Why so few?

TWENTY thousand Syrian refugees over five years is nothing. Britain could absorb that number in a single month and barely notice it.

SO why has David Cameron opted for such a tiny figure, exposing himself to the finger-wagging, holier-than-thou tendency who say it's not enough? Probably because he has done the bigger sums. The 20,000 from Syria will be in addition to the 620,000 newcomers who arrive in Britain each year legally, plus the untold hundreds of thousands who come illegally. Those who accuse Britain of pulling up the drawbridge ignore the fact that the drawbridge was dismantled years ago.

AND what of the German numbers, the figures that no-one wants to question? While Germany is busy grabbing the moral high ground by granting asylum to 800,000 people this year, how many will remain in Germany? Once a migrant gets asylum in Germany, or in any other EU country, he or she can then travel and work within the EU. Given that thousands of the migrants speak a little English but no German, where do you think they may eventually choose to settle? Those German politicians welcoming migrants to Berlin are, in effect, welcoming them to Dover, London, Luton and all points north. Today Berlin, tomorrow Brum.

I SUGGESTED a few days ago that Jeremy Corbyn might not only become boss of the Labour Party but also lead it into the next General Election - so long as he is not exposed as a complete wazzock between now and then. Jez is now suggesting people in hard, manual work should be allowed to retire early on a full pension. It seems good sense, until you recall the £1 billion saga at Birmingham City Council where, thanks to EU rules and lobbying by the unions, compensation has been paid to women who were paid less then men because their jobs were not judged to be equal to those of men. The final ruling was that a dinner lady's job could be considered equal to a binman's, even though she works in a nice, warm kitchen while he is loading garbage in arctic snowdrifts. The system seems to take no account of the "physically demanding jobs" that so impress Mr Corbyn. And if he tried to cut the retirement age for horny-handed sons of toil by a single day, the dinner ladies would be straight in the queue. Is he not aware of this?

CODE-Breaking's Forgotten Genius (BBC2) on the life of Gordon Welchman, repeated the oft-made claim that Britain's brilliant code-busters of Bletchley Park shortened the Second World War (1939-45) by two years. But does it stand up to scrutiny? By the summer of 1945 Britain and America had the atom bomb. From that moment, code-busters or not, the end of the war was only a couple of nuclear blasts away.

TONIGHT I am off to a media awards ceremony where this column has been shortlisted for a glittering prize. As I remark from time to time, I could not write it day after day without the help of you, the readers. To put it another way, if I win the glittering prize tonight, it will be a tribute to my enormous skill in selecting your sparkling contributions. If I do not win the glittering prize it is your fault for not being sparkling enough, and you really must try harder.

PS: If you hear nothing further on the subject of glittering prizes, assume the worst.