Fly on the wall

Back in the days when things were far more simpler and people were trusted to play safe with all sorts of dangerous machines and chemicals there was a simple solution to killing flies, it was known as fly spray. It worked pretty well with a small spray capable of taking out the entire room of flies whilst creating a bit of a stink and if you weren't careful killing the goldfish. Much easier than a swatter and far more aesthetic than fly paper, it even worked pretty well on wasps and other insects.
Then along came health and safety and the number of things we were trusted to do for ourselves came under increasing state legislation until everything became so safe (and expensive) as to be almost to the point of being useless. (Look up the great DDT scandal if you want a prime example) Today we have weedkillers that only work after almost a week and not as I remember being able to see the results after a couple of hours tops with plants almost going deformed before your eyes.
We also come to the nub of my problem, we've had superfly buzzing around the house for a couple of days now, bugger is fast and quite resilient to current chemical toxins, means I can't get close to swat the little sod and a whole tin of today's useless flyspray has failed to even faze the bastard, I honestly think I'd have done better throwing the tin at it rather than waste my time trying to spray it.
I'm halfway tempted to buy one of those uv bug zappers just to see if like Frankenstein's monster it is resilient to large doses of electricity too.
Anyone know of a fly spray that actually works pretty much instantly any more without seeming to kill them by kindness? I know Raid works after a fashion, but I seem to remember spraying a fly and watching it go into paroxysms almost immediately not half an hour later.
Any ways I'm off hunting with a rolled up newspaper and hoping for a bit more luck.
Normal blogging will resume tomorrow.

Update morning of the 6th of August. Bastard thing is still alive, gone to work and left Lady QM to deal with the little git.
Update morning of the 7th of August. Superfly is no more, despite surviving everything I and Lady QM could throw at him/her (literally at times) it was unable to survive being digested by the dog.
I love my dog.

Not something you can afford to get wrong.

There are a whole load of reasons I'm opposed to the death penalty, ranging from not wanting the UK government whom I mistrust greatly over civil liberties to have that kind of power to the most major one in my eyes that if a mistake is made it cannot be corrected.
Still the coalition did make a rod for its own back when it announced any e-petition getting over a 100,000 signatures would have a chance to be debated in parliament and so various newspapers dusted off their pet projects and went for it so to speak. The Express are trying to force a debate on having a referendum on the EU which is bad timing as far as I can see and would have worked 2 years ago but today with the EU having amassed a gigantic fighting fund there's a possibility that they might bribe their way out of a defeat. To the Daily Mail and hanging...

MPs face being forced into a landmark vote on restoring the death penalty.
Capital punishment is expected to be the first subject debated by Parliament under an e-petitions scheme.
The initiative allows the public to help set the government agenda and means anyone can set up an internet petition on any subject. If it attracts more than 100,000 signatures, MPs must consider debating it in the Commons.
The scheme is officially launched today, but it has already backfired on the Coalition because Right-wing internet bloggers have been collecting signatures for the last few days.
The restoration of hanging for the murderers of children and policemen is by far the most popular serious issue.

Don't get me wrong here, I do believe that some people are an utter waste of oxygen like Huntley and Sutcliffe and not worth the cost of housing and feeding at our expense at her Majesties pleasure, but I also think that about most politicians too. Recent history is awash with certain crimes later having proved on appeal that the person convicted actually didn't do it, we probably would have hung the originally convicted Birmingham pub bombers for instance.
Capital punishment is not an area in which we can afford to get things wrong, there is no room for a jury to use reasonable doubt, if there is any I can see some juries unwilling to give guilty verdicts, then again perhaps not, you never can tell with ordinary people.
In the end though, it wont matter, EU and ECHR laws will not permit our MP's to bring back the death penalty. Though as an opening move to get us thrown out of the EU it does have some merit. Still, I do hope it's quashed, those who would have this power cannot be trusted with it.

Balancing acts

Football used to be the sport that working men (and some women) went to watch at the weekend, well until the so called "Sky" revolution which pushed the price of tickets into levels only the well off or the most fanatical were prepared to pay. Also the number of matches increased in order to generate the revenue that a big club needed to pay its way with massive transfer fees and sky high stadium costs with all seater stadia now a requirement in the professional game. Sooner or later though the bubble was bound to burst...
Express.

FORGET signing Sergio Aguero for less than £40million – the biggest battle most football chairmen seem to be facing this summer is whether they can lure Joe Bloggs to their ground for more than a tenner.
Year after year, the current economic climate appears to have little effect on the frenzied activity of moving players around a world that seems to have little grounding in the lives of the people who pay their wages.
But a new survey by the BBC has looked at precisely that – and discovered that, while football’s bubble may not be bursting, it is certainly deflating as supporters are being forced to tighten their belts.
The Premier League gravy train has ridden along for some time under the steam of season-ticket holders who fill stadia week-in, week-out to justify the pricing policies of the country’s elite clubs.
Nowhere is that problem felt more keenly than in the North-west, where last season Blackpool, Bolton, Blackburn and Wigan were all fighting for support with more famous neighbours Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton – all within the traditional boundaries of what used to be known as Lancashire.
As a result, Blackburn feel the need to offer tickets to games for just £10 – a move echoed throughout the divisions this season by Watford, Rochdale, Preston, MK Dons, Rotherham, Torquay and Plymouth.
The war on cost that football is needing to wage to compete with other distractions is best illustrated by considering how much people are prepared to pay from their diminishing disposable incomes on other pursuits.

The big clubs so far are managing, though at the bottom end it seems you either have to have a billionaire chairman or even if you get lucky and make it too the top you won't be able to afford to stay their, not without pricing your fans out of the stadium. Football used to be quite affordable once, yet the last match I attended over 10 years ago cost £25 and there's no way I could afford to pay that week in week out and if my sons or daughters wanted to come along as well, forget it, no way could I afford that. Yet in the 70's and 80's my Dad did just that for me and my brother and we still had the money to go out on the beer at the weekends. These days I can't even afford Sky sports to watch any match I have to rely on Match of the Day for the occasional highlights or if I'm lucky an FA cup appearance on BBC or ITV. 

So long as people could afford to pay and fill the stadia that was ok, I found other interests, but now it seems that the money tree is finally starting to dry up at the roots and it can't be too long before it hits those at the very top.

Classic case of market forces, make something too expensive and people will move on to something they can afford. Took some time with football, but it was inevitable.

Amateur profiling

Certain groups hate profiling if only because it's often used by law enforcement agencies to target specific groups who are statistically more likely to be involved in certain activities. Bit like blacks and knife crime and Asian Muslims and terrorism. It generally makes sense, after all what's the point of going after people who generally aren't remotely involved in such activities. It does run into problems with the politically correct brigades who see it as racist, though sadly for them the stats don't lie.
You can of course play it yourself with certain lists...
Yahoo.

Details of the top 10 most wanted suspected fraudsters in Britain have been released by the crime-fighting charity Crimestoppers.
Peter Stead allegedly conned Derbyshire pub landlords out of thousands of pounds in 2009 and is accused of offering to put on a comedy night to raise money for the Lewis Mighty Fund.
Another on the most wanted list released by Crimestoppers is Nasser Ahmed who police have linked to to an alleged £156m VAT fraud in Bristol.
Timur Mehmet, 38, is wanted in connection with a £25m VAT fraud. Similarly, he absconded before trial and was sentenced in his absence to eight years.
Misba Uddin is wanted by police for fraud by false representation after he allegedly submitted fraudulent mortgage applications while working as a financial adviser.
Meanwhile Ajayi Seun, 48, charged with conspiracy to money launder, is alleged to have conned mortgage lenders and banks out of more than £12m. He has failed to answer bail.
Nicholas Slocombe, 28, is wanted in connection with reports from dozens of shops and businesses about alleged false claims of collecting for charity.
Jascent Nakawunde, a 33-year-old woman, is wanted for questioning in connection with an alleged £35,000 fraud in Cardiff between 2007 and 2008.
Mohamad Khan, from Waltham Cross in north east London, is accused of using counterfeit credit cards to buy more than £100,000 worth of goods.
Kevin Leitch, 48, from Liverpool, who is wanted by Devon and Cornwall Police after he allegedly took bookings for a holiday let in Cornwall.
Finally, an unknown woman is alleged to have falsely obtained a debit card and account details in the name of a legitimate customer from a bank in Bethnal Green, in October 2008.

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that in a list of Britain's top ten fraudsters,six out of the ten don't exactly have British names. Seems even our fraudsters have been hit by foreign immigrants taking all the jobs. Half it would seem have some connection to a certain religion of peace, though perhaps they should be excused as the guy they are supposed to take as an example was a murderer, thief, pirate philanderer with a taste for underage women and other mens wives. Only two are female, sex discrimination in fraud it would seem is rampant in the UK with women seemingly disbarred from the higher levels of scumbags.
Profiling it seems can be fun, even if the bleeding heart socialists hate the very idea as it always tends to show up their pets in the worst possible light.
Which from where I stand makes it all the more fun.

Well I'm not shocked

We all know that alcohol impairs judgement and physical ability if taken in enough quantities, the problem of course being that what the state thinks is enough to impair those faculties is at odds somewhat with what those who drink thinks that affects them. No, I'm not saying that people should drive when drunk, far from it, but it's what makes you drunk that's different from person to person. When I first started out going into pubs, it was quite noticeable who could and couldn't hold their drinks, in the same way it's also very obvious who can go slightly over the legal limits for alcohol when driving and who shouldn't be allowed to drive even when stone cold sober.
BBC.

A police campaign against summer drink-driving caught a higher proportion of motorists driving under the influence compared to last year.
The June crackdown in England, Wales and Northern Ireland saw a drop in the total number of drivers stopped.
But there was an 8% rise in positive, refused or failed breath tests, said the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).
Road safety campaigners said the results were "shocking".
In total police stopped 88,629 motorists, of whom 5,373 or 6.06% tested positive, refused or failed a breath test, compared to 5.6% last June - an 8% rise.
There was an increase in the proportion of under 25-year-olds testing positive, by 15% compared to 2010. The number of over 25-year-olds who tested positive rose by 7%.

Now I wonder just how many of those drivers were an actual danger to themselves or the public? I'm sure some were, however I'm equally sure that a lot of those others would not have been picked up unless specifically targeted as they would not have been driving in a manner likely to have caused an accident. Yes I know the police use an artificial level of 80mg of alcohol in the blood as their tipping point, it's even lower on the continent, though they don't have a problem with people having to travel miles just to find an open pub with most establishments selling some sort of alcohol, even McDonalds.
No I'm not encouraging people to drive drunk, I'm against random testing, I simply believe that police should only stop motorists if they have good reason too. Change the law if necessary to having far harsher penalties for having an accident whilst intoxicated, even charge with manslaughter instead of dangerous driving and the minimal penalties you get for that offence.
As it is, people got fined, lost licenses and possibly livelihoods all because the police decided to have a crackdown not on people driving badly, but on people just driving.
Yes we need to address the problem of drunk and incapable drivers, but no, this wasn't the way to go about it.

That's gotta hurt

Andy Chowderhead and his Muslims Against Everyone and Everything Crusades was out marching yesterday in his self proclaimed shariah controlled zones.
London 24.

Islamist fanatics who plastered stickers in streets claiming that residential areas in east London were under the control of Sharia law, have held marches in streets today (Saturday).

Around 50 members of fringe group Muslims against Crusades (MAC) walked through Leyton in a noisy protest against British society.

Marchers chanted ‘Sharia for UK’, ‘secularism go to hell’ and ‘democracy is hypocrisy.’

Meanwhile, another demonstration by the group was held in Walthamstow.

Opponents of MAC from anti-fascist organisations and left-wing groups staged their own protest at the scene.

The fundamentalists of the MAC have thrust themselves into the spotlight over the past week by claiming that streets in inner-city east London were under control by morality squads enforcing the strict code of Shariah Law.

Stickers appeared in parts of Newham which set a list of strict rules which must be followed.

Speaking to London24.com this week, MAC spokesman Anjem Choudary claimed the new campaign was a response to the murders in Oslo, Norway, by killer Anders Breivik.

Mr Choudary also admitted to London24.com that MAC does not have enough members to enforce its own ‘sticker code.’

 The EDL were monitoring the two marches though were under instructions not to get involved as the real trouble was expected to come from other groups. Still this is an eye witness report of the antics.

I was in Walthamstow today and saw the demo. There was no counter demonstration from "anti fascist groups", that is a complete lie. Before the event the socialist workers had their usual anti EDL and BNP stupid stalls then disappeared

It's well known that anti-fascist groups will only target the likes of the EDL and BNP and literally have to tie themselves in verbal knots to justify not taking action against Islamic extremists.

It was good that the EDL wasn't there it as it was countered by moderate Muslims who were debating and arguing with them. This almost turned into a fight and the police had to intervene. A quote from a moderate "I'd rather stand with the EDL", caused a big argument with Abu Izzadeen the main man at the centre of it. Elsewhere there was sporadic trouble between the two. I spoke to some moderates and they were keen to argue with these guys which was good, it needs more of them to do this. Had the EDL been there it no doubt would've been chaos with EDL blamed as usual. It was a pleasure to see the MAC lot shaking their heads in despair. I overhead some of them talking and they were clearly not happy with how the day had gone.

So there you go, a complete fiasco for both the Muslim extremists and the so called anti fascist groups who deliberately chose not to face them. Well done to the Muslim moderates who opposed them and the comment "I'd rather stand with the EDL" has got to hurt big time for both anti-fascists and MAC enthusiasts.

Things you just don't do

Rupert Murdoch is not a man I care for, his media empire is not something I care for either as its attempts to "enhance" its stories have crossed lines from the morally reprehensible if legal to the utterly repulsive and illegal hacking into peoples voicemails. How much of this he knew about? I don't know, I suspect I never will, he might be very good at covering his tracks or there simply wont be any tracks to find, either way I'm not the one doing the looking.
However, what you don't do is go up to an 80 year old guy, whatever your feelings about him or the matter in hand and try and land him one with a foam filled "custard pie"
Express.

THE man millions of TV viewers saw attacking Rupert Murdoch with shaving foam was warned yesterday that he faces a jail sentence.

His attack was staged last week as Mr Murdoch was answering MPs’ questions on the phone hacking scandal. He shoved a foam-covered plastic plate at the 80-year-old media mogul during the Home Affairs select committee hearing.

May-Bowles was stopped in his tracks by Mr Murdoch’s 41-year-old wife Wendi, who lunged forward and slapped him. Dressed in a check shirt and black combat trousers yesterday, 26-year-old May-Bowles spoke clearly to confirm his name, address and date of birth.

No doubt his (few) fans think he's hilarious, me I just think anyone who physically attacks an 80 year old guy has something wrong with their head.
I doubt he'll go to prison, though perhaps he should, I doubt he'd like it very much if anyone tried something similar on his grandparents, but no doubt in his weird world of black/white, good/evil Murdoch deserved a pie in the face, save only that it made him out to be an utter cretin in my eyes and merely distracted from the proceedings and gained Murdoch a measure of sympathy he may well not have deserved.

How bureaucrats think

Well not all of them I'd guess, though it is only a guess, however bureaucrats running the health service have come up with a novel idea for saving money and it's probably not one anyone with an ounce of decency in their body would have come up with, indeed most of us would not even consider it.
Telegraph.

Health service trusts are “imposing pain and inconvenience” by making patients wait longer than necessary, in some cases as long as four months, the study found.
Executives believe the delays mean some people will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment” claims the report, by an independent watchdog that advises the NHS.
The Co-operation and Competition Panel says the tactic is one of a number used by managers that “excessively constrain” patients’ rights to choose where to be operated upon, and damage hospitals’ ability to compete for planned surgery.
It claims unfair practices are “endemic” in some areas of England and pose a “serious risk” to the Government’s drive to open up the health service to competition.
But managers, who are already rationing surgery for cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils, say they must restrict treatment as the NHS is under orders to make £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015.

One of the problems that often occurs when various departments are told to go looking for ways to make savings or cuts in expenditure is that those tasked with making the savings rarely if ever see themselves as expendable. In public services, the cuts almost always come in at the frontline services, because those services are rarely if ever asked their opinions as to how to make the service more efficient, mostly because the management know the answers will be to get rid of them rather than the frontline staff. A classic case of never asking a question which you know you wont like the answer too.
This is why most private companies use outside auditors, there's no level of covering their own arses involved in a fixed term contract to see where savings could be made.
Yet you have to admire the bureaucratic mindset (for a given level of admire) in their quest for savings in coming up with the idea of saving money by not spending any on their customers who have probably paid into the system their entire lives.
I'm fairly sure there's a special level of hell reserved for those who did this abominable act of cruelty yet justified it by the savings they made. They really are scum and they really need hanging from a lamppost with piano wire pour encourager les autres.

Well I'm gobsmacked

Actually no not really was just an attempt at sarcasm (useless in the written word), but it turns out that about 75% of those on statutory sick pay are actually fit for work.
Express.

THREE in four people on sickness benefits are fit for work or drop their claim before facing strict new tests, shock figures revealed yesterday.
Startling statistics showed that of the 2.6million people on incapacity benefit, a total of 1.9million could work.
A further 17 per cent were found to be able to work at some point with the right support. Nine out of 10 were capable of employment.
After the figures were released by the Department for Work and Pensions, David Cameron renewed his condemnation of how millions had been left languishing on welfare. Visiting a work programme in Wales, the Prime Minister said: “We have left people on welfare for year after year when those people, with help and with assistance, could work.
“So we’re producing a much better system where we put people through their paces and say that if you can work, you should work, we’ll be there to help you with the training and the skills.
“That will be good for them, good for their families and good for our economy.’’ 

One of the things those of us on the (real)* right have complained about for years is that if you pay people enough so that they don't have to work, well guess what, they wont work. In order to disguise the amount of people claiming unemployment benefits,a previous government decided that it might be better to hide them by putting them on sickness benefit which would take them off the books and massage the figures nicely. So we ended up with falling unemployment but a burgeoning incapacity benefit situation where the unemployed actually got more money. In short it paid to be sick, so people claimed to be sick, people being people and always looking to make the best of any situation.
To my mind if we have to have a benefits system it should work in this manner...

1. It's only open to those born here or those who have paid in a minimum amount equivalent to 10 years at minimum wage payments.
2. Unemployment benefit is the absolute bare minimum to survive, you only get housing benefits for the first 6 months after that you're on your own, though if you do take a minimum wage job you will get housing benefits.
3. For those bringing up children and cannot work, you get a variety of benefits paid at an in situ situation. You do not get rehoused or qualify for council housing, that goes to those who are in work. If you are in council housing already, that's fine.
4. Those who are genuinely sick and who will be able to return to the jobs market will get enhanced benefits to make their lives as comfortable as possible until they return to work.
5. Those who due to illness or injury cannot ever return to work will be looked after in comfort by the state for the rest of their lives.
6. Those who retire who have paid into the system a set amount over their working lives get an enhanced pension to keep them comfortable, warm and fed for the rest of their lives.
7. All the above are means tested.

I'm not saying that is a perfect system, it may well need to be tweaked, I probably have missed a trick or two, but it does strike me as being a start, it certainly is better than what is going on at the moment.

* The (real) right being those of us who want small government and low taxes, not fascism, racism or other weird and wonderful things that those on the left believe to be far right.

It's a robberry, lets arrest the shop owner!

You cannot make this sort of stuff up at times, there was a robbery at a florist, a robber got stabbed and died the police then arrest a 72-year-old florist.
BBC.

A 72-year-old florist has been arrested after a man was stabbed to death in a robbery at a shop in Greater Manchester.

Police were called to the shop on Shrewsbury Street, Old Trafford, at 21:40 BST on Tuesday.

A 30-year-old man was taken to hospital with serious injuries and died a short time later.

Shop owner Cecil Coley was taken to hospital with minor injuries and is being held on suspicion of murder.

The dead man is believed to have been one of a number of men who tried to rob the shop.

Police said a gun was found at the scene and was being forensically examined.

Ch Supt Mark Roberts said: "Police in the area became aware of a disturbance at the florists.

"On attendance, there were a number of people in and around the shop and a number of men had fled the scene. 

He said it was not clear what the "full circumstances" were.

Clear enough apparently to arrest the shop owner though and as the shop was being robbed I reckon the guys a hero and anyone robbing the shop deserved everything they got, particularly as it appears to be a gang of them. Just last month the government confirmed that for a homeowner it is legal to stab a burglar and within the law MP Ken Clarke has confirmed reasonable force such as a knife cricket bat or baseball bat can be used in self defence of yourself and your family if confronted by a criminal at home or on the streets. The government were even looking to increase those rights to prevent things like this from happening. You'd have thought that would have applied to anyone defending their property or place of work. This doesn't seem however to have made its way down to Greater Manchester Police though.
So, here we go again, the police would much rather arrest a 72 year old florist than simply get on with the investigation into what actually happened. As for the robber, well so far all I can say is that he got what he deserved.

Captain Ranty puts a quicker version here.

Lies, damned lies and the Daily Mail

There's an article in the Daily Mail online that defies description such is its sheer distance from reality. The stupidity of the article is amazing. It is misleading to the point where I cant believe it was even allowed to be published.

The Norwegian fanatic has been in close contact with hundreds of British right-wing extremists for two years, it emerged last night.

No it didn't, all that emerged was that he added a load of people on facebook who displayed any sort of nationalist tendencies. If adding someone on facebook is being in "close contact for 2 years" then I'm a jellyfish.

He chatted about ‘tactics’ on social networking sites with hundreds of members of the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP)

This is made to sound like he was actually discussing tactics for terrorism and killing people. When it's known that he didn't mention this at all to anyone, for fear of being found out.

and attended demonstrations and meetings here

Not a shred of evidence that these were EDL meetings. No photos, videos, or even public statements from senior figures in the EDL, in fact exactly the opposite. No-one from the guys who march with the EDL remember seeing Anders Breivik at any demo either in London or Newcastle.The only two sources the Mail has are an ex member of the EDL (wonder why) and an anonymous woman who runs a Proud to be an enemy of Islam facebook page which isn't affiliated to the EDL at all.

Anti-extremist campaign groups and think tanks called on the Government to classify EDL as a far-Right organisation.

Well since the only aim of the EDL is to oppose Islamic extremism, they would have to say that opposing Islamic extremism is in fact 'Far-Right.'
To be honest I think most of the political class believe this anyway.

In a rambling 1,500-page manifesto posted on the internet shortly before his attacks, Breivik praised the EDL.

Whilst he did praise the thinking behind the EDL, he in fact called them "naive fools" and stated "The EDL and its principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically."
No mention of this anywhere in the article. 

A source within the EDL said last night: ‘I know people within the English Defence League who claim Anders Breivik was at some of those meetings.

‘Also, people who he knows have been over to the UK many times and are very active within the EDL circles in London. There are definite connections between this man and the UK.’

This is total bull. 'A source' means one of the people they've messaged on the facebook site. Also no EDL member in a position to know those things would talk about this to a newspaper and not mention it to the leadership or on the EDL forums.
And they round it off with a quote from someone from searchlight.a communist SWP site masquerading as an anti-fascist site so clearly an unbiased source.

Matthew Collins, spokesman for the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, told the Daily Mail: ‘EDL was his inspiration, ideologically and politically.’

Can't even get that right, Anders Breivik uploaded a 1500 page manifesto, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence", in which he stated: "EDL and [his] principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically" 
The Daily Mail really has gone downhill these days, another headline on the front page claims that Breivik listened to 'music from Lord Of the Rings', when in actual fact the song in question was from a totally different film.
And the worst thing is they will get away with all of this scott free, no one will take any complaints seriously and this is why I hate the MSM.
The EDL leader was interviewed on newsnight last night by Paxman, not his best interview by far, but again he wasn't intimidated or cowed by Paxman and managed to get his point across.



Considering the desperate efforts being put in by the left, politicians and the MSM to somehow link the EDL to Anders Breivik I have to figure that somehow or other the EDL has the powers that be very worried indeed.

Unfit for purpose

I guess in the days before flight or even mass travel it was fairly easy for Her/His Majesties Customs and Excise to keep an eye on who (and what) was coming in, though judging by some of the novels of past times I've been reading, smuggling has always been a bit of a problem if only because the idiot politicians always set the bar too high where it came to duties on various imports. Eventually though we joined the EEC and the various powers that be conspired behind all our backs and without asking us turned the EEC into the EU and made our borders quite porous to anyone with an EU passport. The UK Border Agency was also formed in this time to keep a track of asylum seekers and other undesirables such as multi-national criminals and illegal immigrants. It rapidly became obvious that it was unfit for purpose.
Express.

THE UK Border Agency ran up record losses of nearly £300million last year, including £1.8million racked up by a convicted conman.
It also paid £2.2million in error to failed asylum seekers who were no longer entitled to benefits, costing £15million in all since 2008, the agency’s annual report reveals.
Staff also received £1.9million in overpayments and £14.2million was doled out to refugees wrongly detained by immigration officials.
Two private finance deals also had to be renegotiated after chiefs admitted “significant duplication” in IT projects awarded to Fujitsu and Atos Origin worth £430million.
The agency’s accounts were described as a “comedy of errors” yesterday and yet more proof that it is “not fit for purpose”, as Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said last year.
Despite the failings, 11 directors received £1.2million in pay and £90,000 in bonuses. UKBA wrote off £297million in bad debts and losses last year, including £207million lost on its e-Borders project, which collects travellers’ details before they arrive in Britain.

On top of this the government has also admitted that it has "lost" 180,000 illegals  since December 2008 and that's only the ones officially here who went missing, it does not include the ones smuggled in on lorries.
Now, I don't like government interference in my life and I especially hate it when the government and its agents are wasting my money. But I do think that it's the job of a minimal government to protect our borders, defend the country and enforce the few laws that we have. As it is we have big state and big spending and an uncanny inability to do anything right due mostly to over regulation and the idiocy of the Human Rights Act.
If we had a simplified system that checked people in and out and quickly removed those who remain illegally I'd be ok with my money being spent on it providing I thought it was giving value for money. This Agency would only allow one appeal by asylum seekers and no appeals at all for other illegals. That would also mean the return of any granted asylum who committed a crime, no ifs or buts.
We need control of our borders, the government has given them away and saddled us with a white elephant supposedly to guard them. We need out of the EU, we need the abolishment of the HRA and we need to enact laws that suit us, not the EU.
Otherwise things will only get worse.