he Daily Mail piece I reproduce here caught my eye.
ASYLUM SEEKERS WILL COVER LONDON BY 2005
The Government suffered a further blow last night as shocking new evidence emerged of previously unsuspected bogus asylum seekers hiding out in London. The sheer number of illegal immigrants is such that it could leave the capital literally swamped within eighteen months.
Mail reporters yesterday were able to visit one previously unknown location in central London where an asylum seeker, known as “David”, has set up an extraordinary rent-free home. There, in full view of thousands of commuters crossing the Thames, this “conman” (© Daily Mail 2003) has built his very own glass penthouse with stunning panoramic views of the river.
Serious questions will be asked in Parliament as to just how this immigrant from the USA - a country not acknowledged by the Foreign Office’s as one where its citizens may suffer persecution - managed to bend our lax benefits system so as to gain a prime piece of docklands location. Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare was said to be shocked, adding “I think I can see him from my window”.
Even worse, the riverside squatter is being allowed to live in the centre of Europe’s largest city without even the most basic form of sanitation. His drinking water comes from a nearby water tower by means of a simple pipe, and his foul waste drops into the Thames itself. Only centuries ago the city was decimated by cholera and typhoid. Now the unmanageable asylum problem threatens an epidemic of similar proportions. And should the worst happen, it would threaten every man, woman and child living in a mortgaged property in the Greater London area not only with death, but with a resulting catastrophic drop in property prices.
Questions have been asked as to what “David” is doing here. His response to being challenged illustrates just what the overburdened and powerless immigration authorities are faced with. “David” has gone on hunger strike - he claims that he will not eat for 44 days and 44 nights, if that’s what it takes. Faced with such do-or-die tactics, Ken Livingstone, David Blunkett and Tony Blair have chosen simply to sit on their hands. If they hope that the problem will go away, they are mistaken.
The raw statistics raise a prospect so chilling that it seems, on the face of it, incredible. Two weeks ago, the number of foreigners living in glass boxes by the Thames was estimated at zero. Today there is one, making for what mathematicians call an “infinite” percentage increase in numbers. If this rate is sustained, by Christmas the whole of the length of the Thames from Greenwich to Richmond will be blocked off by a wall of glass boxes containing beardy strangers, reaching up to a mile high. By the end of next year, London would be completely buried under the boxes, each containing a sleepy-eyed hoaxer, with just a hole in the floor for a toilet.
And yet the Home Office refuses to acknowledge the extent of the problem, claiming (continued on p.2; David Blaine ‘not really able to levitate’ claim, p.7; Picture, p. 9)
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