Why are there higher bills, cuts, poverty, hunger and frustration? There are a few reasons but this isn't one of them

HAVE you ever asked yourself the question: “Why is the country like this?”

- Brian Leishman

Maybe it was when you could not get a doctor's appointment. Or when you rang around for a dentist and found none taking NHS patients.

Perhaps it was when you saw the price of your weekly shop creeping up again, or when your energy bill landed with a thud on the doormat.

“Why can I not get a house?”

“Why are there so many potholes?”

“Why is the council not cutting the grass?”

“Why is everything just so expensive?”

These questions are all valid. You are right to ask them. You are right to complain and be angry, because people's living standards have, and are, deteriorating.

In what is the sixth richest nation in the world that is just plain wrong.

I understand the immense frustration at this unjust situation. I feel it too.

And I understand the instinct to look for someone to blame. That is a very human response.

However, let me be clear: the blame does not lie with people crossing the Channel in small boats.

Someone clinging to a rubber raft, legs dangling in freezing water, fleeing persecution and war, is not coming here to exploit the system. They are risking their lives to come here to survive. To live. To find safety.

And they are certainly not coming here for money not from a benefits system that is threadbare and failing even those who have paid into it all their lives.