Days like this, as I have had occasion to remark more than once over the years, it’s difficult to know where to start. Should I kick off with the Albanian criminal who has avoided deportation because his son won’t eat ‘foreign’ chicken nuggets?
Or home in on the Pakistani paedophile, jailed for child sex offences, who has been allowed to stay in Britain because to kick him out would be a breach of his family’s right to a father?
Let’s start with the chicken nuggets case, one of the most inventive excuses yet for avoiding deportation under the European yuman rites act.
And, to be fair, we’ve had a few oustanding contenders in the past, including the illegal immigrant from Bolivia who was granted right to remain because he had joint custody of a cat and therefore was entitled to a ‘family life’ in Britain.
More recently, a Jamaican drug dealer jailed five times in Britain escaped being sent home because his daughter ‘may be trans’.
You couldn’t make it up.
Albanian Klevis Disha came to the UK as an unaccompanied minor, using a false name and claiming to have been born in the former Yugoslavia, which he wasn’t.
Migrants carry a smuggling boat on their shoulders on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France, in 2022 (none of the people mentioned are pictured)
He married another Albanian, who had gained UK citizenship, and they had two daughters and a son. In September 2017, he was jailed for two years after being caught with £250,000 in cash, known to be the proceeds of crime.
Disha’s appeal against deportation was granted by an immigration court judge because it would be ‘unduly harsh’ on his 10-year old son, who had a distaste for ‘the type of chicken nuggets that are available abroad’.
Admittedly, this was just one aspect of his grounds for appeal. The court also heard that the boy had ‘sensory difficulties’ with certain items of clothing, socks in particular, and despite having been born and grown up in Britain, his first language is Albanian.
In which case, you might think, he’d have no problem adapting to life in Albania. If he doesn’t like they way they cook chicken nuggets, tough. Since when have chicken nuggets been one of your five-a-day? And no one can force him to wear socks if he doesn’t want to. Going sockless is quite fashionable these days.
This case has now been bumped back to the court after an appeal by the Home Office. But it only serves to demonstrate the extent to which the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is regularly abused by migrants and foreign criminals who have no right to be in Britain and the shameless Left-wing lawyers queueing up to represent them.
M’learned friends protest that under the ‘cab rank’ principle they have an obligation to argue their clients’ cases, however absurd or incredible. But, as I have remarked before, that depends on where you park your cab. There’s a good living to be made specialising in yuman rites.
A Pakistani man who was jailed for 18 months after being caught in a police sting operation for targeting ‘barely pubescent’ girls for sex is the latest to avoid deportation under the ECHR.
The court ruled that returning him to Pakistan would breach his family’s rights to a father. This is despite the fact that since his conviction he has been banned from living with his own two young children.
He is on the sex offenders register and is forbidden from using social media to contact underage girls. The court also heard that there was ‘very little prospect’ of him being rehabilitated.
His only excuse for his behaviour was that his wife had gone off sex after contracting Covid. Not the only one, I’d imagine, but hardly justification for her husband to seek gratification from 13-year-old girls.
Sir Keir Starmer cut his teeth on human rights cases, says Richard Littlejohn
Yet, regardless of all this damning evidence, the judge decided that it would be ‘unduly harsh for the children to be without their father’.
Sometimes words fail even me.
The Home Office is appealing, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. The prospect of any of these rulings being overturned is pretty remote.
The Tories lacked the courage to pull us out of the pernicious European yuman rites racket when they had the chance. And nor is there any likelihood of Britain withdrawing from the ECHR while Labour is in power.
Surkeir Starmer, our Prime Minister, is a complete and utter lawyer, who cut his teeth on human rights cases. All you need to know about this Left-wing rabble’s concept of justice is that Starmer appointed as Attorney General one of his best mates, ‘Lord’ Harmer, another yuman rites specialist in thrall to international law, who has represented the saintly Gerry Adams against the British Government, among others.
Don’t forget that Tony Blair described his decision to incorporate the ECHR in Britain as his proudest achievement in politics.
Given the size of Labour’s majority, we can expect more of the same over the next four years – Pakistani paedos allowed to stay in Britain because they have the right to a ‘family life’, and an Albanian gangster escaping deportation on the grounds that his son has an aversion to socks and doesn’t like foreign chicken nuggets.
Do you want fries with that?
Mental Elf is the new bad back, the default excuse of the modern skiver.
Even Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, says that many benefits claimants – among them 850,000 claiming mental health ishoos – are ‘taking the mickey’.
You could say that. Thirty seven per cent of all new benefit claims – 20,000 a month – are from young adults, seeking disability payments for ‘anxiety’ and related complaints.
But when Oliver Freeston, a Reform UK councillor in North East Lincolnshire, expressed a similar opinion he was hauled over the coals.
He told a committee meeting that the easiest way to claim benefits was to feign a mental health problem – ‘It’s the 21st-century version of the bad back’ – because, like a bad back, it was difficult to disprove.
Afterwards, he received an email from a ‘compliance officer’ warning him to ‘moderate his language’ or face disciplinary proceedings.
What, for stating the bleedin’ obvious?
Sounds to me like former NHS worker 25-year-old Oliver is exactly the kind of individual we need in politics. If, by some miracle, Reform wins the next election, Nigel Farage should have him nailed on as Work and Pensions Secretary.
Come to think of it, my back’s giving me a bit of gyp. Do you think I’ve got a claim for Mental Elf ishoos?
Labour too Swift to trash Trump
Just as I predicted on Saturday, Donald Trump got a rousing reception at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. Not so Taylor Swift, who was booed when her image appeared on the big screen.
Swift backed the hapless Kamala Harris against Trump during the presidential election. So, too, did Britain’s Labour Party, which sent 100 staff to campaign for Harris. At the same time, the Government laid on a police motorcade escort for Taylor Swift – in exchange for free tickets to her Wembley concerts.
Labour’s hostility towards Trump is well known, no matter how much they try reversing the ferret now. Talk about backing the wrong horse. No doubt Surkeir had a few quid on the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, too.