"I want to travel to england to claim political asylum"

No pictures or links this time, but if anyone finds (or can create !!) youtube footage of tonight's BBC News At Ten and cares to pass me the link in a comment, I'd be obliged.

by johnofgwent

A man stands in clothes that don't need to shout "down and out" because the smell tells you that from a hundred paces. He stands before a few metal poles roughly fashioned into a shape across which some ragged torn plastic sheeting dangles pathetically as if mocking the winter breeze in which it flutters.

The cameraman filming, and the journalist talking to, this man barely hide their distaste and the wrinkling of noses is evident. I, who have seen, and smelled, the down and out under railway arches in what was mockingly called Cardiff Bay (as if it were somewhere worth taking a beach holiday) and in The Hayes years before that, know exactly what they are wrinkling their noses against.

Or so I thought.

But then the camera pans back to show the acres of sodden mud, into which a disease-breeding mixture of refuse, rubbish, detritus and stinking untreated sewage has been generously mixed, and now I, a man who has witnessed first hand the stench of suppurating infected intestines going under the knife, I instinctively start breathing through my mouth so as not to gag.

And I am watching this on the telly.

It could have been any refuge camp anywhere. Gaza. Any of the countries bordering Rwanda at the height of the Tutse-Hutu killings. An ethiopian desert camp into which the victims of a "famine of biblical proportions" came to sit and wait for death. Or a refugee camp for the desperate fleeing the "ethnic cleansing" in what was Tito's Yugoslavia. It is a scene reminiscent of the low lying scuba-diving tourist paradise islands of the pacific AFTER the tsunami hit and wiped out half the population, carrying the dead out to sea to bloat and return on the tide.

Yes it could have been any of those places.

But it was not.

It was Calais pictured on the BBC Ten O Clock news tonight.

A muddy, stinking, sewage ridden, disease filled couple of hectares where dozens, no hundreds of men have gathered to wait their chance to ambush a lorry and try to get a free ride into Britain.

The cameraman drives round the roads where this goes on and is threatened by baseball bat wielding thugs who make a living from the fee (how the hell do their customers pay, I wonder) they charge to show these miserable wretches where to stand in order to break into a lorry and claim their ride to a new world.

And the cameraman and journalist "interview" one of these people, who smiles for the camera and says "I want to go to England To Claim Political Asylum"

He stands in a sea of stinking mud in a country that over fifty tears ago was one of the original six signatories to the treaty that set those six countries firmly on the road to "ever closer political union".

A country that did away with its aristocrats and royalty in favour of "Liberte, Egalite Et Fraternite"

A country that has willingly signed up to far more "workers rights" laws than we ever will. A country whose pension rights are more generous than ours. A country that wants "back in" to NATO.

And a country where the "gallic shrug" means yet another strike or civil disturbance is afoot and will stay afoot untilt the government cave in.

But more than anything else France is a signatory to the UN resolutions establishing the UNHCR and recognises and defends the right of the genuine refugee to seek asylum free from persecution for political, religious or cultural beliefs which they face in their home lands.

And do not forget that France is a country that has given protection to both the Shah of Iran's Prime Minister Baktiar AND the Ayatollah who replaced him when the shah fled and left his fiefdom to the oncoming storm of the islamic revolution.

So why the Four-X does this guy hold such strength in his voice and pleasure in his eyes when he reveals hios intent to continue to HIDE IN TRUCKS until he successfully remains in one long enough to COME TO ENGLAND TO CLAIM POLITICAL ASYLUM.

WHY DOES HE NOT CLAIM POLITICAL ASYLUM IN THE FREE COUNTRY OF THE WEST IN WHICH HE NOW STANDS.

After all, given that where he is from is a former french colony, he probably speaks their language better than he speaks ours.

Asylum Seekers wrong, Sanctuary Seekers Good

by John of Gwent


On the face of it you would be forgiven for thinking this is another example of Political Correctness taking us so far beyond the locked doors of bethlehem that none of us can ever hope to return to the world of sanity. The Daily Mirror wishes to reveal its latest 'Scoop' story. Some may say Pooper-Scoop but I for the moment wish to plead otherwise.

Sir John Waite, "Co-Chair" of the Independent Asylum Commission, a man who makes a habit, (or perhaps a living, but as I cannot see the IAC's accounts, I do not have the evidence before me to decide which) from painting those who would come to our shores from afar in the best possible light whilst simultaneously painting those who receive them in the worst. Now he wishes us to cease and desist referring to these individuals as seekers of asylum, because of its negative connotations, and refer to them as seekers after Sanctuary instead.

I know. You're wondering what substances the foermer Privy Counsellor has been exposign hiomself too. And doubtless when you hear I think that's a brilliant piece of inspired thinking you'll assume I have been sitting with the gentleman partakling of the same vices in even larger measures.

But I say this is a golden opportunity which the British National Party leadership should seize upon, and seize upon today as a magnificent piece of modern thinking.

Why ? Well unless you can quote me chapter and verse of the UNHCR international agreements on refugees can I respectfully suggest you pop over to wikipedia and read their words on Sanctuary and Asylum. Not least because it has therein all the links you'll need to those legal obligations we have signed up to, obligations that I consider the mark of an honourable and civilised society. The term 'asylum seeker' is almost always "bandied about" by 'snotrag tabloids' in the same paragraph as that used to describe the actions of freeloaders, economic migrants, illegal immigrants. Yet those wikipedia pages could not be clearer in establishing the "bona fide" of the true seeker of asylum, or sanctuary, as one running in fear of their life from the mob.

The mob in question could be Hutu, Or Tutse. It could be Catholic, Or Protestant. It could be White, Or Black. It could be Married with Children All Born in Wedlock. Or it could be Married And Disliking Those Whose Religions Allow Many Mothers-In-Law.

Or it might even be the relatives of a 16 year old killed by a police car 'responding to the activation of its ANPR system' without bothering to turn on its blues and twos beforehand (a point raised in accounts of eyewitness testimony on several BBC Radio News broadcasts yesterday but still left as an ambiguity on the BBC News website.)

By the way, did you get much sleep last night, Mr Brunstrom ? After all it was YOU who campaigned tirelessly for those ANPR systems to be fitted to traffic cars nationwide. If you had concentrated on the crimes your constituents cared about instead of this crusade, a teenager would stil be alive this morning. Have a nice life, Mr brunstrom. Pity that girl can't as a result of what YOU did. Sorry, I digress. Now where was I ...

Ah yes...

Yes, persecution comes in all forms. And the persecutors may be acting on the spur of the moment, or they may be acting following the oratory, or following the example, or they may even be in the pay of, the leaders of the state in which that action is carried out.

But as I read of Sir John's latest idea, it struck me that a more brilliant way of distinguishing those truly entitled to the protection our country proudly offers to the genuinely persecuted, from the freeloaders that wish to come here to make an (often untaxed) buck I cannot imagine.

And what an opportunity to set in the minds of the general population the clear difference between the two.

Carpe Diem, Mr Griffin.

I say a spokesperson from the BNP should get off a Press release right now welcoming Sir John's common sense approach in differentiating between those fleeing here directly from a country where they fear persecution, imprisonment, torture, rape for the purpose of ethnic genociode, death or worse, whom we have a legal and a moral duty to protect and assist, and those who wish to come here to earn money, legally or otherwise, and care not how they get in the door. Do it Now. Be The first political party to seize the opportunity this presents to separate these two cases in the minds of the general population.