I am not kidding that is actually a real and genuine picture of Nigel Farage. Somebody out there without a hint of irony thought it was not only a good image but one worthy of loading up into the public sphere of life. This is no joke, actually it is because it’s hilarious. This is the man who wants you to follow him up the ramparts and help defend the British Isles from an invasion of hordes of swarms of stampedes of scary looking fellow human beings. Perhaps he’s aiming for the lonely middle aged women in Kent with too many cats. Alternatively, this could just be his new picture for his dating profile on Tinder but hopefully I’ll never find out. “Draw me like one of your French girls” he implored. What a clown.
I’ve been avoiding discussing the hysteria the media tried to drum up last week, or this week, or whenever it was about people trying to cross the English Channel. But then I saw this image and had no choice. Obviously thousands of people cross the English Channel everyday, but these were “illegal asylum seekers” according to one renowned and unscrupulous daily rag. These three words then found themselves bandied about in the rhetoric of those with vested interests and those who’ve been told they have vested interests. That there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker is obviously of no importance in the world of who can shout the loudest and whip the most people into a frenzy. It is neither illegal to cross the channel or to claim asylum in any country. That is international law and we are not all of a sudden about to rewrite it just to appease a few scared and unscrupulous racists from the south of England.
It was a handy distraction from Covid-19 and numerous other government incompetencies, it’s just a shame for them that A-Level results were released and everybody stopped caring about a few desperate people risking their lives crossing a bit of sea because possible death was better than what they were leaving behind. All of a sudden everyone realised they themselves have children or know children who have been affected by this mob in power. An issue of immediate importance will always rise above a conflated artificial one that ninety-five percent of the population will not even notice in their daily life. Arguments on immigration have become as entrenched as any other in this polarised world we now live in. The right being self-serving arseholes and the left being self-serving moralists, both sides realising the truth is as ever probably somewhere in the middle. The fact there is no perfect solution if we keep on looking in the wrong places seemingly and conveniently being forgotten. Anyway as a great man on Norwich Radio once said, “Could go your way, could go mine. Either way, one of us is going down”.
Observations and Misunderstandings 