Leveson: drinking in the 'Last Chance' saloon.......

Strewth! The Leveson Inquiry into the conduct of the Press has now been going on for more than 6 months. M’ learned friends must be raking it in.

The origins lie in the News Corp bid to acquire the balance of shares in BskyB. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary responsible, very properly referred it to Ofcom, the media regulator. But Vince got caught in a sting operation by the Daily Telegraph in which he rashly said that he had ‘declared war’ on Murdoch. Dave immediately relieved him of the decision on the grounds that he could no longer be regarded as impartial. So far so good.

Enter Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Minister.

Ofcom recommended that the bid should be referred to the Competition Commission. If Hunt had accepted this advice he would not now be in deep merde.

Instead, he decided to seek ‘undertakings in lieu’, whatever that may mean. The bid was given the go-ahead if Sky News was put under ‘independent control’ (?). My reaction at the time was ‘Stitch-up!’ With Murdoch already owning an unhealthily large chunk of the British media, TV and print, how could this possibly be allowed? This was nearly as incomprehensible as deeming ‘Dirty Desmond’, the Top Shelf millionaire, to be ‘fit and proper’ to take over Channel 5.

At this point the spaghetti hits the air-conditioning.

The Grauniad exposes phone hacking at the News of the World in connection with e murder of  a teenager, Milly Dowler. Six days later, Murdoch closed this venerable institution, the Sunday with the biggest circulation.  Three days after this News Corp withdraws its bid. Cameron sets up the Leveson Inquiry into media standards.

At this point the Law of Unexpected Consequences comes in with a bang. The Old Bill is now involved. Collars are felt. It begins to emerge that hacking is commonplace, not an aberration by the NoW.

And now the scenario changes as it is revealed that the media and politicians of all stripes are so far up each other that they might just as well be Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

We have an outbreak of anguished handwringing about the awful possibility that political parties and publishers do deals, hob-nob in country houses, scratch each other’s backs, go to fancy restaurants together. Oh, the shame of it. Who would have thought it? Politicians even had hefty retainers for writing ghosted garbage in the Sun and elsewhere.

So let’s get back to reality.

The real issue is whether Dave and his understrappers nodded through Murdoch’s BSkyB bid in return for support by News Corp. After all, Murdoch always boasted that he could determine the result of any election (remember ‘It woz the Sun wot done it!’ ?).

We are told that Hunt merely followed the legal and other advice imparted by his advisors. Nothing more. But his role was to exercise his Ministerial judgment.

Why, on his own admission, did he not do so? Why did he not disclose that he was matey with Frederic Michel, News Corp’s mouthpiece? Why did he not refer the bid to the Competition Commission as suggested by Ofcom? Was his brief from Dave to nod it through?

But we do know that at all times he has acted properly and that he is now the victim of a witch-hunt. How so? Because I read it in the Sunday Times. A Murdoch paper.

And the strong possibility that may emerge from Leveson is that the freedom of the press will be reined-in; to become more deferential for fear of losing ‘authorisation’, as in the US, or  hobbled by legal and administrative restrictions, as in France. I forecast less investigative journalism. I predict that the Red Tops will become more like the Star, our largest circulation paper which never gets it wrong because it never publishes any news whatsoever.

One thing is certain.

The media will never be the same again!

I recall that some years ago when the Red Tops were being more than usually obnoxious about Her Maj, David ‘Toe-sucker’ Mellor said ‘The Press is drinking in the last chance saloon’.

Cheers!

'So farewell, then, €.......'

There has been so much tub-thumping, breast-beating and other forms of histrionic posturing from the Lords Of the Universe about the state of the Euro-economy that reliable information has been has been as rare as rocking-horse poo.

So let’s have a look at some of the numbers.

First, the total debt (public and private) league table.

1.   Germany (yup!) with €2061 billion.

2.   France with €1591 billion.

3.   UK with €1362 billion.

4.   Italy with €800 billion.

5.   Spain with €642 billion.

6.   Greece with €329 billion (bet that surprised you).

7.   Portugal with a miserable €161 billion.

Let’s now rank them as a percentage of GDP.

1.   Greece at 165.6% (that’s more like it).

2.   Italy at 119.1%.

3.   Portugal at 106%.

4.   France at 86%.

5.   Germany at 82%.

6.   UK at 80%.

7.   Spain (eh?) at a modest 67%.

So where’s the risk?

Greece owes most to France and Germany. French banks in particular seem to be in very deep. Portugal owes most to Spain, Germany and the UK. France owes Italy a whacking €365 billion. The UK owes €321 to Germany and €325 billion to Spain. It doesn’t have premier-division exposure to Greece.

The Garlic belt is the overall winner.

What about Ireland? The latest figure available is debt at 94.9% of GDP, but it has returned to growth at 2%, and industrial growth is spectacular at 9%. Its case is entirely different from the other casualties. Its economic management was excellent up to the property melt-down. Its problems were entirely caused by membership of the Eurozone. And the villains of the piece were banks and property speculators.

Greece is another matter; corruption, incompetence, greed, paying absurd social benefits with someone else’s money (how does €30,000 a year pension for a retired garbage truck driver grab you?) and unfamiliarity with the notion of actually paying your taxes. Greece is now a zombie state, but still our masters can’t bring themselves to recognise that it’s ‘position impossible’ within the Euro.

The only exit for  the Euro-wide crisis is Eurobonds to mutualise and equalise debt across the Eurozone. How can Spain possibly compete against Germany when it is paying 6% on its bonds and Germany has just issued short-term paper at 0%? But there is a ‘no entry’ sign here.

So what’s the hold-up? The key-holder is Germany and it will not co-operate; Frau Merckel would get an early bath from the voters if she agreed that German pensioners should take a cut to fund someone else’s. And cannot because, so we’re led to believe, it would be unconstitutional.

It stick out like a greyhound’s gonads that the game is up for the Euro; it was based on a lie and a gross deceit and all the chooks are coming home to roost at the same time.

Obama vs. The Pope.....

Well, O has seriously annoyed the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of his promise not to do so, he has allowed his health bill (Obama Care) to stand without amending the bit about compelling organizations to provide for abortions, sterilization and contraceptives.

The RCC Bishops stealthily met and simultaneously launched 40 odd lawsuits from their various hospitals, universities and diocese against the government on the grounds of religious freedom. The move stirred up a great deal of controversy. Even some bishops were not pleased with suits, but the sharp end of the stick will certainly draw O blood.

This is an historic event. I cannot recall the RCC ever before challenging the US government in this manner. And in the process of doing so, the church has attracted some allies among conservatives and protestants. Oddly, most Americans practice some form of birth control regardless of their religious affiliation.

The Catholics among them are not so annoyed with what O has done, but the manner in which he did it. He challenged the RCC and that, more than anything else, will cost him Catholic votes. Nor was there any need for O to do this as there are several ways to avoid institutions of conscience being obliged by law to provide access to practices that violate their faith.

As the race between O and R is close, O has every reason to tread lightly. Indeed, he is known for treading lightly to the point of emptiness on major issues. Now, all of a sudden, he pulls this needless stunt. It is as if his arrogance has taken possession of his senses. It would not surprise me if R chose an Hispanic Catholic as a running mate as this would attract a large number of voters to his camp.

A person like Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida of Cuban heritage, has been seriously mentioned for the VP job. Such an appointment would not be without other issues. For one, the Cubans do not speak for the Hispanics  and his nomination may offend Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and other Latinos. 

On the other hand, the American public in general is not yet ready for an Hispanic president and would therefore balk at one in the VP spot. Also, Marco has a bright political future and he could well destroy it should he accept the VP job. Being VP means subservience to the president on all matters and as a result makes the job holder look inferior, powerless and uninformed.

This is one area in which the American political system could use a dramatic overhaul.

Rant........!

A thought has been exercising my mind. Which badly needs it.

Our leaders have had the benefit of the best education that money can buy. They have MENSA IQs.

So why are they so utterly, incredibly, irremediably, incurably ******g stupid?

A few horribly depressing examples.

I was working in Jamaica in the lead-up to Gulf2. I assured my cronies that it was all a game of bluff. No way would the West make war on Saddam. His regime was the only non-Islamic one in the Middle East. Saddam was opposed to everything  that  Al Qaeda stood for. A war would leave anarchy and a power vacuum in its wake.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was not a matter of Dubya wanting revenge and doing better than his dad. Other countries without  even that motivation went along with it.

We have a lot of breast beating about forced marriage and honour killings following a particularly vile murder of a 17-year old girl. The simple answer is not to recognise marriages abroad for immigration purposes. Just don’t give visas to  spouses who would not otherwise qualify. Simple, innit?

Why are we conducting the longest war since Napoleon, in Afghanistan, to combat Al Qaeda when they gapped it years ago?

Why are we increasing foreign aid by 37% when we can’t pay our own bills?

We have the Masters of the Universe telling us that a Greek default on its debts will bring the end of civilisation as we know it to an end in the biggest collapse since the Fall of the Roman Empire. It won’t.

Argentina and Russia both defaulted, with economies far larger than the relatively tiny economy of Greece. When (not if) Greece leaves the Euro, the markets will set their own value on the drachma which will cure the root of the problem, lack of competitiveness. Agricultural products and tourism will be priced at their proper cost, not the inflated costs imposed by German supply-side economics. Greece should bounce back in a few years whilst the North enjoys cheaper holidays (of which they have many).

But ‘they’ are telling us that what is needed is ‘more Europe’, a fiscal and political union. It is beyond peradventure that (as I have written before) the whole euro thingy was a gross deceit, designed to fail so that ‘they’ could create a federal Europe - the Fourth Reich. Which planet are they on?

However, it’s not all bad for all of us. Brussels is giving itself a €2.4 billion pay rise and €1.4 increase in pensions and allowances.

And another thing.

Why all the kerfuffle over phone hacking? Everybody thought it a bit of a giggle when the mobiles of Prince Chuck and his squeeze were hacked all those years ago. Why is it now a matter of national importance, far more so than mere trivia like the state of the economy, now that politicians are involved?

And there’s the experts.

A few weeks back, they told us that statins were worse than useless because they were ineffective but had bad side effects.

Today they are telling us that not only do they reduce the risk of circulatory diseases but also reduce prostate cancer by 57% (always beware of those precise percentages).

We have the ONS telling us that we are in a double-dip recession at a time when we have just achieved our first balance of payments for motors for donkeys years i.e. the value of exports exceeding the value of imports;  and the Institute of Purchasing Managers saying that we are on the up in both building and manufacturing.

But we know that statisticians will torture the figures so that they will tell you anything you want.

We have economists daily telling us conflicting stories about how bad things are and why (ask  2 economists a question and you will get 3 different answers).

And finally……

It must be true……….I read it in the papers

No less an authority than The Grauniad tells us that of the 52 suspects charged in the Rochdale sex abuse case, 43.16 were Pakistani. Perhaps one just had a Pakistani leg.

How about this as a slogan from Save the Children.

‘No child born to die!’

I thought they all were, but what do I know?

'OWZAT?'

We know that summer is nearly here, despite the weather telling us otherwise. It’s cricket, lovely cricket.

Of course, this is completely incomprehensible to Americans. The notion of a game that can last 5 days without a winner strikes them as totally bizarre.  However, it was precisely summed up when an old boy, asked by a Yank what kind of game this was,  replied ‘Game? It’s not a game. It’s a way of life!’

The serious point is that it embodies certain behavioural values. Sportsmanship; fair play; playing in preference to winning (we are very good at that bit); teamwork but individual effort, etc.

Much of cricket argot has entered our everyday speech. ‘ He bowled me a googly’ (fooled me); ‘play the game’ (stick to the rules and spirit); ‘it’s not cricket’ (unfair, deceitful); ‘he bowled me a fast ball’ (difficult question or riposte).

We also have ‘sledging’, making some rude comment just as the batsman is about to play, with the intention of putting him off. A few examples.

Aussie bowler to English batsman: ‘Hi, Beefy, how’s your missus and my kids?’; ‘Hi Warnie, the missus is fine but the kids are retarded!’, a fine example of repartee. Warnie never said another word throughout the game.

The batsman hit an easy catch but it went between the fielder’s legs. ‘Sorry, Fred’ said the fielder to the bowler ‘ I should have kept my legs closed’. ‘Aye’ said Fred ‘And so should’ve thy mother!’.

And possibly the all-time classic; bowler to batsman, a man of full habit: ‘Why are you so fat?’ Batsman: ‘Because every time I shag you wife she gives me a biscuit!.

A nice one from the earlier days. The Duke of Norfolk has his own cricket ground and played regularly. The bowler appealed that the Duke was caught behind the wicket. The umpire was the butler, Meadows. His decision was a credit to his craft; ‘His Grace is not quite out’ he decided.

The commentators add to the wit - ‘Playing like that he was lucky to get nought’; ‘My granny could’ve caught that in her pinny’; ‘ My granny could’ve hit that with a toothbrush’, and about a player, notoriously obese,  who missed a catch ‘He’d have caught it if it was a cheese roll’.

Probably the most famous incident was when the commentators, Brian Johnson (the daddy of them all) and Jonathan Agnew corpsed. The batsman, Botham, tried to play back and came dangerously close to stepping on his wicket. He unsuccessfully tried to lift his leg over the wicket. Johnners commented ‘Oh dear, Botham can’t get his leg over!’ Aggers started to giggle. Johnners pleaded ‘Oh, do please stop it, Aggers!’ and then had a fit himself. Then it seemed that the whole nation started to giggle. Drivers on motorways listening to the commentary had to pull over on to the hard shoulder in semi-hysterics.

A couple of days later the BBC got a solicitor’s letter which said ‘Our client was at the top of a step ladder during Test Match special, painting the dining room ceiling. The effect of your commentary was that he fell off the ladder on top of his wife. The paint pot fell on the carpet which was ruined. The ladder broke the gold-fish tank, scattering gold-fish over the carpet.

Unless our client receives by way of damages a recording of the commentary within 7 days we are instructed to commence proceedings’.  The BBC duly obliged. You can still hear it on You Tube.

And the bloopers.

‘Welcome to Worcester where you have just missed Richards hitting one of D’Oliveira’s balls clean out of the ground’

‘There’s Harvey standing at leg slip with his legs apart waiting for a tickle’.

‘Welcome to the Oval where the bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey’.

‘Fine ball, that. It’s remarkable how he can whip it out just before tea’.

Then we have the Barmy Army who follow the English team around the world, to the gratification of bar-owners wherever they go. A portly player is likely to get a chant of ‘Who ate all the pies, who ate all the pies, ee-aye-addio, who ate all the pies?’

I was at an England v Australia game a few years ago. The Aussies had a bowler who looked like a gypsy, with long, dank black curly hair and a swarthy complexion. Every time he came on to bowl he was greeted with a chorus of the old song ‘Where’s your caravan?’

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

O goes OTT.....

O is going over the top. He is leaning more and more left every day and what's more bizarre he is treating the Presidency like his own personal fiefdom and in the process is attempting to create a public image of himself as the best president America ever had. Trouble is, he has to rewrite history in order to promote the intended image and many are taking umbrage.

O insists on penalizing the rich to make the poor wealthy. This policy is a hallmark of his national budgets and has been a major sticking point with the opposition in the House of Representatives. As they have the power of the purse and are controlled by Republicans, the budget's future looks glum.

But O carries on insisting that we need to spend more to stimulate the economy and we need to finance this spending by taxing the rich. In fairness, he has agreed to make some cuts, but at a rate which may be too little too late.

O has a bevy of economists who swear by his Keynesian economic theories. I find them rather compelling myself, but do not claim to have mastered the subject. A big problem with O's theory is to him, spending has been a matter of reinforcing the welfare state. Giving money away is a far cry from stimulating the economy.

While I may see some logic in Keynes, I see none in perpetuating the well-being of jobless and idle citizens who are content to accept welfare rather than enter into gainful employment. One problem is that the type of employment they are fit for is not gainful when compared to what they get from welfare.

The drinking man's diet......

I continue to ascribe my sylph-like figure to the drinking man’s diet that I designed a year or so back.

A typical day’s consumption would be a kipper for breakfast (must have one oily fish a week, at least), a papaya for lunch, one only pint of beer at The Dog & Pessary at beer o’clock,  red wine at wine o’clock (only one bottle, mind), beef casserole in beer for dinner (and possibly a modest fruit salad marinated in Madeira), ending with a couple of gold watches as a night cap. Another favourite is a pate of chicken liver, olive oil (no butter),garlic, and either a splash of brandy or Appleton’s rum.

Of course, when I get the results of my annual blood-test next week , the Quack will once more tut-tut about my liver function being less than perfect. There’s nothing to be done about it. It is a side effect of my medication for gout.

As a result of this abstemiousness, I have lost 30 lbs. and have maintained  my weight at a lithe 212 lbs. for over a year, so I can now take my weight on my elbows once more.

Should I copyright this and make a fortune like Dr Atkins?

Warning: when using this diet do not drive or operate machinery. May cause drowsiness.

Immigration: trying to make sense of it all....

Whether politicians like it or not,  immigration is now well up the political agenda.

Let’s try and make sense of it all, because there sure is a lot of nonsense about.

Britain is a creature of immigration

In time out of mind people have come to these shores from somewhere else, perhaps even when there was  a land bridge with the European mainland.

In recorded history we have had a constant succession of intruders, mostly with malice aforethought; the Romans who civilised us; the Angles, Saxons, Danes, Jutes, Norsemen over 1000 years, and then the Normans who tried a bit of ethnic cleansing and scorched earth, destroyed the superior civilisation of the English, and tried but failed to turn us into French. We turned them into English instead.

The French have been trying a repeat process for centuries, and still are.

We had the first influx of Jews and then expelled them.

Due to the perfidiousness of the French in abrogating the Treaty of Nantes and their relentless persecution of Protestants, we began to receive a huge influx of Huguenots after Charles II granted them ‘denizenship’. They were as welcome as the flowers in spring. They represented all that was best in craftsmanship and enterprise. The English churches raised money to relieve their poverty. House-to-house collections raised £40,000, millions in today’s money

They were an incalculable asset to England. They brought a whole raft of new skills and technologies.

They brought new wool-dying techniques to Barnstaple that would make it famous. They became tapestry weavers, spinners, woodcarvers, and calico workers. They created whole new industries – leatherwork, fans, girdles, needles, soap, vinegar, and revolutionised the silk industry. They transformed the manufacture of paper. From a zero start, they created 200 paper mills; they produced all the bank-notepaper for the new Bank of England, and they started the first newspaper press. . Several became the first directors of the Bank of England. Their contribution to the British economy was enormous, but this early example of off-shoring was disastrous for the French

Is estimated that 7%% of us have Huguenot blood.

The trend continued unabated during the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. We acquired people of genius, like Brunel (the father of Isambard Kingdom, the engineer). He was the first to devise mass production and the production line for the manufacture of pulley blocks at the naval workshops in Portsmouth, the largest factory in the world in Nelson’s time.

We became home to Herschel, the mathematician and astronomer of genius (his sister became the first woman to become a Fellow of the Royal Society in the early 19^th Century).

And many others.

After Cromwell gave qualified permission for the Jews to return we had the next  of many influxes, first Sephardi and then Ashkenazi as a result of pogroms all over Europe. There was another wave in the late 19^th C and it is ironic to read in the contemporary press the kind of shrill comments that we hear now about the dirty, diseased, ignorant, non-English speaking foreigners coming here to inflict Lord knows what on the indigenous. What is remarkable is the within a very short space of time they had integrated so unobtrusively that  their presence went generally unremarked upon. And they certainly produced some big hitters – Ricardo, the Sassoons, the Rothschilds and so on. They also helped finance the upper classes by their daughters marrying into aristocratic families.

The last big arrival of Jews was the Nazi ethnic cleansing which over the years has produced to this day a disproportionately high number of top politicians.

At the end of WW2, we took in DPs (displaced persons for all over Europe), large numbers of Italians, and then – and this is where the plot changes – Caribbeans.

The latter were welcomed especially into the NHS and transport services where there was a serious manpower shortage, but this was the point at which race and culture became serious issues.

I now put my head into the lion’s den by reflecting on which groups of immigrants make a positive contribution to contemporary Britain.

A good place to start perhaps is educational achievement

From memory, the league table goes something like this.

1.   Chinese and SE Asians. It is reported that in schools having a large minority of Chinese kids they raise the standards of the whole school on the basis that ‘a rising tide floats all boats’.

2.   Indians. Both groups seem to have an astonishing capacity for mathematics.

3.   White English and Caribbeans equal. I am not quite sure what to make of this. Are the Caribbean getting better or the English getting worse?

4.   Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The only common feature between them is religion. Is Islam a fetter on learning?  And if so, how come it doesn’t apply to Ismaili Muslims?

My purely empirical impression, not backed up by evidence, is that Group 1 are hard-working, mostly law  abiding (Chinese crime seems to occur within the Chinese community from what I have read) and keep themselves to themselves.

Indians are ambitious, middle class, integrate (and inter-marry) more or less effortlessly into the native population. Their contribution to the UK economy is massive. (And to our first-class cricket teams!).

And then there’s the Europeans. Under current EU rules we can’t do anything about migration from the EU, but how valid are the complaints about Polish plumbers and the rest?

So where did it all go tits-up?

Originally throughout our history immigration has been driven by the economic imperative.

Then somewhere in the late 20^th Century, it was hi-jacked by the race relations industry, the Guardianistas, the bleeding hearts and in later years by NuLab determined to open the floodgates and create a client electorate.

We now have a ‘benefits’ imperative that encourages people to come here because a month of state benefits will be more than annual earnings where they come from.

So it would seem that a solution is to ensure a ‘benefits’ regime in which none are paid until immigrants have contributed to the national pot for a period of years

And immigration policy should embrace a total exclusion on people who come from countries that have no cultural, historic, linguistic or other ties to the UK, and who have little to contribute to the national economy. I include Somalis, Yemenis, Ethiopians, and others of that ilk. Why are they here?

But with the little LibDem tail wagging the big Tory dog, don’t hold your breath that anything will change soon.

Libel: boring but important.......

Well, kiss me neck; Dave is actually going to keep a promise – the one about reforming the libel laws. I missed it in the DT, but then it wasn’t very prominent.

The proposals will be important to bloggers.

Its main but not only purpose is to put an end to the abuse of ‘libel tourism’ whereby wealthy foreigners, mainly American, sue in the English courts to silence their critics. Often the connection with England is tenuous to say the least, such as publication on a Ukrainian web-site that secured only 6 readers in England. I find this particularly offensive because it is not designed to protect the reputation of the plaintiff but to intimidate the defendant into silence by threat of legal action that the plaintiff can  afford and the defendant cannot.

The intention is to make cases fairer, simpler and cheaper. The legal procedures will be speeded up; new rules will require the areas of dispute to be narrowed before trial; and cases will be heard by a judge without a jury.

One big change is that the plaintiff must show serious harm to his reputation.

A second is that qualified privilege will be extended. This has always been a tricky defence, especially the burden of showing that the matter complained of was in the public interest, something quite different form ‘interesting to the public’.

In its place comes a defence of ‘honest opinion’. This will be especially helpful in peer-reviewed academic journals, so that scientists and other professionals can do their work without fear of an expensive law suit.

There will also be a definition of ‘responsible journalism’ (no easy task I guess!).

The definition will cover the seriousness of the allegation made, fact-checking, whether comment had been sought, the tone of the article and the circumstances of publication.

From our blogging perspective, an important feature is that greater protection will be given to ‘secondary’ publishers, such as booksellers and to internet service providers and web-sites on which other people write the content.

Is this tantamount to an indemnity for blogging sites, leaving the legal liability with the blogger alone?

We shall have to await the text of the bill. There may well be significant amendments arising from Leveson (apropos which we have seen no reference to the disgusting outing of the blogger ,nightjar, by the Times through illegal hacking).

But it does seem as if Mr Justice Eady, the Judge Jeffreys of the defamation court, will be able to spend more time with his pension.

Meanwhile, take care out there!

Immigration controls? No problem!

From being a topic that no politician wanted to discuss ever since Enoch’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech (which he never said) immigration is now well up the political agenda, like it or not.

So if I were newly-appointed Commissar of Immigration here are my rules:

·        Illegals to be returned immediately by immigration officials at the port of entry to the country from which they departed for the UK. That will stop the French exporting them to us from Sangatte.

·        No asylum seekers allowed in who have arrived in the UK from a friendly country.

·        Asylum seekers to be electronically tagged.

·        Those with student visas to report to a named police station every week.

·        Those given deportation orders to be made to leave the UK forthwith. Where they go is their business, but not at our expense. That will get round the human rights fiasco.

·        Appeals against immigration decisions only to be made from outside the UK. That will stop them abusing the judicial process.

·        No legal aid to be payable for immigration cases.

·        No state benefit to be paid to immigrants until they have paid 5 years NI contributions.

·        ‘Dependents’ to include only one wife and children of the marriage. That will stop the extended families abusing the privilege.

·        Application for work-permits only to be made from outside the UK. That will stop people with tourist visas from bucking the system.

·        Work permits to be granted on the basis of needed skills, not salary level.

·        Travel to ‘terrorist’ countries to require an exit visa. That will help to identify those who go to Pakistan for a couple of weeks further education in bomb-making. A fresh entry visa would then be needed for non-UK passport holders.

·        Conviction of an imprisonable offence  to lead to automatic deportation on expiry of sentence.

Er………that’s it!

Gissa job, Dave.