Good morning. It's four minutes after ten and you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC.

How much time do you think we should dedicate to gassing about how cold it is at the top of the show today?

I don't wear that cape. I'd looked up yesterday. I stepped out of, stepped onto the pavement, came out of the tube station yesterday.

And there were little white balls bouncing around on the pavement, tiny, tiny, tiny little white balls.

And I thought that there were either workmen overhead unpacking something from polystyrene.

You know when polystyrene packaging gets chafed and little tiny polystyrene balls start bouncing around?

I thought it was either that or it didn't actually cross my mind. And I'd mentioned on air that it was snowing in parts of the country, but it didn't cross my mind for a couple of seconds that this could actually be a meteorological phenomenon. And there it was, tiny, tiny little sort of mini hailstones. A bit like those sour sweets, the kids like, you know, the time, what they call?

The Pips, bouncing around the Pips. So anyway, about a minute and a half, I thought,

an hour cold it? Oh, blah, it's cold, in it? It's cold, it's April, you know, April.

Freeze, absolutely freezing. Absolutely shocking. I hope I'm not being a snowflake.

It is five after ten, and it is time to get stuck into the big story of the day, which is, I think, inevitably.

Energy prices.

There's quite a lot to talk about.

We are, and I've been saying this for two or three days, but we are categorically going to discuss the Ukrainian refugee situation today. because I said to you on Monday that I thought that by the end of the week, the blockages may have eased.

I thought that by the end of the week, if there was any hope at all that Pretty Patel's

home office, which is back in the news today for its failure to address all of the problems caused in its response to the windrush scandal. But I honestly thought if there was any hope at all, and you know how this programme works. We always are on the side of optimism. We're always just because they messed it up yesterday. Doesn't mean they'll mess it up tomorrow. And there are arguments that suggest we should probably abandon that position now,

given all of the evidence to the contrary. But what's the alternative? You have to keep hope alive. It's the hope that kills you in the end, isn't it? Desperation or despair I can cope with. It's the hope that gets you every time. But you have to keep it alive. So the hope was that by the end of this week, the Homes for Ukraine scheme, would have overcome any teething troubles, the wheels would

have been greased, and the obstacles and blockages that seemed to many of us to be

sort of possibly quasi-deliberate would have been removed, and lots and lots of people

who had registered to welcome a Ukrainian

refugee into their home would be able to do so. And the news I am receiving is almost universally

bad. So if you are involved in that scheme and you have a story to share,

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