Brexit

twitter.com/LoveEUToo/status/977103279279755264

Hyperion wrote:

twitter.com/LoveEUToo/status/977103279279755264

The best bit in the article is where it describes the burgundy passport as "iconic".

British passports are to be printed in Malta which could mean 100 UK jobs lost and cost the taxpayer an extra £100 million.

And the UK firm which won the contract, De La Rue , is being investigated by the Serious Fraud office and could be French-owned within weeks.
Anger was mounting last night over the deal which was agreed by Labour and backed by the Coalition Government.

De La Rue, the world's biggest bank note printer, is charging taxpayers £100million more than a rival Greater Manchester-based ¬company, which has made our passports for the past 40 years.

Shares in the company, which makes banknotes for the Bank of England and 150 other countries, tumbled by a third last year after its production problems were revealed, leading its chief executive to resign.

But they bounced back by over 25 per cent last week with news of a possible takeover by French-owned firm Oberthur.

Now an MP has demanded the £400million passport contract be offered out to tender again, according to the Sunday Express.

Bosses at 3M Security Printing in Oldham, the firm that has printed British passports for decades, have told the Government they can make them over the next 10 years for £100million less than De La Rue.

'It is not a sum to be sniffed at,' said Labour MP Michael Meacher, MP for Oldham West and Royston.

'It is not far short of one per cent of the entire spending cuts that the Government hopes to make in this fiscal year.'

Mr Meacher also fears that apart from the security risks of allowing another country to print British passports, De La Rue may not be able to fulfil the deal.

The company is at centre of its second Serious Fraud Office probe in three years following allegations of corruption by the company's employees totalling at least £1m.

The company said some staff had 'deliberately falsified certain paper specification test certificates' and added that production errors would cost the company at least £35m.

It is believed one in every five of the six million new passports needed each year will be printed by De La Rue in Malta.
Union bosses are furious. 'It is unthinkable that our ¬passports and other identification systems could be produced outside of the UK,' said Tony Burke, assistant general secretary of Unite.

It has since emerged that Gill Rider, 54, a leading member of the Cabinet Office and one of Gordon Brown’s senior mandarins, was a non-executive director of De La Rue on £43,000 a year when bidding for the deal began.

De La Rue declined to comment.


Iconic: The British passport

Benzin wrote:Not actually a French company as of yet and is based in Malta (you know, a BRITISH colony)...

It's almost as if the government are deliberately throwing bait to the baying wolves to distract from the real problems...

Moggy wrote:

Benzin wrote:Not actually a French company as of yet and is based in Malta (you know, a BRITISH colony)...

It's almost as if the government are deliberately throwing bait to the baying wolves to distract from the real problems...

I think you misread it, the actual story is much funnier than that.

The Mail are currently calling for the blood of the establishment because the new BLUE passports will be made by a French company rather than by the British company that currently makes them.

Then somebody found a Mail story from 2010 where the Mail were calling for blood because De La Rue (the British company that currently makes them) had been given the contract. Oh and they thought the burgundy passport was "iconic".

The Mail are nothing if not hypocrites. And their readers never notice the hypocrisy.

Photek wrote:James O'Brien is on this story at mo.

First caller says British business should only had been offered the contract for passports, and when James counters with the fact that he's saying we should also neuter British companies bidding in other countries. He simply ignores James' point and repeats himself.

Benzin wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Benzin wrote:Not actually a French company as of yet and is based in Malta (you know, a BRITISH colony)...

It's almost as if the government are deliberately throwing bait to the baying wolves to distract from the real problems...

I think you misread it, the actual story is much funnier than that.

The Mail are currently calling for the blood of the establishment because the new BLUE passports will be made by a French company rather than by the British company that currently makes them.

Then somebody found a Mail story from 2010 where the Mail were calling for blood because De La Rue (the British company that currently makes them) had been given the contract. Oh and they thought the burgundy passport was "iconic".

The Mail are nothing if not hypocrites. And their readers never notice the hypocrisy.

I just assumed you'd quoted the story from today, stop spreading fake news!

Photek wrote:EDIT: Next caller is on about ring fencing British companies for British work again and he's 'outraged'. He opposes free trade. We need to become self sufficient.

Hexx wrote:Doesn't DeLaRue Print Euros etc as well?

Presumably these angry Gammons will be fine with all that work leaving as well.

Moggy wrote:

Photek wrote:EDIT: Next caller is on about ring fencing British companies for British work again and he's 'outraged'. He opposes free trade. We need to become self sufficient.

Britain hasn’t been able to feed itself for well over 100 years. If we couldn’t be self sufficient in 1900, how the strawberry float would we manage now.