Heart Warming Christmas Story… Not!
Jams O’Donnell recounts the tale: Santa refused leave to enter
Rev Canon James Rosenthal, who also happens to be a world authority on St Nicholas of Myra , had resolved to bring festive cheer to some children who are at the bottom of the pile of British society – those caught up in the British asylum system.
Rev Rosenthal arrived at Yarl’s Wood dressed in a red robe and long white beard, clutching a bishop’s mitre and crook, carrying presents donated by congregations of several London churches. Sadly he never got past the security personnel who guard the perimeter fence, despite gently protested that he was not a security threat.
Then as St Nicholas, accompanied by the Rev Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, canon theologian at Westminster Abbey, attempted to bless the gifts, the increasingly angry security guards called the police…
Jams says there is video, which the “security personnel” better hope never shows up on YouTube or they are apt to get mugged by gangs of pre-schoolers. This is senseless and petty. This also brings up one of the major disadvantages of privatization – accountability.
The private firm that runs Yarl’s Wood might even fire the people involved, but that isn’t accountability. If this was a government facility some minister would have to explain the situation in Question Time, and might even get called for an interview by Jeremy Paxman [it’s like getting thrown a verbal piranha pool] for Newsnight. If this was a government operation, someone with real power would be sweating, not just the bottom of the pay scale.
6 comments
…oddly enough, the living circumstances at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre sound sufficiently stark to serve as a reasonable substitute for the London of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, with more that enough Major and Minor Scrooge’s to go around…
I think those “security personnel” should be forced to watch every version of A Christmas Carol ever filmed on a continuous loop until the Orthodox Feast of the Epiphany.
What kind of slime denies children, who are guilty only of being children, a visit from St. Nickolaus during Yuletide? Hell, most cop shops hand out candy canes at booking during Christmas, unless you gave someone a hard time with the fingerprints or pictures, and that’s to people who are criminals.
That’s a pretty sad commentary on the state of things in the UK. I would hope that this gets plenty of air on the telly and that enough of the traditional English righteous anger gets whipped up over this. The guards were probably just following orders and whoever gave such orders needs a little ‘attitude adjustment’.
.-= last blog ..Not A Good Monday =-.
It is just as bad in the US with the rapid expansion of detention facilities after 9/11, and the use of private corporations to run them. Public employees would at least have a pension worry about, while most of the private guards will go back to their fast-food part-time position if they get fired.
It’s part of the new anti christmas mood in government. The RAF’s new Typhoons are being fitted out with LRASMs (Long range anti-Santa missile)
.-= last blog .. =-.
That’s what the Shrubbery’s anti-missile “defense” program was all about – stopping that red-suited Commie from compromising the Christmas receipts of WalMart. Why else put it all in Alaska after the end of the Cold War?