Some good stories
This article in the Observer is really quite good.
The estate became home for hundreds of families escaping persecution and torture in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Uganda and Congo. Most had their request for asylum in the UK turned down, and when the Home Office began coming to the estate at 5am to remove them, Donnachie and the rest of the residents looked on in horror. “It was like watching the Gestapo – men with armour, going in to flats with battering rams. I’ve never seen people living in fear like it,” says Donnachie. “I saw a man jump from two storeys up when they came for him and his family. I stood there and I cried, and I said to myself, ‘I am not going to stand by and watch this happen again.’”
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Filed in: British Identity, Current affairs
It was in the Guardian last friday.
Excellent.
There are very few heartening news stories.
I suppose we can all project what we like onto that story. It certainly is a ‘good news’ story. But is also says a heck of a lot about the difference between the decency of ordinary folk when confronted by the sharp end of stupid legislation coming from the Westminster Village. Frankly, they don’t like what they see.
It is that disconnect that is likely to realign British politics eventually. The problem we have is that empowering the state over the individual allows the state apparatus to behave in an overbearing and insensitive manner. It is quite un British in fact.
The other side of that ‘feelgood’ story is this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4124673.ece
Briefly, Iraq interpreters have not had the kind of reception that the asylum seekers have had.
This is the same city that gets all the ‘feelgood’ stuff in Sunnys’ post. It also happens to be my city.
Westminster has got to stop fawning to the Red Tops. And it has got to take an educational approach to why we should give folk shelter. I actually expect better from the legislature than we’ve become used to.