It isn’t just what they say everything about them seems so alien to
It isn’t just what they say; everything about them seems so alien to anyone normal. The trouble is they’re so soullessly, passionlessly, obsequiously pompous, but they seem to think that to reconnect with the people is a matter of style, like wearing short-sleeve shirts or riding a skateboard on regional news. They might as well get up in the Commons and say: “Would the Prime Minister agree this government has big-upped the NHS large-style and the party opposite may diss us but they’re, like, sooo going to lose the next election”.And masses of people do have “real concerns” that can result in hostility to foreigners. Especially when this process is fanned by the sort of local newspaper article I saw that claimed “asylum-seekers are now offering sex for a potato”. I wondered whether this involved a pimp, who collects the fee then hands the woman a chip. And then says “but I’ve got expenses, baby”.The concerns derive from real conditions.
In an estate near me, I’ve had an identical conversation with perhaps fifty people in a row. They complain about the appalling conditions, the decline in transport, the shortage of housing and how they trusted New Labour but feel let down. Then they say: “But the bloody asylum-seekers get anything they want”, and out pour the stories. “They get seven grand off the council for a new kitchen,” is a common one. Eventually I expect to hear: “They come straight off the Eurostar and get given a diamond.
It’s true – 27 carats, worth 85 million quid, my brother told me and he works for the council. Yet my daughter went to the dentist and was told she couldn’t have an appointment before Thursday.”Addressing the “real concerns” means accepting they’re right to be angry about the way they’re treated, and the way in which politicians are divorced from their lives, but being unequivocal in stating that when they blame asylum-seekers they’re talking a load of cobblers
More from Mark Steel. I think I mentioned yesterday that I had been to Istanbul at the weekend On business, it was I was there for the specific purpose of not buying a carpet. I didn’t know that that was what I was going for – I thought I was going for a long weekend with friends – but that’s the way it turned out. Everyone I met in Istanbul had a carpet shop, into which they tried to lure me and then give me apple tea until I begged for mercy and promised to buy a carpet. If any of our party spent more than 10 minutes inside a carpet shop, the rest of us had instructions to burst in and kidnap him. The pressure to buy is so strong that it is not unknown for travellers to look down at their hands, and find they are carrying back to the hotel a carpet they cannot even remember buying.