DEPLORABLE as it is for any mugging to occur, with a recent case in Darwen were we not nevertheless given an enlightening insight into why this country is so attractive to asylum seekers that some will even risk death clinging to Channel Tunnel trains or air beds on the sea to get here?

For among the muggers' loot in one of two attacks on refugees last week was, we are told, a mobile phone.

It seems extraordinary to me that anyone who is restricted to 80 per cent of the breadline benefit of income support, as asylum seekers are - and food vouchers, not actual money - can both acquire and afford to operate a mobile, cheap as they have become in recent years.

I don't know how many of our low income groups, such as pensioners, own or need such things, but I would imagine that not a lot do - and that cost is one of the reasons.

Is it not apparent then, that such 'luxuries' being attainable by those at the very bottom of the welfare ladder - and word of their availability no doubt being spread by mobile phone in the asylum seeker network - explains why Britain is viewed by so many as the land of the freebie?