Sunak is trying to placate the swivel eyed loons after patching up Johnson’s Irish Protocol. His go-to is terrorising the desperate, in this case those crossing the channel in small boats. It’s behaviour now so common and so ugly we might look the other way.
I don’t mean look the other way as we sometimes inadvertently do when passing the increasing number of homeless and desperate prostrate in empty shop doorways in once prosperous towns. I don’t mean the brain tumbling ‘where can I look’ as we try to make that spur of the moment decision about dipping into our pockets, however pathetic our offering may be and however ultimately useless and even while we have the admonishments of homeless charities ringing in our ears about why we shouldn’t hand over money.
I mean we should REALLY look the other way. Away from Westminster – away from the racist posturing by a defunct, deluded and disastrous government well past it sell-by date.
I suggest start with a certain railway bridge in Glasgow.
On Friday night I was out – something that happens so rarely these days I already felt disoriented. But my youngest daughter was taking me to a comedy club for a belated c’mas present. And a lovely time we had too.
However, en route we had to get from Glasgow central and across to the nearest subway which meant going under a long dark, dirty, noisy railway bridge at that time of night which is neither late or early – the twilight zone when the workers are pretty much home but the real party folk are still putting on make-up and aftershave and tanking up on supermarket drink so they don’t have to spend too much in the clubs and bars to achieve oblivion.
The scene which greeted us was something that could equally have been a slum on the outskirts of Mumbai.
Destitution on a scale that is a scandal all of its own.
One of the main homeless charities were setting up hot food stations for the evening with tables stretching from one end of the tunnel to the other. Cordoned off very professionally with food trucks on one side of the road and trestle tables with the food prep on the other and an already forming queue at one end, well before prep was done.
The damk greyness of it was soul-sucking.
It was not a particularly cold night for February in Scotland but somehow the temperature under that tunnel seemed several degrees down on everywhere else despite the heat under the food pots.
And the faces of those early to the queue was one Munch silent scream after another – one emaciated desperate sunken ashen face after the next. Cheekbones and hollow eyes and dirty clothes and the uncared look of the long destitute.
And the only thing you could think is – dear god these are not Auschwitz inmates – this is not Ethiopia - this is Britain – one of the wealthiest countries in the world - 2023. And that contradiction always somehow makes things worse.
I’ve written many times on this blog about what has been taken from ordinary folk since the abomination that was Thatcher. The hard fought gains of post WWII Britain where it was finally accepted that even those at the bottom were entitle to a piece of the pie – however small.
No more.
Hell is HERE.
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