WHICH ONE DO YOU THINK IS THE BIGGER MUPPET?

Oh really! Don’t politicians make you laugh out loud?

So, who is responsible for all my mirth so late on a Sunday night? Not for the first time, it’s the hapless Phil Woolas muppet. (Remember him from his encounter with, and thorough beating by, the lovely Joanna Lumley?)

So Woolybrain has been complaining that the education of his own children has been adversely affected by immigrant children who don’t speak English properly. Now that would be weird, given that he’s a junior minister in the Labour government, but it becomes farcical when you remember that he’s actually the minister responsible for......... wait for it......

.........Immigration.

The wool-brained minister admitted that the influx of immigrants had put local authorities in England under strain. Children are being taught in multi-ethnic classes with a large number of different language speakers in each class, at all different levels of ability in the understanding, reading, writing and speaking of English. As a guy who for a short time taught languages, in both Scotland and France, I can appreciate just how incredibly difficult this must be for teachers.

Interestingly this is a far larger problem in England than it is in Scotland, where the immigration requirements are entirely different. (This is a very good reason for having a separate authority to deal with this problem in each country as Scottish needs are totally ignored in the interest of England’s greater good.)

Chris Grayling, the shadow home affairs spokesman said it was ridiculous that the minister could defend policies which had brought about this situation. Of course it is fair to say that Grayling is no stranger to controversy himself with inordinately dubious expenses claims; offensive comments about a part of Manchester; and a corker of a faux pas regarding Richard Dannett when he was critical of the general's suggested appointment as an advisor to Gordon Brown, only to find out that he had, in fact, been touted as an advisor to David Cameron, which he then thought was a splendid idea. A rather wooly-headed guy too then.

It’s quite worrying when you look at the calibre of politicians holding some sort of office in the Westminster parliament, but surely Woolhead after his encounter with Princess Joanna, and his idiotic support for bonuses for executives of the Borders Agency, which must surely be one of the least efficient organisations in the world, must be pretty near the top of the list for politicians your granny knitted, but there's not a lot to chose between them......

Pictures: Phil Woolass and Security scanner. Phil’s the one with the suit on. And Chris Grayling pretending he’s an ordinary person using some public transport. Chris is the one on the hard left (joke!)

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The Wonder of Woolas

If Mr Brown had had anyone at all that he could have used as a replacement minister responsible for immigration, it would have been a good idea to have sacked the present incumbent pretty soon after he was made to look like a complete and utter muppet by Joanna Lumley over his ridiculous misreading of the “court of public opinion” concerning the Ghurkhas’ case.

Clearly, having trawled the back benches in the Commons and the Lords, and looked around anywhere and everywhere, under park benches for all I know, looking for someone, anyone, from anywhere, that could take the job, he has failed (again).

And that is why we were all entreated yesterday to listening to the unlovely Phil Woolas (OK, I’ve heard all the jokes... probably?), rumble on about how perfectly reasonable it was, in the current economic climate, for him to pay out bonuses of around £10,000 each to the senior executives of his Border Controls Agency.

He claimed that they were very brave men and women who put their lives on the line for us.

WHAT?

Firstly, I don’t want to put down the work that some of the members of that department do. There are hands-on people working undercover trying to find traffickers, indeed people who probably do risk life and limb in the pursuance of a good result. But we’re not giving them bonuses. The people who are getting the ten grand extra of our money are senior management.

Mr Woolas told the Today Programme “We’ve got a superb management team that is getting on top of what is probably the most difficult public policy area in political life. There are 285 million people who visit the United Kingdom every year, and organising that mass movement of people to protect our borders from the people who have bad intent is a huge job.”

He indicated that to do that job of protecting our borders from all these people with bad intent he needed to get the best people. Apparently, unless you pay massive bonuses to managers they just won’t do a hand’s turn. I’ve often wondered why governments of all political shades seem to find it necessary to pay vast amounts to get good managers (otherwise you just get rubbish), but seem content to have one of the lowest minimum wages in the EU for ordinary workers.

(In any case, it seems that all that extra money hasn’t really made any difference at all. We all know that the government’s immigration policy and practice went off the rails years ago. We have no idea how many immigrants are here; we have no idea how many released from prison are not deported... indeed, we have no idea......... of anything. Oh, and another thing, whilst it is relatively important to guard the borders, I'd think it was a bit of an exaggeration to think that it was the "most difficult public policy area in politics". Hmmm, talk about being up your own Woolas!)

Anyway, he added insult to injury by making the remarks on the day that the 100th death of a British soldier in Afghanistan this year was reported. Of course, I don’t make any distinction between the 100th and the 99th or the 3rd, but there is for some at least a symbolic importance to the number 100.

These front line troops are entitled to a bonus after 6 month tour of duty. It amounts to somewhere in the region of £3,500 for a normal infantryman out there fighting the Taliban. Now I wonder if Mr Woolas would like to compare and contrast the various dangers that a soldier in Afghanistan, on the front line faces with those of a typical manager in the Borders Agency moving his desk to that side of the room, or arranging his flowers on the coffee table we provide him with....

Like I said at the beginning, surely, surely in the whole country (coz Brown has long since given up trying to appoint ministers from the Commons) there must be someone with just a little more savvy that this dim-witted placeman, whose foot seems to reside permanently in close proximity to his mouth. He’s not even likeable; he comes across as a smug, self satisfied, supercilious moron. Phil Woolhead would be every bit as appropriate a name for him.