Compare and contrast. A British family, who have saved all year for a holiday after long months of house arrest and general dreariness, have to interrupt their break in Portugal to go home, on the stern orders of the Government in London.
Before them lie hours of bureaucracy, unpleasant and ruinously expensive nasal swabs, long forms to fill in, shuffling queues, more nasal swabs, more queues, and then days of being snooped on at home.
You’ll know that I think this is ridiculous and useless. But even if you disagree with me, you must see that it is profoundly unfair, and a pretence of security.
It reminds me of the water companies which sternly tell us not to waste water in our homes while leaving a thousand ruptured mains gushing millions of gallons of the precious fluid back into the earth.
For here come the illegal migrants, in ever-growing numbers, who have chucked away their passports and paid a gangster to get them across the Channel.
Into the boats they climb, until they are ‘rescued’ from their self-imposed plight by an expensive cutter paid for by your taxes and mine, and ferried to a British port where, after a few weeks of processing, they are almost invariably allowed to remain and can vanish. In most cases, we will have very little idea of who they really are.
Someone will say at this point ‘What about the plight of the poor refugee?’ or alternatively that it is selfish of us British even to take holidays on sunny beaches while millions endure poverty in the Third World.
