UK Immigration Watch @UKBorderWatch

CONCERNING: Yaseen's reported ankle tag offers little comfort.

Lauren Chen @TheLaurenChen

24 hours ago

Mohammed Yaseen, a 35-year-old Iraqi national and former member of Al Qaeda and ISIS, cannot currently be deported from the UK because he has applied to stay on human rights grounds. Yaseen crossed the English Channel on a small boat carrying around 80 people in December 2025.

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DATA: Michael C cites 41,000 crossings without giving a time period.

Michael C @Michaeach3

2 days ago

41,000 people crossed in small boats while Westminster kept recycling its bullshit promises Britain has spent years bragging about border control while tens of thousands keep crossing the Channel and making a mockery of those promises. Westminster's tough talk on border control

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DATA: Michael C cites 41,000 crossings without giving a time period.

Michael C @Michaeach3

2 days ago

41,000 people crossed in small boats while Westminster kept recycling its bullshit promises Britain has spent years bragging about border control while tens of thousands keep crossing the Channel and making a mockery of those promises. Westminster's tough talk on border control

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COMMENT: The government should cut small-boat arrivals, rather than just find different beds.

Jamie Jenkins @statsjamie

a day ago

🚨 SMALL BOATS: THE COST DOESN'T STOP AT ARRIVAL! Hotels, accommodation, asylum claims, appeals and removals. The bill keeps growing. Moving people out of hotels doesn't make the costs disappear. I joined @Nanaakua1 to discuss Britain's asylum system. Watch 👇

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ONGOING: MSF provides weekly psychological support for migrants near Dunkirk.

ONGOING: Small boats still reach Britain. Ministers should answer for that.

Doug Bell @therealdougbell

a day ago

Small-Boats Crossings Are a Policy Choice, Not a Fact of Nature Small-boat crossings persist because of political decisions, and Britain has the power to reverse them. open.substack.com/pub/ayaanhirsi…

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REACTION: There's a case for tighter borders without comparing people to squirrels.

Leachy @leach116888

3 days ago

@UKBorderWatch Remember that grey squirrels have endanged red squirrels. Immigration must be controlled to protect English heritage.

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ONGOING: Care4Calais reports distributing 54,000 hot drinks in Calais since July.

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ONGOING: Care4Calais distributes winter coats to refugees in Calais.

ONGOING: UK expects refugee arrivals in 2026 after reopening its resettlement scheme.

COURAGEOUS: ✈️ This stewardess stayed when Flight 712’s escape slide burned On 8 April 1968, 22-year-old BOAC stewardess Barbara Jane Harrison helped evacuate a burning Boeing 707 at Heathrow Airport in London-and would become the only woman awarded the George Cross for peacetime gallantry. In the first generation of long-haul jet travel, Flight 712 was beginning a journey to Sydney with 116 passengers and 11 crew. Twenty seconds after take-off, the crew felt a shock and heard a bang as the number-two engine began to fail. Investigators found that metal fatigue had broken a compressor wheel inside the Rolls-Royce Conway engine, whose spinning fragments burst through the casing and tore open a fuel pipe. The crew began an engine-failure drill, then changed to the fire drill as flames spread along the left wing. One vital action was missed: the fire shut-off handle was not pulled, so the valve that could stop fuel reaching the damaged engine remained open. With no cockpit voice recorder aboard, the inquiry could not reconstruct every second, but the physical evidence was clear. The engine and part of its mounting tore away on the approach and fell into a water-filled gravel pit. Only three minutes and 32 seconds after leaving the runway, the 707 was back on the ground. The landing was good, but reverse thrust bent the flames towards the fuselage, and an explosion in the left wing made the fire far worse. At the rear right door, Harrison and a steward opened the exit and inflated the escape slide. It twisted, forcing the steward to climb down and straighten it; once outside, he could not get back aboard. Harrison was alone at the doorway. Five people escaped down the slide before flames set it alight and it burst. Five more jumped from the door, all suffering injuries. As fire and explosions closed the rear route, Harrison urged some passengers out, pushed others through and directed those still inside towards another exit. She remained behind and was overcome while trying to help an elderly disabled passenger in one of the last rows. The forward right slide carried most of the survivors, and 122 of the 127 people aboard escaped, although 38 were injured and Harrison and four passengers died. BOAC responded by merging its separate engine-failure and engine-fire drills into one procedure that required the fire handle to be pulled whether or not a warning appeared, then checked by the pilot in charge. The inquiry also called for faster, more fire-resistant escape slides, noting that even another half-minute of use could save many lives. In August 1969, Harrison received the George Cross posthumously. Flight 712 had lasted three minutes and 32 seconds; Harrison’s final post was beside a doorway whose escape slide had already burned away.

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ASTONISHING: ✈️ The wrong bolts blew a pilot through his windscreen On 10 June 1990, during the final year of the Cold War, British Airways Flight 5390 lost its cockpit windscreen over Oxfordshire-and Captain Tim Lancaster was dragged halfway outside with 81 passengers behind him. The BAC One-Eleven had left Birmingham Airport for Málaga, Spain, at 7.20am. It was the aircraft’s first flight since a British Airways shift maintenance manager had replaced the captain’s windscreen. Climbing through 17,300 feet, the panel suddenly blew out. Cabin air rushed through the opening, the flight-deck door was torn away, and Lancaster’s upper body vanished into the freezing slipstream. His legs caught around the controls as the aircraft rolled and dived. Cabin attendant Nigel Ogden rushed forward and grabbed Lancaster around the waist. Senior First Officer Alastair Atchison fought the controls, began an emergency descent and tried to send a Mayday through a roar so loud that radio communication became painfully difficult. Other cabin crew moved passengers to safety and came forward to help. One steward strapped into the left jump seat and held both of Lancaster’s ankles, but during a later handover the captain slid another six to eight inches outside. The crew could see no sign that Lancaster was alive, yet they kept hold of him. Atchison brought the aircraft down to 10,000 feet, slowed it to about 150 knots and asked for the nearest suitable airport. Air traffic control turned Flight 5390 towards Southampton, Hampshire. The BAC One-Eleven was still carrying so much fuel that it was about 1,265 kilograms above its permitted maximum landing weight. Atchison checked that Southampton’s runway was long enough, lined up visually and landed at 7.55am. Only after the aircraft stopped could firefighters pull Lancaster back through the empty frame. He had fractures in his right arm and wrist, a broken left thumb, bruising, frostbite and shock, but he was alive. All 81 passengers had survived without injury. The investigation found a chain of small decisions behind the violence. Instead of using the illustrated parts catalogue,the maintenance manager had tried to match replacement bolts to the old ones by sight and touch. Eighty-four of the 90 fitted bolts were about 0.66 millimetres too narrow, while the remaining six were the correct width but about 2.5 millimetres too short. The narrower bolts had a similar thread spacing, so they could appear to engage with the locking nuts without carrying the load safely. That mattered because this windscreen was fitted from outside the aircraft: cabin pressure pushed the panel outwards, leaving the bolts to hold it in place. No second person inspected the installation because windscreen replacement had not been classed as a “vital point” requiring an independent check. The crew’s refusal to let go turned a maintenance failure into a landing, not a loss. Less than five months later, the captain who had disappeared through his windscreen returned to flying.

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DELIGHTFUL: Concorde’s smallest window changed the whole aircraft At Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey, I step aboard Concorde G-BBDG, the British production aircraft that helped prove the airliner was ready for service. The famous needle nose is outside, but the surprise waits in the cabin: four narrow seats actoss, a slim red-striped aisle and remarkably small windows. I sit down with a museum boarding card in my hand, and the engineering suddenly becomes a passenger journey. Turning back, I find an open section revealing the ribs and pipework around those little oval windows. That is what stays with me: Concorde feels grandest when it stops being a silhouette and becomes somewhere ordinary people actually sat.

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In 1974, British Airways cabin crew rolled a meal trolley through a BAC One-Eleven from Manchester to Copenhagen. Even a short European hop came with table service. What do you remember being served?

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BRILLIANT: ✈️ I cmae for the first jet airliner-then an engine lesson stole an hour. Near St Albans, the de Havilland Aircraft Museum’s Comet 1a was my goal. A volunteer made Rolls-Royce engines simple, welcomed every question and found our perfect filming spot. Coffee and cake sealed it.

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APPALLING: ✈️ Our £6 plane-spotting trip cost £130 At Manchester Airport’s Runway Visitor Park, we queue 25 minutes before discovering card-only, two-hour parking costs £6. Jets and the three-engined BEA Trident thrill the kids; food, drinks and two rides push our family bill to £130. Pack a picnic-take care.

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PIVOTAL: ✈️ This Comet opened jet travel-and transformed testing BOAC Comet G-ALYP opened the jet age on 2 May 1952, carrying fare-paying passengers from London to Johannesburg. Its fatal 1954 breakup exposed metal fatigue beside a navigation window; new rules barred reusing strength-test cabins for fatigue testing.

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APPALLING: ✈️ My toddler reached the airliners-every cabin stayed shut. At Manchester Airport’s Runway Visitor Park, I carried my two-year-old through pouring rain after signs promised aircraft access. The Avro RJX-the last airliner fully built in Britain-Trident and DC-10 all stayed closed. £5 bought a distant Concorde view and a soaked, crushed toddler. Spare yourself the disappointment.

✈️ In 1964, BOAC’s VC10 G-ARVM began carrying passengers, but by 2006 only its fuselage could return to Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey. Restore it, conserve it, or let it go?

I climbed Concorde’s stairs-and found the human story At Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey, I’ve just climbed aboard Concorde,the British passenger airliner built to fly faster than sound. I expected its needle nose to hold my attention, but the boarding stairs and simple CONCORDE panel inside stopped me. I sat in a real passenger seat (my instinct is always to find the window) and the snug cabin changed the scale of everything. A slender body reduced drag at supersonic speed, but passengers felt that engineering trade-off in the narrow space around them. Outside, the VC10 behind Concorde made this feel like a line of old departures, not a row of exhibits. That small shift-from spectacle to ordinary journey-is what stayed with me.