Time 2 Lv ?

So it looks as if, after many disappointing starts and outright failures, we have finally found the solution to the problem of illegal immigration.

Yep, the Home Office cracked it - a stroke of genius or the result of long hours of analysis and extensive consultants' studies, we are not given to know - but it is at long last with us: the ultimate solution in forcing illegal immigrants to face up to their despicable behaviour and convince them to abandon their ways (and the Country) for good.

And it was all so obvious; we had been staring at it in the face for years, and yet nobody realised how powerful this would have been - it took the indefatigable dedication, professionality and inventiveness of the Home Office staff to figure this one out.

So, starting from an as yet unspecified (but we all hope imminent!) date the Home Office will start sending text messages to "foreign visitors" (apparently, "bloody immigrants" was deemed too strong a language) reminding them that their visa is to expire and they should make preparations to leave the UK.

I can already picture them: scores of illegal immigrants, all of them anxiously peering at their mobile phones (was it a text? is it Abdul at the pub, or the Home Office? should I open it?) and then rushing off on the first Piccadilly tube heading off to Heathrow, without even bothering packing up...

Maybe not.

A more sane person (read: someone not working for the Home Office and not desperate to find some ways to make it look like they are actually doing something) would have had a few doubts about the scheme.

For example, given that they do not even know the names of most illegal immigrants, how on earth are they supposed to know their mobile number?

And even of those whose names are known (the mind springs to the 7,000 "foreign criminals" whose files were left to rot in boxes in some Home Office basement) they are hardly likely to be on some sort of computer system so as to enable automatic sending of those messages.

I can already see scores of "temporary" Home Office employees, sitting at their desks and furiously typing the texts to thousands of foreigners....

The other pitfall being, obviously, that mobile phone companies (being just a tad more astute than the Home Office) are quite unlikely to give a contract rental to people without the necessary paperwork - hence, most of them will have pay-as-you-go contracts (critical for them to manage their prostitution ring or crack dealership or whatever else it is that foreigners get into when in UK - I personally started two businesses, both of them engaged in legal activities, I hasten to add) which make them just a trifle difficult to trace back to the real owner.

Hence, even assuming the Home Office to be vastly more efficient than we know it to be - even assuming that they can actually trace a mobile number to a "foreign visitor" overstaying her welcome - even assuming that the computer system in place, in a complete break with tradition, will work as intended - it is rather obvious that even the more anxious of the illegals, wanting to go beyond just having a laugh at the Home Office and its hapless Minister and just delete it, can simply take out the SIM card, throw it in the Thames and buy a new one at the nearest Tesco store, all for a tenner!

In the meantime, we, the taxpayers (yes, sadly, despite being a foreigner I do pay taxes and a shedload of them - in fact, a lot more since bloody Gordon decided to squeeze Middle England's pips) will be facing a bill of several £m's completely wasted in a useless scheme.

It is in days like these that I start to believe in the Original Sin - there is, in fact, no way I can have racked up enough evil deeds in my life to deserve such a desperately superficial and hopelessly incompetent bunch of dimwits to govern the Country I live in.