Lottsathoughts

I can't stop going on about Calais. Today there are over 1500 unaccompanied children who have been cut off from all they know. They are denied access to lawyers. They have no information on what is going to happen now. ALL the officials have gone. Literally the only adults left are policemen - doesn't that sound like a recipe for disaster? They have had their water cut off. There is no food or warmth. The toilet facilities are not cleaned and are beyond disgusting – ankle deep in festering pools of raw human sewage. Thank God for volunteers like Help Refugees. After the media circus has moved on, these amazing volunteers continue as they have done for months. Now providing 1500 meals 3 times a day. Plus drinking water. And emergency help such as ferrying a child to hospital earlier. The volunteers are not allowed access to the containers where the children are housed. What on EARTH is this about? I've messaged the Home Secretary Amber Rudd twice in 3 days but along

Montaigne again (writing over 400 years ago) : "Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept."  So there you are. ....nothing changes after all. The only thing that baffles me is why so many are so happy to believe any old rubbish. Why don't people do their own thinking to expose the lies? Is it as simple as laziness? I'm not sure. Certainly today there is as much publicity for reasoned arguments as for spin yet people actively get on board with the "we don't want experts" idea. Why?  Why deliberately choose to be ignorant?

Today, The Jungle in Calais burns. I have been aware of the inadequacy of BBC news service for some time but today has laid it utterly bare. The BBC reports throughout the day have toed what is presumably the official line - all gone to plan, nobody left, all peaceful etc. The truth is heartbreakingly different. Entirely predicted by volunteers, the issue of the unaccompanied children was disastrously mismanaged. Increasingly panicky messages were coming out about children being ordered back into the raging fires and the only safe-havens were closed by lunchtime. At 9pm tonight volunteers were driving these children to the aid-warehouse for safety because authorities failed to act. I no longer have confidence in our government and our BBC to act and report truthfully and with integrity. I, for one, have wept today following the plight of these children for whom I can do nothing.

My daily reading of Montaigne (doesn't everyone?) "We parrot whatever opinions are commonly held, accepting them as truths, with all the paraphernalia of supporting arguments and proofs, as though they were something firm and solid....everybody vies with each other to plaster over the cracks and prop up received beliefs with all the powers of reason - a supple instrument which can be turned on the lathe into any shape at all. Thus the world is pickled in stupidity and brimming over with lies." This was written approx 450 years ago. How pertinent! And yes, I do include myself in the people who may be mistaken. I particularly like the last sentence and will try to remember this and quote it more often.