Well, Gary Lineker’s tweeting has provoked a storm for the BBC. All they needed to do was not over-react and the storm would probably have passed over them and faded away, at least a little. As it is Gary Lineker is not presenting Match of the Day and neither is anyone else. Other possible presenters have come out in solidarity. Or at least, they perhaps don’t want to be seen to be supporting the anti-immigration bill. Oh boy!
Here are some statistics: The UK granted asylum to 13,000 people in 2021, a fraction of the 60,000 taken in by Germany and much less than half of those admitted by France. Spain, Italy and Greece all took in more than we did. In other words, this is not some unique challenge faced by Britain. Far from it. Asylum claims went up across the entire EU last year, and globally we are scarcely doing the bare minimum. The biggest refugee populations are in Turkey and Colombia; Germany is home to 2.2 million refugees. In Britain, there are 232,000.
Of course, the UK’s chances of sorting some of this out - not all, because it’s really a global problem - would have been greater if we were still members of the EU. As it is Mr Sunak is proposing spending money to have France cooperate with us:
“Spending more money with France to stop small boat crossings is a "sensible investment", Rishi Sunak has said during an Anglo-French summit in Paris.
The PM has met French President Emmanuel Macron and the two men are holding a news conference later.
Speaking ahead of their meeting, Mr Sunak said giving France £63m a year to boost policing on its beaches was yielding benefits for the UK.
He argued it was better than paying to house migrants in the UK.
"I think everyone knows that we are spending £5.5m a day plus on hotels - we would rather not do that, and the best way to stop that is to stop people coming in the first place," he said.” From the BBC..
So it goes.
We still have snow all over the places. And icicles where it has half melted and dripped off the shed roof, only to freeze as it dripped. Today the sky is blue and the sun is shining at the moment but “light snow” is forecast for later today. We shall see!
Yesterday boys were throwing snowballs at cars just down the road from our house. They stood, one on either side of the road, pretending to hold a cord or rope across the road, no doubt confusing drivers who had the sun in their eyes and so slowed down. Then the boys pelted them with snowballs. The boys were old enough to know better. One of my neighbours gave them a tongue-lashing, swearing at them and telling them in no uncertain terms what she thought of them and their possibly crash-inducing game. They seemed unfazed by this verbal torrent and just carried on anyway.
We are about to venture out and see what things look now before anything changes. I have been reading again that exercise staves off dementia and other kinds of old age and decrepitude. So we’ll keep on keeping on. Recently as I’ve cycled back from the market on a Wednesday morning I have seen a group of elderly folk (ie probably my own age), mostly ladies, doing some kind of tai chi exercise routine in one of the park areas near the garden centre. They even do it in the drizzle. Good for them!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
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