4,000 PEOPLE A WEEK TRYING TO LEAVE UK

BRITAIN is facing a mass exodus of people looking to escape the crime and grime of modern living.

The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. Ten years ago the figure was just 300 a week.

Most people are relocating within the Commonwealth – in Australia, Canada and South Africa. They are almost all young professionals and skilled workers aged 20-40.

And many cite their reason for wanting to quit as immigration to these shores – and the burden it is placing on their communities and local authorities. The dearth of good schools, spiralling house prices, rising crime and tax increases are also driving people away.

Obtaining a visa to live abroad can cost as little as £1,500 for the right candidates. Plumbers, electricians, construction workers and doctors are famously in demand. The only obstruction to emigration from the UK is a criminal record, poor health, advancing age and being a “third country national”.

Liam Clifford, a former immigration control officer, set up globalvisas.com as a one-man band 12 years ago. He now employs 60 people and is in the process of opening new offices in both South Africa and Australia. Mr Clifford said: “It’s absolutely phenomenal. People are trying to get away to wherever they can, and most are successful.

“Ironically, one of the main reasons for leaving is the overstretch of services due to increasing immigration into the UK. People are looking for the better standard of living offered by other countries, as even the most idyllic villages in Britain are under pressure from rising populations

Skilled labour is obviously an advantage, but so is speaking the English language. Most countries are harder to get into if you don’t speak English. UK plc simply isn’t fighting hard enough to keep its people. Some are telling us they are fed up with living in this country. Even business people are saying they’ve had enough.

“They’re saying ‘I can’t put my children into the right school, but if I move abroad I can’. Most people are very patriotic and don’t want to leave. They’re almost terrified about it. But they say they just have to.

“It’s a shame people at the top don’t recognise they’re not doing enough to retain highly skilled workers in this country. A lot of them are quite young, and they’re not idle. They just can’t see a future for themselves in this country. They want to get married and settle down and buy homes, but they can’t see it happening here.

“And time and time again they are saying to us they don’t want to be seen as racist because they are quitting because of immigration. We tell them of course they’re not.”

According to the most recent Office of National Statistics figures, in 2005 the official number of people leaving UK shores was 352,000 – up from 249,000 in 1995. The majority – around 150,000 – migrated from London and the south east.

Among those who headed out were Simon Blood, 26, and Rachel Roberts, 23, who moved to Australia four months ago. The couple, from Stoke-on-Trent, are loving their new life in far north Queensland so much that they’ve decided it’s permanent.

Apart from family, football and a few television programmes, there’s nothing they miss about home. Embracing the warmest winter they’ve ever known – averaging 24C daily – both relish the commute to work which takes just five minutes, leaving plenty of time for walks on the beach.

Simon, a marketing executive, and Rachel, a nurse, followed their dream after seeing a newspaper advertisement for nursing recruits Down Under.

“It all went very smoothly,” said Simon. “It’s beautiful here and we’ve no plans to go back for good.”

Boy's balloon finds pen-pal: Britain's Queen

ONDON (Reuters) - A 4-year-old British boy who released a balloon with a message hoping to find a pen pal in a foreign land ended up having a correspondence with the Queen.

Tom Stancombe let go of his helium balloon in Hampshire, west of London, but rather than flying across to France or half way around the world, it ended up just 20 miles away, landing inside Windsor Castle, the Daily Mail reported.

The Queen instructed her personal assistant to reply and so the monarch and the boy, helped by his parents, exchanged a series of letters, mostly about the fact that one of the boy's ancestors, an artist, had works in the royal art collection.

"She (the Queen) was delighted to find that your balloon had traveled all the way to the gardens at Windsor Castle," the monarch's assistant wrote.

Asked if he thought his son would be exchanging any more letters with the Queen, Tom's father said: "I don't expect we'll get another one, but I think it's incredible they bothered replying at all."

Why 'green' biofuels are endangering orang-utans

Biofuels are green fuels, right? Aren't they much less damaging than traditional fossil fuels like petrol and diesel? Well, yes... and no. Alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel can indeed help reduce our emissions of climate changing gases, but without proper controls on their production they could instead make matters much worse.

It's stating the obvious but crops need somewhere to grow and there is a finite amount of arable land on the planet. If we're growing crops to feed our cars instead of ourselves, we will be the ones losing out with increasing food prices and increasing poverty for those who struggle to get enough food as it is.

Worse, forests are being torn down to make way for biofuel plantations. With the link between deforestation and climate change well-established, biofuels have the potential to be a worse climate polluter than dirty old fossil fuels, as well as putting endangered species such as orang-utans under even greater pressure. Now that really would be dumb.

Want to know more? Read the article about biofuels on our blog.

The government is keen to increase the amount of biofuels we use and intends to make all fuel companies increase their supplies. The bad news is, they haven't any decent standards to make sure these biofuels will actually be the green alternative they're intended to be.

However, there is also good news. The government wants to know what we think about biofuels so we have a chance to ensure they get it right. That means developing strict and compulsory standards which are monitored by an independent agency to check that there's no deforestation, wildlife habitat destruction, impacts on vulnerable people, or increase in climate change gases such as carbon dioxide.

Biofuels need to be green from the field to the forecourt so write to the government now and tell them to get it right. You'll have to hurry though, as you'll need to get your email or letter in before Thursday 17 May.

Thanks for your support!

Jamie Woolley
Web team
9 May 2007

2 Days, 2 Letter Bombs In U.K.

A suspected letter bomb exploded at a business center southwest of London Tuesday, injuring two people, police said.

Emergency services were dealing with a small explosion at 9 a.m. (4 a.m. EST) at a company in Oaklands Business Centre, Wokingham, Thames Valley police said in a statement.

Police said it was "likely" that an item of mail had ignited and caused the "small explosion."

It was too soon to say whether the explosion was linked to a letter bomb that detonated in central London Monday, injuring one person, police said.

On Monday, a padded envelope exploded at an office belonging to Capita Group PLC, which administers the $16 daily fee for vehicles meant to cut down on traffic in central London and collects television licensing fees.

Vantis PLC, a tax and accounting company, confirmed it was targeted in Tuesday's attack. Vantis also handles government contracts.

Army bomb-disposal units surrounded the company's office, which is part of business park comprised of red-brick office buildings.

Two ambulances and a crew from Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service were also at the scene. Police taped off the road directly outside the building and evacuated staff, but officers and other emergency services workers could be seen walking near the offices.

Workers from neighboring offices said they were still at their desks when police in white suits prepared to enter the building to gather evidence.

The Irish Republican Army used letter bombs in the early 1970s as part of its campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland, targeting numerous British government offices. The tactic maimed dozens of people but killed nobody.

In recent years, animal rights activists have also sent letter bombs to people involved in animal testing.