Writing a blog, it’s not hard to turn everything that happens in the world into being all about you, or in this case, me. Then again, what is a blog, anyway? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, which was the first dictionary to pop up as I interrogated Google, it is this: “A regular record of your thoughts, opinions or experiences that you put on the internet for other people to read.” Literally, a weblog, shortened by two letters to become a blog. It’s that simple and, frankly, boring. In my case, it’s very easy to make every story into something about me.
Take Rishi Sunak’s latest wheeze to reduce migration to the UK. If I was a single man and wanted to bring, say, my Dutch girlfriend over to, say, Bristol to live with me, she would need to be earning over £38,000 a year. Anything less than that and we’d need to conduct our relationship via Zoom. Such a situation would not be an issue for – hmm. Who should we use as an example? I know – Rishi Sunak who, some years ago, brought his Indian girlfriend to the UK to live happily ever after. Under the new rules, Sunak could still import his bride to be because she is worth the best part of a billion quid and £38,000 is probably akin to her hourly rate than her annual salary. One rule for very rich Sunak, another for everyone else. What a happy coincidence (for him).
My paternal grandfather would certainly have been prevented from coming to the UK at the start of the 20th century, along with the other Scandinavian Johansens, who set up the Mustad nail factory in Portishead, coming over here creating good jobs. Can’t happen. Okay, they’re not black or brown, said the Rishi Sunak of the time, but they are still dodgy foreigners and, being virtually vikings, likely rapists and pillagers, too. That’s the paternal progression in the UK fucked because Alfred Johansen never meets Nellie Ladd and everyone that follows, my dad, me, my two half brothers – we never happen. And even if we do happen, there’s the issue with my mum.
My dad was in the merchant navy and while in Rotterdam he meets Neeltje Verburg with whom he falls in love and wants to bring to Bristol to live happily ever after, or until they split up in the early 1960s. But 1950s Sunak won’t let her in. She was a humble shop worker and the £38,000 salary of the day was something I suspect she got nowhere near. “Write each other letters,” said Sunak. “Because we can’t have your sort coming over here, stealing other people’s jobs, clogging up the NHS queues and, whatever colour you are, you will be the wrong colour. Now get back on that boat and fuck off back to where you came from.” Result? I am never born and neither are my sons, both of whom are net contributors to society.
All this is why I take this migration stuff so personally. I have droned on incessantly about how my Johnny Foreigner family came over here, always worked and never claimed social security benefits (apart from Retirement Pension – yes, it IS a state benefit) and now a here today, gone tomorrow billionaire politician and his nasty government hates people like my grandad and my mum. That they are both far too dead to know or care, I take it personally. This government is so fucked up, while the main aim of the so-called leaders, many of whom are black and brown, is to stop black and brown people coming to live in the UK, they also hate white people. It turns out all migrants are bad, unless they are wealthy politicians or the wealthy sons and daughters of politicians. When you hear people say that politicians are only in it for themselves, this government takes it to new levels of hypocrisy.
The idea used to be that we needed migrants to do the jobs regarded as shit jobs, like care work and fruit-picking. Now, by accident or design, those jobs are reserved for “our own” and the good jobs, at least those paying over £38,000 per annum are reserved for Johnny Foreigner. Coming over here, taking all the good jobs. You couldn’t make it up.
Unless you have been living in a cave, this migration stuff is an almighty distraction for the real mess this country is in. Millions in poverty, NHS waiting lists at record levels (eight million and rising), schools literally falling apart, double digit food inflation and so much else and all Sunak can say is “Stop The Boats” and “You’re not having your marbles back“, the latter in a petulant hissy fit directed at the Greek prime minister. Migration is the “dead cat” story, flinging the carcass of Tiddles onto the table to take your eyes of the fact that the country is falling to bits and the main reason is 13 long years of Conservative government.
Do I care about the levels of migration? Not really, although I would like Britain to become a more secular country and effectively outlaw privileges and special treatment handed out to those of “faith”, such as as religious schools – and I am talking about ALL religious schools here – and ensuring that everyone is treated and regarded equal under one law. That’s quite a qualification if you think about it, but it’s either what we have now, which is enforced separation by way of religious superstition or a society where we are all treated the same. And if someone doesn’t like a secular society and all that comes with it, they can always find somewhere that isn’t secular. (If this sounds a bit like a BNP/Daily Mail rant, there’s nothing I can do about that, even though it isn’t.)
Sunak is one of a number of snake-oil salesmen who have made me feel ashamed of being British. And it upsets me that my family of migrants is regarded with such disdain by very rich people who either are migrants or who descended from them. I feel English, even though only 17% of my DNA is English, and my name certainly isn’t. I wish I could separate the hostile nation to immigrants we have become to my family who came to Britain for a better life and to contribute, but I can’t because Sunak’s crackdown/clampdown on foreigners is an attack by proxy on my family and me. Nothing can convince me otherwise. £38,000 is the new price of love. That’s what we have become.
