POLITICALLY CORRECT JOBS BEING OFFERED BY OUR COUNCILS.

Hence Luton’s hunt for a protected learning time facilitator. Hence, too, the ludicrous and expensive tests that applicants for this mysterious post had to undergo.

This was one of 60 equally outlandish jobs for which I have applied under various guises in a four-month investigation into the public sector bonanza. My quest into this strange world was disturbing. It really is a jungle out there, inhabited by some bizarre creatures.


STEP aside Mr. Plod the Policeman; shuffle up Mr. Stamp the Postman — a whole new series of public employees has joined the Happy Families game. Here’s Mr. Rights the anti-racism coordinator, Mrs. Strict of the council’s smoking cessation unit and Miss Celery the healthy eating officer from the digestion support team. Look, there’s Mr. Lengthy-Forms the targets monitor, to make sure they all measure up to government standards. And here’s Mr. Brown the stealth-tax-and-spend invigilator.

Gordon Brown’s National Insurance rises and other measures are the equivalent of a 7p increase in the basic rate of income tax since Labour came to power, according to a study carried out by the accountants Tenon for the think tank Reform.

The chancellor has promised a “world class” National Health Service in return for lightening our wallets. But critics see a flaw in his proposal — a fundamental paradox in the funding and provision of public services.

He has put in place the managers who will preside over the overhauled health service but not the frontline doctors and nurses, who are still being trained. Between 1997, when Labour came to power, and 2002 the number of qualified doctors and nurses in the NHS rose by 15.3%, while managers and senior managers increased by 45.6%.

It is possible that, because of the economic cycle, there could well be little money available to pay for the new doctors and nurses by the time they do, eventually, emerge from training.

Voters are increasingly aware that their taxes are not being turned into tangible benefits — a poll last week showed only 7% are happy with Labour’s record on public services. But the job bonanza continues.

Money is sloshing through the public sector, gurgling along the corridors of local councils, NHS trusts, local education authorities and quangos. Spending on public services will rise to £512 billion in 2005-6 from £203 billion in 1996-7.

My attempts to get my share of this largesse unearthed some posts that clearly would not do. A “young lesbian and bisexual women’s health worker” was sought by the London borough of Waltham Forest, to be paid up to £26,121 for “improving the mental, physical and social well-being of young women who are lesbian, bisexual or questioning their sexuality”.

More promising was an advertisement for a “Five-A-Day co-ordinator” in east London to “address inequality” in “access to fruit and vegetables”. Sheffield’s council-funded Gypsy and Traveller Support Group was hunting for an information officer. Tower Hamlets borough council wanted a youth worker to help young Bangladeshis “at risk of becoming disaffected, isolated (and) depressed”, while Camden council sought a “welfare rights adviser” to ensure that everyone in the area received as many state benefits as they could manage.

Rochdale metropolitan borough council advertised for an “asylum seeker support project manager”, at up to £30,594 a year. Lambeth council, understandably, wants a “multilingual service manager”, to assist ethnic minorities who don’t yet speak English.

I soon discovered that “diversity” was the new buzzword — and that it indicates a new wave of anti-racist activism sweeping through the public sector.

Sutton & Merton NHS Trust wanted to spend up to £35,163 a year on a “diversity project co-ordinator”. Salford city council wanted an equality officer to help propel disabled, black and other minority workers into senior management. Sheffield South West PCT, Kent county council and Lambeth council in London all advertised for workers in the field of diversity.

The West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS), which has angered Birmingham residents by helping to force up council tax bills with demands for extra funding that outstripped inflation, sought an “equalities and diversity manager”. Key duties included fostering a “welcoming climate for all current and potential employees” and writing reports on equality issues in the service.

The WMFS also sought a diversity co-ordinator. Yet, in a glossy brochure, it said it had never had a serious racial problem in its ranks: the anti-racist drive was simply spurred by the Race Relations Act amendment of 2000.

I decided I might be cut out for the post of joint learning and development co-ordinator with the South Tyneside Health Care NHS Trust. The £25,777 job involves helping health workers to understand how to hit government targets.

As part of the selection process I had been asked to prepare a 15-minute presentation working to this brief: “Based on the proposed new model of working for the joint training forum, how would you ensure a successful integ- rated approach to multi-agency employee development, and what potential difficulties do you envisage in turning this model into a working reality?”

My potential difficulty was that, despite reading the job description three times, I could still not work out what it entailed and had to bluff my way through the presentation — not helped by the noise from the busy hospital canteen adjoining the interview room. At a tricky moment I was inadvertently rescued by a member of staff who burst in thinking the room was empty.

Gradually I worked out that the job involves buying training in order to help staff to meet Whitehall’s targets, and finding the funding for it.

One senior manager told me opaquely that there was “a social care and health workforce which is being dictated to by minimum competency levels set by government, who are very prescriptive in what they are asking for”.

The aim of the job was “really to provide an integrated approach to providing employee development across a very, very diverse and complex area. I guess that’s the hub of it: to develop the workforce within prescriptive government competency levels”. So there you have it.

Funding would not be a problem. Viv Lund, a line manager with the trust, confided: “There are lots of different pots of money . . . you’ve just got to put in the bids really. Multi-agency working and things, you know, they’re flavour of the month.”

This is how the NHS budget is gobbled up. One recent study claimed that, despite a 30% real-terms increase in the overall NHS budget in the past four years, the number of waiting list patients treated only rose by 2%.

It emerged that the training system I would be running was unpopular with the people it was supposed to benefit — but it had gone ahead regardless.

It had met “scepticism, certainly, across the sector in many respects”, said one manager. But he claimed the training system was “a huge awareness-raising exercise for all the parties we are dealing with”.



I DIDN’T get the job. Maybe my heart was not in it. But it was typical of the culture change that has swept the public sector. With myriad targets set by the government, armies of managers are needed not only to chase progress but to collect data and fill in paperwork.

I ran into an extreme example of this when I was being interviewed at Nottingham city council for the post of “monitoring and evaluation officer” of its children’s projects.

Wiser by now to the ways of the public sector, I innocently asked John Seals, a programme manager, whether there were any plans for “evaluating evaluation”.

To my amazement, he replied: “Yes . . . we will be combining this post internally with an external, arm’s-length evaluation programme as well, which will probably be conducted by a university or something like that. We are tendering at the moment.

“It will be a two-faced process, if you like. The role of the post is to work closely with projects in helping them with this, and also enabling the link, helping the link, with the external. It’s not just a matter of us doing it for our own purposes. It’s related to the big picture.”

So, on to the NHS trust in Harrow, north London, which was offering £26,202 a year for a “smoking cessation and prevention service co-ordinator”.

The Department of Health has set a target of more than 3,000 people to give up smoking in the Harrow area by 2006, and this post was described in the advertisement as “an exciting opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of our local community”.

In reality it involves a maze of bureaucracy — dealing with steering groups, developing “strategic and operational plans”, meeting government targets, collecting data, producing reports and ensuring the local primary care trust complies with the government’s white paper on smoking.

What is does not involve on any regular basis is explaining directly to smokers how to stop.

Pretending that I had a background in helping homeless men to overcome addiction, I was interviewed at the trust’s headquarters and gave a 20-minute presentation putting forward a number of “radical” initiatives the trust might like to organise.

These included a “die-in” outside the Cuban embassy to protest at the cigar trade, a “zero tolerance” policy requiring all trust staff to submit to random nicotine screening, a cutback in funding for heart surgery, nurses and medicines (the money would be redirected to anti-smoking publicity) and a picket of newsagents selling cigarettes to children.

“It was nice to see you strongly on the side of prevention during your presentation,” said the trust’s health promotion team leader Shikha Sharma. Too strongly, perhaps. Again, I was rejected.

And so to Luton, where I applied for the new NHS post of “protected learning time facilitator”.

My interviewers admitted that the job title was so meaningless that people reading the advert were likely to have no idea what the work entailed.

Pam McClinton, the Luton trust’s associate director of learning and development, told me: “It was interesting when we went to the advert, because is (protected learning time facilitator) going to mean anything to anybody? But what else do you call it, because it’s a quite specific initiative really? And then we think, well if people want to find out they’ll dig a bit deeper.”

Having done my digging, I discovered that the job involved shutting down all the GP surgeries in the area for 10 afternoons a year, so that all staff can receive extra training.

“It’s a total shut-down,” said McClinton. “And we pay an on-call company to cover the GPs.”

The facilitator would, of course, also have time off to train in how best to ensure that other staff have time off for training.

McClinton admitted there had been “varied” responses to this scheme from the trust’s practices, and the panel accepted that doctors and their staff could balk at the idea of having learning time “forced on them”.

“I think the group that probably needs most convincing are the GPs,” said McClinton.

That increased my respect for Luton’s family doctors, but again I didn’t get the job. I think my problem was the psychometric test, which took place at a sexual health clinic. It wasn’t the sheepish people in the waiting room who cramped my score but the trickiness of the 180 questions assessed by George Havloujan, a wavy-haired, fast-talking Australian consultant.

So, turning to Merseyside, I applied to become a “fathers worker” with Knowsley council. This is a part-time job that pays £22,689 pro rata. My duties would be to accompany problem fathers on dry-slope skiing trips, help them get on with their families and perhaps make them more politically correct.

“I think a lot of them think they should just work, come home — you know, a pretty sexist view of the world. The mum does all the ironing,” was how Sandra Richardson, an area manager, put it to me.

The interview was held on the first floor of offices next to a busy dual-carriageway leading into Liverpool city centre; I had to ask the chairman of the panel to close the window before I could hear what she was saying. I was surprised to see an all-female panel had been assigned to interview men for a job helping other men to understand issues relating to being a father.

They appeared more nervous than me. Even though they had 12 set questions — including “what social and economic issues do you feel young fathers face . . . and how do you feel this post will help to tackle some of these issues?” — there were embarrassed silences as they tried to work out who was going to speak next.

At no point was I asked the most obvious question in determining what practical knowledge I had of fatherhood: “Do you have any children yourself?” Whether I had any or not (I haven’t), I was unsuitable once again.

HOW long can this nonsense go on? Professor Len Shackleton, a leading free-market economist and head of the Westminster Business School, sighed as he contemplated the blizzard of cash now flying around the public sector.

“There is a genuine boom in public sector jobs at the moment,” said Shackleton. “A great deal of money has been thrown at the public sector in the last year or two, without a great deal of thought as to how it should be spent.

“In the public sector, you want to increase your budget because that obviously improves things for you and your mates who happen to be in that particular job.

“Typically what happens in the public sector is you have a budget for a year, you aren’t allowed to carry stuff forward and if you don’t spend it you lose it. So when the sun is shining, you employ people.

“The public sector is also very much driven by all sorts of opportunities to do with equal opportunities and diversity — there’s an endless amount of jobs in that area.”

Experts such as Shackleton say the burgeoning public sector workforce is a key part of a sea-change in Britain, with the country steadily moving from a competitive, if ruthless, Thatcherite society towards a less productive and more touchy-feely one under Tony Blair.

There are signs of resistance, however — and from within the public sector itself.

When I went for the job of “contract monitoring officer” at Lincolnshire county council I found that part of my role would be to overcome cynicism among staff who believe they should be doing something more productive than monitoring their own work.

“You have to be in a position to be able to persuade them and convince them that that paperwork is very necessary,” said a senior manager.

Now there’s a group of people I would really like to work with.

AFGHANS AND IRAQI DECIDE THEY WON'T GO HOME EVEN IF WE PAY THEM.

Mr Blunkett's plan to 'bribe' Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers to go home with free plane tickets and grants is proving a costly fiasco.  The Home Office hoped that thousands would accept payments of up to £2,500 per family (cost them much more to get to the UK) to return now that Saddam and the Taliban have been toppled.  Of the 26,000 Afghans who have taken refuge in the UK only 40 have taken up the offer.  Only one Afghan has applied for the scheme in the past four months.

With the 50,000 Iraqi asylum seekers the story is the same - only eight boarding the first flight last month.  The failure of Mr Blunkett's policy is likely to cost taxpayers millions of pounds as the Home Office will have to resort to compulsory removals - with the expense of charter flights, security staff, legal costs and detaining the economic migrants.  Last month the NOT Governing Government spent £130,000 flying 47 economic migrants back to Kabul, with hardly any other seats on the aeroplane occupied.  Fewer than 200 Afghans have been sent home in the last four months.  One flight in June was cancelled as only six could be rounded up.  At this rate it will take over 30 years to send the failed Afghan asylum seekers home.

Most Afghan asylum seekers have been judged NOT to be genuine refugees but just economic migrants, but until April nobody had been deported.

HEALTH TOURISTS KILLING OUR NHS.

Health tourists who travel to Britain for treatment are costing the NHS at least £400 million per year.  A study by a Londinistan Hospital trust claims foreigners who have no right to free care find it easy to exploit lax procedures and ignorance of the rules amongst staff.

They use a range of tricks to sidestep the rules including ranting and raving at staff if caught.   The trust which has not been named, estimates that it spent over £220,000 treating 72 foreign students over 3 months last year.  The report says this is probably a fraction of the real cost, since many overseas patients pass through the Trust undetected.

Over 14 months, officials at the hospital interviewed 514 patients who aroused suspicion and found that 234 were not eligible for care. Of these, 21 had fake passports, 11 had fake asylum certificates, 146 had out of date visa's.  Most walked out and tried another hospital when challenged.

£18,000 FOR EACH ASYLUM SEEKER.

Every asylum sponger costs British taxpayers more than £18,000 the Government has admitted.  The vast sum - more than the annual income of most Britons - covers legal aid, housing and food for refugees, as well as the thousands of bureaucrats needed to process their claims.  There was a record 84,000 claims this year pushing the bill for taxpayers close to £2billion.  The bill will soar even more as councils struggle with new legislation requiring them to care for young asylum seekers up to the age of 24.  Council tax has already rose vastly due to the rises in Police, Fire and Council staff wages and pensions.  Council can't keep the money they get from non-residential sources this go back to the Government.  Yet the dole scroungers get free houses of the councils, get their rents and council tax paid indefinitely whilst running businesses from home.

100 law firms milking legal aid in asylum cases.

A hundred law firms of Londinistan are milking the legal aid system on behalf of asylum seekers, ministers admitted last night.   One hundred out of 372 companies in Londinistan who specialise in making money from asylum applications are classed by the Legal Service Commission as 'poor quality' and risk having their legal aid contracts rescinded due to wasting taxpayers money on hopeless cases.  The legal aid bill for asylum cases has shot up from £74 million to £181 million.  Each initial asylum application costs the taxpayer £900 in legal aid bills.

HOW ASYLUM CHALLENGES ARE CLOGGING UP THE COURTS

Legal challenges by hundreds of asylum seekers are clogging up the High Court and costing taxpayers vast amounts of money,  a senior judge revealed on the 15th October 2003.  Mr Justice Maurice Kay said 800 judicial reviews had been lodged this year alone by refugees - a quarter of all such cases - and warned of the significant impact on the courts work.  A vast amount of money is being expended on litigation, much of which ought to be avoidable and which is clogging up the processes of the Administrative Court.  The legal row centres on how destitute an asylum seeker needs to be before their legal rights are breached.

TAXPAYERS PAYING FOR YOBS TO BE PUT UP IN HOTELS.

A teenage gang leader jailed for terrorizing his community is being put up in a hotel at taxpayers' expense, it was revealed on the 17th October 2003.  Donavan Osborne 18 , moved into the £44.95 a night room two weeks ago after being released from custody.  Osborne served only half his 12-month sentence and is staying at the Travelodge in Rugely, Staffordshire.  His room has en suite facilities and satellite TV.  The teenager is officially classed as homeless because magistrates have banned him from Chadsmoor,  where he and his gang terrorized the locals.  He could have stayed with his parents in Longford, another suburb of Cannock.

IN A WHOLE YEAR ONLY ONE BOSS IS CONVICTED OVER ILLEGAL WORKERS.

New figures show that only one employer was convicted of giving jobs to illegal immigrants over a full year.   There are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants working in Britain so why only one conviction? Does somebody want them here?

The ease in which foreigners side step the law is the driving force behind the asylum crisis attracting economic migrants from all round the globe.  Between 1997 and 2001, 34 employers were convicted of employing foreigners who had no right to work in Britain , out of thousands of companies that are known to be employing illegal workers often below the minimum wage.  65 prosecutions were brought in 2001 but only one led to a conviction. In theory companies face a  £5,000 fine for every illegal employee.

SENDING YOBS TO ALTON TOWERS AT TAXPAYERS EXPENSE.

Fifty teenage yobs are being given a day out at Alton Towers at taxpayers expense to try to keep them out of trouble.  A Labour council is spending more than £1,000 on the outing for some of its most disruptive yobs the day between Hallowe'en.  Labour run Knowsley Council on Merseyside has agreed to fund the day trip to the theme park.  The Council is paying the £26 entrance fees - a total of £1,300.  Tesco and Asda are supplying pack lunches.

63 ILLEGALS SEIZED BUT ONLY 1 DEPORTED.

The failure to crackdown on illegal foreign workers was exposed on the 21st October 2003 as it emerged that out of 63 Chinese caught only one had been deported.  Ministers admitted that 62 are still in the UK.  None is in custody and no employers have been prosecuted.  33 of those arrested immediately claimed asylum and so can't be deported.  Another 16 are already asylum seekers.  4 were failed asylum seekers. 10 were immigration offenders.  The 62 illegal workers are now subject to a reporting regime - they have to report to Immigration Service officers or police station every few days.  On the other days the illegal immigrants may still be working!

COUNCIL TAX BILLS COULD RISE BY 12 PERCENT NEXT YEAR.

Householders face another inflation busting council tax hike next year, local government chiefs have warned.  Average bills could rise by 12 percent.  The average council tax bill for the average family would climb well over £1,000 a year.  Council tax has increased over 70 percent since Labour came to power in 1997.  Mortgage rates are also predicted to rise by 1.5 percent to 5 percent next year.

TEN TIMES MORE FAILED ASYLUM SEEKERS CAN STAY.

The number of failed asylum seekers who win appeals has risen tenfold since Labour came to power.  More than 1 in 5 now succeeds in reversing the decision of immigration officers to throw them out.  Six years ago the figure was 1 in 17 , when 1,200 refugees overturned an initial refusal.  Last year 14,000 refugees overturned the decision even though they failed to convince the immigration staff that they were genuine.  The volume of appeals has trebled meaning bogus refugees spend years extra here.  The figures come from Migration watch UK. They reveal how much of a soft touch our asylum system has become.  The Government has given no explanation for the huge rise in such a short time.

The number of appeals has reached over 65,000 a year, a fall in the standard of adjudication means that asylum will be granted to thousands who don't deserve it.  Also the number of worthless appeals has risen to more than 50,000 last year.  The Government has raised the target for appeals to be heard each month from 4,000 to 6,000 which means that the adjudicators have to cut corners.

ASYLUM CHILDREN REACH BRITAIN IN THEIR THOUSANDS.

Thousands of unaccompanied children seeking asylum are arriving in Britain, placing strain on schools, hospitals and social services.  A record 6,200 reached our shores last year, six times more than when Labour came to power in 1977.  The bill for the taxpayer caring for the youngsters, each of whom earns trafficking gangs around £10,000 is estimated at £150 million a year, with the burden falling hardest on the channel ports.  In Kent which receives the most under 18's the cost of asylum support has soared from £250,000 six years ago to £56.4 million last year.  That included a £30 million bill for unaccompanied children.

1.5 MILLION AFRICANS BOUND FOR EUROPE.

One and a half million North Africans are queuing up to take their chances on the refugee trail , intelligence sources revealed on the 23rd October 2003.  Italian security chiefs painted a horrible picture of human trafficking at a parliamentary briefing on the country's illegal immigration problem.  They estimate that one and a half million immigrants are waiting to leave North Africa and head for Europe.  In Italy, asylum seekers get a lot less benefits than those who reach the UK.   Thousands will use Italy as a staging post before heading to Britain.

50,000 REFUGEES TO STAY IN UK

An estimated 50,000 refugees could be allowed to stay in the UK in a bid to save support payments and legal aid, Home Secretary David Blunkett has said.

Most of the eligible families are failed asylum seekers who had exhausted the main appeals process but had not yet been deported.

Shadow Home Secretary Mr Letwin said: "This decision will make Britain a magnet for asylum seekers."  

ASYLUM CHEATS TO BE JAILED BUT TAXPAYERS STILL PAYING FOR THEIR FAMILIES.

Bogus asylum seekers (Economic migrants) who tear up their passports on their way to Britain (for welfare handouts) could be jailed for two year, David Blunkett the Home secretary announced on 27th October 2003.  A major reform has been announced to try and stop the flood of economic migrants to our shores.  Critics don't believe the new laws will stop in blocking bogus refugees from abusing the UK's asylum system.  They warn that taxpayers will have to support dependants when the head of the family is in jail.  An Asylum Bill will be discussed in the Queen's speech next month.  It will be a criminal offence to arrive here without a valid reason for having no documentation.  Are there enough prison places for them? No. Will there dependants be given benefits instead? Yes.  Will there children go to school, become part of the community and therefore be allowed to stay indefinitely? Yes.  Will those who have been jailed be sent home after their sentences? No.  Will these new proposals be declared illegal under the Human Rights Act? Yes.  Other countries act decisively but Britain indulges in rhetoric.  No wonder we are the top refugee destination.

LOTTERY MONEY HELPING TERRORISTS.

Controversial asylum campaigners are still flouting the lottery rules by using a £340,000 grant to launch attacks on the Government.  The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns caused a storm last year after being awarded lottery cash but using the funds to stop terrorists being deported.  MP's are demanding to know why political statements are still being posted on the NCADC website.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FREED WITH A MAP TO IMMIGRATION.

The game looked up for 16 illegal immigrants when they were arrested after arriving in Britain.  The Indians were held after workers on an industrial estate caught them jumping off a lorry.  Workers surrounded them with fork-lifts whilst a security officer called the Police.  Immigration staff said to the Police that no staff were available to collect them.  Immigration told the Police to give the illegal immigrants a map to the immigration centre in Croydon 40 miles away and then release them.  The illegal immigrants come from the India sub-continent and therefore don't qualify for asylum.  If they have disappeared it will be very hard to find them again!

INTO THE UK VIA THE MATERNITY WARD.

A Wealthy businesswomen flew from her native China to have her baby in Belfast in a bid to secure British residency.  Man Levette Chen is hoping to exploit a loophole that says anyone born on the island of Ireland is an Irish and therefore a European Union citizen.  Her daughter now aged three would thus secure the family the right to stay in Britain.  Mrs Chen acknowledges the reason for her journey to Ireland. ' Catherine was born in Belfast because we were advised that this was the best way to get residence rights in Britain' she said.  The European Courts of Justice will deliver a verdict next year.

David Blunkett last night said we need more migrants and said dealing with immigration was one of the key challenges of our time.  He warned that immigrants can easy get in via back doors like applying for college but not taking their places.

AFGHAN FOILED 16 TIMES BUT WON'T GIVE UP.

An Afghan who has been caught 16 times trying to smuggle himself into Britain aboard a boat from Belgium vowed last night: ' I'll be back'.  Haroon said he will reach the promised land and is speaking for another 50 Afghans whom he is squatting with in Zeebrugge.  If we reach Londinistan then our troubles will be over he says.  We expect a good life there , a free house and free food.  No identification papers or documents to worry about.  It's always been like that - everybody knows it.  He admitted his reason for leaving Afghanistan was not persecution and admitted he was an illegal immigrant.  He said ' haven't we got the right to be happy' .  My parents hope to come and live with me later on when I get a house in Londinistan.  Hartoon says he will keep on trying to get to Britain until he is dead.

BRITAIN HAD 513,000 MIGRANTS LAST YEAR ( LEGAL ONES).

According to the new count, 513,000 economic migrants arrived last year.  In 2001 this was only 480,000.  95,000 of these were expatriates returning home.  31 percent of arrivals came from the Commonwealth , 12 percent from the E.U and 38 percent from other countries.  Around 174,000 foreigners left the country - which means we have an extra 244,500 living here.  186,000 Britons left the country.  The figures show the influx has quadrupled since 1993.    The Governments Actuary's department said 130,000 people per year will arrive.  Since 1998 - 1,034,000 non-British immigrants have arrived while 246,000 British have left the country.  The figures are the highest ever recorded in our history and the trend is still sharply upwards.  The genuine level is likely to be much higher because the Government's figures includes neither illegal immigrants nor visa overstayers.

GANG MADE £50 MILLION SMUGGLING 6,000 IMMIGRANTS INTO BRITAIN.

A five-strong gang who smuggled 6,000 illegal immigrants into the UK were jailed for a total of 23 years yesterday.  Judge Dawn Freedman said their human trafficking which earned over £50 million , posed serious risks to national security.  A Sikh extremist terrorist was one of the people smuggled in.  Harrow Crown Court had been told that the racket appeared to centre on the Indian Consulate General in Birmingham.  One official there was paid to process bogus documents and steal genuine ones.

FRANCE GETS TOUGH.

Tough new asylum laws in France could trigger a new wave of refugees across the channel.  The UK will seem even more of a soft touch.  The new French system will process asylum claims within two months and provide a new category of subsidy protection.  This will give lesser rights than full asylum and refugees will have to renew their resident permits every year. Other refugees will be returned home.  In Britain bogus asylum cheats can count on receiving at least two years of benefits before their claim is processed.

AMNESTY FOR EU TEN.

Eastern Europeans living illegally in Britain will be able to stay once their countries join the EU next May the Home Office minister confirmed on the 19th November 2003.

She told M.P's that once the ten new nations become members, any asylum claims from their citizens that are being processed will be defunct.  Under EU law they will be able to stay and claim full UK benefits even though it was likely that the original claim would have been rejected.

MILLION ON HARD DRUGS IN BRITAIN.

The number of people taking hard drugs has toppled a million for the first time, figures revealed on the 4th December 2003.  Overall drug use over the 2002 period has risen to 3.7 million people.

There are 1,028,000 uses of class A drugs like heroin, cocaine, crack and ecstasy .  Cocaine is used by 642,000 users.  13 percent of adults questioned admitted to using a class A drug at sometime.

BRITAIN'S LOST BILLIONS.

The British economy is losing more than £3.5 billion a year as migrant workers send money home to their families,   MPs have been told.  The figure is bound to raise fresh doubts about controversial Government plans to encourage more foreign workers to come here.  Ministers believe Britain can help tackle Third World poverty by allowing thousands more low-skilled migrant workers into the country so they can send money back home as well.   The scheme would involve giving temporary work permits to people from the poorest countries in the world.  The number of fruit pickers and seasonal farm workers has expanded from 10,000 five years ago to 25,000.

The startling £3.5 billion figure was revealed as two senior civil servants gave evidence of the idea to the Commons international development select committee.

THOUSANDS OF SLOVAK GIPSIES CAN COME HERE .

Thousands of impoverished Roma Gipsies from Slovakia will be able to enter the UK without visas from 12th December 2003.  Britain imposed a strict visa regime five years ago in an effort to curb the rising numbers of Slovak Gipsies seeking asylum in the UK.  News that Slovaks will no longer need visas to enter Britain from 12th December 2003 has prompted fears of a repeat of the asylum problems seen in 1998.  Roma leaders from Slovenia have predicted a mass exodus to Britain when it joins the EU next May.  We will also see large amounts of Polish and Portuguese arriving because their countries have no welfare systems.  Estimated 750,000 Slovak Gypsies will come to the UK.

FAKE ASYLUM SEEKER JAILED FOR HUGE FRAUD.

A Dutch national posing as an asylum seeker launched a "wholesale attack" on the benefit system by fraudulently claiming more than £31,000.  Mohomed Cali was jailed for 30 months at Northampton Crown Court in December 2003.  The 24-year old former Somalian was granted Dutch Nationality in 1989 but when he arrived in the UK, he claimed to be an asylum seeker.  He told immigration officials that he had children in his care and was granted child benefit and income support and housing benefit.  But while he was claiming these under a fake name,  Cali was signing on under his real name receiving more benefits while also working at the same time.  Cali was receiving benefits for two people and housing support for two homes.

£16,000 IS THE AMOUNT THE AVERAGE ASYLUM FAMILY GETS EACH YEAR - TAX FREE.

Families of asylum seekers many just economic migrants are getting more than £16,000 in tax-free handouts each year it was revealed on the 15th December 2003.  Immigrants are better of than newly-qualified teachers.  An average asylum family gets £1,340 a week - the after tax equivalent to a salary of £20,500.

The figure includes cash benefits and housing given to an average couple with 2.13 children - but the burden to the NHS, schools or the costs to the Home Office and Courts processing the asylum claims is NOT included.

The cost to the taxpayers is over £5 million each day!

BENEFIT FRAUD COSTS TAXPAYERS £6,000 A MINUTE.

Benefit fraud and over-payments cost nearly £6,000 a minute, an official report revealed in December 2003.  A total of £3 billion was lost last year as a result of bogus claims and blunders,  Whitehall's spending watchdog said.

For every £10 paid out in Jobseeker's allowance, £1 is lost as a result of fraud or mistakes.  Labour have had very little success in reducing the amount lost.

£2 billion was lost in fraud last year (2002) and another £1 billion in errors.  This equates to £120 a year for each household in Britain.  The National Audit Office revealed a total of £860 million was lost in Income support , £510 million due to fraud and the rest errors.  Jobseeker's Allowance lost £290 million.  Housing Benefit figures show that £750 million was lost through bogus claims or mistakes.  Year after year we are faced with this disgraceful situation.

Changing the Dependency Culture.

OFFICIAL OECD REPORT:- BRITAIN TAKES 1 IN 5 OF THE WESTERN WORLD'S ASYLUM SEEKERS MORE THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

Britain took almost one in five of the Western World's asylum scum in 2002, it was revealed yesterday.  We top the league table with 110,700 asylum scum accepted last year.  This was 1 in 3 of those coming to Europe and almost as many as Germany plus France put together.

                                            ASYLUM LEAGUE GUESS WHO IS TOP?

Calmly, with compelling detail the OECD exposes the utter failure of the asylum policy in a nation with no control over its borders.  Britain is numero uno destination for asylum seekers with the number of refugee coming here greater than a large country like the USA receives.  We take a third of Europe's asylum scum and a fifth of the developed worlds.  These figures exclude the number of illegal immigrants that have been smuggled in.  It is estimated that 1 in 20 people in the UK can be classed as a foreigner.  We have been thwarted by our judges interpretation of the Human Rights Act their lust for money and lack of patriotism all being factors.  The courts are likely to throw any legislation out that will cut the number of illegal immigrants living here.  We will always be top of the charts in future OECD reports.

DISABLED MIGRANTS HAVE MORE RIGHTS TO HOMES THAN BRITONS.

Disabled asylum seekers MUST be given priority over British citizens in the queue for council housing, the House of Lords ruled on the 26th January 2004.  The landmark decision by the Law Lords means would-be refugees with disabilities can demand support from a local authority - even if Britons would not qualify for the same help.

The announcement came on a day a report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee said most asylum seekers arriving in Britain were economic migrants with no genuine claim to refugee status.  The latest controversy centres on the case of Abdelaziz Mani. a Algerian who claimed housing from Lambeth because he has one leg half the length of his other and requires prosthetics.  Asylum seekers are normally housed and supported by the National Asylum Support Service, with costs coming from the Treasury not from local council taxpayers.  Lambeth Council has been forced to give Mr Mani a special ground-floor room in a warden controlled former Georgian mansion block used to house vulnerable people.   The decision will dismay councils across the country but will effect those in London and the South-East most because more asylum seekers are housed here.  Councils now face a string of similar claims from asylum seekers with disabilities who want to avoid being dispersed across the country.

Forty thousand asylum seekers ( economic migrants) were handed the right to free housing anywhere in Britain.  They may choose where in the country they want to live and apply to the local council the law lords have ruled.  This decision applies only to those given permission to stay and is a severe blow to the dispersal policy.  Councils in Londinistan and south East will face a boom in demand for housing and thus council tax will rise to pay for this!

JAIL OVER ID SCAM.

A Finish teacher caught with £500,000 of fake passports and ID cards for an illegal immigration scam was jailed for just five years on the 29th January 2004.  Custom officers nabbed Paavo Kuosmannen as he got of the Euro-star train from Brussels.  He was a courier for a people smuggling gang in Thailand who wanted to bring in loads of bogus asylum seekers into Britain. 

Fed up with the EU and the migration issues :- FREEPHONE 0800 0727730 or write to EDD Group in Euro Parliament, Queen Anne's Gate , London , SW1H 9AA.