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THE SUN SAYS
The Passport Office is yet another arm of the state infected by WFH lethargy
HOLS FIASCO
IT is depressingly predictable: A huge surge in passport applications, Home Office staff overwhelmed, deadlines missed, family holidays wrecked.
Even allowing for the inevitable chaos of a once-in-a-century plague shutting Britain down for two years, it is a giant fiasco typical of leaden-footed Whitehall.
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No wonder Boris Johnson is hinting at privatising the Passport Office.
It once had a decent record for speedy turnarounds. But it was obvious that when Covid restrictions were lifted millions would rush to go abroad for the first time since 2019 and need new passports.
Indeed, civil servants were warned of it. Why were they so unprepared?
It’s not even that a renewal always takes ten-plus weeks. Some applicants are sorted in a fraction of that. For others it takes months.
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Why? And how can anyone know how long they’ll wait?
It is hard to avoid concluding that the leisurely work-from-home Covid era which baked in lethargy across Whitehall has infected the Passport Office.
Officials must raise their game — or let a private firm take the reins.
JIHADIST JAILS
IT is sickening to learn of Islamist terrorists running Sharia courts in jail and dishing out medieval punishments to other lags.
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The report by anti-terror chief Sir Jonathan Hall is jaw-dropping.
How have we allowed these wicked extremists to rule the roost in our prisons, including over the guards?
The answer, according to Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, is the wretched Human Rights Act which enables them to talk their way out of separation units designed to isolate them and then to radicalise other lags.
He intends a clampdown just as soon as he can replace the Act with a Bill of Rights.
Why stop there? Sling all Islamist terrorists into one supermax-style prison.
There they can only preach their warped ideology to the converted.
CALL TO ARMS
FOR 30 years after the Cold War the West enjoyed a blissful sleep over the threat from Russia.
Despite all the atrocities Putin was perpetrating, he was treated merely as an old rogue. The EU, Germany especially, even mortgaged their futures to his gas.
The Salisbury poisonings woke Britain up. But Russia still wasn’t economically isolated or handed pariah status until Ukraine was invaded and butchered.
In hindsight, it was three decades of insane complacency.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is right to call now for a huge rise in defence spending, to ensure Ukraine’s survival and guard against the future warmongering ambitions of Russia and others.
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In an ideal world we wouldn’t need it.
But a world with Putin, plus North Korea, Iran and China, is very far from ideal.
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