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Bureaucratic Incompetence

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

I've long been a cheerleader (yes, I do look good in a short skirt and know how to wave my pom poms) for a campaign being run by Dan Hardie (and the not really associated but very similar one by The Times) over the Iraqi interpreters. It's not just interpreters of course, it's about all of those who are at risk of being murdered because they worked with the British troops in and around Basra over the past few years. Some have indeed been murdered. The leaping up and down and screaming has moved things along a little. At first there was a blank refusal from the Government to do anything at all, then some months of consideration, then an announcement that, subject to certain limitations, perhaps some of those at risk of having their eyeballs drilled out because they aided our soldiers might, well, might get something.

And then today I see this:

There are a great many methods which our Government, acting in our name, is using to keep out Iraqi ex-employees at risk of being murdered for having trusted this country. Officials have rejected 125 out of 200 applications for help so far, and one of the grounds that they are citing is absenteeism. One of the skivers, an ex-interpreter named Safa, says that he served UK Forces for two and a half years and was unable to come to work when militiamen began observing the British bases, targeting those working for the Army. Of course applications cannot be accepted simply at face value: but Safa has no right of appeal. His case could quite easily be verified by ringing round the Army officers with whom he says he served, and checking his story. There is no indication that the Government has done this, and now his case is in the bin.

There's two possible explanations for this. The first is that the people who rule us are simply incompetent. That drinkies in a brewery are beyond them, the whelk stall business a mystery. The second is that they are malevolent, that they are actively orchestrating matters so that as many as possible are killed before we have to actually do anything.

I'm not sure what I consider to be worse: to be ruled by fools or to be in the hands of the competent but morally deficient.

You can of course make up your own minds on the matter, but if you'd like to celebrate our joint Britishness (I take it as an obvious point that we Brits don't in fact abandon our allies, for being British we're better than that) then why not see how Dan Hardie suggests you can help?

Here.