Andy Burnham hasn’t spoken a single word on the UK’s migrant mess - Sarah Todd

Much will - hopefully - be spoken about national security this week, in the light of the horrific suspected Islamist terror attack in Berlin. The crowds must have been so scared when a van rammed into pedestrians at the weekend, followed moments later by the perpetrator opening the door and going on a stabbing rampage, killing one woman and injuring 29 others.

Many discussions will surely reflect on migration and the problems that have long been documented on Germany’s side of the North Sea, with statistics showing certain groups (young men) are regularly suspects in violent and sexual crimes.

Sound familiar?

Saturday’s attacker has been named by police as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, a German citizen of Lebanese background. Officials confirmed that he was known to police and had been radicalised.

He doesn’t deserve more column inches, so anybody interested should look up his background.

Fast-forward to May this year and he was sentenced to one year and ten months in prison for ‘preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state’. The decision was deferred for six months and he was placed under the supervision of a parole officer.

A few weeks on and here we are. As a journalist specialising in farming and rural life this is not your correspondent’s area of expertise.

However, to use an agricultural phrase, we seem to be waiting ‘til the cows come home to get a grip on this ticking timebomb.

Our new Prime Minister should stop trying to win popularity points with the odd quid off bus fares and start getting down to the nitty gritty.

Not so much as a flutter of those eyelashes as normal, everyday people - those he claims to have such affinity with – watched the first so-called “mega-dinghy” arrive on our shores last week, carrying a record 165 illegal migrants.

It’s easy to get migrant obsessed, so it’s important to say that national security must also include wider risks like food stability and severe fires, not just terrorism.

Never, in a lifetime spent working and living in the countryside, can this columnist recall so many harvest fires. Every day the weather presenter on the television is shouted at, as they smile and comment on the wonderfully warm spell.

Many farmers already are - or are on the brink of - having to start feeding winter supplies to their livestock. Their grass ravaged by drought. Don’t care? Well, maybe people will when the prices go up again at the supermarket.

Thoughts must go out to those in France, where wildfires are causing such devastation. We’re not talking Australia or California, just a hop and a skip over the channel (ask those migrants).

Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated and it’s impossible not to wonder what would happen if such a disaster were to happen in our country?

Our son is driving a combine down in Wiltshire and, just the other day, they had a fire drill to work out who would do what if the worst happened. Some fetching water bowsers and others ploughing fire breaks.

Does our country have a national emergency fire plan in place? It was disgusting last year when 5,000 acres, around ten square miles, of the North York Moors were devastated by a wildfire. It burnt for over six weeks and seemed over half that before many of the media or powers-that-be started to take any notice of the crew of underfunded firefighters and farmers putting their lives on the line to put it out.

As a child of the 1970s, there was barely a day watching television when a public service advertisement didn’t come on. There was the animated cat Charley, telling us not to talk to strangers or do daft things like play with matches. Some may remember having nightmares in 1973, from a short public safety film called Lonely Water starring a scary hooded spirit warning children about the dangers of swimming in places like quarries and lakes. As an aside, swimming proficiency among our country’s children has plunged to the most terrible low, with nearly 30 per cent of pupils leaving primary school unable to swim the length of a pool unaided. That is disgusting.

Of course, the Green Cross Code Man had us all stopping, looking and listening before crossing the road. Thinking aloud, he’s often remembered as youths walk into oncoming traffic with earphones on, staring slack-jawed down at their phones.

Yes, warnings could be more modern and shown on TikTok or whatever, but our country needs to stop waiting for those aforementioned cows to come home and start being proactive.