Not just 5,000, but 10,000 illegal immigrants are employed in the security industry. Double the number suggested before. So the Home Office is twice as abysmal as I thought.

It's just not good enough.

Especially not when they knew about this issue back in July!

The Home Office isn't fit for purpose, and it is seeming increasingly likely that neither is the Home Secretary.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, put spin before the safety of the public. Despite knowing about illegal immigrants being employed by the Home Office - as security staff, of all things - in July she did nothing. Well, nothing to protect us anyway. She was far too busy spinning to save herself. In August, a Home Office memo read:

So she knew, but did nothing about it.

How can they possibly justify knowing about it in July, yet doing nothing about it until November - five months later?

Can the first female Home Secretary survive much longer, or will David Davis claim yet another Home Secretary scalp for his collection?

The BBC reports that:

Let's read that again:
Bloody hell! If the Home Office is so bad at screening it's own security staff as to end up employing people who shouldn't even be in the country, how on earth can we trust them to screen out terrorists and other undesirables?

They don't even know how many immigrants there are in this country, for crying out loud! So what the hell are they for?

The Home Office says that companies are responsible for ensuring that their staff were legal to work. Except, obviously, themselves. If the Home Office of all people can't screen their own personnel, what chance have other companies? Unless, of course, the Home Office is just incompetent, and still absolutely not "fit for purpose".

Source: BBC
Image: Theo Spark

The Home Office has spent nearly £9,000 on giving twenty top civil servants top of the range iPods to provide them with 'lessons in leadership'. The iPods have been loaded with fifty three to five minute training films provided by management experts. A spokesperson for the Home Office said:

"Video iPods preloaded with 50, three- to five-minute leadership lessons, are currently being piloted with a small number of senior civil service staff...
As with other modern learning aids, video iPods provide the opportunity for flexible learning and the cost is extremely competitive compared with the rates for classroom training for senior staff...
An iPod is portable, convenient and just an extension of e-learning."

The expenditure on iPods is defended as a more economical way of providing training than management courses, which can cost £1,000 a day.

There is nothing wrong the idea of using short training films, and I would guess that they would be more economical than a management course, but why use iPods as a means of providing them to civil servants? Since they are presumably to be used in the civil servants free time anyway, and not whilst at work, why not provide the films on a CD or DVD instead? Then the civil servants can watch it at home on their own computers or if they have a video iPod of their own, upload them to that.

What is to stop the civil servants from uploading their own music and videos onto the iPod which they are using? They may be being "monitored" but I am sure that there are ways around it.

Spending nearly £9,000 of public money on iPods is absolutely unnecessary and a complete waste of taxpayer's money. I can't see how this could possibly be defended in its entirety. The government should not be buying iPods for civil servants - or anyone else for that matter.

Sources: BBC, The Times, thisislondon.co.uk, inthenews.co.uk