Discussing immigration has become almost taboo. Nevertheless, I'm going to discuss it. Or rather, I'm going to ask someone to explain to me how any reasonable person could defend the system we have at the moment. In the last week, I've read the heart-rending story of Elena, a 15-year-old East European girl smuggled into Britain to be used as a sex slave. She was lured away from her home in Lithuania by the promise of well-paid work selling ice-cream in Britain. On her first night here, she was sold for £4,000 and raped. Later she would be sold again and again, her value diminishing as she became damaged goods. Each night she had to service men for her `owner.' Even cutting her wrists brought no respite. Eventually she was taken to a club to tout for trade. Sobbing in the toilet, she was befriended by some English girls who distracted her minders long enough for her to escape and run to a police station. The men who bought and sold her have now been jailed for terms up to 18 years, but each year there are 2,000 Elenas brought into Britain and treated as badly, or worse. How do they get through, even with EU passports, when most of them are under-age and how do the men who prey on them, in Elena's case Albanian asylum seekers, sneak into Britain and get away with mayhem? I ask because on election day, a good and law-abiding family - mother, father and two young children - who had fled here from Mongolia to escape persecution were put on a plane and sent back to their homeland. Their lawyer believes it was no coincidence that they were deported on a day when everyone's eyes were elsewhere. "At best, the family faces the prospect of interrogation and imprisonment. At worst they could be executed by a regime which is simply unaccountable." At the same time, a school in Rochdale is fighting to prevent the deportation of three children who saw their grandfather shot dead in front of them in Bolivia. That was in 2001 and the family - mother, father and three children - fled to Britain, but not before the mother, a nurse, had been raped by government soldiers. She says: "I will never go back to my country. I prefer to kill myself." My question is a simple one. Why are we so efficient - even ruthless - at sending back people with genuine need of sanctuary and so apparently inept at chucking out villains? ********** Time for a break, says Maria I hope Maria Brunner doesn't start a trend. Frau Brunner has refused to pay a parking fine in Poing, Germany, because she wants a break from her "demanding children and lazy husband." She thanked the arresting officers and smiled as she was driven away. "I've had enough of scraping a living for the family every day. As long as I get food and a hot shower I can finally get some rest and relaxation." A lot of harassed mums will think she has a point. ********** Right royal Rolf Royalist or not, you have to respect our Queen. She's agreed to be painted by Rolf Harris, the master of slapping paint on canvas. Our Rolf, although Australian, is now a British institution and no mean artist when he puts his mind to it. Besides, as she's already withstood a bizarre depiction by Lucien Freud, who made her look like Widow Twankey, what has she to lose? ********** On the scent of attraction A new study, carefully conducted to preclude cheating, shows that homosexuals and heterosexuals prefer different body odours. Homosexual men were found to have a strong preference for the natural scent of other gay men while heterosexuals found it unattractive. The study also showed that gay women were attracted to the natural scent of other gay women and heterosexuals to the body odour of their own kind. This adds to the growing evidence that sexuality is determined by biology, which should confound those who think it is just something you choose to do and could stop if you wished. ********** When I saw the headline "RAF pays woman to train as stripper," my initial reaction was outrage - £2,100 of taxpayers' money to learn lap-dancing! Whatever next! But then I thought again. Stephanie Hulme, 23, has served her country for five years. Now she's entitled to a resettlement grant and training to equip her for Civvy Street. She wants to be a lap dancer. In fact, she's already secured employment, so who are we to tell her which profession she should choose? If I'd been Stephanie, I'd sooner have stuck pins in my eyes than spend my life gyrating for gawpers, but it takes all sorts. All the same, isn't it a pity that having trained Stephanie to be a useful member of the Armed Forces we're now letting her go? Surely there should be a career ladder within the forces so attractive that not even the charms of a lap-dance club could lure trained technicians away. ********** Why British is best Last week I went to Somerset to work for a day. The countryside was so beautiful it almost took my breath away. I saw more wild flowers in that one day than in the last five years, and the fields were full of placid cows and fat little lambs. I meant to work on the long train journey, but the landscape won. I know it's nice to jet abroad on holiday, but surely we live in the most beautiful country on Earth. ********** Nobody need suffer double trouble Personally I wouldn't cross the road to see a lookalike - not even if it was a Jean-Christophe Novelli lookalike. Well, maybe in that case! Anyway, there is a good living to be made from looking exactly like Posh and Becks or Elvis or the Queen. I've worked with Jeanette Charles, the best-known Queen lookalike, and people actually stand back in reverence when she appears. In some cases, however, reality recedes and the lookalike begins to think they ARE the person they resemble. Comedian Robin Williams, right, is suing his double, Michael Clayton, because Michael allegedly began to be Robin and not just impersonate him, something he's been doing for 18 years. It must be weird to have everyone look at you and not see the real you but only the icon you represent. "I look exactly like him," Clayton says. "It's a curse." Surely in this day and age you don't have to look like someone unless you choose to. A nip here and a tuck there and you could be anyone. | 
