No, it’s not about the famous Scottish soft rock band of that name, but a pretty good description of the politics of Herefordshire South Conservative MP Jesse Norman. Mr Norman has recently been criticising the decision by the Home Office to house 120 Channel Invaders in the plush Three Counties Hotel on the Belmont Road in the southern part of Hereford city. According to a BBC report of the 13th March of this year, Mr Norman moaned that local services could not be able to cope with the influx of migrants being put in this hotel.
The BBC said:
The 60-room Three Counties Hotel in Hereford closed to the public last week and will be used as temporary accommodation for migrants under a 12-month contract with the Home Office.
However, local MP Jesse Norman said it would affect “highly-stretched” public services.
The Home Office said the UK’s asylum system was “under incredible strain” and it was taking immediate action to reduce a backlog in application decisions.
Mr Norman, Conservative MP for Hereford, said the Home Office had “decided to press ahead… on a very rapid timescale”, which he described as a “great disappointment”.
He said the decision was taken without detailed analysis on the impact on the area.
“Herefordians will always want to do the right thing, and over the last few years this county has stepped forward to support refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine,” he said.
“But it is also essential to consider the impact on vital local public services.”
However despite Mr Norman’s whines about putting the Channel Invaders, who have apparently been moved to Hereford from Kent where they presumably illegally entered the UK, it seems that he’s apparently a bit of a ‘wet’ with regards border security. In the past it seems that Mr Norman has called attempts by the government of Boris Johnson to improve border security, ‘ugly’. He used this word ‘ugly’ to describe in particular the Rwanda Scheme which would see some Channel Invaders and other illegals held there instead of Britain.
The political commentator Patrick O’Flynn described as ‘unreal’ the disconnect between Mr Norman moaning about the Channel Invasion and other migration related problems and his failure to support even tiny steps, such as the Rwanda Scheme, to secure the UK’s border. Mr O’Flynn said: “Unreal that Hereford Tory MP Jesse Norman who grandly declared the Rwanda deportation scheme “ugly” is now kicking up a fuss about migrants being moved to his constituency”.
I’d go a little further and say that Mr Norman’s bleating about the problems that these Invaders will bring to the Hereford area is more than a little hypocritical when set against his failure to support even the smallest possible moves to sort out illegal migration. As I’ve said before, Mr Norman is not exactly a ‘dry’, to put it into the Thatcher era descriptions of Tories being either ‘dry’ as in standing up for Britain, for reform of the economy, for the party leadership and for national security, and the ‘wets’, the left leaning, liberal and pro-EU Tory MP’s. From what I’ve read and heard of Mr Norman’s political leanings and views would have placed him then firmly in the ‘wets’ camp. It’s certainly the case that on the issue of border security he’s not just wet, but as I’ve described him before, wetter than an incontinent tramp’s trousers.
Mr Norman has had ample opportunity over his political career to stand up for border security and the creation of an effective immigration system one that works for the benefit of the nation instead of what we have at present which is a system that is doing great damage to the country and its people. He’s done none of this. He is also unusual for an MP in that he’s never revealed how he voted in the 2016 Referendum on membership of the European Union. He’s one of the few that have taken this attitude and I wonder why this could be?
Mr Norman is complaining that the people of Hereford will suffer because of the imposition of 120 illegal invaders in his constituency. He’s correct in saying that. Ordinary Herefordians will suffer because of the invaders and I’ve no doubt more will be revealed about this suffering once the invaders start to explore the local area. However, Mr Norman’s complaints would have more weight and gravitas to them had he stood up for border security and not used hyperbolic language such as the word ‘ugly’ to describe a scheme that would in itself only scratch the surface of Britain’s migration related problems.
Once upon a time we used to call these “invader” refugees. I’ve long thought it considerably more brave to leave ones hell hole of a warzone country or place of persecution and undertake a perilous journey culminating in a sea crossing than it is to snipe from a position of privilege. The home secretary disgusts me, as does the Prime Minister. Slip in, pull up the drawbridge.
Nope, they’re invaders, (economic migrants if one is being generous) and have either passed through numerous safe countries or come from one that is (*cough* Albania *cough*)
This is going to sound harsh but f’em, we can’t take in all those who want to move here and have no obligation to accept them who do so illegally. I doubt the latest scheme will work but is better than the usual throwing up of hands and declaring nothing can be done.
Once upon a time people arriving illegally in the Country were termed (correctly) “illegal aliens”. Illegal because their presence was unlawful and alien because they were not British.
And that is what they actually are.
But I do agree with you: these ‘refugees’ are incredibly brave to cross so many war torn Countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Hungary (though that Country is now so desperately war-torn that few make it through – or is that because Hungary actually believes in borders? Nah, must the war raging there) etc.
One must applaud them for struggling through all the artillery bombardments, machine-gunnings, gassings, mud, trenches etc., slogging their way on foot through mud several feet deep, on the way to the coast of France where the noble people traffickers charge them a trifling £5K or so to bring them across in a manner reminiscent of the Dunkirk operation (although, disgracefully, that only returned mostly white Britons to these shores showing how horribly racist our (grand) parents were).
They clearly all deserve medals and free housing, food, medical care etc. and we should rejoice in paying for this in tribute to their bravery.
At one point I would also have called people arriving on small boats refugees, especially as I’m old enough to remember the Vietnamese Boat People being heavily featured in news broadcasts. The problem is that when you look at those who have been genuine refugees and compare them to the Channel Invaders then there’s a massive difference. I don’t see what the HS is trying to so as ‘pulling up the drawbridge’, rather than doing something that the people desperately want which is proper border control. An interesting thought experiment and one that I’ve done is to look at the list of those who came to the UK as kids running from the Uni-Testicled Austrian Corporal and his pals. The number who fell by the wayside and went off the rails seems to be pretty small and many went on to do great things for the UK. There was not among this cohort massive numbers of rapists, violent religious maniacs or criminals. There were a few naive idiots like Lord Dubs for example but try as I might I can’t find any of the Kindertransport children who graduated into a mindset where bombing a tube train or self detonating in a pop concert was considered acceptable, unlike too many of those who claim asylum today.
“So wet one could shoot snipe off him!”
LOL. Nice one! On a similar vein I seem to recall Michael Gove being described by someone out there as ‘As slippery as a vaseline coated eel’
that could also have described the perpetually scandal ridden Keith Vaz, nicknamed Keith Vaseline (note: this was before before his rent boys incident).
Of course. He wasn’t called ‘Vazeline’ for nothing. He should have been excluded from polite society long before he assumed the persona of ‘Jim the washing machine salesman’ and got into the rent boys and coke game.