...Why anyone bothers. Why is there this fascination with politics, with the power of the State to do things? We have people insisting that ID cards will make us safe, that we can ban by legislative fiat racism and hatred, that said State can make the world a perfect place for us. Then we see what actually happens when said powers that be take on a fairly simple, if important task.

Many blog readers will already know about the campaign to force the Government into doing what it should for the locally hired Iraqi assistants and translators for the British troops there. Indeed, what it is already legally bound to do under the UN rules on asylum. And then, as Dan Hardie points out , we come to the reality of what is actually being done. 

You can go to the Army base in Basra to apply for asylum: but the militias kill people who go to that base. You can flee to Syria and pick up the forms at the Embassy there. But the British Embassy in Syria hands out the forms via Syrian security personnel: not known to be people who look kindly upon "collaborationists" in Iraq. And people who worked for us before 1 January 2005 (so, say, those who might have worked with Private Johnson Beharry, VC) get no aid at all.

I am constitutionally a believer in the cock up theory of governance rather than the conspiracy one, so I don't believe this is all deliberate to make sure that the translators are all murdered before the paperwork is processed. But if plucky Denmark can fly all of their workers, with their families, out of Iraq, why can't we?

And why are there so many wanting government to take on tasks well beyond current capabilities, when they can't even manage efficiently the simple ones?