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!
The 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.
From 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.
And 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.
When 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’.
Now even the Left is, sort of, admitting it got it wrong, largely because it perceives electoral advantage in pulling on the hair shirt.
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.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...#ixzz2P3HdSX6Z
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