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Humorous
newspaper column dealing with our view in
England of the refugees in France
What
fantastic world do politicians inhabit? Is it
the case that once they get their grubby behinds
on a seat of government they are injected with
silly juice? Perhaps some secret rite of passage
removes the little grey cells. The latest
mind-boggling suggestion coming out of the
foreign ministry in England is quite, ….well,
boggling for the mind. The idea is, ….wait for
it. To use Royal Air Force Hercules transports
aeroplanes (because they are big) to return
refugees whence they came. Am I the only one to
see the problem with this idea? What if they
don’t want to go and why would they since it
cost them dear to reach the UK? What if their
country of origin e.g. Iraq doesn’t want them
back? Where will the planes land? Unless,
….and this could be the devilishly clever
plan. They intend to make them parachute.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of
Soviet domination in Central and Eastern Europe,
the migrations began. The former bad guys must
be braying over their borsch. Cackling over
their kolbasa. Desperate to leave their poverty
behind and to escape violence and ethnic
fighting, thousands upon thousands of souls have
headed West. Many of them have shown up in
France. The French have been housing and caring
for refugees and illegal immigrants at San Gatte
in the Pas de Calais, northern France.
Altruistic and noble indeed but, before the
backslapping for our Gallic cousins gets too
loud. We, in England, ask ourselves why? Why so
near the English Channel? Sorry…. La Manche
when France is so large that there country could
house the whole population of Albania and still
not be full? Specifically, why near the railway
yards, which lead through the channel tunnel
into England?
C’est le question. Especially, it is Le
question, which is exercising English minds more
and more these days. Nighttime brings legions of
Afghans, Iraqis, Central Europeans and Albanians
to the fences, over the fences, under the fences
and even, through the fences. Once comfortably
hidden in the rolling stock it’s just a short
20 miles or so into the Promised Land.
We strongly suspect although no politician would
voice it, that the French encourage the refugees
to sneak onto the freight trains as a way of
thinning their own unwanted population out. The
evidence is only anecdotal but I have heard of a
laser-powered hologram projected over the
stockyards. It reads Allez Nos Amis a Londre and
flashes in time to the loud beat of The
Beatles’ Back in the USSR. The absurdity of
the situation is now further complicated by
reports that the UK government has agreed to
take a large number of these refugees into the
UK on the proviso that the French close the camp
down. Well, once they’ve moved to England,
there will no longer be any refugees there so, I
guess it’s a good deal….for the French.
The politicians wring their hands and talk of
the need to give succour to people in dire
straits while the locals in the channel counties
keep an eye on their property and look
suspiciously at anyone who wears a tea towel on
his head and doesn’t talk posh. And with the
latest ‘leak’ from the ministry suggesting
we use aeroplanes to dump the unfortunates, it
would seem wiser to build a conveyor belt
starting in France and running through the
Channel Tunnel directly to the RAF base with the
waiting Hercules. Alternatively of course, we
could place all politicians on the conveyor belt
and direct it straight into the sea. C’est
vrai? |
