Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I don't often watch BBC news but I did this evening - I was really annoyed at the decision to use a clip of a white tourist to Jamaica talking about the devastation which seems an insane editorial decision given the number people in Britain with Jamaican family and the number of Brits in Jamaica.

But was really struck on the immigration/crime stories. There were three.

One was the Ethiopian sex offender who was accidentally released. He was caught again and deported today. He was then given £500. There is a payment scheme if people convicted of a crime accept their deportation "at the earliest possible opportunity". But this wasn't part of it - apparently it was just purely discretionary (in the power of the immigration officials) as he was threatening to make another asylum claim and to challenge his deportation legally. Obviously that would mean he couldn't use the flight today - they would have needed to detain him, legal costs and costs of another flight etc. So they made the decision that this was the cheaper and quicker option - which I get and makes sense. But it does seem a bit mad, I think especially for ordinary people looking in.

Other two stories were murders.

First was a Somali mirant who'd travelled through four countries and committed low level crimes in all of them. He got to the UK on a small boat and after his asylum claim was rejected he got drunk and phoned a helpline. He told them he was going to kill himself or someone else. Then he went into the local bank and stabbed the man at the back of the queue in the heart - in all it took about 20 seconds. The man who died was a local businessman and friend of the mayor of Derby, both British Asians, and the mayor's done a statement saying that the killer shouldn't have been in the country in the first place, once he got here and was refused the right to stay he should have been removed - and if that had happened his friend would still be alive.

Other one was a really horrendous stabbing in West London, one man was killed while walking his dog. The alleged attacker has also been charged with attempted murder of another man and a 14 year old boy. It sounds like the attacker knew the two people who were attempted to be murdered but not the man who was actually killed. I think footage of this attack has been circulating on social media. Again the attacker was also an asylum seeker this time from Afghanistan who had arrived via small boats.

I get there's not some deep connection here but if you're just normal every day people, not deeply interested or following politics those were the main stories on the ten o'clock news (plus the Chancellor appears to have been renting her family home unlawfully). It's easy to see how people have the sense of the system being broken and why small boats matter. And I don't think ths is the BBC trawling for asylum related crimes (also all picked up by the Guardian - we're not talking about the tabloids here).