UNEMPLOYMENT may be rising as job opportunities decrease – but there is one position in the UK where you can be handed more than the average yearly wage for actually breaking the law.
And it is our government that is signing the cheques for these handouts — with taxpayers’ cash.
It sounds far-fetched doesn’t it?
But shockingly this preposterous scenario is the latest desperate scheme from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
She wants to pay illegal immigrants who are squatting in our country up to £10,000 a head to leave the UK within seven days — that’s up to £40,000 per family because the kids get a bung, too.
If they don’t accept, they will be forcibly removed.
Cha-ching! Who says crime doesn’t pay?
It is like rubbing salt in the wound of every person who is actually trying to earn that above-average wage through hard work.
It is like a slap in the face for every hard-working taxpayer in this country.
Meanwhile, the face of every future potential illegal immigrant who fancies a pay-day for being a squatter in our country will light up.
This is being described as a trial scheme and so far 150 families with no right to be in the UK, but living in taxpayer-funded accommodation, have been told they are eligible for the windfall.
Mahmood is somehow trying to pass this off as a MONEY-SAVING exercise because housing a family of three in asylum accommodation costs up to £158,000 per year and these families, according to Home Office estimates, are costing us £20million.
That’s ridiculous.
How insane that it somehow works out cheaper to give them that £40,000 handout than keep them here for a year.
Surely there is a better way around this.
These are people who have failed in their bid to be here. They certainly don’t deserve a penny from us.
They are very different from genuine asylum seekers fleeing persecution. That’s an entirely different matter.
Boat smugglers will be rubbing hands with glee
We shouldn’t be handing out our cash to criminals as though it’s meaningless Monopoly money.
It really brings a new meaning to gaming the system.
After these failed asylum-seekers get their windfall, they will head home and spread the word.
What a message to return with from across the Channel: “Get yourself to the soft-touch UK — there’s 40 big ones in it for you.”
You can just imagine the enthusiastic uptake.
And the boat smugglers will be rubbing their hands with glee, too.
They will benefit from those who fancy a roll of the dice so they can pass.
Go and collect their prize pot as well.
This kind of cash really is like winning the Lottery to them.
It will encourage more chancers and a terrifying cycle of law-breaking.
Which is madness when Mahmood promised just a few days ago to get tough to save taxpayers’ money.
If she thinks this new scheme is a crackdown, she’s crackers.
Chloe doll is an own goal for Barbie
POOR Chloe Kelly. She has been transformed into a Barbie billed as a one-of-a-kind doll. It’s supposed to look like her wearing the England kit.
Chloe hopes that it will encourage young girls to play with dolls and kick a ball.
Such a great sentiment. The problem is, it doesn’t look anything like her.
Barbie designers: if you’re going to turn an England hero into a doll then at least try to make it look like her.
It is just the latest balls-up in a long line of supposed lookalikes from the dolls’ makers Mattel.
BRIT’S IN NEED OF HELP
WITHIN hours of Britney Spears getting arrested for drink-driving, after allegedly swerving her BMW on the freeway and being involved in an hour-long pursuit, one of her close friends said this was “out of character”.
Sadly, anybody who has watched her tragic Instagram videos knows it probably wasn’t.
Her former personal assistant and longtime pal Sean Phillips said Britney had given him the green light to talk on her behalf and that she needed to “get out of LA” and away from the “people she is currently associating with”.
What she needs is rehab, support and medication.
Sean tried to describe the driving incident as a “mistake,” adding: “We all make mistakes.”
We do. But when you are putting your life and those of others at risk it’s more than an “oops . . . I did it again” scenario.
You have to wonder if that conservatorship really was as cruel as we thought it was.
YOU’VE got to applaud Baftas host Alan Cumming for coming out and slating the BBC after, as he calls it, a “trauma-triggering s**tshow”.
I wonder whether his agent will get a call from the Beeb for next year’s gig?
DRAMA QUEEN
TALKING of calls – the most astonishing one I’ve had in a while came this week from a talent agent, who asked if I would like to interview their “celebrity influencer” about the devastation in her life.
The poor little lamb was due to go on holiday to Dubai with her kids but her trip had (shock, horror) been cancelled.
She wanted to discuss her plight, sadness and trauma . . . for a fee.
I checked my diary and, while not quite April 1, this definitely sounded like a joke to me.
MAKE-UP mogul Bobbi Brown says she looks good and keeps fit at 68 because she parks her car farther away when running an errand, so she has to walk longer.
Unlike me, who will drive around the car park in Tesco for 30 minutes to park as close to the door as possible – then grumble that I need to find time to go to the gym.
MUM’S LIFE OF GRIEF
WHEN the news of Ian Huntley’s death broke, my thoughts immediately turned to the parents of his young victims.
This is a day those families must have been waiting for, yet it can never soften the unbearable pain they must live with every single moment.
But I also thought about Huntley’s mother and daughter, two women whose biological links must cause them horrendous inner turmoil.
His daughter never met him so for her, perhaps, it is easier to deal with.
But Lynda gave birth to that monster. That thought must be excruciating.
When the killer was arrested in 2002 she was in “shock,” but bravely admitted part of her still wanted to hug him because he was still “my son”.
What a gut-wrenching thought.
She and her family gave evidence to the police that helped convict him for the murders of ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Lynda said afterwards that “he’s my baby boy and I love him but he deserves to be punished.
“I wish there was an electric chair in this country that they could put him in and that would be the end of it.”
Lynda knew right from wrong. But she was still his mum, so the 71-year-old visited him before he took his last breath.
Now she will remember him as a baby boy, before he turned evil. How heartbreaking.
She’s endured decades of anguish. Huntley gave her a life sentence, too.
No mother will ever recover from producing a man like this, but I hope she finally gets some peace now he’s gone.
WISE UP , GALS
SOMETIMES I’m quite pleased that I am knocking on. A couple of decades ago, we went to the pub, drank, flirted and arranged a date. If that date didn’t treat you with respect, they got dumped.
How things have changed.
New figures show a third of Gen Z fellas think a wife should “obey” her husband. It’s like being back in the Dark Ages. And a quarter don’t think women should be too independent. What jumped-up idiots.
But another survey shows party-pooping Gen Z has finally discovered booze.
So, on International Women’s Day, younger ladies, why not tell an insulting partner to get stuffed, then hit the pub, have a drink and flirt with an older fella?
If they want to behave in an old- fashioned way, so can you.
