No happy pictures to welcome refugee children

Conservative Party MPs rarely pretend to be the cosy, arm-round-the-shoulder politicians you might see in other parties. But the action of one minister raises questions about whether there is a heart there at all. When the Immigration Minister, the Right Honourable Robert Henricks, visited a child’s asylum centre in Dover, Kent, he noticed that colourful murals of animals, Mickey Mouse and other Disney cartoon characters, adorned the walls.

Local workers explained that they were there to reassure frightened foreign children arriving on our shores without their asylum-seeking parents or guardians.

But the Minister promptly ordered that the pictures be painted over. The building, he said, was “a law enforcement environment, not a welcome centre”.

Staff at the centre were horrified, but the walls were duly painted over. You have to wonder what the minister’s own three children would think of the order.

Utterly absurd

The shadow immigration minister for the opposition Labour party, Stephen Kinnock, said the idea that removing the murals would somehow stop immigrant boats was “utterly absurd”.

And so another inglorious addition is made to the list of Tory insults, including Boris Johnson referring to Africans having “watermelon smiles” and saying Moslem women in burkas looked like letter boxes, while David Cameron referred to “swarms” of migrants, and a rightist columnist described asylum seekers as “cockroaches”.

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Proposals for the mass closure of railway ticket offices across England have prompted a wave of anger and fears that after ticket offices would come book stalls, cafes, newspaper kiosks and toilets. The Rail Delivery Group said only 12 per cent of train tickets were now sold from ticket offices, with most sales being online or from ticket machines. But what if you are one of the 12 per cent?

Wrote North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll: “I was standing by a station’s information boards when a gentleman asked me what platform a particular train was coming into.

“I was about to point him to the departure boards when I noticed he held a folded white stick. So I read the boards for him, and we found a member of staff to help him to his platform.”  So one disabled traveller was lucky.

Said one Northern councilor, “Fundamentally, this is an action taken by greed.” It is hard to disagree.

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On July 7, The Sun published a mother’s claim that an unnamed BBC presenter had paid her child (gender unmentioned) thousands of pounds for explicit photos, beginning when the child was 17.

That same night the young person denied the claim as “totally wrong”.  Subsequently, The Sun  published further allegations, which the young person’s lawyer described as “rubbish”.

Meanwhile, the BBC said it had suspended a presenter.

On July 12, police said their inquiries had produced no information to indicate a criminal offence had been committed.

On the same day, the BBC’s top presenter, Huw Edwards, was named by his wife as the person at the centre of the allegations. She said he was in hospital “suffering from serious mental health issues” and had been treated for severe depression in recent years.

The Sun said it had no plans for further allegations and the BBC said Edwards remained suspended while its investigations continued. His wife said he would “respond to the stories” when he was well again.

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A politician running for office was asked to set out his policy on liquor.  He answered, “If you mean the demon drink that poisons the body, ruins the mind, destroys the family and creates criminals, then I’m against it.

“But if you mean the lovely drink used for a wedding toast, the foundation of a fun Saturday night and the biggest source of tax revenue there is, I’m all for it.”

Elsewhere, staffers in an office were complaining of management’s constant interference.  The employees were asked to jot down in one word what upset them.

One participant wrote the word “nitpicking”, whereupon a manager leapt to his feet and said, “Shouldn’t there be a hyphen between nit and picking?”

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