Steve, just to put your mind at rest on sewage, Google 'supersewer' and you will find, for all its many faults, Thames has made some big investments in infrastructure.On social housing, I don't know the figures for Hounslow but across London in 2021 about three quarters of social housing tenants were UK born. It is actually very difficult as an asylum seeker or a recently arrived immigrant to get social housing and, for the young men crossing the channel in boats, there is zero chance.On the example of the Vietnamese man with multiple convictions, all I can say it is the wrong approach to take an individual case and suggest it represents the general situation. Without sitting through court proceedings and reading lengthy reports you can't say with confidence why any individual avoided deportation but the number of similar cases is small in the overall context.Where the main risk to the public lies is in the significant slowdown in deportations of foreign criminals since 2016 which means there are far more dangerous people in the country that there should be. Most of these are from countries with which we have returns agreements so, whatever you might read in some papers, the problem here isn't 'lefty lawyers'. I can't tell you the reasons for the reduced number of deportations although it may have something to do with the massive backlog in the courts and the process being more complex for EU countries since Brexit. As it is clearly an issue that causes you concern, why not research it further and then lobby the government to improve its performance?
Francis Rowe ● 1d