Ascension Island

Yesterday, it emerged in an exclusive in the FT that the Home Secretary has explored the possibility of setting up refugess camps on Ascension Island.

From Wikki:

"Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) from the coast of Africa and 2,250 kilometres (1,400 mi) from the coast of Brazil. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha,[2] of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around 1,300 kilometres (800 mi) to the southeast. The territory also includes the sparsely-populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, some 3,730 kilometres (2,300 mi) to the south, about halfway to the Antarctic Circle.

The island is named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension Day. It was an important safe haven and coaling station to mariners and for commercial airliners during the days of international air travel by flying boats. During World War II it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic.[3] Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922.

The island is the location of RAF Ascension Island, which is a Royal Air Force station, a European Space Agency rocket tracking station, an Anglo-American signals intelligence facility and the BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. The island was used extensively as a staging point by the British military during the Falklands War. Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system (others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral). NASA operates a Meter Class Autonomous Telescope (MCAT) on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which is potentially hazardous to operating spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island

Like many servicemen and women, I have landed on the island.

Unlike many of them, I actually stayed one nigt on the island when our RAF VC10 broke down. Planes used to land there to refuel on the long flight south. And when once the refuelling had taken place, the plane moved and there was this pool of hyraulic fluid that had leaked from the wing.

We'll never stay the night said someone who had done the trip before.

But we did. As it took 12 hours to fix the plane.

So, the plane dropped from cruising altitude, lower and lower, until it seemed we were skimming just above the wave tops. There was no sign of land, then at the last minute there was land and we tounched down.

There was a runway, a radar station, a radio relay station. And little else.

There is an RAF base there, and some personnel were posted there to move freight, and the lucky few could fly up for R&R from the Falklands for four days if you knew the right people.

Once it became clear that the pane could not be fixed that night, we were taken to the accommodation, and when we switched the light on, the floor moved as dozens of huge roaches scuttled for shade.

As we were due to land in the Falklands in April, it was just after their "summer" had ended, so we were dressed in winter clothes. Azzi is almost on the equator.

It was hot.

So, we retreated to the bar where we drank the island dry in three hours.

Azzi is fine. For 24 hours, or a four day break from the grind of RAF Mount Pleasant. But it is the top of a volcano, 4,000 miles from the UK and water and other supplies is a serious issue, and Priti Vacant wanted to send immigrants there.

Even better, there was also the question of using St Helena.

St Helena is even more remote. There are infrequent boats from Azzi, maybe once a month. Its so remote that's where Napoleon was exiled too. And Priti wanted to send immigrants there too.

This Government is both stupid, and evil. Priti just about the worst of them as she is shameless, and there is a rumour some want her to take over from Johnson when the time comes. She is the Snow Queen, made real.

This is where we are now: something like the law of Human Rights Act is just something to be got round, like Parliamentary Scrutiny.

It would be better if we sent Johnson, Gove, Patel, Hancock et al to Assi to see who would be last Tory standing, then we could lock them in the Tower. Instead they will be in power for four more years.

Weep for us.

And tonight, the Guardian is reporting that Number 10, not the Home Office, is pushing for "processing centres for refugees in plaes as diverse as: Moldova, Morocco and Papua New Guinea.

Weep for what we have become.