Migrants: The Cost Before They Enter the UK.

I've been looking at FlightRader24 more and more since I learned of the converted Dash-8 airliner that border force are using to overwatch the channel.

It did a 10 hour shift over the channel yesterday. I assume it had maxxed out its crew hours and possibly maintenance as well, because after it landed, a coastguard aircraft flew down from Hull to take over.

See here:

 

Note the time: 22:49. There are still UK assets flying over the channel at that time. 

Now, don't get me wrong, there may have been no dinghies, but it seems more than a little suspicious that the "rescue" vessels in the channel all withdrew. Because the dinghies full of migrants stopped.

Is Thursday night "Drug and Weapons Night". Because it seems a bit sus to just suddenly stop after a number of days sending dinghies across. The sea conditions were the same as before. But is this the night that the proper serious fast boats launch from France and drop their goods?

Are the surveillance aircraft working? Are they spotting migrants on the beaches and stopping them from getting to the water? Or is this an accord with the traffickers?

But if the answer is either of those, at what cost?

We are not only putting large boats out to sea on a regular basis to pick up the migrants, but we're also paying the French several hundred million pounds to stop the dinghies and at the same time we're running something akin to a military operation to surveil the channel and the French coast.  

Before the migrants arrive, before they are processed by Border Force, before they are housed during and after processing, before we go through the machinations of the legal system of claims and counter claims for asylum, before we count the cost of Policing the criminal activity the migrants are bringing to our shores. 

How much is all of this costing?

And if we really, really put an effort in and changed the law so that we just refused ALL asylum claims from ANYONE not using legal routes, how quickly would the dinghies stop and how much money would we save from not having to do all of the surveillance and "rescue" operations?

Conscription: A Flaw in the Plan.

I do wonder if the Government are really serious about conscription and if they have really thought it through.

Let me explain:

The government are going to recruit by force, a cohort of people that for the past 30 years the government have essentially abused. That cohort has been the last in the line for benefits of any kind, social housing, role models in media... you name it, the cohort have been browbeaten for decades.

But the government think it's a good idea to train this cohort up militarily and give them guns. Real guns. 

The government think they can manipulate the cohort into pointing the guns at the government's enemy. 

It's quite possible the cohort won't see the government's enemies as their enemies. As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

The government may find the guns pointing back at them, much like the elites of Russia did in 1917. 

And as the government is quite obviously shitting it's pants at the recent events around the migrant crisis, especially the mental leaps it's making to jail Tommy Robinson and now Danny Tommo, I think the government are slowly coming to reaslise the reality now.

Luckily, for now, the irregular forces coming back from Ukraine haven't yet transferred their weapons expertise to the common man. But The more come back and share knowledge around cooking up explosives and weaponising commercial drones, you can bet your bottom dollar that issues will start to arise. 

I mean, it doesn't take much for a FPV drone carrying a couple of grenades to fly into the middle of the channel and dispatch a dinghy load of migrants. Or to convert an old jetski into a high sped floating Kamikaze weapon. The technology is readily available and the expertise is in Ukraine learning.

The government really need to start treating their working class better and providing opportunities for enrichment, rather than just a life on benefits. Because all it takes is one tech-savvy squaddie to come home from Ukraine and become disgruntled at their treatment and then you'll quite literally have a war on your hands.

Maybe that's the war the government is expecting and it's not war with Russia after all. 

Migrants: Is the Cost Really the Actual Cost? Is Something Being Hidden?

Yesterday/Last Night's migrant fiasco highlights something I suspect most people hadn't considered. 

The total cost of the operation. Not just the cost of housing the Migrants and feeding them or supplying them with benefits, but the costs incurred before they even set foot on UK soil.

Yes, there are the costs incurred in running the Border Force Boats out into the channel on a daily basis; the staff costs, fuel and the maintenance of these boats is not a cheap exercise. Believe me, I know!

But there are other costs: are the RNLI being reimbursed for their part in the water taxi operation? 

But then what is the cost of landing the migrants? Staffing, security, transport etc.

Well, lats night, we got an insight into the costs involved.

Local Councillor George Magwick posted on X a video of a huge convoy of several emergency vehicles including a large number of Police Vehicles and a few Ambulances escorting three coaches into Gosport for the original intended destination of last night's recovery.

Eventually, due to the large number of crowds turning up at the again, ill-conceived landing on the end of the Gosport peninsula, the boats carrying the migrants headed for the port of Dover, where the landing could be secured and controlled.

Next, as an example of how many of these crossings happen when the weather is right, today there were three obvious simultaneous crossings happening. Again, border force and the RNLI made their way out to the French boats at the halfway point.

However, today I checked an extra resource, Flight Radar 24.

Circling above at least two of the crossings was an aircraft. Not the previous small border force Britten-Norman Islander. Nope, this was a not insubstantial De Haviland Canada Dash-8 300 ISR aircraft.

Now, the operating costs of this regional airliner size aircraft must be huge.

Note that the aircraft information is not complete, I assume in an effort to disguise it's identity. 

The aircraft is on planespotters.net here: www.planespotters.net/photo/1660535/c-gfmx-uk-home-office-bombardier-dhc-8-315-isr

This is not a cheap to run asset. Imagine this aircraft is out circling above every boat passage reported by The French boats shadowing the dinghies. That's a huge additional cost.

This is a military-scale action happening almost on a daily basis. How is this sustainable? 

I'm sure the cost is hidden by spreading it out amongst various government departments, but when you see the figures for housing the migrants, just remember the huge operation that brings them here and processes them and transports them before they claim a penny from the government.

UPDATE:

It's now 20:11 and there is another boat transfer in progress between the Dungeness RNLI lifeboat and a French warship. The This is being circled by a smaller aircraft at the moment. Looks like the Dover lifeboat and fast vessel BSC Enterprise are involved too.