ONE staggering, dismal statistic lays bare the scale of the small boats scandal.
Just three per cent of all those who have landed here illegally since 2018 have been deported. Three.
Most of those were from Albania, with whom we have a returns deal.
But the bulk now come from Afghanistan and Iran.
It is obviously neither sensible nor desirable to think we should strike such a bargain with the appalling Taliban or the West-hating mullahs of Tehran.
Over six years some 120,000 and counting have sailed across the Channel and begun new lives in Britain.
And, with our sole deterrent now axed, we remain wide open until Home Secretary Yvette Cooper “smashes the trafficking gangs” as she advertises.
The annual cost to taxpayers? About £4billion.
At least legal immigration is falling from its record-shattering highs, thanks to belated Tory curbs.
But they can forget getting the credit for that.
They lost control of it in the first place.
What boggles the mind is that anyone would now even consider pushing the numbers back up.
Brussels wants our new pro-EU Government to reinstate free movement for under-30s.
Some on the Left would love that, but Ministers have commendably refused.
The numbers are unsustainable already.
NOT content with securing massive pay rises for the future, grasping unions now want yet more for the PAST.
The junior doctors’ Marxist-run BMA started this crazy “wage restoration” ball rolling under the Tories — only to run into a brick wall. Quite rightly.
It is absurd to believe young medics or any workforce should receive inflated and inflationary awards because their salaries were hit by the financial crisis of 2008, then austerity, Covid and war.
Most of us accept recessions and global calamities as unfortunate twists of fate, not reversals which taxpayers must compensate them for.
Private sector workers rolled with the punches. Not the TUC and its hard-left members, emboldened by Aslef and the BMA’s recent successful “negotiations”.
They intend to formally push for the rewriting of their pay history.
Keir Starmer must say No — or further fuel a public sector wage spiral destroying all hope of turbo-charging growth.
IS a window cleaner’s family heirloom an original 1595 portrait of Shakespeare?
It’s Bard to tell. But as likenesses go we’ve seen verse.
Owner Steven Wadlow knows all that glisters is not gold. But there’s still a chance, if he ever sold it, that he could come into a truly jaw-dropping fortune.
Is it to be, or not to be? That is the question.
