A reflective piece

Hello everyone

This is a reflection on the last post and on a comment that I did not approve. That’s right. I have, much to my dismay, as I do not believe in the ‘cancelling culture’ and am so very much for free speech, I did not approve a comment.  And I won’t dear readers if there is name calling. Enough said, but no.  I want a civilised discussion, and absolutely from different points of view, but not that.

Anyway.

This is also about the purpose of this blog and I will just set out where I come from (obviously the left) but also how I like to conduct the conversation. As, just like my blog that is about women, their health, their ageing and style (oh yes, never, ever forget style and gorgeous clothes) I really hope for a conversation on various subjects, including like the last one, on immigration. Actually, I had thought why not put the politics into the style blog as we don’t stop thinking about politics and political issues as we age. But perhaps not, so this ‘other blog’ is a serious place to discuss serious issues, many of which I feel passionately about.

First of all, for those of you who are newcomers to this blog, my basic stance is that I encourage debate and discussion. And that includes discussion from all points of view. Above all, I believe that people should agree to disagree, agreeably. That is not my phrase, but the mantra of two podcasters that I admire immensely, Alistair Campbell (Labour, and to Americans, left-wing but very middle of the road really) and Rory Campbell (Conservative, and to Americans, right-wing, but to us Brits, really quite middle of the road) so they agree quite a lot of the time, but on other times (especially Iraq) they disagree, but always with courtesy. And that is how debate should always be conducted.

One other thing about my stance, before I say some other stuff, is that I went to uni (college) to study International Relations. And, I remember the way it taught me to question everything and unpick what people say and what policies mean. Above all, it was about looking at the context and asking why this or that is happening. What I remember from my time at university is, the tools it gave me.

So let’s take immigrants and immigration, the subject of my last post.

The thing is, everything around this subject is being amplified by the tech bros and their social media. Where do people get their facts from about refugees, immigrants and immigration? Do they verify, do they triangulate, do they read widely? Do they look at government statistics? Do they debate with people with other views and, importantly, listen to them? Big sigh, I doubt that. And even I am in quite the left bubble. At least I know that, but I do try to get out of it, and I do read very, very widely.

Consequently, because of the lack of sensible deliberation in the immigration debate (debate, ha, it is not) there is so much unpleasantness – and hate. For instance, I, for my sins, am on various parts of social media. Not X though, left that long ago, which is a shame as once upon a time Twitter was a good place to be on.

So the algorithms ought to know by now, what I ‘like’ and don’t like.  I’m not sure why the algorithm did this, but a few days ago up popped a reel of a crowd of people demonstrating in Crowborough, which is another small leafy town in Sussex not far from where I live. They were demonstrating against the housing of people in the very barrack huts that I so objected to a couple of weeks back when they appeared in the morning news. But these demonstrators were marching through the town and cheering on someone with a microphone spouting the most horrible nonsense, including we don’t want any illegal migrants near where we live.

See my previous post.  The people the government is proposing to house in the Crowborough barracks, will not be illegal migrants. You only become illegal when your application for asylum is refused.

And this person went on, all the while being cheered, ‘we don’t want our women and children being raped by these men’. On  and on it went about this. Just horrible.

Right. Let’s look at the official stats.

I downloaded a set of stats from the Ministry of Justice on sexual assault convictions by ethnicity in the UK and made myself feel quite sick looking at the number and variety of criminal sexual activities. By far the largest number committing these crimes, and by a huge margin, were white males. Another example, The Office of National Statistics also states that over half the victims who were assaulted by penetration or rape were assaulted and raped by partners or ex-partners.

Here’s the thing. And feel free to disagree with me. Keeping out or even removing all the black/brown/multi-coloured refugees/immigrants we have here would not stop sexual assault. Sexual assault surrounds us. It is always there. It is a problem that has never been solved. We women are at the mercy of men. Of course, most men are fine, but who hasn’t had unwanted sexual advances. I certainly have, I hasten to add, when I was younger. Us women, we are vulnerable, and some of the time we fear men. Why? Because we have to, we have to be street aware, we have to learn how to deal with men. It is a problem about men, not a problem around refugees and immigrants.

It seems we could have a debate here about men, all men, and sexual assault. But I’ll leave that for the moment.

So much nonsensical and wrong words are being thrown around in the media, and I have to say, by our politicians. We have a government who can’t see the wood for the trees (silly expression but not far from how it is) and with regard to the ‘boats’ and refugees and immigration generally, they are just moving further and further down a very dangerous road.  Now they want to make becoming a citizen an incredibly lengthy process. But worse, they have stated that they might remove from the ‘boat people’ their jewellery to pay for their processing. That makes me sick to my stomach. Because where did we see that before? This is the slow road to more and more cruelty.

Instead, the debate should be about the absolute necessity for immigrants. Have you been to an A&E recently. I have and who are the majority of professionals running the place and dealing with all the broken people? Immigrants who, of course, are legal.

However, what we are talking about here, as is the whole of the UK pretty much at the moment, are people who are refugees, not immigrants. They are refugees from warfare and torture, and extreme poverty as well, who don’t have visas, and don’t go through the usual routes, the usual safe routes like flying to the UK, and instead come across the English Channel in flimsy boats. Of course, there will be some who are trying it on, of course, but that is what the process of vetting the asylum seekers does, it will weed these out. Although, it does need pointing out that a lot of refusals are negated on appeal.

But, the lack of any safe routes, the consequent herding of these people into hotels or even worse, huts, and not letting them live normal lives and work. This is down-right stupid.

Also I wish to make it clear, that just because I am concerned about their treatment once they reach the shores of southern England, this does not mean I wish the boats to continue to come here.

No-one wants people to come to us via the English Channel. No-one wants people to continue that so very dangerous, unsafe route. People die crossing the English Channel.

But there are no legal safe routes. There is no system to get these people to safety. And there should be. So many things could happen that are not, including vetting people in France before they get on to those inflatable boats. If that was done then you would know that the people who do come via the boats haven’t got visas, so they must be deported.

And the separate debate about sexual assault on women? Banning and deporting all these people would not stop sexual assault. That is another debate altogether – about men. All men, including white men.

I wrote the last blog post because of the drone shot of huts shown on the morning news

And now they aim to take their jewellery

This is the UK on a dangerous path similar to the 1930s. We have to be alert and notice this. We have to say this is wrong.

Finally, I do regret not approving a comment because I welcome discussion from different points of view, but this is my blog so I can decide these things. I have no need to say this to the people who usually comment here, but can I remind everyone who is new to commenting here, to be kind and use courteous language. No need to say any more.

Penny Kocher, 26 November 2025