Readers of a certain age will remember the famous Eighties TV commercial for an insurance company that promised: ‘We won’t make a drama out of a crisis.’
The advert was intended to reassure customers that no matter what calamity might befall them, their problems would be solved calmly, speedily and efficiently, with the minimum of fuss.
Sadly, it’s a message that has been lost on our modern generation of politicians, who are guaranteed to turn any minor hiccup into a full-blown, multi-million-dollar Hollywood production number.
Not that there’s anything minor about the current cross-Channel traffic in illegal immigrants coming ashore on the Kent coast in increasing numbers. Since the story exploded on a slow news day over Christmas, the Government has gone into full headless chicken mode.
The latest group of migrants landed shortly after 8am today at Greatstone, near Lydd-on-Sea
With great fanfare, Home Secretary Sajid Javid cuts short his family holiday in Africa to fly home and ‘take control’ of the situation. Everything is going according to the script. Javid arrives back in the middle of the night and changes from jeans and zipper jacket into his ‘I’m In Charge’ blue suit.
Hours later, he leaves his London home through a scrum of television reporters shouting inane questions, which they know perfectly well he has no intention of answering.
He convenes emergency meetings in Whitehall, then announces a plan of action, despite admitting in a newspaper article that, actually, there’s very little he can do to stop the influx of Iranians and other assorted foreign nationals making their way across the Channel.
Sajid Javid may be taking the flak right now, but he wasn’t Home Secretary in March 2016, when this problem first came to light
Javid could order the Navy to turn back any dinghy bound for Kent and return any passengers to France.
But he’s already rejected an offer of naval assistance from Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson because he doesn’t want Williamson to gain any political advantage at his expense.
Still, he has to be seen to be doing something, anything, to justify his dash back from his safari holiday. How long before Javid is filmed heading out to sea on the prow of a coastguard boat, like George Washington leading his troops across the Delaware River during the American Revolution — only in a hi-viz jacket, rather than a general’s uniform and tricorn hat.
Mind you, given this Government’s track record of dealing with illegal immigration, a better analogy would be Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the Titanic. All that matters is that Javid creates an impression of frantic activity, with him at the centre of it.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured outside his home in London this morning) has battled through a chastening fortnight including the Gatwick drone fiasco and the migrant crisis
None of this would be necessary, of course, had the Government not ignored the problem of illegals crossing the Channel when it first surfaced more than two-and-a-half years ago.
It’s not as if they didn’t know it was happening. Between March and May 2016, there were at least eight recorded incidents of Border Force officials intercepting attempts to enter Britain by boat, via beaches in Kent and Sussex.
On May 31 that year, after 18 Albanians were picked up in a rubber dinghy off Kent, I wrote a spoof Shipping Forecast, illustrated by a Gary cartoon, of a country under siege from foreign nationals on a variety of inflatables.
Here’s a flavour of it. ‘Forties, Dogger. High chance of Iraqis, pretending to be Syrians, seen clinging to lilos near North Sea oil rig, bound for Bridlington . . .’
You get the idea. And still they kept coming, unhindered, throughout the summer. In September 2016, the Mail’s Sue Reid hired a small inflatable boat in France and sailed across the Channel to Dover. She passed a French coastguard vessel, a naval patrol and landed safely without anyone challenging her or asking to see her passport.
The French Patrolman of Gendarmerie boat, the Athos, rescues 11 migrants 15 miles off Calais
Six days earlier, a group of illegal immigrants had jumped off a private boat near Felixstowe, in Suffolk, and simply vanished.
In November 2016, I returned to the subject, when a man who claimed to be Iranian, but probably wasn’t, was found rowing towards Britain in an inflatable kayak.
I wrote at the time: ‘Instead of towing him back to Calais, he was rescued and given a lift to Croydon, where his asylum claim was processed. If the authorities aren’t going to deport them to France, it will only encourage even more desperate illegals to attempt the hazardous journey in everything from children’s paddling pools to inflatable armbands.
‘I don’t know if anyone has yet landed in Margate clinging to one of Del Boy’s blow-up sex dolls, but, at this rate, it can only be a matter of time.’
Gary’s cartoon featured a family in an inflatable dinosaur and one man on a giant banana.
While I played it for laughs, Sue Reid stuck doggedly to the story. In a brilliant dispatch in last Saturday’s Mail, she revealed how illegal immigrants from Iran are making their way here via Serbia, where they were allowed in on tourist visas.
Once there, they were free to travel across open-borders Europe. In France, she reported that local police were pointing immigrants camped out at ports towards Britain. Part of Javid’s new emergency plan to halt the flow is to rely on increased co-operation from the French. Good luck with that.
Iranians living rough in Calais, many of whom took advantage of temporary tourist visas to Serbia, before fleeing North towards the English Channel
One thing we’ve learned over the years is that our French ‘partners’ can’t be trusted.
If they were serious about stopping immigrants heading for Britain, they would turn them back at the border when they attempted to enter France.
Under international law, migrants allegedly fleeing oppression are supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country in which they arrive. In this latest case, that means Serbia. None of them should have any right to settle in Britain.
But the reason this country remains their No 1 destination is the same as it ever was. We’re not just perceived as a soft touch, we are a soft touch.
In Calais last week, Sue Reid spoke to a 33-year-old Iranian, who told her: ‘My friend reached England from here in a boat and is now in a three-bedroom flat in Birmingham. He likes it very much.’
I bet he does. What’s not to like? There are plenty of people born and bred in Birmingham who have been on the council waiting list for years and would just love a three-bedroom flat. Yet an Iranian can jump out of boat on a beach in Kent, make his way to Brum and move in straight away.
While we roll out the welcome mat, immigrants will continue to make the dangerous Channel crossing, secure in the knowledge that, once they set foot in Britain, the chances of them being deported are less than zero.
Despite the current song-and-dance at the Home Office, the numbers will go on rising. In no time there will be so many small boats heading our way that it will be like Dunkirk all over again.
Incidentally, the funniest story I’ve read this week was the announcement by Kent Police that, as part of the emergency response, they will be sending up a drone to monitor activity in the Channel.
Given the fiasco at Gatwick before Christmas, the first sight of a drone off the coast will immediately close every airport from Southampton to Stansted.
Sajid Javid may be taking the flak right now, but he wasn’t Home Secretary in March 2016, when this problem first came to light.
What he has inherited is merely the culmination of more than two-and-a-half years of incompetence, indifference and inaction.
So who was Home Secretary back then? Let me think . . .
Oh, yes. It was the same Home Secretary responsible for the Windrush scandal, for which her successor had to carry the can.
The same Home Secretary who abandoned stop and search, leading to an explosion of knife crime in London.
The same Home Secretary whose reputation as a ‘safe pair of hands’ propelled her into 10 Downing Street after Call Me Dave resigned, even though she voted Remain and spent the referendum campaign hiding behind the sofa.
The same Home Secretary who, as Prime Minister, ordered Javid to cut short his holiday to deal with something she should have nipped in the bud two-and-a-half years ago.
And still some people wonder how she has managed to make such a complete Horlicks of Brexit.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Theresa May, someone who can always be relied upon to make a drama out of a crisis.
Happy New Year.
Revealed: 123 migrants have tried to enter Britain in 16 bids to cross the Channel in just seven days
There have been at least 16 attempts by migrants trying to get to Britain since Christmas Day in the Channel
1) Dec 25, unknown time – Dover – five migrants sail into Dover port and light a fire on the beach before handing themselves in to police
2) Dec 25, 2.40am – Folkestone – a girl is one of eight migrants found after arriving on a boat
3) Dec 25, 4.30am – off the coast of Deal, Kent – 13 migrants, including one child, rescued in the Channel
4) Dec 25, 5.50am – Channel – dinghy travelling towards the UK with seven men and a woman intercepted
5) Dec 25, unknown time – French side of Channel – nine migrants rescued by French officials after engine failed but transferred to English authorities
6) Dec 25, 9.20am – eight miles off coast of Dover – two migrants in a rowing boat are rescued
7) Dec 26, 12.30am – ten miles off France in Channel – three migrants intercepted and taken to Dover
8) Dec 26, 1.45am – off the coast of Sangatte, near Calais - 11 migrants intercepted and returned to Boulogne
9) Dec 27, 12,30am – off Battery Point, Folkestone – nine migrants including three children intercepted after dinghy came ashore
10) Dec 27, 8.30am – Shakespeare Beach, Dover – six Iranian men found after coming ashore
11) Dec 27, 8.45am – off the coast of Dover – eight Iranian men rescued from a rib and taken to Dover
12) Dec 27, 11.30pm – off the coast of Calais – 11 adult men, including five in a state of hypothermia, rescued and taken to Boulogne
13) Dec 28, 3am – off coast of Dover – one Syrian and three Iranian men found in rib
14) Dec 28, 9am – in the Channel – eight Iranian men rescued from a small boat and taken to Dover
15) Dec 30, 7.30am – Kingsdown beach near Dover – six Iranian men land in a dingy
16) Dec 31, 8am - Greatstone, near Lydd-on-Sea – 12 people arrive and are detained
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/category/the-sun-world/
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/richard-littlejohn-theresa-may-should-have-solved-this-migrant-crisis-back-in-2016/
News Pictures RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Theresa May should have solved this 'migrant crisis' back in 2016
You don’t have to pack away your bikini just because you’re the wrong side of 20. These body-beautiful stars reveal their secrets to staying in shape and prove you can smoulder in a two-piece, whatever your age. Read on and be bikini inspired!
TEENS
Hayden Panettiere
Size: 8
Age: 18
Height: 5ft 1in
Weight: 8st
To achieve her kick-ass figure, Hayden – who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes – follows the ‘quartering’ rule. She eats only a quarter of the food on her plate, then waits 20 minutes before deciding whether she needs to eat again.
Hayden says: “I don’t have a model’s body, but I’m not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they’re fat. I’m OK with what I have.”
Nicollette says: “I don’t like diets – I see it, I eat it! I believe in eating healthily with lots of protein, vegetables and carbs to give you energy.”
kim cattrall
Size: 10-12
Age: 52
Height: 5ft 8in
Weight: 9st 4lb
SATC star Kim swears by gym sessions with Russian kettle bells (traditional cast-iron weights) and the South Beach Diet to give her the body she wants. To avoid overeating, Kim has a radical diet trick – squirting lemon juice on her leftovers – so she won’t carry on picking.
Kim says: “I am no super-thin Hollywood actress. I am built for men who like women to look like women.”
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/12/31/11/7984166-6541947-image-a-49_1546256549478.jpg
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