Mirpur

Yeah.

We are talking about anchoring locations in Emporium Mall in Lahore, Lucky One in Karachi, and expanding this massive format into Mirpur, Faisalabad, and Multan.

They're going everywhere.

They even launched a dedicated sustainable retail format called the Green Hub in Mardan.

The promise was, when Reform were a party, to launch a privately funded inquiry into the Pakistani rape gang scandal.

For those who don't know about this and weren't following the developments early last year on Elon Musk X, since the 1950s, Pakistani migrants have moved to the UK, mainly from a region called Mirpur, which once flooded, They came over in clans called Biradiri clans.

They're Muslim.

They have high rates of cousin marriage.

It was bad enough in places like Manchester and Birmingham and Bradford.

So what would it be like in places like Mirpur in Pakistan? But, uh, and this has been going on and on and on and on.

And for decades, people have been trying to blow the whistle on this.

So victims and survivors have not been believed, and, and very often their character was, was, was kind of, uh, besmirched because, you know-

Use of shortwave for broadcasting in and from Pakistan ended in 2021, but they do still make quite a lot of use of medium wave in that part of the world.

And if you open this year's edition of WRTH, what do you find? Azad Kashmir Radio Muzaffarabad still on 792 kHz in the north, but now with 100 kilowatts, and also Azad Kashmir Radio from a new location, Mirpur, in the south, with 40 kilowatts on 936 kHz, plus a small number of low-power FM stations.

There's also a very interesting story about Adrian's attempts to obtain QSLs from these stations in Azad Kashmir, but we're out of time for today.

Perhaps I can bring that another week.

He said, well, you can't prevent people of foreign heritage from holding political office, never mind that that would be inconceivable to do so in many other countries, including Pakistan, right? You can't prevent that because otherwise they'll ghettoise and without political representation, they'll never be integrated.

And I said, look, You've already got endless examples, as Majid conceded, of Pakistani MPs wanting to build airports in Mirpur.

Now, I'm only for that if it takes exclusively departure flights from Britain.

You've got a Shabana Begum that has colonised Poplar and Limehouse, the Right Honourable Member for the Forest Moon of Endor, whining about the far right and complaining that Shabana Mahmood is making it harder theoretically, for loads of her co-ethnics to come into Britain on asylum visas.

And I think it's interesting to see why is there this massive distinction? Now, some of it is the part of the country from which people come.

I mean, have we had people from more well-to-do families come from India relatively? And Mirpur is a particularly poor and underdeveloped part of Pakistan.

And perhaps that has been why there's been a less successful element of integration from that part of the country.

But I I think there is more that needs to be learnt about this, about why some immigration tends to work and why clearly some others tend to not.

And that's very depressing.

But yes, a group of Labour MPs, all with diverse constituencies or not, have been busily anti-runway at Heathrow, but have been urging the funding of an airport in Mirpur because their constituents want to be able to get back and forth to see family.

Where's Mirpur? In Pakistan.

And They're very insistent that anti-building of runways in England, but very in Pakistan.

And those things are just crazy.

And everyone in Britain can see it.

And, you know, and then people criticized these MPs for this obvious, ridiculous double standard of saying, you know, if Heathrow expands, you know, it will kill the planet.

And they go, but Mirpur, great.

No, thanks, buddy.

Actually, we're building that airport in Mirpur and it's only taking arrivals.

That is positive immigration and a restored Britain government will celebrate and enable it.

Overall, the result will be simple.