What would you do if you were Italy?

How do you suggest we do that, jingl? Ask them if they wouldn't mind leaving the boats so we can blow them up? Or are you suggesting we kill people, which will make us no better than them.

Oh fgs dj you can't just pussyfoot around the issue. People are going to get killed anyway.

What do you suggest? Open borders and a worldwide acceptance of extremists because it's their Human Right to blow up anyone they don't like?

Nothing wrong with open borders. Anyone who breaks laws should go to prison. Whoever it is. That's why we've got the UN, as a worldwide police force.
In yesterday's paper there was an article about Cherie Blair, accused of profiting from repression. She has set up her own legal consultancy and is defending the Maldives government, which is facing international condemnation for human rights abuses. The previous president was forced to give up office at gunpoint by the army. He was the first democratically elected president. Amnesty is criticising the new president for carrying out executions and judicial floggings.
Not much about this in other papers, I do not think.

durhamjen I think they just might wait till the boats are empty.

AND OF COURSE I'M NOT SUGGESTING WE KILL PEOPLE!!!

Idiotic bloody thing to say.

Under EEC rules companies have to advertise certain level posts in Europe.
Doesn't surprise me that Cherie Blair is profitting from repression ; probably plenty of money involved and taking her lead from her husband.

It isn't so much the issue of open borders, it's how we/other countries identify those with murderous intent or inciting others dj
The UN often seems pretty impotent to me.

secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_tide_of_death_loc_uk/?tkHcnjb

Nearly 400,000 signatures.

theconversationuk.cmail20.com/t/r-l-adhirkk-iudkikukhu-x/

This is happening in Syria now. This is why people risk their lives to try to get to Europe, and some of you want to send them back to this situation, and do not want to let them come to the UK. At the same time you condemn women for taking their families to Syria from the UK.
That does not seem right to me.

"One country or one organisation cannot solve this complex problem but, as individuals, we can help by avoiding simplistic polarisation.
There is an astonishing fatalism in our attitude towards the traffickers and smugglers who exploit the vulnerable people in search of a new home. The entire situation requires clear re-conceptualisation. It is unacceptable that only the traffickers perform the essential role that they do. Punishing them is not effective. New traffickers will appear because the demand is real. What we need is an internationally coordinated effort that performs the role the traffickers currently fulfil, rescuing people from untenable situations in a proper, legal and well coordinated way.

We have to grasp the complexities of this situation. Blaming others or passively hoping for the best are no longer an option."

I read an interesting parallel to this on another forum - in the mid 19C over a million Irish people fled to the USA and Canada in ships that were often unsafe. They were eventually accepted and lead useful lives - the Kennedy family for one. following much debate among both govts.
Also this exodus was also partly the result of their treatment by the English ( as from the interference in Iraq Libya, Afghanistan etc.)

Ken Loach said something in his interview about the fact that the people who were treating the Irish badly were also doing the same to his people.

Who are 'his people'?

triciaf please don't use the word English when you mean British and American
it is inaccurate as well as misleading.
Ken Loach is a filmmaker - not a representative of some unspecified 'people'

the Irish emigrated mainly because of a massive increase in population - to 8.5 million and the failure of the potato harvest

one study states

'The Irish state, through constant commemoration of Famine emigrants , has continually represented Irish emigrants as exiles escaping colonialism and its legacy. In addition to embracing this official version, the popular memory of migration often associated the emigrant experience with economic struggle. Due to the sheer volume of Irish people who have left the country over the past four centuries, emigration has become a fundamental part of Irish identity'
given that Sweden, Italy and other European countries also had considerable emigration across the Atlantic the Irish situation was not that differant (economic necessity exacerbated by the potato famine)

and this thread is not about the Irish and the perfidious English in history

He quoted the coal miners and the poorly paid, as "his people".

Thank you, jingl

thank you too, jingl
not that de-mystified though as I find it hard to see how someone who went to University to study Law after a grammar school education is at one with the coal miners and poor of history.

This is a separate topic but:
grannyonce - I wrote "English" and that is what I meant.
Perhaps you know more about Irish history than I do.
And I can't understand your above comment about coalminers - that is exactly why I became a socialist having grown up in a coalmining town where several of my friends lost relatives "doon the pit".

Another lie from this government.
We were told the replacement for HMS Bulwark would be part of the search and rescue operation.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/23/uk-pulling-back-from-migrant-rescue-with-hms-enterprise-deployment

See the Italian PM is writing about the situation in the press