A couple of years ago I had a fantastic idea for a new TV reality show, a cross between Wish You Were Here and Changing Rooms.
The premise was simplicity itself. Judith Chalmers would find the perfect holiday destination for a typical family. They’d spend two idyllic weeks in the sun before returning to discover that their house had been occupied by a gang of Romanian squatters, with hilarious consequences.
While they were away, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen had helped the immigrants break in, change the locks and trash the place. Surprise!
Maybe if Dave came home to find Number 10 occupied by Romanian squatters, it might concentrate his mindThe cameras would record the reaction of the tearful home-owners as armed police in hi-viz jackets over their body armour turned up to warn them that if they made any attempt to repossess their property, they would be arrested instantly for ‘taking the law into their own hands’.
If they protested too stridently, they could be nicked for ‘hate crime’ against a ‘vulnerable minority’.
The format had BBC Daytime written all over it. Either that, or prime-time Channel 4 in the 8pm freak show/ property porn slot.
Unfortunately, there was one fatal flaw. Real life had already beaten reality television to it.
More... Now savings could be raided across Eurozone: Finance chief warns more EU taxpayers could be targeted as Cyprus rescue set to become first of many ALEX BRUMMER: Papering over the euro cracks as Cyprus struggles 'Thieves': Russia savages EU after Cyprus gets £8.5billion bailout deal which could see richest investors losing 40% of savingsFrom across North London came reports of Romanians moving into homes while the owners were away.
In almost all of these cases, the squatters waved a ‘tenancy agreement’ that had allegedly been supplied by a broker.
The Government has now changed the law to make squatting a criminal, rather than a civil, offence. And since the new law came into force last September, guess what?
Nearly half of all the squatters prosecuted or cautioned are, that’s right, Romanian. They heavily outnumber home-grown squatters and those from other nations, including Algeria and Nepal.
Criminal offence: Nearly half of all the squatters prosecuted or cautioned are Romanian. They heavily outnumber home-grown squatters and those from other nations, including Algeria and NepalAnd if Romanians make up half of all squatters, they also seem to comprise at least 50 per cent of all the beggars in central London these days. Presumably they return to their suburban squats of an evening.
Scotland Yard says that most of the cashpoint crime in the capital is down to Romanians, too.
So, against this background, it’s worth putting into context Call Me Dave’s ‘tough on immigration’ speech yesterday, written in response to the imminent lifting of restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians moving to Britain.
Most people will be surprised to discover that there are any controls, given that half the population of Romania appears to be living here already.
Are we supposed to rejoice that arrivals from within the EU will be expected to find a job after six months or lose their right to benefits?
You could just as easily present that the other way round: everyone arriving in Britain will be allowed to live on benefits for six months before they have to look for work.
Old news: Cameron's speech has 'stable door' stamped all over it. The truth is that the political class, Tories and all, sold the pass on immigration donkeys' years agoWhen you examine the small print, the proposals are far less radical than Cameron would have us believe.
Even if the EU doesn’t decide that the new rules are illegal, you can bet your bottom euro that someone will find a way round them.
The courts have already ruled that foreign nationals selling the Big Issue on Britain’s streets are ‘self-employed’ and therefore entitled to the full panoply of benefits.
Cameron’s speech has ‘stable door’ stamped all over it. The truth is that the political class, Tories and all, sold the pass on immigration donkeys’ years ago.
Those of us who warned of the problems dismantling border controls would bring were howled down as ‘racist’.
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Belatedly it’s deemed acceptable to express concerns about mass immigration and the disastrous imposition of ‘multi-culturalism’ because these conclusions have now been drawn by ‘good, liberal people’ rather than harrumphing dinosaurs like me.
In the Daily Mail over the past few days, David Goodhart, director of the Left-wing think-tank Demos, has written an extended mea culpa over the utterly predictable consequences of Labour’s immigration policy.
To which I can only retort: where were you 15 years ago, old son?
Saturday’s paper, which carried Goodhart’s first instalment, also featured a couple of other relevant stories.
The first was a report on the woman from Togo who is going to court in an attempt to force Westminster Council to rescind its decision to make her move out of a £2.5 million mansion in Belgravia. She has been living on benefits, despite the fact her husband is a chartered accountant who runs an online fashion business with a showroom in Togo.
The second was about a convicted African war criminal currently living in a council house in Birmingham. On benefits, naturally. We can’t kick him out because it would infringe his yuman rites.
Both of these stories are pretty much par for the course. Yet still the Government will not grasp the nettle.
If the Prime Minister was serious about addressing the immigration problem, he would refuse to lower the barriers to further immigration from Eastern Europe and pull Britain out of the iniquitous human rights convention.
But he isn’t. And he won’t. Nor will any other political party with a chance of forming a government.
Maybe if Dave came home to find Number 10 occupied by Romanian squatters, it might concentrate his mind.
How the lies on global warming snowballed From The Independent, Monday, March 20, 2000, a story headlined: ‘Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.’It quoted Dr David Viner, head of the climate unit at the University of East Anglia, as saying that in future: ‘Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.’That would be the same Dr David Viner whose department was accused of suppressing the existence of evidence casting doubt on global warming. The coldest winter in 30 years: Far from being a thing of the past, snowfalls are still very much with us Thirteen years ago, the global warming gravy train was only just getting into gear. Since then we’ve lived through a decade of global cooling.Far from being a thing of the past, snowfalls are still very much with us. This has been the coldest winter in 30 years.Rather than admit they were wrong, the so-called ‘experts’ simply changed the rules. Out went ‘global warming’, in came ‘climate change’.The Government’s outgoing chief scientist was yesterday still insisting that the world is heating up. Dr David Viner was quoted in a story in The Independent back in 2000 saying: 'Children just aren't going to know what snow is' When confronted with evidence to the contrary, he tried hilariously to argue that the weather we are currently experiencing is being caused by all the carbon we released into the atmosphere 25 years ago.Yep, the snow which has Britain in its grip this week has been a quarter of a century in the making.If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Actually, the global warming, sorry ‘climate change’ head-bangers will believe anything which reinforces their zealotry.Unshakeable faith in ‘climate change’ is now the official religion of the Met Office, Whitehall, the EU, the UN and the BBC. We are all paying for this lunacy through our gas and electricity bills, which are inflated by heavy subsidies for inefficient and ludicrously expensive ‘green’ energy sources.In the name of saving the planet, our countryside and coastline have been scarred by useless wind farms. Meanwhile, India and China open another coal-fired power station every five minutes. We are closing perfectly good power stations to meet arbitrary EU carbon targets.Soon this bovine stupidity will lead to the lights going out across the country. It is industrial and economic suicide.At the weekend we came dangerously close to running out of gas. Yet Britain is sitting on a bottomless well of shale gas just waiting to be exploited. Shale has transformed America and slashed energy bills.But ministers remain in thrall to the eco-maniacs and the greedy spivs of the ‘green’ energy industry, growing fat by fleecing consumers as an instrument of government policy, which is still being dictated by the deluded, lying fanatics who told us 13 years ago: ‘Snowfalls are a thing of the past.’
Who are the real animals?Animal rights lunatics beat to death a dog belonging to a hunt master and dumped it on his drive.
The killing took place on the Herefordshire-Gloucestershire border, close to an area designated for the upcoming badger cull. This blameless animal was a family pet, not one of the hounds used by the hunt.
I have always thought these rural terrorists hated people more than they loved animals. But what kind of deranged maniac is prepared to batter a pet dog to death in the name of ‘animal rights’?
When Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev popped up on TV the other night, I did a double-take. Then it dawned on me. He’s the spitting image of UKIP’s thirsty leader, Nigel Farage. Nostrovia!
Double-take: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (left) is the spitting image of UKIP’s Nigel FarageWelcome to a special cyberspace edition of Mind How You Go. On Facebook, Debra Burt told a friend she’d like to ‘egg’ David Cameron at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s enthronement to protest about the savage cuts.
Four weeks later, two detectives turned up at her house in Ramsgate, Kent, to assess whether she posed a genuine threat to the Prime Minister. They had been scouring the internet in an attempt to track her down.The Keystroke Cops strike again.
