Thursday 9 September 2021

Another Crazy Scheme From The Desk Of Priti Patel

Despite once admitting that under her own rules, she wouldn't be allowed in the UK, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is doing her damnedest to make sure that other  non-Brits are not welcome here and her latest wheeze is to turn back rickety floating vessels overladen with desperate people in British waters attempting to cross the Channel back towards the French coast.
The French have called it dangerous and insisted that 'safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy' and has said that a large boat attempting to approach a smaller craft will cause it to capsize for which the Government have hurried out an explanation that it will only be used in 'very limited circumstances for sturdier, bigger migrant boats' which appears a bit pointless when most of the boats are inflatable dinghies
The UN Conventions of the Law at Sea says that 'every state is required to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost' and in response by lawyers that it could be against the Geneva conventions, EU legislation and Maritime Law to attempt to push back refugees in boats claiming asylum, Patel has ordered officials to rewrite Britain's interpretation of international maritime law.
In an unfortunate turn of phrase, the Immigration Services Union called the plans 'dead in the water' due to the legal implications or maybe it wasn't unfortunate as that is exactly what will happen as seen in the Mediterranean when the Italian Border Patrol tried the same thing and the migrants threw themselves off the ship rather than be forced back, so many drowned that the Italians stopped the practice.
As most of the migrants are coming from Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq, the countries whose citizens are seeking to live elsewhere may ring a bell to anyone who has been paying attention to the news over the last few decades, for those who haven't it is where the West have intervened militarily and left the citizens in a more perilous state for it.  
Maybe our foreign policy needs to be looked at and the floods of refugees accepted as a consequence of our terrible decisions in these countries and not crazy, dangerous hare-brained dog whistle calls from Patel to her right wing brethren with schemes like her other awful scheme to install giant wave machines in the Channel.

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