Refugee Christmas

Just back from a lovely family stay in Whitstable. Highlight was yesterday's erection and decorating of the Christmas tree. I know, it's still November, but in these times of virus depression, it cheered us all up.

Last year I decided to nominate Crisis UK as my Christmas charity. I was moved by my daughter in law Gabby's interest in the plight of homeless people and have continued to donate in the last 12 months. This year I'm going for the Refugee Council. As regular readers will know, I have been exercised by the inhumane attitudes to and treatments of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. I recognise that judgments have to be made about the legitimacy of asylum claims but expect my fellow citizens and my government to treat these people with respect while they undergo processing. Human beings, not animals. In the Council's words "we exist to support those who come to the UK in need of safety and we speak out for compassion, fairness and kindness."

The Refugee Council happens to be one of three charities chosen jointly by the Times and Sunday Times for their Christmas appeal this year. Their journalists can illuminate the issue far better than I can:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/times-christmas-appeal-2021-our-lives-our-dreams-our-country-collapsed-the-refugee-council-helped-to-give-us-hope-again-jd66l2dp2

You might like to read the Refugee Council's tribute to the 27 men, women and children who tragically lost their lives last week whilst trying to reach safety in Britain.

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/latest/news/refugee-council-pays-tribute-to-27-people-who-died-last-night/

70,000

My co-blogger and co-grandparent MiceElf recently completed 70,000 'steps' and has so far raised over £300 for Greenwich Mencap.

I don't know what a 'step' is, and I do not have a smart watch, stepping app or FritBrit [I know that's not accurate; I just think it sounds like all you anti-Brexiteers out there] so I have no idea how much of an achievement this is. Is it just one stroll around the garden, a hike from Greenwich to Hastings or 1,000 walks from my car to/from the store entrance in the Asda car park?

Greenwich Mencap provides "care, advice and support to people with learning disabilities, learning difficulties and autism and their families". Their Riverwood Project helps Adults with Learning Disabilities (AWLD) through therapeutic work: "Using recycled wood, our members create hand-made furniture and craft items which are sold to the public to help fund the project. By teaching skills and promoting teamwork within a positive environment, we aim to help our members develop social skills, experience independence and feel a sense of value and purpose."

I believe MiceElf's fundraising is still open and you can donate at https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?userUrl=JaneLawson13&pageUrl=1

Tickled Pink

When I pay at the Asda checkout I am invited to add a small amount to the payment for their Tickled Pink charitable cause. It can be as little as 10p or as much as £1. I choose 25p as a matter of course; it's a round number. Well it isn't really; actually a square number.

I'm not actually sure that Tickled Pink is a charity; more a programme which supports and partners with breast cancer charities Breast Cancer Now and CoppaFeel! Asda has been doing this since 1996 but the checkout option is a new initiative I think. I imagine it's a really effective one, done to celebrate Tickled Pink's 25th anniversary; they have raised more than £71 million in that time.

Is this a lazy, unfocused way of giving? It's not as if I am making a choice to adopt this particular charitable cause. It's the only charity available in this particular way but it's not one that would really have been at the forefront of my mind if I were to decide to give £15 a month. I guess there will be lots of people like me making a donation because someone has had the clever idea to add it to the checkout screen.

This Friday, 22 October is Wear It Pink Day. The only pink item I have is a pair of garish pink trousers. I've got them out ready for Friday.

Heading for a change

Footballers are five times more likely to suffer from dementia than the general population. Because they head the ball. This revealed by a Glasgow University study. Already, the English football authorities have issued guidance for mens' and womens' professional and amateur clubs that recommends "a maximum of ten higher force headers are carried out in any training week." [thefa.com] High force headers are "typically headers following a long pass (more than 35m) or from crosses, corners and free kicks."

This represents a huge challenge for the sport of football. The present stance of the authorities can be summarised in one word: prevarication. Tony Cascarino was a striker who played for Ireland in two World Cups. Writing in the Times, Cascarino is scathing about the guidance:

The new guidance on heading in training, issued by the leading bodies in English football, makes no sense. The thinking appears to be that doing less heading in training means fewer impacts and therefore less risk.

First, if there is an issue with heading, why allow it to continue at all? Second, heading is a skill and it requires practice and plenty of repetition. Reducing how much a player can practise reduces their technical ability and means they might suffer more damage because they head the ball poorly in matches.

The issue is damage to the brain which is a sponge in the skeleton that takes impact regularly.

I'm not a medical expert but the evidence of this and other studies appears irrefutable. There is only one question to be answered: is heading so fundamental to football that we are prepared to see footballers suffer brain damage? The answer surely is: no. I frequently get carried away when watching football and my frustration at a team's inability to create scoring opportunities; I will shout something like "get the ball in the box for him to head it". You can hear fans at matches encouraging their teams to do the same, so we definitely need educating.

If you watch teams such as Barcelona and Manchester City playing the beautiful game, they do so without the traditional big, brawny strikers who can score headed goals. Last season's Champions League winners and Premier League winners did so without such players. I remember the late Brian Clough, winner of two European Cups with unfashionable Nottingham Forest, saying "If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there". The clue is in the name: football is meant to be played with the feet. I remember a sickening heading collision last season between players of Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers and that made me think seriously about my attitude towards this issue for the first time.

UEFA - the governing body for European football - has guidance for young people playing football. It includes recommendations and advice on specific aspects such as ball size and pressure, the need for neck-strengthening exercises, and detection of potential concussion symptoms. FIFA - the world governing body - is, as far as I can discover, silent on the issue.

I believe that it is inevitable that, within ten to twenty years, heading will be banned in the laws of the game, exactly as handling the ball is. The authorities would do well to take the kind of initiatives used by climate change activists, by setting a fixed end date to achieve the change and establishing realistic waypoints. Something like the following:

• by 2040, the laws of football will be amended to ban heading the ball, punishable in the same way as handling the ball already is
• by 2035, headed 'goals' will not count as goals scored
• by 2030, free kicks and corners in a football match must be played along the ground
• by 2025, all football goal-scoring statistics and honours (such as 'Golden Boots') will exclude headed goals
• by 2023 the laws of the game will include a definition of 'head' in the laws, as there are currently of hands and arms

1966 World Cup hero Nobby Stiles died last year after suffering from dementia. His son John, a former footballer himself, is campaigning with the Head for Change charity who helped organise a match at Spennymoor Town a week ago, in which heading was banned. A noble cause and well intended, but high level influence is needed to effect change.

There will be those that believe that this will destroy football as we know it - which it will and, in my opinion, for the better - and others who believe such a timetable is too long. The debate should be started and it should not be left to charities to do so.

It's in Africa

Be honest, dear reader. If I put an unannotated map of Africa in front of you, would you be able to accurately locate Rwanda? Try it:

Were you correct? Me neither. Here's a quiz question: what percentage of UK asylum seekers are granted asylum (including various resettlement schemes)? I didn't know and guessed at 75%. The most recent confirmed figures show that in 2019 there were 35,566 asylum applications and in 20,703 cases asylum was granted: 58.2%.

The UK has a population of 67.8 million. The 14,863 rejected asylum seekers represent 0.22% of the population.

Denmark has a population of 5.8 million. They had 1,008 asylum seekers in the last three quarters of 2020, of which 357 were granted asylum: 35.4%. The 651 rejected asylum seekers represent 0.11% of the population.

In May, Denmark signed an agreement with the government of Rwanda; the agreement refers to the UNHCR-sponsored Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) in Rwanda, a transit/processing resettlement centre designed primarily to deal with an influx of refugees from Libya to other African countries. You can read the full agreement here. A few weeks later, the Danish government passed a law enabling it to process asylum seekers outside Europe.

“External processing of asylum claims raises fundamental questions about both the access to asylum procedures and effective access to protection,” said Adalbert Jahnz, an EU Commission spokesperson. “It is not possible under existing EU rules or proposals under the new pact for migration and asylum.”

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees urged the Danish government to refrain from externalizing their asylum obligations. Such practices "frustrate access to international protection, are inconsistent with global solidarity and responsibility sharing, regularly undermine the rights of asylum seekers and refugees and thus violate international obligations of States."

The Guardian quotes Rasmus Stoklund, the Danish government party’s immigration spokesman, as saying “If you apply for asylum in Denmark you know that you will be sent back to a country outside Europe, and therefore we hope that people will stop seeking asylum in Denmark.”

All this to deal with a few people who together represent 0.11% of the population. It's likely that most - perhaps all - of these are not genuine asylum seekers but is that reason enough to subject legitimate asylum seekers to an arduous journey of 6,500 miles to live for days, probably weeks, maybe months, in a probably over-populated equatorial camp? Not to mention the economics of it.

By now you may well be asking why I am so interested in Denmark's immigration policies.

Reports in UK newspapers today suggest that the Home Office is keen on replicating Denmark's outsourcing of asylum seeker processing and has had discussions with the Danes about their agreement with Rwanda. Next week, the government will introduce the Nationality and Borders Bill into the House of Commons; today's Times reports that the bill will "include a provision to create an offshore immigration processing centre for asylum seekers" The chief executive of the Refugee Council charity is quoted as saying "For generations men, women and children seeking protection in the UK have been given a fair hearing on British soil. Most have rebuilt their lives as law-abiding citizens making a huge contribution to our communities. Offshore processing is an act of cruel and brutal hostility towards vulnerable people who through no fault of their own have had to flee war, oppression and terror."

What kind of country are we? Whether or not people agree on immigration policy as applied to asylum seekers, surely we should treat all of these people with compassion and decency while their applications are being assessed.

Oh, and here is the answer to the original question:

Images courtesy of freeworldmaps.net

Mother Carey's Chickens

Mother Carey's Chickens is a phrase I learned today from a dear friend. Tony is a long-retired Royal Navy officer and apparently these words are (or at least were) much used by mariners. They refer to storm petrels, which are small birds - a little larger than a sparrow - common in the world's oceans, migrating to warmer climes in the southern/northern winters. There are 24 species of storm petrel.

Mother Carey is supposed to have been some kind of supernatural figure, definitely of a seafaring ilk. Here's John Masefield's take on her:

She's the mother o' the wrecks, 'n' the mother

Of all big winds as blows;

She's up to some deviltry or other

When it storms, or sleets, or snows;

The noise of the wind's her screamin',

'I'm arter a plump, young, fine,

Brass-buttoned, beefy-ribbed young seam'n

So as me 'n' my mate kin dine.'

This painting by the late 19th century Dutch bird illustrator Johannes Gerardus Keulemans.

Philip Carteret, Commander of his Majesty’s Sloop the Swallow noted this in his diary of 18 April 1767:

we saw also a great many pintado birds, of nearly the same size, which are prettily spotted with black and white, and constantly on the wing, though they frequently appear as if they were walking upon the water, like the peterels, to which sailors have given the name of Mother Carey’s chickens

Mr Wiki tells me that "Storm Petrels' presence in rough weather at sea has led to various mariners' superstitions, and by analogy, to its use as a symbol by revolutionary and anarchist groups."

Not sure that this, by the band Alive 'N Kickin', is either of those. However, Stormy Petrel (formerly known as Virus) is the Anarchist Communist Group’s theoretical journal. Whatever a theoretical journal is. The latest issue claims to be a "bumper 60 pages of revolutionary anarchist communist thought and ideas". It contains the following: 

• Building Resilient Communities: The Challenges of Organising Locally
• Community Activism in South Essex
• Mutual Aid during the Pandemic
• Charity or Solidarity?
• Covid Mutual Aid: A Revolutionary Critique
• ACORN – no mighty oak!
• Anarchist Communists, anti-fascism and Anti-Fascism
• Women: Working and Organising
• What is Anarchist Communism? (excerpt from Brian Morris’s forthcoming book)
• Poll Tax Rebellion – Danny Burns
• Book Reviews – Putting the poll tax rebellion in perspective
• We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain
• Class Power on Zero Hours
• McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality

Frankly that doesn't sound very anarchic to me but each to their own. I couldn't find out how many members they have but I declined to join their mailing list. Dunno why I'm publicising them really. It's as long way from John Masefield.