THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: A cheeky request By Maggie Urry First in the queue for permission to stay in the UK on January 1, at the dawn of the new regime for immigrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria, will be the Cheeky Girls, the Transylvanian pop duo comprising Gabriela and Monica Irimia.
Has Gabriela been doing some lobbying already? For she is the new girlfriend of Lembit Opik, the headline-hogging Liberal Democrat MP who recently broke up with weather presenter fiancée Sian Lloyd. Many have wondered what a glamorous 24-year-old might see in a gangling, snaggle-toothed, middle-aged MP with an interest in asteroids. Not, surely, the hope that he could advance the applications for visa extensions she and her sister made in the summer. Quite properly, Opik passed documents relating to the girls' case straight to their local Hastings & Rye MP Michael Foster. He also mentioned their plight to Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, but only when he bumped into him outside the Commons' voting lobbies. "That is exactly what you'd expect a member of parliament to do in those circumstances," insists a Liberal Democrat spokesman, who called it a "commonplace" event. In any case, Opik's help didn't do any good - well, he is a LibDem. Whitehall insiders say the girls' application was refused but, because Romania's accession to the EU is only 10 days away, it would be churlish and a poor use of taxpayers' money to bundle them out. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006 "FT" and the "Financial Times" are trademarks of The Financial Times. -- ______________ EuroAtlantic Club monitoring Romania's journey towards the EU http://www.europe.org.ro/euroatlantic_club/ mail to: P.O.Box 13-166, Bucharest 011737 e-mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
