Charles Clarke appears before an Eminent Jurists Panel, spruced up and professional, to defend the undermining of due process and roll his eyes backward, because they just do not get it. Terrorists, they kill people, we need security.
“I defend it categorically,” Clarke told the Eminent Jurists Panel at a hearing in central London. The orders give some capacity for the state against people we don’t feel able to pursue through the courts in a normal prosecution.”
Clarke today rejected those arguments in his testimony, suggesting the panel may have failed to grasp the gravity of the terror threat.
“I don’t think you understand,” Clarke said. “Do we just somehow pretend it’s not there?”
That was the response of the Home Office to foreign prisoners who were designated for deportation after completing their sentences. They just slipped away… into the community.
Matters were made worse by Clarke’s admission late Tuesday that he did not know where most of the offenders, who include three murderers and nine rapists, were.
Among the offenders, five had been convicted of committing sex offences on children, seven had served time for other sex offences, 57 for violent offences and two for manslaughter.
There were also 41 burglars and 20 drug importers among those released back into the community without considering their removal from Britain.
Our Home Secretary has taken personal responsibility for this slight hiccup.
Clarke, who has accepted personal responsibility for the ‘shocking and systematic failure’ of his ministry and the immigration agencies in dealing with the cases, said Tuesday evening: “I certainly don’t think I have a duty to the public to go – I have a duty to sort this out.”
All the foreign prisoners released will be served with a ‘super-ASBO’ (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) trademarked TB, and supervised by the Probation Service.
Excuse my spelling, but I’m knackered after a few pints and seeing Arsenal make it to the Champions League Final, to be held at the Stade de France in Paris on 17 May (tickets guaranteed, hotel and train booked – get in there) … but this was delibrate. This must have been deliberate. Look again at what was done and ask yourself if it was – in the parlance of the congenitally useless – an administrative error. Not a chance. I read today (Tuesday) that this only came to light because of the sheer bloody mindedness of a Tory MP, whose name escapes me. Up until it had no option but own up, the government had been denying that this had happened. How long does this government have to screw things up before people realise it is being done deliberately? Hundreds have been murdered, thousands have been mugged, injured and maimed by convicts on probation who had no business being let out. This is deliberate, left wing social policy in action. No, it is not misguided. Those doing this know what the results will be. They welcome the inevitable carnage of their policies.
From the BBC:
1 in 8 Prisoners in the UK are foreigners. (and that doesn’t even include foreign born British citizens so its probably a even worse)
Wow, gotta love those open borders.
No what it really is
is crap people doing a bad job.
Charlie had no idea how useless his department is because he never asked.
He was to busy thinking up new and radical legislation and delivering the right sound bites, to keep this magic roundabout of a Government turning.
I just watched Paxo do him over on Newsnight.
It was a beautiful sight. He clearly has no idea yet that he is unlikely to be in office this time next week.
Pete_London is correct. It is deliberate. It is calculated to degrade the fabric of our country further. It is deliberate.
I used to work for the Lord Chancellor’s Office.
Believe me it’s cock up not conspiracy.
The cover up of the cock up is usually the consipracy.
And as we always eventually find out about that—
Well things dont look too clever for this Govt right now.
The wheels are coming off even faster than I’d dared to hope!
See for 10 years they’ve all been watching the birdie!
Not taking care of business— They thought it took care of itself.
That looks almost poetical RAB, in a Philip Larkin sort of way,
Well thanks Julian!
I’m off to bed now.
Not into the bible black
(we do have leccy in Bristol)
Nor into the clutches of
Mrs Pritchard.
To think of the breasts of
Molly Probert
And to dream of Buggerall!!
I’m sure RAB is right & it’s simply cock-up. Our masters are simply not up to concocting any form of conspiracy that doesn’t revolve around further robbery of the citizenry or increasing its per capita debt…..but they can always produce a ‘best year ever’.
Just read the CVs of these Quislings by default & shake your heads that you were stupid enough to vote these ignorant & culture-destructive pigmies to power.
Cock up or conspiracy, Clarke has the sheer audacity to say his job is just to make things work, not be responsible if they do not actually work in practice.
This teflon-coated, slopey-shouldered attitude is the sort you get in some provinical corporate head office toadie who has nothing to say but corporatespeak and considers everyone else is to blame.
My guess is this will be used as further ammo for ID cards…
Look, from 1999 to 2006, on 1100 occasions, a cell door was opened and a murderer, a rapist, some other nonce, a burgler or a common violent criminal was freed and allowed to walk away when they should have been deported. This happened in 1100 instances. How is this is ‘cock up’? How do you ‘cock up’ 1100 times? Come on, once something has happened 1100 times it’s fair to call it systematic. We know it is government policy to not incarcerate violent criminals, rapists and burglers, they told the judiciary not to do this. We know government immigration policy is not to police our borders. In 1100 cases the Home Office didn’t see a criminal who should be deported upon release, they saw someone who probably shouldn’t have been incarcerated in the first place and who should be allowed to remain in this country, like every else who wants to come here. To believe the Stalinst Clarke that this was a cock up is stretching credulity way too far.
And hot upon the heels of one scandal comes the news that (vomit bags at the ready please) John Prescott has been having an affair with one of his secretaries.
Pete’s perspective on this is very interesting.
Any inquiry must not only consider issues of resources and individual actions but also the policy (if any) behind them.
I’m with RAB on this. I used to work for the Inland Revenue (Boo, Hiss!) and was utterly stunned at the unbelievable lack of competence on display there.
Once they were moving a large number of NI returns from one part of the complex to another on a little electric thing like they have for baggage at airports and it hadn’t been secured and a gust of wind blew thousands of papers all over the place. Hundreds of office staff were told to drop what they were doing and chase paper round the car-park.
Still a cock up?
Evidence has now come to light that a report to the Government in 2003 highlighted this issue.
Anyone still think it’s a cock up and not an intentional policy?
It is formal policy, decided behind closed doors with no minutes taken.
Don t get me wrong, I would love to find there is evil intent behind this but for the life of me I cant see what it could be.
Having worked at the level I did in the Crown Court, I can tell you that all Civil Servants are promoted to the level of their incompetence.The higher the rank the greater the incompetence. Our Principal level Chief Clerk once managed to get the yearly budget wrong by £20 million. We got two C.O’s to sort it out.
As for the Prescott story, I am desperately trying to shut my imagination down!!
The poor woman! I hope she got one of the Jags out of it, or one of his many mansions.
As someone points out over on Stephen Pollard’s blog, interesting that the revelations about 2Jags’ affair come just as the released foreign prisoner affair reaches a boil. Like the revelations about the plot to kidnap Blair’s crappy kid came out at the height of the stories of Ruth Kelly’s towering incompetence and stupidity.
The morticians of spin are still in the business of burying bad news.
Nah! They are leavng them free until after the local elections,every vote counts.
Absolutely Verity.
The timing of the Prescott story is where the Machiavellian intent is.
The public love a human interest story, and John is certainly human.
How did that turn up in the Mirror just when it was needed? The affair is already over apparently.
Prescott has obviously been prevailed upon to make a sacrifice for the party and field the flak for a few days whilst we all forget about Charlie.
I wish I could stop getting a porngraphic version of that Reggie Perrin moment popping into my head every time his name is mentioned though!
These felons are foreigners,defacto members of the victim classes,society made them do,society must pay.These foreign criminals enrich our society with new and varied offences,we should be proud to be robbed,beaten and murdered by those who come so far for our benefit.
Courtesy of the excellent blog Drinking from Home (Link) , here is the link to The Mirror piece. (Link).
I made the mistake of reading it while eating my breakfast toast. If you have a low nausea quotient, I beg you to give this story a miss. The bit about Prescott waltzing around the room with his girlfriend’s legs on his shoulders is only for the strongest.
Well, thought as much. Jug-ears used the fiasco with the prompting from the Honourable Member for Ealing North, Sir Stanley Unwin, that this proves the case for ID cards.
…”all clear now?”
I have been listening to Radio 5
for most of the afternoon.
The Prescott ploy hasn’t worked.
Expect hairy wingnuts to be history
before I come back from Egypt next week.
Clarke has said that he takes full responsibility for this debacle. So, if any of these escaped criminals does any harm you know just who to sue.
This criminal mob alwys “take full responsibility” but like pretty much all they say, it is just hollow words. Words that bear no relationship with the dictionary definition of those words.
When he says he takes full responsibility what he really means is “f**k off, you are not worthy of being in my presence, I will do exactly what I please”.
In fact I suspect that is this governments motto.
Still a cock up?
Yes. The Home Office really is that shambolic. This is the department that could not reconcile its bank accounts for 2004/5 and had to put through £694 million of corrections to make its new bookkeeping system balance.
It’s 7:30 p.m. and Charles Clarke still has a job. Looks like, as intended, John 2Shags has managed to divert, even if only to a small extent, public ire.
Cock-up? Conspiracy?
Does it matter?
Either the Home Office are criminally negligent, or they are conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Either way, the result should be the same.
Unfortunately, the result will be the same either way, which is to say, these scum will get away with it.
1100 times? A release doesn’t only involve a prison officer unlocking a door before wishing the ex-con bon voyage. Over many months prior to the release large numbers of officers and governers and parole officers and parole boards and phsycologists and councellors and many more are involved.
For each single release.
1100 times – 288 times after the government knew.
I’m just not that credulous.
I agree, Pete_London. It was policy, a decision taken behind closed doors, possibly on T Blair’s rolling sofa, with no minutes taken.
This was deliberate. How many of these murderers, rapists, violent burglars and paedophiles were Muslim I wonder. It would be interesting to see the figures. Tony Blair makes Nevil Chamberlain look like Lee Kuan Yew.
Sir Ming The Mercilless resorts to a Liberal dose of Reliable Sauce ™ to smite Jug-ears but ends up with egg on his face.
Tone states that there was a “failure to identify the foreign prisoners” – how on EARTH can that be? They knew each and every one of them when charged, let alone brought to court, tried, convicted, sentenced, sent down, banged up and then…released into Charles’ new “super Hostel” a.k.a. the UK.
TimC – They are beyond vile. It pains me to quote the ex-Torygraph, aka The Telegraph, but here is what a leader writer writes today re this enormous scandal:
“Labour’s obsession with a multi-cultural society, and its determination to undermine what used to pass for a national identity, are at the root of this scandal over foreign prisoners. Mr Blair has also led the policy of politicising the Civil Service, with its consequent demoralisation. Once, incompetent ministers could rely on brilliant officials to get them out of trouble. As Mr Clarke has seen, that does not apply now. Mr Blair has sown a wind of prejudice, misgovernment and wanton stupidity in the past nine years, and now he reaps the whirlwind.”
Patricia Hewitt is slow-clapped off the stage by NHS nurses when she tells them the NHS has had its best year ever, David Blunket is presumably still illegally skulking around in his official ministerial car to save him, an ordinary MP, the bother of calling a taxi, and may still be living in his ministerial flat, John 2Shags dances unsteadily around his office with his secretary hanging around his shoulders by her legs, the Tessa Jowell financial scandal slithers on, the many financial misdeeds of the mistress of Downing St go reported but unacted upon, the constituency of the Foreign Minister Jack Straw is not only guilty of vote-rigging, but is essentially dictating British foreign policy, Ruth Kelly, a registered moron, is in charge of the nation’s education, and the prime minister may have his collar felt by Scotland Yard for selling peerages.
That the vast majority of Brits did not see all this coming in 1996 still astounds me. How blind did they have to be? They thought Tony Blair was on their side? How stupid, how bovine do you have to be to look into the glinting, feral, greedy eyes of a cobra as it entwines itself around you, and vote for it?
Sainted P J O’Rourke, who wrote so presciently of a parliament of whores some thirty years ago, I wish you were covering this one!
Verity, I think you’re forgetting quite how thoroughly pissed-off we all were with Johnny Major’s “bastards” by ’97. Having said that…
The John Prescott story caused much mirth in this house. When I told my girlfriend he’d had an affair she looked nauseous and asked (as though for all woman-kind) “who with?”
I’m from Gateshead and was delighted that the nurses gave Ms Hewitt a proper Geordie welcome. I was also amused by Ms Hewitt’s bravura school-ma’am performance which cut about as much ice as damp broccoli.
In your excellent summing-up of the state of the government you missed out Ms Jowell’s clone, the abysmal Hariet Harman, currently Minister of State at the Department of Constitutional Affairs. I thought that job was taken by Jim Hacker.
The Tories ought to be crucifying NuLab over all of this, but a guy called Dave seems to think it’s more important to go to Norway to watch ice melt. Am I alone in thinking the Cons missed a trick by not getting Billy Hague back? Apart from anything else, he scares the pants off TB because he’s much smarter than him.
(Link) It seems as though Clarke misplaced another 1,500 prisoners. Well, I never!
And the number of foreigners behind bars in England and Wales “could be” (hmmmm, really?) higher than the 10,000 reported.
Just for kicks, I’d be interested in seeing them classified by nationality.
Verity,
Just for kicks, I’d be interested in seeing them classified by nationality.
So would I. I think we’d both put a tenner on more than half of them being of the Islamic persuasion…
But that’s OK because they’ll only blow themselves to pieces in order to prove they are the followers of The Religion of Peace(TM).
Charlie Clarke is a joke. A joke long gone stale. I mean, let’s face it he is both authoratarian and incompetent. We frequently have home secs who are one or the other but to get both all rolled into one luggy bugger who makes Blunkett look like eye-candy…
We have clearly fallen very far.
But, I’ve got an idea which would require lottery funding. More on that later…
Frankly, Schadenfreude is underrated. Watching Blair’s “government” disintegrate in slow mo is just too satisfying. The Telegraph’s Your View has, I estimate, over 200 literate, well-articulated comments detailing the nine-year failure that is Tony Blair’s government, with only two dissenting voices.
I was surprised at the level of hatred expressed – especially as the language is temperate and civilised. Look for further Schadenfreude opportunities at the local elections in a few days.
This whole “government” is coming apart in Tony Blair’s hands and he doesn’t understand it. It’s been quite a trip since Mandelson, hasn’t it? I love it!
How can we find out if David Blunkett is still illegally siphoning off money from the taxpayer for his living quarters, and whether he still has a ministerial car?
Verity
Thanks for the link:
915? Whose nationality has not been determined? And 600 falsely claiming to be British? And the rest. That must equate to tens of thousands doing the same who haven’t been banged up. No wonder this government doesn’t want anyone to be locked up anymore, it’s the only way we have left of finding out just who’s been let into our country.
“Tony Blair defends embattled ministers” according to the BBC. (Link)
One question: Why?
His “embattled ministers” are incompetent and venal and their embattlement has come very late in the game. Blair is going to try to demote – through lies and spin, as always – these grave events to minor irritations with a dismissive wave of his regal hand.