On refugees

I agree with Matthew Parris, the whole business is not fit for purpose and totally unworkable in today's world.

Matthew Parris is an arse.

He's a gay, white South African who took refuge in the UK.

What have being gay and a white South African to do with being an arse? I wouldn't have thought there was any connection.

Rhetorical question, obv. ?

Because being white in SA gave him certain privileges but being gay didn't - he has since taken refuge in the UK but now wants to deny that to others.

Living in the past as well. It's the Universal declarationon Human Rights now, rather than the Geneva Convention that is supposed to be taken notice of.
Not that governments do. If they did, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in.

Riverwalk Did you read the article? Or you didn't bother because it was written by a white gay SA. I thought it was very good but I'm afraid it's too late, 100s of 1,000s of people aren't going to stop coming from Africa no matter what change in the rules.

To put our problem in perspective.

fullfact.org/news/refugees-lebanon-and-uk/

Yes I did read the article petra - how could I otherwise comment?

Was he a refugee because of homophobia in SA, river?

Bags, why did you not give the title of the article, The West must harden its heart against refugees?

If he was, it makes his article worse, bags, pulling up the drawbridge, as Riverwalk implies.

I've no idea on what grounds he's in the UK Bags but as a gay man he would obviously have found life here more conducive than SA.

I doubt if he was an anti-apartheid activist and needed to flee, given his record as an MP, but I would be happy to be corrected on that.

I've just read the Wiki article about Parris. I don't think you can hold the fact that he grew up in SA against him. People don't choose their parents.

dj, I'm not sure. Do I usually state the title of articles I link to? I don't think I was avoiding the issue if that's what you suspect because I tend to assume people will read an article before commenting on it.
I'm not sure if it is necessary for me to say this but I sometimes get the impression that you assume I support an article's message just because I post a link to it. That is a wrong assumption. Quite often I post a link to controversial articles precisely because I haven't decided what my own personal views on the subject are and want to hear more viewpoints.
I did think it was interesting that a range of politicians have already made suggestions about reforming the Convention/UN Declaration and the definition of asylum that Parris suggests does not sound unreasonable to me.

I don't think his being gay is relevant, river.

I didn't get the impression from Wiki that he 'fled' at all.

But what do you think of the proposal to reform the UNDHR? That is surely the important bit?

I think I'm going to start saying something like "Linking to this article is not an endorsement of its contents", bit like the thing one sees on Twitter profiles quite often that says something like "Retweets are not endorsements".

Sad that it needs saying.

A gay dared to voice his opinions, seems to horrified one poster

Bigoted, prejudiced view of others to think otherwise, much?

I think Parris is being very simplistic. The problem is far more subtle and complex than this.

Whatever rules are made (he suggests that risk of death and death only should be the rule for admission) how do you prove their validity? We have to assume that anyone prepared to risk their lives by fleeing has some valid reason to fear.

Of course terrorists and others will hang onto the coat tails, but in principle we cannot send people away to oppression and misery. I do appreciate the logistics are hard, but we have to have some bottom line decency in operation.

We sacrificed thousands in two world wars in an attempt to establish decency and honour as basic principles - we cannot really abandon them now.

x posts, ab.

I agree that it sounds simplistic as he puts it, but I do think some reform is necessary because what is in place at the moment is not working.

I admit I was shocked and sickened to read that post thatbags.