Syrian Refugee crisis - is this Tory Government doing enough to help?

When you think about the Syrian refugee crisis consider these figures & remember it's not mere numbers, it's about people:

But if you want to talk about numbers - Cameron and the Tory Government are going to ask Suffolk to take just 200 refugees, over 4 years - I am sure that most Ipswich people will agree that figure is far too low - This Tory Government should do far more to help those suffering because of the war in Syria.

Cameron can't answer questions and Ipswich Tories can't ask them!

At Prime Minister’s Question time this week not only did David Cameron fail to respond to any questions he was asked with a thoughtful answer (on Google, Saudi arm sales) he also managed to demean the role of Prime Minister by describing those who are living in atrocious conditions in Calais as a ‘bunch of migrants’ – remember this the same week we mark ‘Holocaust Day’.

Many believe this was not a slip of the tongue but a pre-medicated move to either take the focus away from the Google cock up or to try and look tough on migration so to appease his Eurosceptic colleagues. Whatever the reason, it was not the sort of comment that a Prime Minister of the country should be making.

Unfortunately his comment looks quite Liberal when you compare it with the right wing drivel (and scaremongering words) that were posted on a blog by the Ipswich Tory leader, Nadia Cenci. Her comments declaring that many stuck in Calais were possibly terrorists on their way to UK, were quite sickening to read and again not the sort of words you would expect or hope to see from an elected politician. – “all the infiltration of terrorists (and I bet there's quite a few of them at Calais so frustrated at not reaching our shores as easily as Merkel's now very new and unrecognisable country). “

She then turned her piece into an anti EU rant, using such terms as “EU and all it's horrible socialist experiments” and “if the EU doesn't collapse before then under the weight of it’s own corrupt, poisonous and egotistical head. “

We are informed by many that our Tory MP, Ben Gummer is pro EU – if he is, he should now stand up and inform his constituents that he does not agree with the comments of his local Tory leader.

There are so many rumours and bits of miss-information floating round, it is important that politicians stick to the facts, the comments of Nadia Cenci do not help. Last night we invited a local refugee charity to a Labour meeting so we could discover the truth.

I was shocked how little Cameron intends to do- in the next 5 years, the Tories propose to allow 200 Syrians to settle in Suffolk- just 40 a year, so expect about 10 families at the most – whilst at the same time Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have millions of refugees living in their countries.

 

 

If Cameron can’t answer questions it seems Nadia Cenci and the local Tories can’t ask them! On Wednesday I attended Ipswich Borough Full Council Meeting, and as always at the start we have a series of questions, mainly from the opposition and sometimes the public. This week we saw 10 questions from the local Tories and even independent observers had to admit via social media that the quality of questions was very poor. In fact even being very generous only two were worth asking, one from Cllr Pope about IBC working with the college and Cllr Debman on the number of football teams now using park pitches.

Even then Cllr Pope failed to follow up his questions with a good supplementary whilst Cllr Debman is correct that park football now does seem a thing of the past, it is not IBC who are to blame, the FA for one should look at their own actions quite closely and Ipswich dies provide quality facilities at Gainsborough, Whitton and now Ransomes.

Cllr Pope is right in questioning how much work has gone on between the council and the college but his timing was poor as this week the college has launched it’s own ‘vision’ document which will see more cooperative work between the organisations.

Then we had the really  bad questions starting with Cllr Cenci! She asked how much to council spend to cover their union facilities agreement, but she could not help herself and turned it a pre-election statement and asked how much does it cost the council tax payer. The amount is £45,00 but she was quickly informed that only a small percentage of that comes from council tax, we could have added that Tory run Suffolk spend more on when the Tories were in power in Ipswich they did not try and stop paying this money- which is probably the most economical way to run Human Resources at the council.

We then had Cllr Phillips ask how much our legal costs were for work on the Ravenswood inquiry, seeming to forget the fact that we were only having an inquiry because Pickles and Gummer called the project in as a blatant piece of electioneering.

But that was not the end of it, we had Cllr Vickery ask about the Olympic 2012 legacy, only weeks after the local paper had published a report that lavished praise on Labour run Ipswich for all the work we had done with sport but he made even more of a mess of an earlier question when he asked why groups such as the Friends of the parks were no longer invited to the Culture and Leisure working group, he did not seem to realise that parks had not been part of the culture portfolio for the last 8 months.

What the night did highlight is that this group of Tory councilors and candidates are not capable of running a council, and let us make sure in May that they never get a chance.

My week ahead, 16 - 21 November 2015 #StandWithParis

 

Monday 16 November, 6pm – Labour Group meeting

Tuesday 17 November, 6.pm – Audit meeting

7pm – Fabians talk on Palestine

Wednesday 18 November, 8am – Meeting about IBC/Press and social media

6pm – Ipswich Borough Full Council meeting

Friday 20 November, 8am – Launch of VETS – Employment service for Veterans at ITFC

Saturday 21 November, 10am – Labour campaigning in South West Ipswich

This week we saw how twisted this world is at times, on Wednesday I accompanied Ipswich Primary School children as we remembered those who had fallen in conflict at the War Cemetery in Ipswich and on Friday many of those same children would have helped others in the UK raise millions for ‘Children in Need’ but on that evening as we were celebrating this great charity event, people with no concern for others carried out cowardly and murderous attacks on innocent (and mainly young) people in Paris.

The murders of so many has united most of Europe, in fact the world in solidarity with the French people, just disappointing but not unexpected that some would use these callous murders as reason to insist that we do not do our part in accepting refugees from Syria.

Those innocent Syrians are fleeing from the same mad, nasty, viscous people who committed those heinous crimes in Paris. This is the time to stay united and help those in need not become even more selfish and turn our back on those in such urgent need of the help we can give.

Stanley Baldwin and David Cameron - Two Tory Prime Ministers afraid to show compassion

The lack of compassion by Tory politicians over the Syrian refugee crisis has even shocked me, would expect UKIP to try and use this humanitarian disaster for their own means but disappointed when even here in Ipswich, local Tory leaders attempt to use unfounded claims about ISIS terrorists attempting to make their way into Europe (and the UK) pretending to be refugees fleeing from Syria.
The facts certainly show that this is not likely to happen but as senior Tory Ministers are also willing to peddle this lie it is of no surprise that local Tory politicians will also repeat it. In my opinion they are using this poor excuse just as a reason to do nothing – because they want no refugees, migrants, immigrants in this country- a case of ‘shut the door, I am in’ or more simply put ‘I’m alright Jack’.

Bu the attitude of the Tories nothing new, the similarities between the behaviour of Cameron now over the Syrian crisis and Baldwin during the winter of 1937 over the possibility of Basque refugees arriving here from the Spanish Civil war are quite striking.

This week Ian Herbert of the Independent wrote a fascinating article about how a number of those Basque refugees ended up playing professional football in the UK – more here. It shows how a refugee, Emilio Aldecoa blazed a trail for Spanish footballers to ply their trade here that would later be followed by millionaires such as David Silva and Cesc Fabregas.
The article also mentions the refugee status of the father of Fabrice Muamba, whose half-brother is now on the Academy books at Ipswich Town.

Fabrice, a refugee himself once informs us (wisely) that refugees are just “ like us, they have all the same hopes and fears. They are part of humanity.”

I have been proud of how football is coming together to help in this crisis, British fans are keen to do their part, happy to follow the example of German supporters where our own Tory Prime Minister has no wish to follow the example of the German political leaders.

Philosophy Football are currently collecting old football scarves and hats to transport ‘from Wembley to Calais’ to help prepare the hundreds of migrants who will be facing a bleak winter in the Calais ‘jungle’.

The support of football fans is important as it is obvious that Cameron can be swayed by public opinion, and currently it is a battle between the general public forcing him to do the ‘right’ thing and the views of his Tory activists like their leaders in Ipswich who will use any excuse possible to get out of doing what we all know we need and must do.

But as Ian Herbert states in 1937 we had a “humanitarian crisis and a Conservative Prime Minister unwilling to open the door to those in need of escape” and in 2015 we have exactly the same!