JUSTIN DUNN’S ROOM 101 Why do the powersthat-be care so much about foreigners?

WHAT’S ANNOYING HIM THIS WEEK?

DO you ever get the feeling that the powers-that-be give more of a toss about people from other countries than they do about those from their own?

In this desperate of 24/7 forelock-tugging and virtue-signalling, the three main parties are wedded to the idea that all we voters really want is to heal the world. Well, the rest of the world, anyway. Labour, which just scraped home in the Batley and Spen by-election last week, spent much of its campaign time confusing the Yorkshire constituency with the disputed southern Asian territory of Kashmir.

Yes, that’ll be the Kashmir long fought over by its squabbling neighbours India and Pakistan.

So, not quite in God’s own country, then.

And also a region of the world that, with the greatest of respect, relatively few from Batley and Spen have ever been to and fewer still care about.

Quarantine

Or the party’s other obsession with all things Palestine, a hot topic on uni campuses and at Jeremy Corbyn’s mung bean supper club, rather than, say, Middlesbrough.

The Lib Dems, of course, led by the utterly uninspiring Fungus the Bogeyman, will offer anything to anyone if they think there’s a vote in it. Which for them, there usually isn’t.

And now we have Boris Johnson, who has decided to start paying for every incoming person’s quarantine bill. Unless you happen to be British, in which case you have to pay for yourself.

In one of the posh papers on Monday, it was reported that “the Department of Health and Social Care is being forced to draw up a new subsidy scheme that will cut the quarantine bill for travellers from red list countries suffering financial hardship.”

The report added: “It raises the possibility of costs being reduced or waived for tens of thousands of arrivals into the UK.

“It could also lead to a rise in travellers from high-risk countries who were previously deterred because of the cost.”

Which is a long-winded way of saying we’re opening the doors again but you and I are also going to foot the £1,750-per-head quarantine bill for people from countries where their unvaccinated compatriots are still dropping like flies from COVID-19.

Wobble

Why? Why are they doing this? Why are they, unlike almost every other country on the planet, agreeing to effectively PAY people to come here?

Isn’t the country skint enough already?

If Boris Johnson thinks that is the way to people’s hearts and, more importantly, to their decisions at the ballot box, then he needs to give that unkempt head of his a wobble.

Isn’t it bad enough that most of us will still struggle to get away this year, whether it’s because of COVID jabs being accepted or not by foreign regimes?

Or because we can’t afford to spend 10 days in a cramped hotel abroad with the wife and two kids before flying home three or four days later in any case, because we’re then due back at work?

No, Boris appears to think, let’s make it even worse by making taxpayers pay for any other bugger from anywhere to get “free” quarantine accommodation.

Why not go the whole hog and throw in some “free” housing, too?

Ah…