Refugees and migrants

My gardener/handyman came on Friday and as he and I were chatting, he commented : "Well if these people are refugees, how come, in the newspapers, we see them taking selfies with iphones"?

I hear this sort of thing a lot, mostly from people who don't like 'foreigners', or the thought of them coming to the UK.
 I explained that newspapers always have an agenda and pictures don't actually tell a thousand words, and if they did, most of the words would be lies. I asked him if he'd seen images of the camp in Calais on the news. He said he had. I asked him why he thought people were living like that in such terrible conditions if, by his implication, they were well off. He had no answer.

I asked him, if another country went to war with us and started bombing us and the country was a shambles, with no water, little food, the whole infrastructure gone to pieces, and all around him in his village, his friends, neighbours and family were bombed out and killed and every day it was getting more dangerous, so that in the end, one of his friends said to him "listen, we need to get out of here and I've heard there is a place we will be safe and can start again, perhaps start a business or get work", would he simply walk away with just the clothes on his back, or would he grab his phone so that he has some means of keeping in touch with those dear to him, and anything of value that he might sell or trade along the way, in order to sustain himself and maybe get a start in the country he was trying to reach?
It seemed he'd had a lightbulb moment.

Why do bigots in the UK, assume that outside the UK, in places like Syria (which the UK government is destroying) that there is no technology and the civilians live in mud huts with no electricity or running water and communicate by smoke signals?

I explained that the likes of the Daily Mail, brainwash people into thinking how they want them to think, So when he sees a photo of people taking selfies with iphones, the reporter has deliberately taken a photo of it and this will be the picture splashed across the page, leading people to have no empathy for refugees. Our government is helping to destroy their country, but doesn't want to accept any responsibility for those whose lives it has destroyed. It certainly doesn't want to take any responsibility for the desperate

Still not convinced?
Well think about the cities of England during the blitz of the second world war. People's homes got bombed and they were evacuated. Did they just walk away with nothing? Or did they comb the rubble of their destroyed home, hoping to find anything of value, sentimental or monetary?
survivors, or let them settle here. So it makes sure the general population feels hatred towards them by being selective about what they photograph.
Yet people are thinking badly of refugees who have done the same.

The media is nothing short of mass brainwashing of the population.

The one advantage of being autistic is that I analyse things. So I hear people sneer at the refugees and start to ponder about stuff.
I'm not a bleeding heart liberal by any means, however, I do happen to think that if the government of one country, destroys another country, they have a responsibility to the people whose homes and lives they have destroyed. And if they don't want that responsibility, stop dropping bombs on them!


How desperate do people have to be to set out on a rickety overloaded boat with tiny children and babies? They don't do it for fun. They don't do it because they are a bit fed up with where they are living and fancy a change. The newspaper photo of that little boy laying drowned on a beach, made me cry. It reminded me of when my own son was tiny. That's how he would sleep.

As to where we would put all the refugees if we allowed them in................... well, there are currently enough empty properties in this country (owned by wealthy land owners and landlords), that every homeless person in the land, would have a choice of 10 .

Then there are the clickbait facebook posts stating things like "click if you support 'our forces' and the like.  I ask myself why? What help will clicking do? Will it help someone with PTSD? Will it send a donation to S.S.A.F.F.A.? Or perhaps send a donation to any of the forces charities to help ex service people? No it won't and it doesn't. So why do people click and share?
Of course I 'support' our forces. I have done so from birth as I am a soldier's daughter and was with my Father as he was posted all over the world, even spending 2 years in war torn Aden, where I went to school in a bomb proof school bus with weldmesh over the windows to protect u from thrown grenades, and an armed guard inside the bus and an armed landrover with several soldiers in, one in front of the bus, and one behind.Where we were taught in school, what do do if someone yelled "grenade" (throw yourself flat on the ground and stay down), where we could not go outside of our married quarter flats (complete with armed soldiers on the roof and the entrance) for fear of us getting killed or kidnapped or shot at.So yes, I support them. I went on to marry a soldier and my son was born in a British Military hospital in Germany. I don't need to click on a picture. I've been there, done that and lived the life!
I found these photos online.

Us kids would craze the soldier for the little feathers on his beret.

Taken in Ma'Alla. Note the armed soldiers in the road. Traffic was stopped to let the kids off the white buses. Behind the bus on the right, you see the armed landrover with more armed guards in.My family lived in the block of flats just in front of the front bus on the left. The road was called Ma'Alla straight, nicknamed 'murder mile'.
So don't ask me to click if I support 'our boys', get out of your armchair and join up, join the T.A. or get your hand in your pocket and give to S.S.A.F.F.A. or something like that, instead of sitting and clicking and feeling so patriotic because you pressed a key on the computer!

Then you get the posts about 'our servicemen' being more important that refugees. Well compassion is not finite. I can care about both. We are all humans.
If you knocked your neighbour's house down , the law would insist that you made things right and paid enough money to him, for him to rebuild or repair his home or find a home somewhere else wouldn't it?
So why does our own government feel that it has no responsibility towards the people of the country that they have bombed and destroyed?