ASYLUM PARACHUTE TERROR
Our outspoken columnist John Crow has his say.

The arrest of the Mr Big of an asylum parachute gang once again highlights the weaknesses in our immigration safeguard policy.
Time and again our overstretched police and customs oficers are swamped by the relentless tide of foreign invaders eager to suck
the lifeblood from our nation.

This latest scam involving light aircraft and tandem parachute jumps onto British soil highlights the lengths to which illegal asylum seekers will go to claim benefits and free housing from the nation which once proudly proclaimed itself as the friend of the usurped.

I enjoy a curry as much as the next man and welcome those genuine refugees whose lives are threatened by dictators. And yet, what help can we give to those people when the fake asylum seekers flood our shores, when the bogus benefit claimants burrow through their underground tunnels and the well-heeled skydiving immigrants from Eastern Europe can pay as much as £10,000 to leap from the clouds onto British soil ?

As the grandson of a second generation Irishman who worked twenty hours a day to provide a future for his heirs, I know the hardships and obstacles endured by those of us who daily fight against prejudice and suspicion. As such, I feel proud to stand alongside those who say enough is enough.

John Crow (above) speaks eloquently of the insidious threats posed by the asylum parachute scam. However, it is not only to the skies that we must look for evidence of scams and double dealing. The Rhona Cameron Edinburgh Festival Fringe rip off reminds us that it is not only the Mr Bigs of this world who use underhand methods to fleece the British public. We are under threat too from the world of the media.

When a performer feels that she can charge up to £20 for a show in which she reads her jokes from secret computer screens, the finger must not be pointed solely at the door of the troubled Scots star. No. For what we see here is only a sympton of a larger and avaricious malaise - that of celebrity culture. Other fingers must surely be pointed at those behind the scenes complicit in such rip-off behaviour. Namely, the theatre managers who know little of the performer's work; the promoter who knows that that performer has little to offer (other than the dubious distinction of "celebrity") and, sadly, most of all, the general public who will pay money to see some one who has achieved fame by accomplishing not much at all really.

Political comedian Andy Zaltzman notes that if the number of celebrities keeps increasing at the present rate, there will, by the year 2018, be more celebrities roaming the streets than there are ordinary people. For the sake of our children and their children, a step-change is required in the mind-set of society. We must look now for the role models of the future - individuals who gain our respect by showing society at large that same respect.

While wreckered understands the frustration and anger of of those who walked out of the Rhona the Moaner show, we must remind those people that no-one forced them to go in the first place. In this shallow culture of fame for the sake of fame, wreckered reminds its readers of this simple maxim: "Discern and survive".

Editor

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