Eats, texts and leaves

If you put your email address in the box on the right, good things will happen to you.
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The scandal of British citizens receiving text messages telling them that they are in the UK illegally and “are required to leave” reached new heights yesterday when Home Secretary Theresa May spoke of her surprise at receiving one of the messages herself.

The SMS was sent by Crapita, a company contracted to provide racism solutions to central government. It turns out that, acting on instructions from the UK Border Agency, the inflammatory texts were sent to everybody living and working within 10 miles of a known illegal immigrant, and they have reportedly been “surprisingly effective” (at encouraging legal action against the government).

Crapita’s director of policy P. Philip Mountbatten (Is this right? -Ed.) told our reporter, “We sent messages to tens of thousands of people because if even one snivelling little Indian feller saw it and decided to go home, that would be a victory for true British society, what?”

The UK Border Agency defended their position, releasing a statement saying: “The Immigration Act 1984 reads, ‘n e prsn livin in england 4 mr than 6mths must hv Vsa or indefinite lv 2 remn’ and that clearly justifies our plan to text everybody in the UK inviting them to consider relocating back to Bulgaria or wherever.”

When a wizard is tired of London…

There are many reasons for foreign students to come and study in London. World-class institutions, a variety of internship and work opportunities, and a thriving cultural scene are amongst them.

But the argument Boris ‘toenail in the body politic’ Johnson chose to put to a group of Chinese youngsters last week was:

“Who was Harry Potter’s first girlfriend?” he went on, “Who is the first person he kisses? That’s right, Cho Chang, who is a Chinese overseas student at Hogwarts school. Ladies and gents, I rest my case.”

Those Boris spells in full

• Paxo – confuses the target with a random stream of consciousness
• Injunctio – conceals information from the target
• Zipwiros – suspends the target in mid-air to general appreciation from everyone else
• Accountabilio – frustrates the target’s attempts to supervise London’s leadership
• Bonkio – causes the target (That’s enough spells. -Ed.)

The cabinet needs to do its filing

The Guardian has revealed that an archive of over a million historical government files is being secretly stored at a Foreign Office facility in Buckinhamshire, apparently referred to by London staff as “up North.”

Rather like Guantanamo Bay inmates, the files are being held illegally and should have been released under the Public Records Act decades ago. They cover government affairs from the Crimean War right up to the Cambridge Five in the 1950s. They’ve scarcely been categorised at all, and the official inventory (which was released this week under freedom of information legislation) simply refers to them by the length of shelf space they take up, eg. Palestine-related material: 15.27m

Diplomats are now in a bit of a quandary about how to go about releasing this archive, which Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has ordered them to do within a year. I’d like to give them my advice, which is in the form of a song entitled, Public Records: You Gotta Know When to Hold ’Em.

5. Outsourcing update

As you’ll notice, Interserve has been named as the “preferred bidder” for Sussex University estate services. I first posted about their track-record last month, and can now recount a few more of their triumphs…

Triumphs such as forgetting to feed hospital patients in Leicester for three hours, which disrupted their medication cycle and generally fell below generally-recognised standards of human rights and dignity. (The results of starving a ward full of ill people is generally known as ‘finally losing patients’ I think?) Other recent Interserve triumphs include failing to clean a hospital properly despite having bid for, erm, the cleaning contract.

I look forward to seeing what positivity Interserve will bring to the Sussex campus.

Pseuds Corner

Continuing the Harry Potter theme, every now and then a crisis prompts the Minister of Magic to go visit the Muggle Prime Minister, and occasionally a wizarding event even makes it into Muggle newspapers.

This week was one of those unfortunate occasions when a Jewish communal row made it into Muggle newspapers, specifically an article in The Times, “Chief Rabbi caught in pseudo-Judaism row.”

The new Orthodox Chief Rabbi’s groundbreaking decision to take my advice and come to Limmud (what the Times described to its Muggle audience as “the Jewish Glastonbury”) has caused a bit of a stir, and a group of retired dayanim (ultra-Orthodox religious judges) have published a fatwa saying that “Any Jew whose heart has been touched by the fear of God should not participate in any pluralist activity.”

Apparently pluralism, “the ‘political correctness’ of the world of theology,” fails to distinguish between “authentic Judaism and pseudo-Judaism.”

As it happens, blurring this line – or ‘engaging in constructive debate’ as I like to call it – is one of the main aims of my Lishmah Sussex course, which still has two weeks to run if anyone’s interested! Thursday evenings, 7-8pm, Brighton & Hove Sixth Form College.

Five of the best

• The Telegraph: Students take cardboard cutout of Eric Pickles on American road trip (PHOTO GALLERY) – but their airline charged them for the excess weight.
• Buzzfeed: 14 Totally Believable Excuses For Your Train Being Delayed – I particularly like number 7.
• The Huffington Post: Downing Street solves energy crisis; wear a jumper – a ‘let them eat cake’-style solution to the energy prices crisis.
• The Daily Mail: University plans to build THREE types of toilet for men, women and transgender so that ‘all students feel welcome’ – the Mail uses capital letters to express outrage, presumably because our parents all hated Britain.
• BBC News: US Scouts filmed toppling prehistoric rock formation and high-fiving each other – “We’ve modified the park!” shouts a total idiot.

Your ‘to sue’ list

In tonight’s episode, Prince Philip received policy advice from Tommy Robinson and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Interserve forgot to serve. And Dayan Ehrentreu made the fatal error of giving the oxygen of publicity to his mortal enemies. This was an Gabrielquotes production.