News OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from Jane Burton, Rookley. Ed
With a world increasingly in turmoil the issue of people displacement is baked in, and with no safe route for refugees to the United Kingdom it is little wonder families from war torn countries are handing over their life’s savings to people smugglers.
Last week 500 people crossed the English Channel in small boats.
Barges
The Government intends putting 500 people on the Bobby Stockholm, a barge that was designed to accommodate 222. The irony of putting boat people on boats I’m sure isn’t lost.
But this is only one weeks worth of asylum seekers, is the plan to add a barge every week, and what about marine safety, where is the marine certification that validates doubling a barges capacity, mightn’t this be another Grenfell Tower disaster waiting to happen, this time on water?
Why not embrace their energy?
The Rwanda solution is equally flawed since it is a reciprocal agreement. Families that have made the perilous journey across the channel desperate to create a better life here in the UK have something about them, why not embrace their energy, process them, and allow those who are entitled to stay to contribute to the UK economy?
Simply exchanging them for the same number of refugees Rwanda wants to get rid of doesn’t make any sense.
Dog whistle politics
In truth, what we are witnessing is the worse kind of Conservative dog whistle politics designed to appeal to their traditional voter base. Let’s not forget, Britain was founded on exploiting immigrants from third world counties.
Witness our colonial past, slave trade, not to mention windrush, so why the sudden outrage?
The hallmark of a government that has run out of ideas
Fear mongering is a classic pre-election Tory technique. It’s the hallmark of a government that has run out of ideas. The last hurrah from a desperate bunch of politicians who’ve nothing left to offer.
The truth is the Conservatives have trashed the economy, run public services into the ground, cutting everything whilst taxing us all to the hilt, and are now desperately looking for someone other than themselves to blame for the mess.
