Send in the loons

THE Government has spent £152,000 sending two Whitehall “gender and diversity” equality advisers to Baghdad.

You couldn’t make it up.

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Iraq faced any number of problems.

Electricity and water supplies had been disrupted, schools and universities were closed down, hospitals were desperate for staff and supplies.

Oh, and don’t let’s forget the ever-present threat of terrorism.

Into the middle of this chaos, ministers thought it was appropriate to parachute in a pair of busybodies plucked from the jobs pages of The Guardian.

I suppose there might have been some merit in this madness had they been able to turn their hand to repairing power lines or dressing wounds.

Leave aside the staggering waste of British taxpayers’ money, which could have been better spent elsewhere.

What exactly are they supposed to contribute to the rebuilding of Iraq?

Nothing could be more calculated to get up the noses of Muslims than being lectured on gender, diversity and equality by some hatchet-faced harridan from Islington.

They’d quickly figure they were better off under Saddam.

Who thought this was a good plan? I’d love to have been at the meeting which decided to send them.

Now then, we’ve got millions without power in Baghdad, raw sewage running through the streets, hospitals without medicines and equipment, widespread looting and someone has just driven a truckload of explosives into a roadblock near Basra. Ideas, anyone?

Why don’t we send out a couple of gender and diversity advisers?

Brilliant, Simpkins. Any other business?

There couldn’t be a better insight into the bureaucratic New Labour mindset.

These people exist inside their own little bubble where the trivial takes on exaggerated significance.

Theirs is a world of five-a-day co-ordinators, healthy walking advisers, lesbian empowerment officers, smoking cessation enforcers and the thousands of other meaningless jobs which this column has drawn to your attention over the years.

Now, not content with trying to force us to comply with their bizarre guidelines, they’re attempting to impose their world view on the Iraqis.

I know it’s easy to make fun of this lunacy. And I’m not one to miss an open goal like this. Over ’ere, son, on me ’ead.

But if you think about it for more than two seconds, it’s more serious than that.

Billions of pounds are being spent employing these people.

This Government has hired 350,000 more public employees, co-ordinating, monitoring, advising, outreaching, facilitating.

Most of them contribute about as much to the good of the nation as a couple of gender and diversity advisers contribute to the rebuilding of Iraq.

And the money has to come from somewhere.

News that £152,000 had been frittered away on this absurd expedition came on the same day it was revealed that up to ten of the Army’s most famous regiments — including the Royal Scots and the Black Watch — may be disbanded.

More than 9,000 soldiers are facing redundancy as part of a cost-cutting exercise, even though the Army is already 4,000 below strength.

At a time when Britain is playing a full part in the war on terror and facing imminent threats at home and abroad, ministers are considering sacking soldiers.

Meanwhile they are hiring legions of diversity and gender advisers as if they are going out of fashion.

It beggars belief.

Ask yourself how you would rather your money was spent — on an army of interfering Guardian readers or on the Army?

Precisely.

Talk about a game of soldiers.