HYPOCRITES TO THE LEFT AND RIGHT, PART II

Kezia DugdaleVerified account‏@kezdugdale

Kezia Dugdale Retweeted Kevin Schofiel

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Utterly heartless

Kezia Dugdale added,

Kevin Schofield @PolhomeEditor

BREAKING: MPs vote 294 to 276 against Lord Dubs' amendment calling on the Government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees.

So, Kezia's reaction to the Tory government's decision to overturn the Lords' amendment which would have allowed these children to come to their UK, was, quite reasonably "Utterly heartless".

Pity it doesn't quite fit with their attitude at the UK elections in May last year when they took a very Tory line on immigration.

Now Munguin's Republic understands that the UK can't accept every single person who is fleeing oppression, war, poverty and destitution or any combination thereof. 

(I mean it's not like Brits would ever have had to flee anything like that, is it? Ask the Highlanders, the Irish (Brits at the time) fleeing the famine, or the folks who had the audacity to not wish to change their religion every time the king changed his! Or more recently ask the economic migrants who, after the Second World War, decided that life in America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or South Africa seemed a better bet for their family!)

As the UK felt obliged to involve itself enthusiastically in every single war that has caused these hardships, I think it should be equally enthusiastic about helping to deal with the tide of misery that they and their allies have left behind.

And throwing money at Turkey or Lebanon to continue to house these people in massive concentration camps simply won't cut it. Safer than a war zone they may be, but life is hell there too.

Olivia Humphreys ‎@OliviaDocmaker

We had the chance to save lives we helped endanger, and we chose not to - doesn't say much for us as a nation #3000children

7:59 AM - 26 Apr 2016

The kids in question, of courses, are not in Turkey or Lebanon. They are in France and in some cases their parents are in the UK. Who knows what horrors they face as children alone. Perhaps the Establishment should be more aware of that than most of us.

But we don't suggest that the UK do what rich countries are doing. The UK can't afford it, although they always have money for a war, which is strange or possibly even magical. Ask Harry Potter.

But surely, when it comes to children, they should pretend that they have hearts instead of cash registers, hard though that might be.

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Last year, clearly before she got her state-funded dresser (strange how the Tories don't seem to mind social security when it benefits them!), Mrs Cameron attended the Save the Children Gala (looking like she'd fallen out of the dressing up hamper...you begin to see why Dave got her someone to put on her clothes for her...total embarrassment). Instead of showing any interest in the children needing to be saved, the Daily Mail went into full blown slurping sycophant mode...

Maxi-mum style! Samantha Cameron dazzles in designer floor-length skirt as she attends the Save the Children Winter Gala (Dazzles as in hurts your eyes. Her lady in waiting has a little more class, although probably less money.)

• Samantha Cameron wore a vibrant printed skirt at Save the Children ball (yep we can see that!)
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• She attended Alice in Wonderland-themed night without husband David (Oh, hint hint. Marriage in trouble...remember it's the Daily Mail. Brainless readership with lots of lonely time to fill)
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• The 44-year-old mother-of-four dazzled in a daring designer outfit (Always get in the age, becasue that's REALLY NEWS, and the fact she's a mother of four and yet still able to go out for a night on the town! Lucky to have all those servants, huh?)

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WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BAND AID MONEY?

The poor old BBC is coming under fire again.

This time it is from Sir Bob Geldof and the Band Aid Trust, backed by some of the world’s most respected charities including Oxfam, the Red Cross, Unicef, Christian Aid and Save the Children.

They are complaining about the "false and dangerously misleading impression" which was given in a report by World Service's Africa editor, Martin Plaut, which alleged that 95% of the aid which went to Tigray in 1985 had been diverted to buy arms by the rebel forces in that area.

The complaint is of poor reporting based on “dubious sources and rumour designed to leave an overall impression that the vast majority of resources raised by aid efforts in the mid 1980s largely went on buying arms". They say that there is not a shred of credible evidence of this whereas there is overwhelming evidence that hundreds of thousands or more lives were saved by their work.

Ironically the whole charity effort was inspired by the reporting of Michael Burke for the BBC in 1985 a irony not missed by the charities which contrast the decline in the quality of reporting in the intervening years.

The report relied largely on the testimony of a then commander in the rebel army who was expelled from the guerrilla movement in of 1985. Sir Bob pointed out that, not only does he have an axe to grind, but he wasn’t even in Tigray at the time, having already left the rebels. He noted too that the massiveness of the story at the time meant that journalists were crawling all over the Live Aid team trying to find something wrong, but they couldn’t.

Nick Guttmann, director of emergency relief operations at Christian Aid has described the story as “palpable nonsense”, and “beyond belief”. He knows because he bought the food, bought the trucks and was there when they were driven in, offloaded, the food distributed and the empty trucks driven back.

Clearly I have no idea of the truth, but Sir Bob Geldof is a hero to me, and Band Aid is one of the events that helps me to make sense of the unpleasant world of greed and personal gain that we live in.

I trust that investigations will be held into this story and that the truth will be uncovered. I desperately hope and truly believe that the money was used as the Christian Aid director suggests.

At all costs we must know the truth, becasue already we have heard that people are, I suppose not unreasonable, dubious about giving to these charities. At a time when people are suffering in from the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, we need to encourage not discourage donations.

If the BBC has been sloppy over this, it must answer for more than sloppy journalism.

For those who like that sort of thing the BBC’s own “Now Show” has an excellent piece by Marcus Brigstocke on it (towards the end of the show) although there is much more that is excellent in this topical radio satire. (*There, I’ve said something nice about the BBC at long last.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r2fh8/The_Now_Show_Series_30_Episode_1/

Pics: Organic farming in Tigray; and Bob in Ethiopia

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