Going back to the discussion about "what is a child refugee?" Husband pointed out the physical maturity of this young man:
www.bbc.com/sport/wales/38984875
Good Morning Tuesday 16th April 2024
Brother - no girlfriend or wife
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The wrong kind of refugee?
In recent years, the world has witnessed a refugee crisis that has forced more than a million men, women and children to flee the brutal violence in their own countries. Yet despite the life-threatening situations they face, these refugees (including children) have often been met with a degree of suspicion and fear in the nations they have escaped to.
Author Barbara Fox, whose own mother was evacuated from inner-city Newcastle as a child, wonders what the difference between Britain's long-ago children and today's refugees is?
Are today's refugees really any different?
When I read a headline recently about the outrage of a 'picturesque' village to which 70 'child migrants' were to be sent, I was reminded of another time in our history when places in the countryside were obliged to welcome strangers into their midst.
Back in 1940 when she was six years old, my mother, Gwenda, and her older brother, Doug, were among the hundreds of thousands of children who left their inner-city homes and were evacuated to the countryside to escape the German bombs.
Gwenda's main memory of her journey from Newcastle to the Lake District centres round the banana she was given to eat by her mother – the last she was to see for several years. A teacher ordered the children to sit on their bags, and consequently, when Gwenda came to unpack later, she found squashed banana over all her belongings.
On arrival in the pretty village of Bampton they were lined up in the church hall while the villagers came to choose who they wanted. Yes, it does seem unbelievable that that was how the evacuees were billeted to their families! You might imagine that Gwenda and Doug – clean, nicely dressed children - would have been snapped up first (they would surely be the refugees that no one would protest about today!). But actually, that was not the case. Gwenda was the youngest child there as she was tagging along with Doug and his class of nine-year-olds - their mother had insisted that the pair should not be separated. Consequently, the locals were expecting older children, and someone of Gwenda's size probably didn't look very useful in this farming community.
Were these home-grown children that our rural communities welcomed back then really so different from the oft-maligned refugee children today?
Gwenda and Doug were the only children left when the wife of the village headmaster arrived. As the mother of two sons, she had to be persuaded to take a girl. However, she relented, and so the children went home with her. They would spend three happy years living in the schoolhouse and Gwenda would keep in touch with the couple she called 'Aunty' and 'Uncle' for the rest of their lives.
The following year, in more desperate circumstances, Bampton opened its doors to another influx of children, this time from the shipbuilding town of Barrow-in-Furness.
Undoubtedly thousands of lives were saved by this evacuation of the nation's children, and indeed, Gwenda and Doug's own street in Newcastle was bombed.
Britain also welcomed refugees from Europe, including thousands of Jewish children who might otherwise have perished.
Were these home-grown children that our rural communities welcomed back then really so different from the oft-maligned refugee children today? I would go so far as to say that the inner-city children who turned up in Bampton were often just as alien to their rural hosts as the foreign newcomers seem to be to the 'picturesque' village dwellers. But equally, both could teach something to the other.
Those harking back to 'when Britain was great' perhaps forget that it was also characterised by our opening our doors to those in need.
When the War Is Over by Barbara Fox, the story of Gwenda’s wartime evacuation, is published by Sphere and is available from Amazon.
By Barbara Fox
Twitter: @Gransnet
Elegran I am so glad SOMEBODY sees the absence of logic 
And hope he doesn't get into the afore-mentioned hot water.
PS our plumber, Robert IS Polish and excellent as well as being fully qualified to deal with hot&cold and even tepid water. 
not trained to deal with hot water
Hope he never turns on the wrong tap by mistake...
not trained to deal with hot water
One of my Afghan foster sons is training to be a plumber and is doing very well - top of the class in fact.
That post does not pass muster on just about any level MawBroon. People are no longer accepting having the wool pulled over their eyes. And why should they?
Thanks Jalima.
I have now realised from this thread that the plumber I am thinking of, although not an immigrant of any kind, clearly has not passed all his exams
He is going to get employed by the group I work for, but has been clear himself that he is not trained to deal with hot water!
OK well consider this statement very carefully
"Nobody has any stats on undetected crime. "
Now this one
"Nobody has any stats on unknown extraterrestrials"
Getting there?
Now consider again
"Nobody has any stats on undetected illegal immigrants. Bear in mind that there will be precise figures (if you know where to look) on those awaiting a HO decision, those being held in detention centres, those awaiting deportation, those possibly appealing against deportation and those who have been deported in any one year.
Now engage brain again
or
especially if they are on the list of illegal immigrants 
Engage brain Ankers
PS of course nobody will have accurate figures for illegal immigrants except those found out, in detention centres or being repatriated. It's like being horrified at the amount of "undetected crime"
I call it using English properly 
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