Borders [2015]

Borders are just the boundaries of

Where sets of rules apply.

Where being different, for example,

You can live or you must die.

I don't want persecution

Of people like me

To wander free.

Neither do I want persecution of you.

______

Somewhere between

The far side of

The Middle East

And just over there

The rules change.

A transsexual stoned

In Seaside City

Is a

Recreational

Happenstance.

A transsexual stoned

In the Middle East

Is a

Public

Execution.

______

Especially,

I am wary of people

Who have been raised to

Believe it is their god's will to

Stone me.

Perhaps it

Is no surprise

I am wary of people

Who refuse to respect

Our bounded freedoms.

It is true,

You cannot see

Political boundaries

From the depth of space

But they are very real on earth,

This planet where we have to live.

______

Europe is an area of land.

It has hot bits and cold bits,

Flat bits and bumpy bits,

Bits that are dry and

Bits that are less so but,

It isn't the land that

Made Europe the magnet

For the disenfranchised

From elsewhere in the world.

______

Soil has no more or less problem than sand

With colour or gender or preference,

With who walks hand in hand

With whom or for why

They can't stand

Each other.

It's just

Land.

______

I am fifty-three, born

Only seventeen years

After World War Two.

When I was born a

European, peace was

barely old enough to

ride a motorcycle and

still too young to vote.

This year,

European Peace

Is seventy years old

And we take it for granted.

______

But it has taken people seventy years

Of tolerance, of understanding,

Education and co-operation

To get where we are,

To become where

Everyone else

Wants to

Be.

It didn't come for free.

______

We did not achieve this

Lasting peace in secret.

Our methods are in

The public domain.

______

Our methods are

The European public.

Our customs and practices,

Our rules and regulations,

Our laws and public behaviour

Are what makes Europe

And Europeans

Successful.

The peace

And calm,

The time

To think

Can no more

Be stormed

Or occupied

Than a pub's

Quiet ambience,

Its calm can be

Enjoyed

By anyone

If one

Pugnacious

Seeker

Of it destroys

The very thing

That drew them.

BBC Migrant (FB 26th June 2015)

I can't be bothered to rephrase my Calais lorry-jumpers piece from tonight as standalone so I'll begin with the post that prompted my response. It was a Public post so I am not breaching any confidences and I shan't attribute it to avoid its author embarrassment:

They wrote:

" Last night on the BBC news, they interviewed a Sudanese migrant in Calais. He's trying to make his way to the UK. He's taught himself impeccable english, and he's made his way across Africa and Europe to try and make his dream come true.
Some people think we should move heaven and earth to stop him. I disagree.
A man with that much motivation, drive, and talent should be welcome here. He's shown more resourcefulness and resilience than I think most of us could in his situation, and with all that going for him he's going to be an asset to the country.
So what do we do? We spend millions of £ to stop him.
Smart move."

I replied:

English is one of the two official languages in Sudan so it is no great surprise he is fluent.

If he had entered the EU legally he would already have a visa that entitled him to come here. I guess he doesn't so he has illegally entered and crossed a large number of countries, those of which are in the EU having the same human rights legislation as we do.

The UK, as is recently widely reported, is on average the most expensive place in Europe in which to rent accommodation and as he presumably has no funds he is presumably intending to be supported by the UK as he has no job ready and waiting for him.

The key to what makes the UK an attractive destination for illegal migrants over other European countries is that if one does qualify for asylum here and finds even a low paid job one's earnings are topped up by Tax Credits, which are an unquestionable burden on those taxpayers in the UK who do not qualify for them.

And, of course, if he intends to cross on a lorry he is also putting the livelihood of the driver of that lorry at risk. I believe the fine is some £2000 or so per person discovered on, in, under or otherwise aboard a vehicle but not on the ticket or with the correct documentation.

Had he real drive and motivation to become an upstanding and contributing member of our society he would have done all he could to qualify for legal entry. He might also, were he not criminally selfish, have thought to stay closer to home to help sort out the problems within his own country.

So, in summary, he is someone who has no respect for the law in the countries he has already crossed without the appropriate permissions and has no respect for UK law as it is his intention to enter the UK illegally. That he has not expired yet would imply he has either illegally worked along the way or has stolen enough to sustain himself. He also chose to run away, much further than is necessary to achieve safety for himself, rather than address problems for the greater good of his fellow Sudanese.

I fail to see how all that renders him a potential asset to our country? He may have been a refugee from Sudan a while ago but right now he's nowhere near Sudan, has no need to flee anymore and he is just another illegal resident in France, which, as it happens, is not a dangerous war zone. I am there at the moment and would have noticed.

Calais Migrant Camps (FB 29th August 2015)

For clarity, the definitions used here are:
Migrant - noun - a person or animal that moves from one region, place, or country to another. [Collins]
Illegal immigrant - noun - a person who has entered a country illegally [Collins]
Refugee - noun - a person who has fled from some danger or problem, esp political persecution [Collins]

Can we please remember that the people who are camping near Calais and attempting to board lorries etc. to reach England are willfully illegal immigrants and are only a tiny minority of the refugees and other people currently legally present in and wishing to settle in the EU. This is an important distinction.

This tiny minority is made up exclusively of those who refuse to apply for residency in the EU in the proper manner, who have entered and crossed a number of countries without regard for their laws and who intend to break both French and UK laws in order to cross from France to the UK. They are not model citizens.

It is their free choice not to have applied for asylum in any EU country they have set foot in before reaching Calais. If they had applied via the correct channels and had achieved a legal right to be living and working in the EU they could get on the train like anyone else.

All the people camped in Calais, some of whom may be refugees and all of whom are illegal immigrants, can apply to the French government and would be entitled to exactly the same as the many tens of thousands already in the system. Were they to do that I might respect them a little more.

I am appalled at the calls to take supplies to this tiny minority, the small criminal element doing more to damage the reputation of genuine, law abiding asylum seekers than anything else. I have even received an invitation via social media to contribute to a collection for these people which, unsurprisingly, I shall not be doing.

No one needs to buy food or supplies in Brighton and take them by van to France, it is a daft idea and a waste of money. If you are that concerned, pop over as foot passenger and walk to the local supermarket and save yourself a bundle. I am slightly concerned that a local politician bigged-up the idea.

The camps in Calais are not populated by desperate people who have just escaped a war zone and who seek safe settlement in the EU, those people applied when they arrived and are already in the system. The camps in Calais are populated by those who have been safely in the EU for a while but who refuse to abide by the rules.

It isn't about being racist or capitalist or nationalist or any such nonsense, it is about respect for the law and giving support to those who properly apply for it and qualify for it, which is as available in Calais as it is in Dover or Folkestone.

It is the simple selfishness of these few thousand criminals, I assume that to be the term for someone who is committing the offence of being where they are not legally entitled to be, that incurs massive cost and causes frequent delay, not just to the service through the tunnel but across Kent and in the Pas-de-Calais as traffic backs up.

People Traffickers (FB 30th August 2015)

The second emotive issue I am going to tackle tonight, while my head is in the right place to do it, is that of refugees and other migrants drowning en route to Europe from North Africa.

While regrettable, the deaths at sea attributed to the current "refugee crisis" are not something the citizens of Europe should be made to feel guilty for, unless they are personally a part of the trafficking organisation responsible for providing the boats to the people in an unseaworthy condition or overloading them or both or of any other ruse designed to prise money from people with no concern for their wellbeing.

The drownings etc. are a symptom of a much larger problem and one that cannot be solved by the EU, no matter how many rescue craft are or are not deployed. There is even a strong argument that a greater chance of being rescued in the event of difficulty decreases the perceived risk involved in attempting a crossing and encourages more to give it a go.

To use the analogy of "Russian Roulette", with each boat being a chamber in a revolver and lack of seaworthiness or overcrowding being the bullet therein, it seems the gun is now fully loaded and there is an approaching certainty the crossing, the pulling of the metaphorical trigger, will result in death, injury or sickness.

People pay huge sums to play the game and it costs even more to pick up the pieces of the players at the end but, and here's the catch, the game is being played outside the EU so it has no power to stop it, just to clear up the mess from it that does or would otherwise wash up on its shores.

It is no more responsible parenting to send or take one's child to sea under the conditions we see across our news media than it would be to point a loaded gun at their heads directly and to pull the trigger.

I find it barely credible that it causes an outcry in the UK to suggest sending appropriately skilled people out to where the games are being organised and to discreetly disrupt the traffickers' activity such that so many people do not commit what is tantamount to suicide and infanticide by paying to play.

This is not an action movie, these are not crowds surging from imminent death at the hands of armed hordes onto whatever craft is in front of them at that given moment. Even those presumed refugees are already displaced. They are not plucking themselves directly from a war zone, they have already extracted themselves a considerable distance and are deciding where to pay to go next.

Of the hundreds of thousands of people currently displaced by war, predominantly from the Middle East and Africa, a relative few have the desire to travel to somewhere as far away or as different as the EU and of them a relative few would have the means with which to pay traffickers' rates for the journey.

So an earlier conscious decision, taken weeks or months before the decision to board an unsuitable watercraft in which to cross the Mediterranean Sea, could easily be considered to be where the tournament of Russian Roulette began, any number of games having already been played between leaving home and reaching the coast of North Africa.

There has to be a point at which running away from something to achieve safety becomes a different journey, when safety has already been achieved and the decision to continue running into the far distance turns it into a quest for something else. That something else is usually money.

Traffickers don't offer sea crossings for free so any adult on board their vessel has made a decision to gamble what they have against what they dream they might one day have and has bought a place in the last round of Russian Roulette, the one where all the chambers of the gun are loaded and it comes down to luck and the benevolence of the EU whether they are rescued from the brine or they die.

I have no problem with people dying from their own greed and stupidity but I do have a problem with people putting their children's lives at risk because of it. Understanding human nature as I do, I am aware there will always be idiots prepared to take potentially fatal risks so the only way I see of keeping these children safe from their parents' idiocy is to take away the boats.

It would probably be cheaper, too, for the EU to buy and scrap every potential trafficking vessel than it is to keep scooping people out of the water when they break down or sink. It might give people from some parts of the world the incentive to sort their own countries out rather than just move out, too.

In Europe now we have a peculiar situation in that our own rules generally prevent our direct intervention in the politics of troubled areas so we don't have the option of sorting the problems out at source, helping places become safe and prosperous enough that populations don't feel the need to seek asylum elsewhere.

Until someone changes the rules elsewhere in the world, there is nothing more we in the EU can do than clear up any mess that reaches us. It is not appropriate for us as individuals to feel guilty that other parts of the world choose not to follow our political example and experience problems from which people flee as a result.

Some numbers:

Of the people arriving in Italy by sea in 2014, just over 25,000 were men originally from Syria and just over 24,000 were men originally from Eritrea. Just over 6,000 women arrived from each country, too. The published number of minors I have to hand does not differentiate between girls and boys but I guess the split to be no less skewed in favour of males. However you view these figures, they do not convincingly represent a flow of refugee family units.

The Gambian arrivals numbered almost 7,500 men and only 28 women, very clearly suggesting economic migration to be the principal driver for migrants attempting illegal entry to the EU from that region. Malians numbered over 9,000 men and just 27 women, indicating a similar situation.

Today's papers showed a picture (FB 4th September 2015)

Today's papers showed a picture of a mother, father and their infant sprawled on a railway track with a policeman standing over them. The father's face is contorted in fear. Why? The policeman is trying to get them to accept help, not to harm them.

The father's despair is really only at his having to stay in Hungary for a bit and he's only really upset because he can't just ignore the law and zip right along to Germany as he would like to.

Imagine a homeless person coming to your door in distress and you offering them a seat and some food in the kitchen while you make up a comfy bed for them in the living room until you can find them something permanent.

Then imagine them refusing to sit in the kitchen, refusing to sleep in the living room and instead making a dash for your bedroom because that's the only room they want to be in. You would probably say they were taking the piss.

That is exactly what is happening if you put yourself in Europe's place. If you put yourself in Hungary's place you will notice the people refusing your help are not even satisfied with your bedroom, they covet a bedroom in the big house, two doors up. Which is really taking the piss.

A column of people who had already reached safety and who just had to wait to be signed in to the system in Hungary to, if they were genuine refugees, shortly achieve free movement within Europe have now gone walkabout. They have just left the area in which the adults had my sympathy.

The children will always have my sympathy because it isn't their fault their parents take unnecessary risks with them, put them in unnecessary danger and unnecessarily prolong their hardship.

I do not recognise it as the act of a responsible parent to take their child on an unnecessary pedestrian road-trip simply because they would rather be safe in Germany than just as safe in Hungary, where they already are, or just as safe in Austria, which they intend to pass right through before accepting help.

It is also really rather insulting to the people of Hungary and Austria that these supposedly desperate refugees do not consider Hungary and Austria acceptable places to live, both countries being safe and in many ways more comfortable than Syria was before the war that has displaced them began.

*Hungary is a popular destination for other Europeans, notably from Germany and Austria, to visit for holidays. It is a member of the EU and of NATO and refugees are at no particular risk by being there.

I feel I am watching the world as it goes mad (FB 8th September 2015)

Scammers, con artists, rip-off merchants or whatever else you choose to call them are having a field day, fleecing shedloads of cash from compassionate folk via the internet.

Anyone can set up a donation page, post a picture they copied from a news site, write something to inspire guilt-driven giving based around others being less fortunate and then sit back and watch the pounds roll in. It's hardly genius.

If your particular cause isn't photogenic enough you can always pick a photograph of something that will tug at more heart strings and use that instead, use an award winning aerial shot of an overcrowded boat on the sun-drenched Mediterranean, for example, to raise money for some people camping in a field near Calais.

Even the best intentioned of these knee-jerk operations are amateur and downright wasteful of donations, seemingly more concerned to be seen to be making the effort to travel to France themselves than to be efficient with what they get and to feed in locally to the existing and well established supply chain.

Be very careful where you donate. Just because an individual, group or organisation is requesting donations and what they state they intend to do with them is a charitable act does not make them a charity. You could just be buying someone a booze cruise or subsidising their ego with the cash you electronically hand over.
______

Until last week most people in the UK had been turning a blind eye to the plight of refugees from war-torn or otherwise less salubrious areas of the world wishing to settle in Europe.

No matter how many times they had heard or read reports of boatloads of migrants drowning or of people being found dead or dying in the backs of lorries they did nothing until they saw a photograph of a drowned child.

Suddenly there were public outpourings of anger, not at the traffickers who provided an unsuitable craft for the crossing or at the father who let his family board it but, quite bizarrely, at the governments of the land they were setting out to visit.
______

It is more than fifteen-hundred miles from the Turkish coast where the boy drowned to the migrant camps near Calais in northern France. Fifteen-hundred miles is far enough to make them separate circumstances.
______

Assuming one to be a genuine refugee, to achieve refugee status in Europe one has to reach Europe and apply for it. It might take a few weeks to come through but that's only because there's lots to check and every application deserves to be considered properly and individually. Oh, yes, and there's a bit of a rush on.

Alan, the boy whose photograph seems to have shaken people from their rose-tinted torpor, died at sea on his way to Europe. The inhabitants of the camps are already in Europe and have been for some long while. Sitting in a field they are not at risk of drowning. They are in no imminent danger except from themselves.
______

Assuming one to be a genuine refugee, the quickest way to a decent life in the UK really is to apply for asylum as soon as entry is made to the EU. If someone failed to apply at the point of entry, their quickest way to a decent life in the UK is to apply right now, wherever in the EU they happen to be.

Had the people camped at Calais applied for asylum even when they arrived there some of them might by now have been in a position to cross the channel by conventional means instead of risking their lives jumping trucks.

Had they applied when they first entered the EU, wherever that was, their applications would have been in days or weeks earlier and the relevant decisions would be made that much sooner, too.

Is it not strange then that so many people choose to stay in a squalid camp with no end to their ordeal in sight rather than signing up for the first step towards what they all say they want, a decent life in the UK, for which they will need the appropriate paperwork?

I suspect their real motive for not signing in is that they know they do not qualify for asylum in the EU under the rules. So I have to ask, how humane are they themselves being by jumping trucks in the hope they can break the rules to enter the UK and to take a job on the sly that might otherwise have been offered to someone who genuinely was a refugee?

It really doesn't make sense on so many levels that so many people in the UK fail to see the difference between someone desperate to reach Europe to claim asylum and get on with their life as we live it here and someone who is happy to turn a piece of northern France into a replica of the slum they snuck thousands of miles to escape from.

If you want to send supplies to Nigerians, Eritreans or whomever living in shanty towns send them to the parts of Nigeria, Eritrea or wherever where shanty towns are as good as it gets. It is ridiculous to perpetuate the existence of a shanty town near Calais, especially one populated entirely by people who insist upon living other than in accordance with the laws, customs and accepted standards of those they purport to wish to assimilate with.

Just because someone used to live somewhere dangerous does not entitle them to ignore the laws of Europe, the very same laws we are expected to follow, and it certainly shouldn't entitle them to mollycoddling while they do.

If British idiots stopped making life unnaturally comfortable for people choosing to camp in a field in France the people in the field might just make an effort to accord with the rules, to play fair and to either sign in or fuck off. I thought we were supposed to stand-up for fairness here, not to support those who cheat.

If people in the camps in Calais don't qualify for asylum in Europe they should take the oft referred to "drive and determination" they displayed in coming thousands of miles to shit in a French field back to their own home countries and make life better for their families, friends and neighbours that way.
______

There are hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees currently in or heading for Europe. It is a massive headache for everyone concerned, an unprecedented situation but, if you prioritise the saving of life, the most immediate need is to stop people putting themselves at risk.

The real urgency is stop people being overcrowded onto boats in Libya, Turkey and elsewhere and to stop people gathering near Calais in the hope they might jump a truck to England. Yes there will be queues building up while we work out how to deal with everyone but no one will be dying at sea, suffocating in or dangling off lorries.
______

It is not compassion fatigue or an initial lack of it it is common sense. Anyone who calms down enough to look at things clearly will see that to perpetuate the camps as they are at Calais brings no solution any nearer. If you can't see why that is and you still want to perpetuate the camps at Calais you should do it in a cost effective fashion.

If you want to make a cash donation choose a proper charity that has some experience and expertise in the field. If you want to be a more direct part of helping you can always volunteer to assist with an established charity's work. They will know how best to deploy your skills or resources and will work with complementary charities in developing long term and sustainable support strategies.

Or, if you live in Brighton, you could wander outside and probably find someone homeless to help within minutes of your front door. You wouldn't need to waste money on a van or a ferry ticket or anything if you did that. You could be cash efficient and green, too.

Of course, if you were helping homeless people in Brighton you wouldn't be able to use an award winning picture of an overloaded boat on the Mediterranean to encourage donations to fund a weekend away like you can if you help homeless people in Calais.

Safe Giving - Avoid scams and other rip-offs carried out under the guise of a charitable cause.

If you give money directly to a registered charity they can claim back the tax you paid on the money when you earned it, increasing the value of your donation to their cause.

If you donate to any small charitable fund though a crowdfunding site a proportion of your outlay will be diverted from the cause to the operators of the site. It is unlikely this will be the most efficient method of funding disaster or crisis relief efforts where established charities are already operating with similar aims. Larger operations benefit from economies of scale, reducing costs and maximising the effectiveness of your cash support.
______

The regulations being flouted by a surprising number of pop-up independent charitable fundraising campaigns currently surfing the wave of compassion triggered by the recent publication of a photograph are there to protect the donations made to the fund and to ensure they are used properly and only for the purpose for which they were made.

For small charitable public fundraising campaigns the requirements are far from onerous. For successful campaigns that raise in excess of £5000 a year there is a requirement to register as a charity, which is also not onerous and is quite reasonable an expectation to make of any group or individual entrusted with that amount.
______

If it is not clear *before* you make your charitable donation exactly whom you are giving your money to, by which I mean such that you could easily identify and locate them if they were to misuse or lose it, consider why they would feel the need to keep this detail secret when the law requires transparency.

Also check it is clear *before* you make your charitable donation to a particular cause what will happen to unspent monies when a campaign is closed. Your money should not, for example, be at risk of loss in the event of the organiser losing interest in the cause or being incapacitated through illness or death and should not be spent on anything you would not wish to contribute to.
______

The above advice applies to any charitable giving and is provided free of charge and for the benefit of all. Whether I personally support any cause or not is irrelevant as to whether I wish those who do support that cause to have confidence their cash donation to it is efficiently achieving what they intended it to.

This is about safe giving. It is not about politics.