The article discusses the legal implications of time limits, specifically focusing on the government's proposal to extend the 60-day detention limit for illegal immigrants to 18 months. The author argues that the government is using the 'short' duration of the deadline as an excuse for its own failure to provide sufficient resources for deportation processes, drawing a comparison to the violation of procedural deadlines in criminal cases and the potential for such logic to be applied to the National Health Service (SNS).