Several years ago, the UK’s own energy regulator estimated that thousands of British old-aged pensioners died every year because they had to choose between food or heating. Thirteen million Britons are classed as living in poverty. There are nearly half a million homeless. Nearly four million British children are going hungry every day. If they get sick, they face waiting either 10 days to see a GP or hours-long queues in A&E.
It must be sorely tempting, for a native Briton, to take a ferry across to Calais, jump on a rubber dinghy, sneak back to Dover and claim ‘asylum’. After all, should you survive the trip without being murdered or raped by the Middle-Eastern and African men you’re sharing the trip with, the life of Riley awaits.
Just ask Reform UK councillor Peter Harris, whose mind was duly boggled by the luxurious holiday camp where illegal immigrants enjoy a lifestyle beyond anything he would have experienced as a lad at Butlins.
Welcome to Holiday Camp UK. For the 800 guests enjoying the luxury sports facilities, this place is unbeatable.
As I saw for myself this week on a visit to the camp in Wethersfield, deep in the Essex countryside, residents want for practically nothing. There’s a fully equipped gymnasium, a fitness room, a full-sized football pitch and a substantial indoor sports hall with all the equipment for five-a-side soccer, basketball and cricket – all free.
For those who want to kick back and take it easy, there are recreation rooms with televisions and pool tables, and a snack bar.
Mobile phones are provided for all, with generous allowances for free calls.
The main restaurant, serving two dining halls, provides three meals a day with a wide choice of meals, including vegetarian options.
And, oddly enough, it’s all halal. Just as oddly enough, the ‘multi-faith’ prayer rooms are stacked with Korans and prayer mats. Bible or crosses are conspicuously absent.
Even all that free luxury is not quite luxurious enough: the British taxpayer is also forced to stump up a tenner a week for any out-of-pocket expenses like, I don’t know, knives, porn or date-rape drugs.
Seventeen minibuses, three times a day, seven days a week, Christmas Day included, ferry the guests into Braintree, Chelmsford and Colchester. For the campers, the tariff is zero. For Britain, the National Audit Office has already pencilled £15.3 billion over 10 years for asylum accommodation contracts.
Meanwhile, back at the holiday camp, the suggestion boxes do not overflow with requests for English lessons or news of the war-torn relatives.
What irks them most, apparently, is the lack of a swimming pool.
When Harris was grudgingly permitted to tour the facility his ratepayers are helping finance (whether they want to or not), he was forbidden from taking photos or talking to the holidaymakers, which would have been difficult, anyway, as most of them were off jaunting around the local towns.
Towns where residents have quickly learned to safely avoid the roving packs of Third Worlders by shopping at dawn, before the influx.
As if dumping thousands of rootless fighting-age males, whose names may not be the ones they gave officials when they arrived (DNA is not taken: it might upset their human rights), isn’t bad enough, the UK government is also training them to fight. Again, at the taxpayers’ expense.
The gym was full, with most training with weights. Several of them were obviously dedicated bodybuilders. One man, we were told, was a mixed martial arts athlete and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) contender, an expert in kickboxing, wrestling and jiu jitsu […]
Those bodybuilders in the gym could easily be part of an army sent here piecemeal by an enemy state such as Iran. And we are paying for their training. If you wanted to help terrorists come into the country unknown and unregistered with no checks on them, I can’t think of a better system.
The two-day induction is the comic masterpiece. Not compulsory, but well attended, because compliance looks good on an application. Interpreters explain how men should treat women and children: do not stare; do not sexually assault them.
Incredibly, it is considered necessary to explain to thousands of men on arrival in Britain that rape is unacceptable.
A two-day PowerPoint against a lifetime of custom. The government expects Britons to find this reassuring.
The on-site NHS clinic treats active tuberculosis, latent TB in up to one in five, scabies and mental health in about a tenth.
How many Essex people are sitting by the telephone at 8am desperately trying to get through to their own GP, while these men have access to medics and nurses?
Wethersfield has dormitories, kitchens, a medical centre, pitches and acres of tarmac that once served the RAF. Essex is hunting for a site for a Veterans Village. The answer is sitting behind the same fence, occupied by men who needed a pamphlet to learn that rape is frowned upon.
The old, the hungry and the homeless of Britain might be forgiven for wondering whether the dinghy is the only rational housing policy left.
