THE first batch of child refugees from the Middle East arrived in the UK last week.
One thing is for sure, they certainly grow up fast in the desert. There are 11-year-olds with five o’clock shadows and if I was a refugee, I would be the shortest eight-year-old with grey hair in the camp in Calais.
I might even be sent to school again and this time may even pass matric on my first shot.
I kid you not. The two things that stand out about the initial batch of ‘children’ to arrive here is that they all looked pretty mature and they are all men.
But if you point that out, as one Conservative MP has, you are a racist.
So gone are the days when the victims of war are women and children. Today’s typical refugee is a well-fed, husky, 20-something demanding entry into any European country of his choice, and expecting free food and lodging for the foreseeable future.
I could add groping local totty is also on the bucket list, but perhaps that would take stereotyping a little too far, despite the many thousands of reported incidents in Germany and Sweden.
Okay, no one is doubting that many of these ‘refugees’ will become model citizens.
But also no one – including Interpol – is disputing that many terrorists are streaming into Europe under the guise of asylum.
The European Union’s default position is to let most in and hope for the best. That’s the humane solution, it says.
Maybe, but sentimentality is not necessarily compassion. It’s worth noting that the only time in history that so many ‘unknowns’ have been allowed into another country is when the Greeks left a wooden horse outside Troy 4 000 years ago.
To me this is what it has come to; we are living in the most dangerous times since World War 2. Yet usually, when people face dangerous times they control their borders, not give unfettered access.
Look at the current global situation. Iran will soon go nuclear. This will be the first Shia nuke and it will result in a Uranium car boot sale with Sunni Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia building reactors like there’s no tomorrow. Which they believe will be the case when Iran gets the big bang.
Rogue powers
Indeed, rogue nuclear powers like North Korea are anticipating a lucrative export market heading their way.
However, what really intrigues me is the hipsters of my generation all thought we were going to fry in a nuclear fallout between America and the Soviet Union. It didn’t happen, as whatever one thought of the Cold War, the two superpowers were relatively sane.
Yet now that we have A-bomb Ayatollahs and other crazies all hot for nukes, the same hipsters think that’s cool. And you’re a racist if you say otherwise.
What is also equally alarming is the huge fiscal divide between the nuke-haves and have-nots.
For example, an average Pakistani earns $1 200 a year, while in North Korea they boil stones for soup.
By comparison, Sweden’s GDP is $58 000 and Holland’s is $50 000.
But Pakistan and North Korea could evaporate Sweden or Holland in a blink. Yet if any Swedish or Dutch politician proposed going nuclear, they would be voted out quicker than a non-quota rugby player.
Instead the debate in Europe is whether we have enough transgender toilets.
If that’s not a crazy scenario, then what is?
The wealthiest countries can’t defend their borders, while the basket cases have the most destructive weapons on the planet.
Perhaps the key question, though, is how much spine the wealthy nations still have.
The over-riding thread that holds a country together is the concept of a nation state. In other words, you’re happy to pay taxes and contribute to the welfare of those less fortunate if they have the same basic values as you, such as democracy.
The state and its citizens have mutual responsibilities towards each other with a shared sense of identity. It’s a value system, not ethnicity.
Once that’s gone, the relationship between state and citizen is shattered.
Unless these ‘refugees’ swarming into Europe buy into a shared identity, this is going to end in tears.
