Reading and listening to every article and discussion on the horror of the migrant crisis has brought home how unarguable it is us that we are a country of arrogant, over privileged selfish arseholes.
That a large body of people would rather see mass pain and suffering than give away a tiny slice of cake to a stranger.
We are conditioned with fake outrage towards every act a person may make in getting to those shores. In one breath we are the world beating masters of everything inviting the richest world beating best to join us, in the next we are the poor and fragile creosote man of Month Python fame unable to take one more tiny morsel into our overgorged bellies in case we explode.
Wilful ignorance abounds, selectively chosen to see us poor English as the victims and everyone else as the bad guy. We could never be to blame and whilst few of us would have the stomach to hold a drowning woman's head under the water, many are happy to turn their heads whilst others do. Farage and his gruesome entourage spend hours walking the beaches looking for horror, not to help or assist but to gloat over their special place in their world. Poverty and tragedy porn at it's worse, standing over a person who has made a journey more extraordinary, perilous and unbearable than anyone in this small minded country could imagine, yet the tiny bit of lifesaving dignity these people have left is far more than Farage could ever possess.
The person who's idea of a bad day is waking up next door to a Romanian family cannot even offer a towel, a warm blanket and hot mug of tea to shivering souls on a beach. He mocks and ostracises those that do. Such a Christian spirit. As I recall in my reading of the bible, generosity of spirit didn't have a cap. The good Samaritan didn't say ''tough, I've saved enough people today, I'm off to the pub, the rest can die.'
Our Government has a policy not vastly less horrific. Pretending to mourn those poor people who drown but equally making it policy to turn back the boats to make it more likely they will drown.
For those that do survive, rather than a warm welcome and the hand of friendship we have a our artificially generated hostile environment. How far are we from lining the M20 with people spitting and abusing people as they are shipped to accommodation around the country. Our media positively encourages this response firing up the rhetoric with words like invasion and economic migrant. Even the word Asylum Seekers is seen as a dirty label for a person, when it literally is what it says, 'someone seeking help and sanctuary'.
What are we told to see? A person who isn't a person. But a robber, a thief, a terrorist. Humanity and cause stripped back to dirty labels.
So what do we do? First strategy is to ask media to be nice and turn our more darker instincts to a fresher view of the world. I say it because that's what should happen but will never happen.
Oddly under the covers of the hostile environment the government knows they can no longer stop the migrant crossings and they also know they will grow in numbers as more displacement is inevitable. Reality is truly a bummer. Like with Covid and Brexit, migration problems don't go away with shouting at the TV and wishing them solved. Reality keeps coming back to bite and the news eventually will turn against those who continually blame others. Popularity goes in cycles and eventually it will turn on them.
Even the most stupid government needs a strategy so eventually I believe the only way to stop the boats be to open up some legal routes. The government would like to do this quietly and hidden from view so they can claim credit for solving the boats problem in the channel without increasing the number of migrants on our shores. They could actually have got away with this once upon a time as 95% of people in the country never even see or meet an asylum seeker or can't tell them apart from others. They are an invisible problem which we only know exists because it makes good headlines.
Sadly the government can't work on the solutions in the background because they have created such a toxic atmosphere, everyone is watching and waiting for the next story to unfold. The opening of legal routes for these people will be treated as a betrayal and a defeat. Other parties will be subject to this accusation to a greater degree making it worse for politicians seeking to do the right thing.
So in order to spin it well and tell the right story the language will not change, the hate will continue and we will no doubt be drowning people routinely for some time yet.
We lack the leadership to resist the rhetoric and treat the population as adults. Perhaps also we lack the population willing to listen to a leader attempt to explain this. Such is the world we live in.
