Seeing red
HOW many Home Office geniuses does it take to work out that when the weather is good and the sea is calm more illegal migrants will try to cross the Channel?
And how many French intelligence officers are needed to think that when le soleil is shining it might be a good idea to send a few extra cops down to the beach to stop them?
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That the Home Secretary thinks this new “red days report” is in any way illuminating manages to be both patronising and laughable.
We already knew the smuggling gangs — which the Government keeps pledging to smash — were cramming more human cargo on board each dangerously ill-equipped dinghy.
Instead, the useless Home Office has merely described a worsening situation.
It’s a public admission that the Government appears wholly powerless to stop the problem.
Ministers are still miles away from a viable solution.
Other than praying for bad weather to save their summer.
Sub-standard
LABOUR insists it is pursuing a “Nato first” approach to defence.
But the bizarre refusal to commit to spending three per cent of GDP to pay for a massive military upgrade cannot survive reality much longer.
Not just because Nato countries will be forced to commit next month to spending a minimum of 3.5 per cent — even as President Donald Trump is demanding FIVE per cent.
But also because the Chancellor is drawing up a programme of cuts without the all-important OBR costing extra defence spending in its sums and rules.
That means the money effectively doesn’t yet exist — making defence of the realm a fiscal fantasy for much of the next four years.
As a result, Defence Secretary John Healey was unable yesterday to say how many of the promised dozen new attack subs will actually be built — or how much each will cost.
The strategic review should have been a straightforward win-win for the new Government.
Instead, it’s already on the retreat.
Ideas drought
LIKE returning swallows every early summer, the failing water companies start imposing hosepipe bans.
Baffled and fleeced customers are right to feel outraged.
Over the past two decades, toothless regulator Ofwat has done precious little to protect them from mismanagement.
Only now that the entire system is on the brink of collapse has it woken up with measures too little, too late.
Along with the water firms’ stinking waste, Ofwat should be flushed away.
