“We are the Village Green Preservation Society.
God bless strawberry jam and all the different varieties”
Sang The Kinks back in 1968.
Don’t remember any lyrics about asylum seekers and brothels though, do you?
C’mon Julie! These are modern times!
People aren’t interested in preserving……preserves.
It’s about meeting need!
The right to safety, housing and …….a jolly good English rogering!
Yes, you heard right.
Former cabinet member Edwina Currie has suggested that a brothel be built near a village hosting 1250 asylum seekers, to accommodate their ‘needs’.
That surely has to be her worst idea since shagging her boss mouthing off about salmonella.
It’s important to remember that asylum seekers or their representatives have NOT requested such facilities. It’s just Currie attempting to be spicy and desperately trying to be relevant.
No-one listens to her though surely?
Sadly, some do! Some are lauding the idea as reasonable.
It’s interesting this has been suggested in the light of increased publicity around rapes and gang rapes, isn’t it?
Almost as though she is saying “well……the dirty savages are gonna do it anyway, so y’know…”
The way you put newspaper in a corner to save the puppy shitting on your Axminster. (Or should that be shag pile?)
But these are grown men, able to control such urges. If we begin to question that ability - that basic societal expectation - things go down hill very quickly, don’t they? We go back to an era of victim blaming, of ‘because she was wearing a short skirt’. The idea of any sane, adult man being unable to control himself is antiquated and has no place in modern day Britain.
Then there’s the women who would be involved in providing it.
It’s become fashionable to talk about ‘sex work’, ‘yeah just another day at the office dear…..’ kinda thing.
No, it’s not.
To refer to sex as ‘work’ feeds in to a toxic porn culture already damaging women and girls and hugely distorting the expectations of males.
Women’s bodies are not newspapers to be offered up ‘just in case’ and subsequently disposed of. Bodies carry energy and trauma and that doesn’t conveniently bugger off at the end of a shift no matter what people may say.
I actually welcome Burnham’s idea that asylum seekers should be more evenly distributed around the country.
Why?
Because for too long many people talking the talk haven’t been walking the walk.
For too long those in cities have taken more than anyone else. Why shouldn’t some Middle Class Mary in Virtue Upon Signal have a few on her doorstep?
And I’m not saying they will cause any problems by the way. We have to remember each one is a person, a human being - despite the best efforts of politicians to make us hate them and convince us otherwise.
BUT to have a true informed take on it, you need to know how local housing is affected, how doctors surgeries and school places are impacted.
And who knows?
Maybe all will be well in Virtue upon Signal. Perhaps one such man, a Somalian Mr Darcy type will hook up with Middle Class Mary’s daughter - consensually of course - and they’ll live happily ever after, Morris dancing and Maypoling.
And Mary and Edwina can invite him round for bridge club and cherry bakewells as further reward for not raping anyone.
If England’s heart truly is being ripped out as many claim, then it will cut deepest in England’s heart, wont it?
That’s where it needs to be felt.
And if it’s not…….then we can all crack on turning old red telephone boxes into mini libraries and saying ‘Tally Ho!’, can’t we?
In the meantime, could we please have Kenneth Baker rustling up a few tips on accommodating West African dietary preferences?
John Major rented out as an alternative to sleeping pills?
Oh, hang on…..
That last one’s not a bad idea…..
Where do I sign up?
*Photo my own, but not of the village in question.
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