Someone brought this job advert to my attention. It’s been fun writing this blog and representing immigrants and asylum seekers, but duty calls. You have to be part of it to change it, as Steve Cohen undoubtedly would not have said.
Free Movement, post recruitment
I’m confident I’ll get the job and very much look forward to working with ‘strategic policy colleagues and process owners to deliver efficiency improvements across the policy and operational policy environment in line with the UKBA Business Plan’. I already see the Refugee Convention and human rights as ‘products’, by which I assume it is meant to be bought, sold, withdrawn, exchanged or returned at will. I reckon I’m ‘able to manage change effectively, identifying resistance’ and all that (it’s futile, we’ve often found). Actually, I’ve often favourably compared the Home Office to The Borg. Favourably to The Borg, naturally.
I can certainly ‘build on Litigation and Appeals stakeholder engagement with the Judiciary, the MoJ, Legal Services Commissions, OISC and the AIT’. I’ll build on it, alright. I’ll make sure I have no overall idea of what I’m building, make it up as I go along, rush the whole thing through and construct the most hideously deformed, deranged legal architecture known to bureaucracy! It will be the legal equivalent of Milton Keynes.
Actually, there’s not much to do on that last front, it’s pretty much sorted already. All it needs is another Bill.
I’m already thoroughly familiar with and therefore ready to ‘implement and further refine the strategy to minimise the adverse impact of litigation across the Agency and deliver savings on litigation costs’: ignore any adverse cases and do nothing. To be honest, though, I’m not sure this strategy can be any further refined, the Home Office is already flawless in its execution. I also know what they mean by ‘aligns policy and delivery with clear communications objectives’: do what the spin doctors tell me then make up a spurious excuse for it afterwards.
There’s not much in the job description on upholding the rule of law, I noticed, though. Perhaps that means they’ve got an internal candidate in mind?
15 Responses to Free Movement to apply for Home Office job
Immigration cases- R (on the application of SS)v London Borough of Croydon (AAJR) [2012] UKUT 139 (IAC) (16 May 2012) 16 May 2012
- R (on the application of ES) v London Borough of Hounslow (AAJR) [2012] UKUT 138 (IAC) (15 May 2012) 16 May 2012
- MK (documents - relocation) Iraq CG [2012] UKUT 126 (IAC) (25 April 2012) 14 May 2012
- Mumu (paragraph 320; Article 8; scope) Bangladesh [2012] UKUT 143 (IAC) (14 May 2012) 14 May 2012
- Ahmadi (s.47 decision: validity; Sapkota) Afghanistan [2012] UKUT 147 (IAC) (14 May 2012) 14 May 2012
- Buama (inter-country adoption - competent court) Ghana [2012] UKUT 146 (IAC) (14 May 2012) 14 May 2012
- Barnett and others (EEA Regulations: rights and documentation) Jamaica [2012] UKUT 142 (IAC) (14 May 2012) 14 May 2012
- LK (Somalia)), R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 1229 (Admin) (10 May 2012) 10 May 2012
- UK Border Agency
- Removing full right of appeal for family visitors 10 May 2012
- Scrapping family visitor appeal rights will save millions 10 May 2012
- Service disruption at public enquiry offices 4 May 2012
- Child experts recruited to Family Returns Panel 25 April 2012
- Tier 2 certificates of sponsorship allocations for 2012/13 20 April 2012
- Immigration news
- Damian Green questioned by MPs over Heathrow delays: Politics live blog 18 May 2012
- In this week's New Statesman: European Crisis 17 May 2012
- New rules on overseas students 'will cost universities billions' 17 May 2012
- Dissenting Tories pushed out of backbench committee 17 May 2012
- Europe’s endgame 16 May 2012
- Policy and research
- Why asking the public to report irregular migrants to the UKBA is the wrong path to go down 17 May 2012
- "Home Office plans are too harsh" - Letter to the editor 16 May 2012
- Maps/Multimedia 16 May 2012
- Focus on Africa/Africans 16 May 2012
- Focus on Statelessness 15 May 2012
Welcome!
HJT Training
HJT Training Immigration Manual
FM
If you do get the job, I hope you can bring professionalism and personable qualities to the HO. It certainly needs them.
Hopefully you can introduce a feedback and a continuous improvement program at the HO, so that systemic failings can be dealt with, and letters of complaint replied to properly.
While your at it, the DVS at Ghana BHC needs replacing with some-one who listens.
However, if you do get the job I think you will struggle to get the level of job satisfaction that you do in the private sector.
I do hope you are able to continue with this site, but with “conflict of interest” issues arising I’m not sure you will be able to – note unless you become a mole.
Er, I was joking. To be clear, I’m not really planning to join the Home Office.
FM
Isn’t it called “Suspension of disbelief”.
You’ve obviously had a better Monday morning than I.
Kids back to school, traffic etc.
It was slightly more believable than the UKBA article on “suspension of COA fees”.
Ah FM, another amusing post, thank you. Good to see the blog is still a fair and objective view on immigration related matters representing both sides equally and not at all an anti Home Office rant.
Hmm, this is clearly a movement away from the tron guy thing. But, as a great geek once said to me “I am Training Manager of Borg. Please don’t forget to complete the assimilation evaluation form.”
Here Here,
Self indulgent, narrow minded, broad brush stereotyping . . . . . . these kind of personal attacks, whilst no doubt cathartic to you, come across quite frankly as pathetic.
Why engage in constructive debate and discourse when you just call people names in school yard fashion with a veil of (semi) anonymity over the internet.
PO
PO, please do get a grip.
I suggest starting your own blog. I think minion.borgpress.com is available. Then you can write humourous posts about Hampstead liberals and their beardy-weirdy ways. Or legal aid gravy train lawyers and their very fat cats. Or the asylum charities that make up the ‘asylum industry’. All attacks made by ministers on me and my kind over the last decade, not BNP press releases as it may first appear. My post just very, very slightly, minutely restores some cosmic balance.
In your more serious blogging moments, perhaps you could take the time to defend and justify the drafting of the citizenship provisions in the new Bill, Home Office inaction on Metock, Baiai, the Gurkhas and other cases, the use of the word ‘product’ to describe human rights obligations, serial failure to consult stakeholders over important law changes (rule 320 comes to mind), the drafting of Home Office press releases or the notable absence of any meaningful points from large swathes of the ‘points-based’ system.
However, I am genuinely SO sorry if you thought I was stereotyping you as a nasty cyborg or you took that as a personal attack on you.
Maybe I’ve just been around to long and have seen to much but I find myself being more and more pissed off with the attempts of my seniors to ignore their duty to the people who make use of our services.
Maybe its becasue I am one of the HOPOs who has come to see a main part of our job as being to sort out the messes that other people in the Home Office have created.
My dealings with people in the various decision making teams can have me near tears as they fail to understand that there job is not to stop people being in the country. They seem to have no idea what the House of Lords is (other than a bunch of old duffers having a nap) and what effect their decisions have.
What in buggeration is going on with the Ghurkas I don’t know, why does anyone think that the arguement that they don’t have sufficient ties to the UK would work, I guess we’ll just have to leave it up to the loony left like FM to defend them as HMG doesn’t give a flying ****
[sorry rant over]
For what it’s worth, I can appreciate what you mean.
I couldn’t agree more. I think as soon as targets were introduced and all resources focussed on attempting to get a couple of big removal / case completion rate headlines, Some decision makers started becoming refusal machines which leads me to the Borg … Am I starting to turn into FM?????
“Self indulgent, narrow minded, broad brush stereotyping . . . . . . these kind of personal attacks, whilst no doubt cathartic to you, come across quite frankly as pathetic.”
As a member of the ‘uneducated’ public, I feel it’s my duty to highlight to you where to find your local sodium chloride supplier ( http://www.kompass.co.uk/directory/products/item/0/uk/Sodium_chloride/3106024.htm ) see if they sell it by the pinch.
Not sure how the words “not credible” or “not plausible” were avoided here.
Most public sector respondants say “they have identified the problems and have already put in place new systems to avoid repeat episodes”.
The HO cannot even say that, so now its complaints about “fairness” and “anti-HO rant”. – about as much substance as a marshmellow.
Still, these PO’s are human beings trying to work in a “corrupt” system, mostly doing as they’re told.
Oh well, its all di-oxi-hydride under the bridge, as DP would say.
You mean dihydrogen oxide ;-)
Anyone seen the Gurkha vote %-D
The Ghurka issue is beyond ridiculous.Ageing hopo can’t see why anyone would think the argument of insufficient ties would work.I can’t even see the reason why anyone feels the argument ‘needs’ to work.
If it’s about keeping voters and media happy then one would expect it to have the reverse effect.Even the staunchest bnp supporter wouldn’t begrudge these folk their citizenship surely! It’s over zealous immigration powers now interfering with the uk’s foreign relations almost ,and consequently embarrassing us all in front of the rest of the world. Just my opinion anyway :-)