Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
border force cutter has been laying of shaky bay for the last few days,
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
While Border Farce continues to provide a safe passage to the UK for those 'fleeing' France.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/children-among-migrants-intercepted-off-coast-201597/"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Andy B
- Location: dover
- Registered: 10 Nov 2012
- Posts: 1,757
I,m sure the French did everything possible to intercept them before they came into UK waters.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
And why should the French do anything to intercept them? What French laws are they breaking?
Do we expect France to be like North Korea or the old East Germany stopping people trying to 'escape' their country?
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
yes bob. at least you haven't got them knocking on your door at 0500 asking for directions for the cop shop,
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
Absolutely Brian BUT let's be realistic about things (which is more than 'our' Charlie is).
They will continue to come as long as we don't send them back.
As I've pointed out before, signatories to the SAME 1951 Convention and 1968 Protocol, Japan, in 2017 had 19,628 asylum applications and accepted 20.
The Japanese are at least honest. They want to keep their Japanese culture. They are actually proud of their way of life and think it better than anyone else's. They have nothing particularly against foreigners but don't really want to live with them.
Which is why a primary school outing in Tokyo looks like a primary school outing in Tokyo whereas one in England looks like an advert for a United Colours of Beneton.
Also they don't spend their time in existentialist angst beating themselves up and apologising for things their ancestors have done (and recent generations did some pretty disgusting things in WW2) and like me, certainly would not give a toss, about what might have happened as far back as the Slave Trade or the Crusades.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,701
A wise man once made the observation that all offences are historic as they occur in the past.
How far into the past we wish to delve to address offences is a matter for both the law and our sensibilities to decide.
I would suggest that this is exactly why we have things like The Limitiations Act 1980 for civil matters and S127 of The Magistrates Courts Act 1980, for minor offences and S1 of The Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 for traffic related offences.
Unlike most other western nations we do not have any limitation on serious offences (those that require trial in The Crown Court) which has seen the UK judiciary and police tie themselves in knots and unsuccessful prosecutions over alleged sexual offences occuring decades ago and also why we waste acres of news print and internet column inches beating ourselves up over things like the slave trade, the crusades, concentration camps in the Boer War, or not dealing with Israels current/recent behaviour because of the holocaust and how British soldiers behaved in 1948 in Palestine.
Little or nothing is solved in these "quests for truth" and the outcome often appears to be a fools errand, at huge expense and masses of unrealised expectations creating greater resentment etc.
As for illegal migrants presenting themselves at our borders, we should process them, assess their claim for asylum and where unsuccessful return them to their country of origin (if safe) or the first EU country they entered. Frankly, if the press can establish that many so called Syrians are in fact Iranians/Iraquis/Afghans then surely the Border Force can do so too and take the appropriate actions.
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,024
Captain Haddock wrote:The Japanese are at least honest. They want to keep their Japanese culture.
Is that the one they imported from the USA? It's hardly Samurai, Noh and kotos anymore.
Ross Miller likes this
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
Somehow missed this one in the press?
Lionel Shriver
30 March 2019
9:00 AM
I just came back from a book tour in Italy, where I’d no access to English-language TV news. So over my last breakfast, in Piacenza, my editor related the horrifying story dominating the Italian headlines. The day before, an ethnic Senegalese bus driver had kidnapped the 51 12-year-olds in his charge and poured petrol down the vehicle’s centre aisle. He forced the three other adults to bind the kids’ wrists with zip ties. He confiscated everyone’s phones. Yet one student snatched a phone the driver missed. The child surreptitiously rang his mother, who contacted the police. When the cops corralled the bus, the driver rammed their cars. After carabinieri forced open the bus door and broke a back window to begin to release the children, the immigrant ignited the petrol. The bus went up in flames. The children managed narrowly to escape, as the bus cremated to a black shell. The driver claimed to be protesting against migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.
When later that day I return home to London, my husband mentions that he’s seen the story in the breaking news section of the New York Times website. So I go to my NYT app, and oddly find no mention of this extraordinary near massacre. I resort to the website: absolutely nothing on the paper’s long, extensive home page — where I note that the vandalising of five Birmingham mosques (ugly, but at least life and limb were never at risk) enjoys pride of place up top. I go separately to the ‘world news’ section. I scan down about 20 articles. Nothing. But a button at the bottom says ‘more’. I hit that. Several more articles down I finally locate ‘Italian driver sets school bus on fire after kidnapping students’.
And get this! After two tiny, one-sentence paragraphs sketchily thumb-nailing the incident, the article spends all but one of the following six paragraphs detailing the terrible statistics for migrant deaths in the Med, effectively making the driver’s case for him. We only get the full lowdown on what happened beyond the article’s midway point. You get the gist: the New York Times didn’t like this story, didn’t find it politically convenient, and buried it the digital equivalent of six feet under.
Yet since we’re dwelling in the realm of the counterfactual this week, imagine the same news item with the roles reversed. A white, right-wing, native-Italian Salvini–supporter kidnaps 51 black immigrant children to protest against migration from North Africa, has the kids tied up, attempts to burn all the children alive, and very nearly succeeds. Now. Where does the Times put this story, and how hard is it to find?
Interestingly, after all the furore over the mosque vandalism in Birminham it turns out that it had nothing to do with 'hate-crime' and it is just another nutter now detained under the Mental Health Act. Vandalism against places of worship is unfortunately all rather run of the mill and a daily occurrence in the UK. Here's the figures just for Nottinghamshire:-
https://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/document/recorded-incidents-vandalism-against-churches-last-5-years-foi-00021614
Not to worry. Sold loads of newspapers as we all wondered if this was yet another example of the rise of the far-right and rampant Islamophobia.
Fortunately I feel suitably smug having had a 'one minutes silence' at last weeks Deal Town Council meeting for all those killed by a nutter with a gun in New Zealand where their Prime Minister quite sensibly, and whilst in fancy dress, refuses to say the name of 'Lord Voldemart'.
(Though I can't actually remember any minutes silences for any of the bombings or stabbings by Muslim fanatics in the UK over the past years, in fact the last one I remember was for the Grenfell Tower fire. Funny old world)
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,024
Perhaps Ms Shriver should have checked the BBC when she got back to London, as it was well-placed enough for me to pick it up:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47642298
The driver is an Italian citizen from Senegal. It's a good thing that the astute Italian kid, Ramy Shehata, born to Egyptian parents, and currently without Italian citizenship, intervened or the whole thing would have gone up, resulting in a huge loss of young lives.
Lionel Shriver's next novel will be titled
We Need to Talk About Ousseynou Sy. I expect it'll make good reading and be made into to film.
ray hutstone likes this
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
If only it were so. The actual Home Office statement says that they had been 'returned' rather than 'removed'. i.e. Having decided not to pursue their application for asylum they had made a voluntary departure.
Furthermore the figures are meaningless unless compared to the figures arriving and the Home Office are refusing to give the press a 'running commentary'.
The only reason the figure of 20 came out was in reply to a query from 'our' Charlie and this weasel worded statement was the best the lying incompetents could do.
howard mcsweeney1 likes this
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
Spoiler alert.
Before 'our' Charlie takes to the airwaves saying the French are stopping immigrants crossing the channel on small boats, here's what actually happened:-
https://www.premar-manche.gouv.fr/communiques-presse/deux-operations-d-assistance-concernant-des-embarcations-de-migrants-5cac55bed9219
So in each case, far from the French 'turning back migrant boats', the vessels have sought help from the authorities and been rescued by the local lifeboat!
Pablo and howard mcsweeney1 like this
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
Cette page n'existe pas!
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
at last the French have woken up to the fact that they need to do the right thing.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/two-boatloads-of-migrants-picked-up-202381/Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
They were NOT stopped, they were rescued.
Yes, rescuing people is the right thing.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Ross Miller- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,701
yes Cap'n but rescued doesn't cause kippers, brexiteers and their ilk to get hot and bothered whereas "stopped" does.
ray hutstone likes this
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352