The Tories really think we’re stupid, don’t they?

They’ve dreamed up a crisis  – I mean “crisis” – involving people trying to get into the UK from the European Union. Clearly the EU isn’t doing its job and keeping these people out, right?

Well… It’s not actually that clear-cut.

Here‘s the BBC’s version of the story:

“The rising number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel in small boats has been declared a “major incident” by the UK home secretary.

“Sajid Javid has asked for an urgent call with his French counterpart about the situation.

“The Home Office said there was “concern that it is only a matter of time before people lose their lives”.

“It comes after at least 221 migrants have attempted to cross the Channel to England since the start of November.

“Most recently, 12 people were detained off the coast of Dover in the early hours of Friday morning.

“Officials on both sides of the Channel have warned of the dangers of crossing what is the world’s busiest shipping lane in a small boat. Police have likened the journey to trying to “cross the M25 at rush-hour on foot”.”

The factual information is accurate – it is extremely dangerous to try to cross the world’s busiest shipping lanes in a small boat.

But some information is being passed off as fact when it isn’t. For example, here‘s the Tory Fibs Twitter feed: “Dear BBC, they are not migrants. They are refugees. They are not migrating, they are fleeing. Words matter.”

And here’s a little more – factual – information about the huge numbers of people crossing the channel that prompted Mr Javid to declare his state of crisis:

So, 33 people coming into the UK constitutes a crisis. Really?

Here‘s Dr Lauren Gavaghan: “What a perfect way for Conservative MP’s like Sajid Javid to spend their Christmas hols. Whipping up just the right amount of hatred before the possibility of a second Brexit referendum.  I wonder if Steve Bannon is visiting again.”

This is the heart of the matter. Refugees are renamed “migrants” because that makes it easier to whip up anger against them – by lying that they’re not escaping persecution but trying to get into the good life by the back door.

(Although why anybody would think the UK was the “good life”, what with Brexit and all that, is anybody’s guess.)

It’s all part of the Conservative “divide and rule” philosophy. They manipulate the people to do what they want, and keep power for themselves. That’s why they are turning public opinion against these refugees.

Consider the words of Yannis Gourtsoyannis, below:

But of course the Tories have already used their puppets in the right-wing news media to turn public opinion against the homeless people who died in 2017 (that’s homeless, not “rough sleepers”). And they tell us regularly that poor people’s debts are their problem and nobody else’s – even though that problem arises from rich employers refusing to pay their employees properly, and from the Conservative government finding the flimsiest excuses under which to refuse payment of benefits – often to the same people.

Alan Gibbons adds: “And it is not ‘a major incident.’ It is 220 vulnerable people arriving since the start of November. We need more empathy and less anti-refugee sentiment.”

Do you want it in more blatant terms? Okay, try this:

https://twitter.com/Chewiebeast/status/1079292350277603328

Your government wants to scare you.

Just so. The Tories want you to think foreigners are bad, and that the EU in particular is bad because it isn’t helping keep those bad foreigners out.

All to win a vote in a couple of weeks’ time, that can’t be won anyway. To get Theresa May’s hopeless Brexit “deal” through Parliament.

Meanwhile, the real crises go unheeded, as Andrew Graystone points out:

Don’t be fooled. Take action. Contact the government and demand to know what is being done to keep these refugees safe and to protect them from whoever they are fleeing.

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