how to rescue their economies by charging banks 12% interest and expecting them to lend below Libor to bust businesses. (Those German fools are charging less than 5% interest to their desperate banks – next thing they’ll be manufacturing stuff to SELL to people for MONEY instead of playing Monopoly). Presumably his advice to Sarkozy will be to buy more British utilities with semi-nationalised French state utilities and take over our infrastructure completely. Mr Barroso needs to send us more immigrants to exploit from newly-initiated member states.

The EIB is suddenly to blame

Brown has apparently just woken up to the fact that the European Investment Bank (EIB) was set up to advance development loans to European businesses, and has EU cash available to do exactly that. When the Euro was weak against Sterling, UK banks made it difficult for small and medium sized businesses to take advantage of EIB loans at preferential rates (preferring to lend at rates preferential to themselves, of course). Some estimate that up to £4 billion per year in qualifying loans for UK companies went unclaimed for several years. It is risible that the UK government is now trying to blame the EU at the same time as claiming leadership in the credit crisis, but entirely consistent with the policy of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted (then shooting the stableboy, especially if he’s European).

Meanwhile, we’ll maintain the pretence of British independence by doing whatever the US, a busted flush tells us to do. It’s Monday morning and I’m grumpy, but last week the European Court condemned Britain’s illegal DNA database (THUS passim). Gordon Brown could reduce the national debt by several billion by putting the hated identity card scheme on hold and he could stop pretending that spending vast amounts scrubbing the decks of the Titanic with (foreign) toothbrushes is likely to work. Talk to the Germans, Gordon. They have some experience of economic reconstruction. It tends to involve a degree of hard work, readjustment to economic realities and (in the case of the former GDR) dismantling the wasteful and corrupting apparatus of the police state.