POISONED SPY
Why did it take so long to raise the alarm over health threat?
HUNDREDS of people who were in the area where a Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned have been warned to wash their clothes and personal belongings.
Health officials issued the alert after traces of nerve agent were discovered at a pub and restaurant visited by Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
It is feared around 500 people could have come in contact with the deadly substance.
Uniforms worn by staff at the Zizzi restaurant have been burned and the table where Mr Skripal and his daughter ate lunch was destroyed.
Furious locals raised questions over why it has
taken the authorities seven days to issue the unprecedented alert to members of the public.
Officials said the advice was “precautionary” and insisted the risk levels to the public “remain low”.
Traces of the unidentified chemical were found at Zizzi’s restaurant in Salisbury city centre where the 66-year-old double agent, and his 33-year-old daughter had lunch last Sunday afternoon.
They then headed to the nearby Mill pub where forensics teams discovered more evidence of the chemical.
The pair were later found in a “catatonic” state on a bench outside the Maltings shopping centre just yards away at around 4.15pm.
They remain in a critical condition in the intensive care unit at Salisbury District Hospital.
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey – who was contaminated by the substance as he rushed to the aid of the pair – remains in a serious condition.
A major incident was declared after the attack but customers were free to come and go at both establishments until closing time the following night.
Public Health England warned it was possible the substance may have come into contact with clothing or belongings and “could still be present in minute amounts and therefore contaminate the skin”.
People were told to machine wash all clothing worn on the day they visited the venues.
Items of clothing which would normally be dry cleaned should be placed in two plastic bags tied at the top and stored safely at home. Officials said they are “currently reviewing” the best way dealing with these items in the long term and more information will be provided when it is available.
Advised
Those wishing to destroy items were urged to clean and double bag them before disposing of them in the household bin.
Visitors to the locations were advised to wipe belongings such as mobile phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes and dispose of the wipes in the bin.
Jewellery and spectacles and other “hard” items which cannot go in the washing machine should be washed with warm water and detergent and rinsed with clean, cold water.
Shoes should be wiped clean with a damp cloth and dried or polished as normal.
Once the items had been dealt with people are being urged to “wash their hands thoroughly”.
Anyone who visited the The Mill pub between 1.30pm last Sunday and closing time at 11.10pm on Monday and Zizzi’s between 1.30pm on Sunday and 9pm the next day was urged to take action.
Last night residents hit out at the week-long delay in telling them to decontaminate themselves.
Mother-of-two Sarah Walker, 36, said: “We keep hearing different officials telling us there’s no risk to the public but now we’re being told that hundreds of people may have been exposed to contamination. That’s very worrying.”
A 24-year-old man, who did not wish to be named, said: “I had friends who went for a meal in Zizzi’s on Sunday. They are annoyed that they don’t know what they could have come in contact with.”
REMAIN campaigners like to pose as the champions of truth. Unable to comprehend their defeat in the EU referendum they constantly proclaim that the case for Brexit was built on the deception of the public.
A particular target for their fury is the Leavers’ claim that Britain sends £350million a week to Brussels, money that the Government will be able to spend at home once we take back control of our national finances after independence.
Brimming with righteous indignation the Remoaners dismiss this as “a lie”. But it is nothing of the sort. The reality is our gross annual contribution to the EU coffers is about £18billion. It is true that we receive a substantial rebate but such a sum is always vulnerable to the whims of Brussels bureaucrats.
Nor does our payment include all the other costs of EU membership such as compliance with officialdom. Indeed the extent of our financial subjugation to Brussels has been painfully illustrated by Brexit negotiations, with the EU making ever more punitive demands.
There is no basis for the Remoaners’ hysteria about supposed dishonesty from the Brexit camp. On the contrary their whole stance reeks of hypocrisy. They are the ones who constantly indulge in misleading propaganda. They constantly extol the virtues of open borders, telling us that free movement is the real engine of British prosperity.
MUCH of their noisy advocacy for the EU has descended into a form of national self-loathing, with European migrants portrayed as far more skilled, diligent and successful than lazy, feckless Britons.
That mentality was perfectly captured in the words of archRemainer Lord Kerr, who declared: “We native Brits are so bloody stupid that we need an injection of intelligent people from outside.”
According to the proBrussels, anti-British narrative, the vast EU influx is a source of unalloyed economic growth and fiscal generosity. But that theory, which has become the orthodoxy of our times, has just been blown apart by a research paper from former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith. Based on calculations by independent think tank Migration Watch, which was founded by distinguished former diplomat Lord Green, this new study estimates that EU migrants actually claimed £4billion a year in benefits in 2013/14.
Part of the sum was made up of £1.1billion in payouts for jobless Europeans. Another £714 million went on child benefit. Duncan Smith’s paper shows that migrants from 10 European countries, most of them in the former Soviet bloc, receive more than 20 per cent of their income tax and national insurance contributions back in tax credits and child benefit, compared with the UK average of 16 per cent.
Duncan Smith rightly argues that post Brexit there should be tough restrictions on EU immigration, including bars on entry for those without jobs or the ability to support themselves. It is ridiculous that under Brussels rule we have to support foreigners who may have made no contribution to our society but want to exploit our welfare state. That approach demeans the very concept of citizenship.
But it is precisely what has been happening, despite the Remoaners’ attempts to hide the truth. One study by the Office for National Statistics last year revealed that there are 390,000 EU nationals living here who are economically inactive. In the same vein, when David Cameron tried unsuccessfully in 2016 to negotiate the reform of free movement, Downing Street admitted that “40 per cent of EU migrants who have arrived in the last four years are supported by the benefits system”.
EVEN those EU newcomers in work are often burdens on the state because their low pay has to be subsidised by tax credits. In a notorious but characteristic outburst Left-wing commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown once wrote that “tax-paying migrants past and present keep indolent British scroungers on their couches drinking beer and watching TV”. But that is an offensive delusion. In fact British people have paid twice over for the massive import of cheap labour. First, at the bottom end of the market, they have seen their own living standards ferociously squeezed by foreign competition.
Second, they have seen their taxes used to underwrite dismal wages. This is the economics of the madhouse: the publicly funded welfare state enables employers to hire foreigners on low pay to the exclusion of British workers.
It is amazing that progressives, because they are so wedded to the ideology of mass immigration, should still support this racket, which has brought Britain squalor, exploitation and poverty. In one telling case 35 Eastern European workers were found living in a five-bedroom house in London. Some migrants even live in makeshift camps on open ground in the capital. Pressure group Migrants Rights Network bleated that such outcomes are “regrettable” but are now “a feature of London life”. Well, they shouldn’t be, but that is what free movement has imposed on us.
Other consequences can be seen all around us: in pressures on the NHS and schools, in the number of foreign nationals in British jails, and in rising homelessness, with migrants comprising 60 per cent of rough sleepers in the capital.
That all adds up to the real price of EU membership, far beyond anything the Brexiteers claimed on the side of their campaign bus.
‘Living standards are ferociously squeezed’