Dam the award hungry media

THE DISTRESSING image of a dead three-year-old child washed up and laying face down on the shoreline was awful to look at. The image is on the front pages of the entire world's press; and the video is playing on every channel of every news broadcaster throughout the globe. Our politicians are coming under pressure from the liberal media, NGOs and the UN, to allow the great mass of humanity ready access into Europe.

                

                This image will prove to be the tipping point (or so the liberal media hope) toward the European continent absorbing whosoever takes to an unseaworthy vessels from North Africa to cross the Mediterranean; or pile-up in Hungary. The image is the ball-changer as far as the media are concerned. I can remember the image of a naked child fleeing to safety on a road in Vietnam carrying the burns of napalm. This image probably did more to undermine the American cause in Vietnam than anything the NVA or Vietcong managed to do.  That image also spread like a virus (even before the age of the internet): news broadcasters posted it, and the anti-war movement realised this was a tipping point for America's involvement in Vietnam.

               

                 In Gaza during Israel's attempt at closing down the tunnels which Hamas used to send terrorists into Israel; the media did its best to propagandise on behalf of the Palestinians. Hamas played them well, because the media wanted to be played by Hamas because of the Western media's sympathies for the Palestinians.

                

                 Journalists allowed themselves to be taken in by Hamas who were using their own people as human shields. Hamas used civilian buildings, including a hospital to hide their rockets that had been raining down on Israel by their hundreds weeks before Israel sent in their military to put a stop to it. Images of Palestinian civilians: distressed women and children were the focus of the camera lens; and Israel was targeted for blame by (to name but two news agencies) the BBC and Sky News, by their overall biased reporting at the time.

                

                  So images can affect the way Western politicians (fearful of any unpopularity) react to any crisis. There was that classic moment in the Channel 4 satirical series, Drop the Dead Donkey, when a news reporter was standing by a pile of rubble which a bomb had obviously been responsible for creating. The reporter had planted a teddy bear on top of the rubble and his cameraman zoomed in on it implying of course that children had been buried by the blast – the image is everything. What this particular fictitious journalist was hoping for was an award for his journalism; primarily for himself, but the fictitious broadcast company he worked for would also take some of kudos from employing him; and parade him or her as the case may be as a prize winning reporter.

IF WE DID NOT HAVE OPEN BORDERS; there would at least be an argument for taking in some of these people. But the already over burdening of our country by mass migration from Europe due to Schengen has ruled out any possibility of bringing further waves of migration into this country from Libya, Syria and parts of Africa.

                

               We as humans tend to respond to the immediate plight of people emotionally with little consideration (in the case of migration) for the indigenous society itself; which is where the image becomes dangerous because emotion supersedes objective judgement, if only temporarily, but long enough to do something stupid. The politicians act like ferrets in a sack. They either, out of principle, encourage or discourage the deluge visited upon them; but even in this moment of humanitarian crises, party political game play continues. The reality of party politics within a democracy can at times appear disgusting; and we are at such a moment. Andy Burnham has called for a parliamentary debate on this issue – his own preference appears to be that we should take in these migrants; although he does not, unlike one of his fellow challengers for the leadership, wish to put a figure upon the amount of people we should take in. His wholly humanitarian impulses stop at the point where he is asked about numbers.

SOME European nations have demanded that Cameron takes in his fare share after the German Chancellor opened her borders to 800,000 migrants. Angela Merkle has led the charge on behalf of European imbecility in demanding that the UK, on threat of outright rejection of the Cameron proposed reforms; take a 'fare' share of these migrants/refugees.

                

                She has pointed a gun at Cameron's head. But it was she who invited these 800,000 to Germany. There was no reason why she should. No one held a gun to her head to take them in. It was her decision to do so. Now she has the temerity to expect other nations, who thought her invitation a folly; now to follow her lead – no, she has made her bed, now let her lay in it; until a year from now when there will be further demands made on German residency from the next wave; which will continue, even if Europe found homes for this latest influx. Year after year the pressure will mount to deliver ever more migrants, until the whole EU edifice crumbles before tsunami after tsunami. Who believes after all that Syria will prosper again as nation whose boundaries like those of Iraq where creations of British/French imperialism? Those leaving it certainly do not.

                

                For those of us who have insisted that our borders be reconnected throughout Europe to stop this advance is now being supported by some at least. European nations are finally smelling the coffee and are worried enough (as they should be) to believe in a return to Europe of its national boundaries –but it may be too late; Schengen released the genie from the bottle.

               

                Earlier this year Cameron was chastised because he used the word 'swamped' to describe the burden on our society of people having the right to enter; particularly from Eastern Europe into our country. In the last ten years over five million people have been added to our population, putting pressure on our social, educational, and NHS services. Now Angela Merkle expects us to take even more, which will put further pressure on our welfare state; our education system and the NHS; demanding further expenditure that will either result in further taxation or borrowing; or as Corbyn suggest the printing of more money; the so call Quantative Easing; that fictitious assemblage that only socialists believe does not need in one form or other any kind of repayment.

               

                 I do not think that the state can continue to expect the taxpayer to pay for this haemorrhaging of resources from the indigenous people to all and sundry who turn up, however traumatic their arrival on our shores. Cameron should stand firm on this. He should even be prepared to tell his people to leave the EU after Merkle's threat.

               

That young child was delivered to its wretched death by its parents, not by Europe. The United Nations that now demands that the UK take what it and Angela Merkle deems our 'fair share' with little knowledge of our circumstances after Schengen; had better think again.

                

                 I have always opposed the construct of a super nation, but this is the EU's plan. The continent of Europe is to be reduced to a single nation like the USA. Which is why the EU opened our borders: and in this time of crises we are unable to close them now. So why does Cameron pay any kind of heed to it? It is because Cameron himself has bought into the EU project. But he has used the renegotiation of this country's relationship with the EU to save his party's membership and voters drifting toward Ukip – he will bend.