Refugee hell

Like many others, I'm acutely aware of the growing global refugee crisis and the terrible images of desperate people being killed and injured in their attempts to reach a safe haven.

The recent picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi being washed up on a beach in Turkey - his brother and mother also died - has dramatically emphasised both the crisis and politicians' inability to get a grip on it.

The current British government, apparently oblivious to the country's proud record in absorbing thousands of refugees in previous decades, is being increasingly hostile to the present flood of refugees, seeking to batten down the hatches and turn them away.

Other countries like Germany have been far more sympathetic and welcoming and have taken in much larger numbers. They've recognised that those exhausted souls struggling through one country after another aren't spongers and scroungers but distraught human beings in dire need of help and resettlement.

But politicians aplenty trot out all the usual absurd excuses for giving them the brush-off. The country's already overcrowded. Public services can't cope. They'll be an endless burden. They're just chancers out to exploit us. They're all criminals and sex traffickers. They're a threat to the British way of life. And so on.

The aspiring Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper has suggested the UK could take at least 10,000 refugees on the basis of 10 families going to each large town.

We could surely take many more than that if we really wanted to. If there was political will and human compassion - and even the Dunkirk Spirit - rather than sour-faced hostility. Of course public services are severely stretched. They have been for decades. But they could be expanded easily enough with a bit of ingenuity and determination instead of the usual helpless shrugs.

After all, migrants not only work in the public services themselves, they pay taxes that help to finance those services. So why not take a few more?

The "I'm all right, Jack" attitude of those comfortably-off politicians who won't lift a finger to help the less fortunate is quite sickening.

Pic: Aylan Kurdi's body is taken from the sea

Poor lore

How often do you hear people wash their hands of poverty by saying "You'll never get rid of poverty, it's too big a problem. You just have to accept that some people are well-off and some aren't"?

Christian Aid is running some rather good adverts pointing out all the other big problems that people once dismissed as unsolvable - and were proved wrong. Ending poverty, says the ad, is no bigger than:

Eradicating smallpox
Liberating Europe from the Nazis
Putting a man on the moon
Bailing out the banks
Abolishing slavery
Ending apartheid
Bringing down the Berlin Wall
Creating the Internet
Digging a tunnel from England to France

"We're humans, we do big tasks" the ad ends. In other words, if we really want to achieve something, we can. It only takes the political will and the collective belief that the aim can be achieved. If we really think poverty is unacceptable in the 21st century, if we really want to wipe it out, then we can.

It's not a fact of life. It's not a fact of nature. It's a result of the way we organise our societies and it can be changed if we decide to organise things differently.

This isn't just a minor issue. Some 13 million people in the UK - 22 per cent of the population - are living in poverty*. That includes around 4 million children and 2½ million elderly people.

How can anybody simply shrug off these statistics as an unsolvable problem? How can anybody be blasé about people who can't afford to eat, heat their home, or buy new clothes? They wouldn't be so blasé if it was their own aunt counting the pennies and going without food.

I'll give my vote to the first politician who seriously reduces poverty instead of merely promising to do so. But it's funny how other things always get priority. What was that about bailing out the banks?

* Normally defined as 60 per cent or less of the average household income (or is that median?)
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Jenny and I finally met up with John Self, who writes the wonderful book blog John Self's Shelves, and his wife and little boy. John is just as funny and perceptive in the flesh as he is on his blog, and Mrs S is lovely too. It's always fun meeting another blogger and seeing if they match up with the mental picture....