Three Little Piggies 2017

Three Little Piggies 2017

[Only the president's name has been changed]

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Across Europe houses are built of brick, stone, concrete and other durable materials.

Mediaeval houses had the stoutest of timber frames with solid infills. The timbers were connected with simple push fit joints and held in place with wooden pegs.

Even in the changing climate, at least for now, Europe does not suffer destructive typhoons and hurricanes.

Yet, in almost every photo of the aftermath of a seriously destructive storm in the USA I see a pile of wood, a bank, a pile of wood, maybe a hotel, a pile of wood, a gas station, a pile of wood etc..

I suspect even Donald Trump could be explained to that it isn’t just when big bad wolves huff and puff that houses of sticks and straw offer little protection.

Surely it is cheaper for the taxpayer to subsidise the building of strong houses that will last for generations, even in such vulnerable areas, than it is to deal with emergency evacuations and the constant rebuilding of homes just as fragile as those they must replace.

© John Barrow (Po) 2007 & 2017

This street was home to three people as I walked along it

This street was home to three people as I walked along it. One had erected a tent, one was in a partly cardboarded-up doorway and the third was less discreetly packaged. - A postcard from the not so saucy side of Seaside City.

Meat Thief (FB 18th May 2015)

I was accosted in the street tonight by a meat thief. Not in the sense of anyone walking up masked and demanding I stand and de-liver, that would be odd even by Seaside City standards, but, in the absence of any apron, boater or other relevant paraphernalia that may signify butchery as a trade or profession, I feel it enormously unlikely the selected cuts on offer would have left their intended retailer's premises accompanied by an appropriate receipt.

"Do you eat meat?" was the initial enquiry. A number of interpretations of this question were still jostling with each other in my mind when clarification of sorts came by way of "Fresh meat? Do you eat fresh meat?"

A woman, in her forties, maybe older, maybe younger, hard lives make it harder to tell. Hair, dark and unremarkable framing a face riven with sharp-edged creases throwing high-contrast shadows from an unflattering street light, a black on white, DC Comic depiction of ever-scowling villainy if ever I saw one.

I mumbled an affirmative, honest answer to the question as posed and was genuinely relieved to see her rustle in an unmarked plastic carrier bag before advising me she had meat to sell. It was half past eleven on a Sunday night on the Lewes Road and I really didn't want to have to deal with a radicalised vegan.

Truthfully not boastfully and not to insult, I said I had no need of it and crossed the road away from her continuing pitch, having to repeat the same advice a little more pointedly to draw the encounter to a close.

I carried on my way without further interference and with the lesson learned that if I don't shave for a week I look like someone who might buy stolen meat on the spur of an almost midnight moment.

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.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.