Friday 24 July 2009

A Blunder of Unparalleled Proportions



When I first read this morning's Telegraph, I was shocked but not surprised by this article. Our governmental security services leave so much to be desired.

A military source told the Sun: 'This is a blunder of unparalleled proportions. For an illegal immigrant to gain membership of any Army regiment is unbelievable when you consider the potential damage an enemy could do there. But to be accepted into a Guards regiment, and therefore to have such close proximity to the monarch, is nothing short of a scandal'.

A solider, from an African Commonwealth country, is believed to have used fake documents to join the Army where he was trained in marksmanship, grenade throwing and how to use a rocket launcher. He has been found to be an illegal immigrant and his scam was only uncovered after a car crash when police discovered he had numerous aliases. He trained at Catterick Barracks before joining the elite Batallion Irish Guards last autumn.

How on earth did this happen? The vetting process for any applicant is usually way above any in civvie street. Surely there has to be an immediate enquiry and the people responsible removed from their posts because this is not a clerical error, this is total incompetence. It seems the police managed to find information about the man without much difficulty so all I can suggest is that the MoD staff didn't even try.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

And the government have the cheek to criticise businesses for employment discrimination, burdening them with various regulations. How ironic that discrimination is exactly what they should be doing in this instance.

subrosa said...

CB this is nothing to do with discrimination and everything to do with utterly unacceptable incompetence.

Say a 20 year old wanted to join the military. He has to supply the following information (although this may not be completely accurate as some things may have changed recently).

Name, address, place & DOB of parents
Date of death if applicable

Name, place & DOB of both grandparents
DoD if applic

Name, place & DOB of any new partner if parents are divorced

In cases of the above Name and place+ date of birth of any step-children

The authorities can also ask for further information about any member of a family.

An original birth certificate must be produced not a copy.

So there are umpteen checks, obviously not even the birth certificate was checked for authenticity.

Oldrightie said...

Subrosa, Labour are so incompetent and busy scheming and spinning, the brewery social events calendar just withers on thevine.

O/T Oldrightie called Norwich well! Humiliation for Jim and The Snot Gang!

Doubting Richard said...

The irony is that as a Commonwealth citizen he could have joined perfectly legitimately under his own name. After a short service (I think around 4 years) he would have been entitled to stay in the country.

subrosa said...

Good result for you with Norwich OR. Well predicted.

subrosa said...

Very true Richard. The only problem I foresee is that it would depend upon the types of crimes as not all with criminal records are accepted.

The Last Of The Few said...

UN-BLOODY-BELIEVEABLE

MSM has noot made a huge isssue though.

So is Norwich North a bit more important...........no I certainly dont think so.

Utter cretins

subrosa said...

Keep calm now, no point in letting your blood pressure get out of hand LotF.

Fitaloon said...

Losing data, not checking data, just being incompetent , do we really expect anymore from the MOD.
The MOD have consistently managed to be below even the government's low expectations of them.

subrosa said...

I wonder if DC, should his party be elected, will have enough courage to root out the dead wood in the MoD FL. Hopefully he will.

Richard T said...

You should never ever underestimate the stupidity and ineptitude of British Government and the MoD in particular. I recall that the wee geniuses privatised security operations to save money (ie by paying beggars' wages to the guards) and then wondered why unvetted illegals had been employed.

subrosa said...

I'm sure it's ever been thus Richard, but with FOI and instant communications these days it's more difficult for them to hide their incompetency.

Aye I read somewhere about that privatisation and still never found any trace of a debate in parliament about it.

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