the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Its been a few weeks since my last post and in those weeks quite a few things have happened, as things are wont to do. The tricky thing for me then, was to find an ‘in’ –  a way in which to use one of these things to comment on some of these other things. But I was worried that some of these things I wanted to comment on might’ve faded into distant memory before I found one. I shouldn’t have though. It wasn’t a long wait. 

Chan Mathok Atak. If his name isn’t immediately familiar to you, don’t worry. You’ll probably better know him as the bloke who piloted a so called ‘mega- dinghy’ carrying 165 migrants across the English Channel in July. He was jailed for two years and three months at Canterbury Crown Court last week. Those are the barest of the bare facts. But the bare facts don’t do the story justice. In fact, its difficult to discern any justice in it anywhere

Because his story, along with that of the other 165 migrants, is instructive. Not only does it reveal the twisted morality of those who claim to be morally unimpeachable, it also highlights the the grift, opportunism and fraud that they disguise by constantly impugning the motives of those who disagree with them. 

When he was sentenced, the judge told Atak ‘that as a foreign national he was liable in principle to automatic deportation once he completed his sentence.’ This is, to use the correct technical term, utter bollocks. No-one ever serves their full sentence. This shocking state of affairs is only exacerbated by the early release programme that the government starts and stops as headlines dictate. If she’d have wanted him to spend two and bit years in prison, she should’ve sentenced him four years instead.

Secondly, and maybe I should’ve started with this first, he was only here and available to be sentenced in the first place because a lifeboat had rescued him and his passengers and bought them to the UK. I mean, its all very well and good for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) to claim that anyone in distress at sea is someone in distress at sea regardless of any other factor. But this conveniently overlooks the calculation the people smugglers make when they overload these dinghies in the first place. In the case of the one Atak piloted, it had only one of its two engines working and the dinghy was leaking. The people smugglers knew what RNLI would do. And they did.  

But after the rescue, why bring them here? Why not return them to France? After all, wasn’t the whole migrants fleeing persecution thing predicated upon claiming asylum in the first European country they could? I seem to recall that we voted to leave the EU in 2016 so the fact of the UK still being beholden to its rules is a total mystery. As is the fact that even if were were still obliged to adhere to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), none of the migrants rescued by the RNLI and bought here since 2016 are by any stretch European. On what basis then can they base any appeal claiming the  protections guaranteed under the ECHR?

Apart from the obvious basis, that of the UK taxpayer footing the legal bill. Those tribunals, appeals and judicial reviews don’t come cheap. Immigration lawyers recently settled a dispute with the Ministry of Justice over pay, which resulted in even more taxpayer largesse being handed over. Naturally, this came after drastic cuts to the types of cases eligible to claim legal aid for. Of course it did. Why on earth would anyone think that UK taxpayers should be entitled to the same rights as anyone not born here? Absurd idea.  

Atak has as much chance of being deported as he has of being struck by lightning. There’d be all manner of tribunals and appeals funded by the taxpayer before some legal freeloader would claim his human rights were being somethinged. Then sensing room at the trough, more snouts would appear. Pressure groups, charities and hitherto unknown unknowns would engage in the important work of trousering as much taxpayer money – and publicity – for themselves. 

In the meantime, until the legal cash-cow is milked dry, he and all of the other asylum seekers will need to be housed somewhere. Quite how this has suddenly become an issue for some people is a mystery. But then concerns about a sudden influx of largely male migrants who come from deeply misogynist cultures and the fears for female safety this  represents are easier to dismiss when they’re expressed by working class oiks.  Think of how quickly the far-right’ narrative became the story to explain the motivation of the protesters at the Bell hotel in Epping earlier this year. They were all either racists or bigots, quite possibly both.The sort of people who were all too easily duped into voting for Brexit and were again being manipulated.   

However when these same concerns and fears are expressed by nice middle-class people in a quiet part of the Cotswolds, such views are transformed. The residents of Paddington are demonstrating the truth of this. Plans to house over 1200 mainly men in a disused army camp near their village of under 300 would be hilarious if they weren’t so predictable. Its not about us. We’re only concerned for them. They’ll have nothing to do. There are no amenities. It won’t be safe for them either The army camp is some distance from the village, only accessed by unlit paths in deep woodland. They might be scared of the dark.

There’s something reassuringly duplicitous in all this, of dressing up their fears for the collapse of their house prices and seeing an end to their rural idyll as somehow empathetic. Except of course concern for welfare never seems to extend to the soaring welfare bill. The UK’s national debt is so big that it seems utterly perverse to add to it. The UK needs less people to be claiming benefits not more. 

After he’s served his sentence – which in reality will be less than 15 months actual prison time – Atak will almost definitely make a claim citing the ECHR. Or his lawyers will. If need be, they’ll fight for his rights for just as long as the taxpayer is footing the bill. Eventually, he’ll be allowed to stay, judges getting progressively more progressive the more senior they become. The taxpayer still won’t be done with him. There’s more milking to be done! Numerous local authority services, activist charity groups or other grifters will be all to eager to help him claim benefits, get housing, healthcare, and access everything he’s entitled to. They don’t care. They’re getting paid.

The problem is he bill. At what point does the social contract cease to enforceable? What happens the implicit moral obligations that the state demands of its own citizens are not reciprocated? The fundamental obligation of any country is to defend its borders and keep the people within them safe. The state keeps us safe and in return, we follow the rules it makes. That’s it in a nutshell. Everyone wins. Except now it seems that some of the winners shouldn’t have been playing the game in the first place.

********************************************************************************

If recent events are anything to go by, the criminal justice system is criminal. Far from being the impartial exponent and interpreter of law which exists only in theory, in practice it has become a willing extension of an increasingly authoritarian state. 

I’d be be very surprised if most people when asked what constituted violent disorder wouldn’t think of punches. Possibly resulting in some bruising, a bit of blood, and a couple of paracetamol. Not severe enough to meet the threshold of Actual or Grievous Bodily Harm, but not enough either to be kissed better. How then was it possible that someone pleaded guilty to violent assault, was found guilty and sentenced to two years in jail, for throwing a plastic bottle at police?  Oh, he also swore at them.   

When sentencing him, the judge explicitly stated that the severe sentence was intended to ‘act as a deterrent’ to others. Naturally one then thinks of what activity he had been engaged in and should be avoided by people not wishing to spend the next two Christmases in jail. Protesting, thats what.

Of course protesting is fine. But not if you’re protesting about the wrong thing. His mistake was to be protesting at an anti-immigration rally in Portsmouth earlier this month. Had he been one of the 82 Palestinian Action (PA) idiots arrested today outside the Labour Party Conference, he’d’ have been fine. In the unlikely event of his going to jail, a fate most arrested PA cretins avoid, he’d be treated as some kind of prisoner of conscience by the more Hamas apologistic media.

**************************************************************************

Throwing a plastic bottle. Quick, hand down a ridiculously disproportionate prison sentence. It’ll act as a deterrent. Obvious.

Arrest five men for allegedly preparing to launch a terrorist attack on a RAF base one day, release them on bail the day after. That’ll learn them.