Clearly Britain has become the benefits office of the world

REVELATIONS about the state of Britain's asylum and welfare systems are the stuff of nightmares. Can it really get worse than discovering more a million non-British migrants are claiming universal credit at the expense of the British taxpayer? Spoiler alert, apparently it can!

- Esther Krakue

Because just when you thought this country couldn't be made to look any more pathetic, we find out thousands of Afghans were quietly flown into the UK under a secret government scheme after a catastrophic data breach by one of our own officials. Yes, really.

A British bureaucrat accidentally leaked a classified spreadsheet containing the names of Afghan nationals linked to UK forces. Not a few names. Thousands. And what followed was a panic-stricken scramble to avoid bloodshed and embarrassment. Yet instead of owning the error publicly and dealing with it transparently, the Government did what it does best: slapped on a super-injunction, buried the story and funnelled tens of millions of pounds into flying people into the UK under the radar.

The public knew nothing. Parliament knew nothing.

The official final cost of this quiet disaster is likely to be around £7billion. All drawn from Treasury reserve funds, of course. Heaven forbid the departments actually responsible for the mess should foot the bill. Operation "Rubific" saw thousands of Afghans resettled in British towns with no debate, no scrutiny and no mention in the official records.