Escorts With Special Skills

Even under the party of working people every blessing has its price, and Team Starmer's rah-rah at having ramped up the repatriations is inevitably tempered with the news of redundancies in the wog disposal custodian sector. Now that His Majesty's Government has ended the Rwanda transportation scheme, the private company which provides what are rather charmingly called "escort services" is laying off some three hundred employees; although thanks to their special training in subduing disruptive foreigns, some of those facing redundancy may yet find useful and fulfilling roles elsewhere within the company. Doubtless it is this humanitarian provision, rather than any reluctance to condemn either migrant-bashing or sacking people, that accounts for the apparent lack of any squeals of indignation from His Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

Bracing Stuff

Britain is bracing, as usual, in the face of winter weather as the recent flooding season gives way to snow and ice. Particularly braced will be Team Starmer and its minister for profitable healthcare, Wideboy Wesley, who is planning a cosy chat with the hard right on how best to marketise adult social care without unduly denting Labour's three-figure overall majority in the House of Expenses Claimants. Possibly even more braced than that will be those pensioners deprived of their winter fuel payments, who are expected to become self-solving burdens in ever more convenient quantities over the next few days, despite Wideboy Wesley's generous permission for them to feed the maw of the energy profiteers to the best of their humble ability.

Better Late Than Payable

In the great circle of time the past is as the future, and the environmental well-being of present and forthcoming generations is subject to scruples befitting the subcontinental asset-strippers of the Honourable East India Company. Mere decades after an industrial disaster that killed some thirty thousand people and continues to poison the local expendables, the Indian government has commenced a token clean-up operation. In December 1984 the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, which was no doubt lightly regulated and relatively unencumbered by Health and Safety straitjackets, exploded and released forty tonnes of toxic waste into the air; and thanks to the Indian government's cordial relations with the business community the intervening period has yielded neither a proper decontamination of the area nor a non-derisory compensation scheme. Less than one per cent of the contaminants have now been removed, and there is every possibility that their disposal will cause yet further environmental damage; so the enterprise scores Britishness points for effectiveness as well as for promptitude.

Justice Delivered By Second-Class Post

Unlike the lesser breeds, ours is a nation that believes in fair play and the rule of law; which doubtless explains why His Majesty's Government has spent a hundred and thirty-six million on legal fees to ensure that no undeserving or unworthy persons are recompensed over the Horizon scandal. Besides the laudable stimulation of economic growth, the law's delay has meant that a number of potential claimants have died before being able to make themselves a burden on the Post Office. Nevertheless, after only one year's pondering the parliamentary business and trade committee has concluded that criminals should probably not be given control of administering the financial redress for their own derelictions; which will certainly have significant repercussions for the rule of British law in the unlikely event that anyone takes any notice.