Horrific news

Indeed Labaik- we all feel desperately sorry for those poor people and their families.

But things do not happen in a 'vacuum' - and links are there.

I only googled about the reduced funding for border security because my partner [who has a much better memory and knowledge of all things political] was telling me years ago about the reduction in border control spending and it was something that crossed my mind when I heard of the tragedy.. I'm not trying to point score in any way about something as tragic as this and pretty offended by the accusation. It is, after all, in the news and politics section so why should it be separate from politics? For heavens sake, do you honestly think my first thought was 'oh good; people have died horribly lets score a few points from it.

lemon twelfth post in and JE praises PP. Why on earth would I think that was politically point scoring? ???

I don't think there's any evidence they went anywhere near Ireland. The container came from Belgium.

I apologise to the people who didn't want politics and mention of Brexit.

I feel desperately sad for the poor people who died in such a horrific way.

With 39 in that sealed truck the oxygen wouldn’t have lasted the ferry crossing, let alone the trip to Essex. I wonder how they got to Ireland, probably on board ship from a port were nobody cares much.

Maw, yes, obviously. Very.

lemongrove Before jumping to any conclusions, it would be wise to wait until some more facts are known.

My understanding is that the tractor unit (the truck) was registered in Bulgaria to an Irish person. However, that doesn't mean that it's been anywhere near Bulgaria for ages. Indeed, Bulgaria is denying that it's been in the country for years.

The refrigerated shipping container had (as far as I know) nothing to do with Bulgaria and was only connected to the tractor unit in the early hours of this morning. It was shipped from Zeebrugge to Purfleet and then driven to Grays.

Nobody knows where the group of migrants met. They probably hadn't travelled together, so would have come from all sorts of different places. They might or might not have been of different nationalities.

I think everybody knows that what they were trying to do is illegal and why they were trying to do it. People will have different opinions about it.

The fact is that some people are making a fortune out of people trafficking - whether in dinghies landing on isolated beaches or in shipping containers or whatever. Border Force has totally inadequate resources to monitor the situation. Its previous incarnation, UKBA, was scapegoated by Teresa May when she was Home Secretary and Border Force was set up as a separate agency, directly accountable to the Home Office.

There are literally hundreds of places around our coasts where people can land. I think there might be another one now, but at one stage, there was only one Border Force cutter controlling the whole of the East Coast from Kent to Hull.

Ports such as Purfleet aren't resourced properly. By putting people in containers, they don't actually have anybody "owning" them. If they're caught, the traffickers are still keeping their distance and only pick up the container once the containers have cleared border control.

Priti Patel makes a lot of noise about talking tough, but unless the cuts to staffing and resources are reversed and significant extra money is made available, people will continue to find ways into the UK. Brexit will indeed make the situation worse because there will be less international co-operation. France and Belgium will be more than happy to wave their problems onward.

The huge tragedy is that these people, even if they had survived, would have been unlikely to have had the life they'd wanted in the UK. It's seriously depressing and makes me very angry that people like Patel, whose own parents were welcomed as immigrants, thinks that making a couple of tough speeches can solve any problems.

GG13 I have just read your post and see this tragedy happened near your village, what a shock for you all.

Oh please jura2 give it a rest!
No political point scoring and no talk of Brexit ( which hasn’t even happened yet!)

Labaik is not point scoring but saying as it is.

I have warned many times that Brexit will result in less checks in the EU by our ex EU partners who have worked tirelessly to stop illegal immigrants crossing to our shores. And it is bound to get much worse if we do leave with No Deal. The reality.

It will also disconnect us from EU international intelligence sharing, etc. It also illustrates how massively important the Irish border is.

Yes, this dreadful case is just desperately tragic and sad- and as said, I am really shocked of reports of disgusting comments on some sites linked to BF/EDL also linked to parts of the Leave campaign.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could respond with simple humanity, not attempting to make political capital out of it, or castigating those poor, poor people as scrounges - I trust grapefruitpip was being ironic.

And emphatically keeping the R/L and B words out of it?

Labaik making political point scoring out of this tragedy is
Just not on.
The lorry carrying these poor people originated in Bulgaria and would have gone through other custom checks well before landing up in England.
We can beef up our own port custom checks for the future and I hope we will, but can do nothing about those in other countries.

From 2011;'The political storm over relaxed border controls at UK ports during the peak summer period is set to continue as Home Secretary Theresa May faces another grilling by MPs.
On Monday, Mrs May admitted authorising a watering down of checks on Britons and other EU nationals. But senior officials at the UK's border force went further, scrapping key checks against a Home Office database without ministerial approval, she said in a statement.
The number of suspected terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants who entered the country as a result of the move will never be known, Mrs May said.
Three staff, including the head of the UK border force Brodie Clark, have been suspended and those responsible will be punished "to make sure that border force officials can never take such risks with border security again", she said.
Labour accuses her of giving the "green light" to the policy and she will be pressed further for details of how it unfolded when she appears before the Home Affairs Select Committee. Its Labour chairman, former minister Keith Vaz, has complained of a "culture of complacency" and suggested the Home Secretary's office must have been informed of the policy.
Mr Clark confirmed he had gone further than the pilot scheme allowed when John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), raised concerns last week, Mrs May told the Commons.
Biometric checks on European nationals and checks against the Home Office database on children from the European Economic Area (EEA) "were abandoned on a regular basis, without ministerial approval", she said. Adults were not checked against the database at Calais and the fingerprints of non-European nationals from countries that require a visa were stopped.
"I did not give my consent or authorisation for any of these decisions," Mrs May insisted. "Indeed I told officials explicitly that the pilot was to go no further than we had agreed."
The Public and Commercial Services union has claimed that border controls were relaxed to keep queues down despite cuts to personnel.
Some 5,200 staff will be cut from the UKBA, taking its numbers down to 18,000, by 2015, with 1,552 jobs to go in the UK border force before the next general election, including 886 this financial year, MPs heard. But Mrs May denied the cuts led to the unauthorised reductions in border controls.'
Apologies if this has been mentioned; dipping in and out today and skim reading things....

The traffickers won’t care .They will have their money.It needs more education in these countries to teach them about trafficking . I wonder what made them enter a sealed container. They would see as they entered that there was no way out except where they went in .I think the traffickers would know they would die. It’s so very sad indeed

It is just dreadful; I heard it on the car radio and felt sick.

I just hope that they didn't suffer and keep wondering if they were calling in vain for help.
One report said that the container was refrigerated, it is beyond belief if they were just abandoned.

Agree no reason to go on about “ why do they want to come here and not other safe countries”, there are many answers to that one - many other EU countries accept far more refugees than the U.K.,many of those travelling here will have relatives or friends already here, many will come from countries which have had British influence in the past, they also know they can work under the radar here easier than countries which require ID cards, they may speak English etc Not rocket science. Not because we are so superior to any other peaceful countries.

He had hoped his life would improve once he reached Europe, but that dreaded feeling has stayed with him in France. “I feel like my mind is slipping. I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept,” he said. “I ask the police for help, but they just beat us and take us to jail.”........ a quotation that may help you JE? Possibly?

Do you know anything about France, the police, racism, history?

We don’t even know yet where they are from or which countries they went through.

BlueBell are you trying to suggest that migrants wouldn’t be safe in, say France?

That is ridiculous. Of course they would.

I have to say that 'some' border guards at Calais can be a bit lax when searching our motohome. We have had some who have not realised we had a shower and not one has looked under the bankette or the boot.
We have pointed out these possible hiding places in the hope that they might learn something.

EllanVannin it is true that staffing levels have been slashed leaving staff shortages. However a system that checks 100% of anything is prone to fail to find errors etc than one based upon a properly constructed random sampling process and is far more likely to produce succes. However it is less acceptable to most politicians and the public.

If they were escaping a war zone somewhere, they would have been safe there or, as Chestnut said, in any of the other European countries they would have passed through

That'll be it then, they were probably just scroungers, not proper people escaping a war zone.

I'll say it again, because of staff shortages at border points vehicles are only randomly checked.
How many of our unemployed would get up at 4am to be at work in these places----in all weathers ? Not a lot !!

9 people have been found in a truck on the M20---Kent. All okay being checked.