LONDON – The UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman is coming under fire after using an RAF Chinook to fly from Dover to Manston, which is a 30-minute journey by car.
Causing Further Upset…
Braverman has been in the Dover & Manston areas today to get a handle on the current migrant crisis in the asylum centers, where not enough claims are being processed.
On top of that, diseases such as Diptheria are becoming present in those camps, bringing into question the treatment of the migrants when they enter the UK.
AviationSource has approached the Home Office, and they declined to comment on the reasoning for the use of the Chinook.
For context, people on social media are highlighting the fact that if you go on Google Maps, the commute from Dover to Manston is 30 minutes, and it would cost less money for such transport in cars than chartering a military helicopter.
A Waste of Taxpayers’ Money?
This is yet again not a surprising element from the Conservative government, especially with the use of aircraft either for their own travel or for other policies.
Back in June 2020, the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent £1m of taxpayer’s money repainting one of the Royal Air Force’s Airbus A330MRTT aircraft into a “United Kingdom” livery. It was known solely as “Boris Force One”.
More recently, over the Summer, the previous Home Secretary, Priti Patel, wasted around £1.2 million on the first Rwanda Deportation Flight, which never went ahead due to last-minute High Court injunctions.
At £1.2m, that was £160,000 per deportee to send to Rwanda.
This resulted in the airline, Privilege Style, being lambasted for weeks until they took the decision to no longer support the UK Government with this scheme around two weeks ago.
So, what we are beginning to see here is a more clear and more consistent pattern of financial wastage, especially when the government is trying to toot the horn on making spending cuts.
Yes, a couple of million is nothing compared to an overall budget in the hundreds of billions, but the principle still stands. They need to get a grip on such wastage.
And as a general point, the Conservatives have created a lot of wastage themselves, valued at well over £50-60bn as well, so this is quite the woes of their own making.
Overall…
With Braverman under fire already for sending private information from her personal email, it is quite surprising that this short and wasteful Chinook flight has occurred.
This will probably result in further condemnation of the Home Secretary, who does appear to be holding onto her job on thin ice. Such ammunition has been provided to the opposition for free on those accounts.
Maybe she was trying to make herself look like a rapid-response Home Secretary by using a quicker mode of transport, but what is 30 minutes?
Looking ahead, it’s going to be interesting to see how much further this pattern will continue and whether we could see more wastage occurring.
