Is Yorkshire really worse for Afghans than life with the Taliban?

AFTeR America pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, abandoning it to the Taliban, every sinew was strained to bring Afghans who had been loyal to Britain to safety.

At great risk to British service personnel working in Kabul, and at huge expense, some 11,600 individuals and their families were rescued and brought here. Naively, perhaps, we might have expected a bit of gratitude for offering them sanctuary.

Not a bit of it. Fast forward to 2023 and we learn that 40 rescued Afghan families, including some 150 children, are outraged.

Why? Because after spending 18 months in a four- star hotel in Kensington, a stone’s throw from the Victoria & Albert Museum in one of London’s most exclusive districts, they are now being told by the Home Office they are to relocate to Yorkshire.

On the website of their London hotel, single rooms are advertised at £217 per night. The cost to British taxpayers housing families in that hotel alone surely runs into millions — even before we consider the cost of free health care, educating their children and other benefits.

Some of the Afghans claim that after 18 months, their children’s mental health might be damaged if they were forced to move to the

A SURVEY reveals we’ve become so isolated three in ten of us don’t know our neighbours’ names, let alone talk to them. Not true round my way. I know where they all live because Amazon keeps delivering their parcels to me.

pretty historic market town of Wetherby. I know it well, having spent many years in Yorkshire.

Wetherby is gorgeous. A safe place to bring up kids, with cycleways, good schools and one of the lowest crime rates in england. The average wage is a handsome £30,501.

Yet that’s not good enough for these Afghan refugees — several of whom say they will refuse to go.

Dependency culture doesn’t take long to foster, does it?

If these guests find the thought of moving to a different free hotel so oppressive, perhaps they could cast their minds back to the hellish Taliban regime they left behind.

Half of their country is starving. Its women are being brutally oppressed. Anyone back home would swap places with them in a heartbeat.

What a mockery these people are making of our hospitality.

In every UK city, we pass homeless men, many of them military veterans who have served this country. They lack a clean and safe bed. But these ungrateful refugees all sleep safe and sound, paid for by us.