Bill Carmichael: The only way to retain border controls is to leave the EU

She basks in the admiration of the whole community and is widely praised for her kindness and humanity.

But then reality kicks in – many thousands turn up in the street outside expecting free food and a bed for the night. Some of them are not very nice people and they start to commit violent crimes in what used to be a peaceful neighbourhood.

Ah, says your neighbour, I can’t actually be expected to take all these people into my own home.

So instead she comes up with a plan to force each household, all of which are much poorer than her and who never made any promises to the homeless in the first place, to take their “fair share” of the people in the street.

Outrageous? Yes, indeed, but that in a nutshell is what has happened in Europe over recent months.

In September, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open Germany’s borders saying any Syrian, or anybody who claimed to be Syrian, would be welcome, no questions asked and with no security checks.

More than a million people answered Mrs Merkel’s invitation and the numbers, which normally decline in the winter months, have continued at an unprecedented rate.

About 1,700 migrants are entering Europe through Greece each day – more than the whole of January 2015. Some experts forecast that 10 million migrants could come to Europe during the course of this year.

The full disastrous scale of this folly is only just beginning to dawn on the German people, following the Paris terrorist attacks and the mass sex assaults committed by migrants in Cologne and other German cities.

So Mrs Merkel, aided and abetted by the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in the European Union, has come up with a plan to make the rest of Europe pay for her mistake.

The Commission is apparently about to tear up unilaterally the existing migration rules agreed by all member states. These are known as the Dublin Regulations and they decree that refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

This will only accelerate the process whereby Italy and Greece simply wave migrants through en route to the northern European countries including Germany, Sweden and the UK.

But even worse, the Commission this week issued a direct threat to the UK – if we don’t accept our “fair share” of Mrs Merkel’s migrants, about 90,000 people a year, then we won’t be allowed to deport asylum seekers who have already lodged claims in other EU countries.

We, a supposedly sovereign country, “won’t be allowed” by Brussels to control our own borders. Read that and weep. Clearly we have no hope of controlling our borders while we remain a member of the EU.

Of course this quota system, like much else devised by the EU, simply will not work. Migrants allocated to live in poorer countries in southern and eastern Europe will not accept it and will continue their journeys to richer countries in the north.

And ask yourselves one question – if the EU treats the UK with such contempt now in the run up to the referendum, how do you think they will treat us if we are mad enough to vote to stay in?

Credit cataclysm

AFTER the festivities of Christmas, January is usually a tough month with bleak weather and even bleaker 
finances as we struggle to pay off the credit card.

But, after the events of the last few days, you could be forgiven if you pulled the duvet over your head and refused to come out until the spring.

Not only have stock markets collapsed, but also economic experts gathered in the Swiss ski resort of Davos have been queuing up to voice apocalyptic warnings about the global economy.

One said the situation was far worse than 2007 and another warned: “We are heading for a crash. Cataclysm would be the right word to use.”

Gulp! The big problem, apparently, is unsustainable levels of debt.

We in the UK are not immune. We are still borrowing more than £5bn a month on our national credit card.

I suspect we will regret not paying it off when we had the chance.