I start with a thought, foreigners! Never in my life have I looked on people as 'other' or 'foreigners'. This photo from F/B actually makes the point that we rely on people from different nationalities caring for us in this country - they are definitely not the enemy, just doing a good job of work. Our messing around over what constitutes leaving the EU makes their lives uncomfortable.
This thought occurred yesterday when after lunch in Kirkby, I saw the dentist who had repaired a broken tooth last week, he is called Muhammed, I thought he was coming out of the fish and chip shop but he could be living in one of the cottages and I wondered how he was settling in a small market town, probably quite happily as I think most people are like me, accepting of what is there.
It reminded me of another Muhammed, this time Turkish who I had looked after when we lived near the Bell School of Language in Bath and I took in language students (probably nearing 230ish). Many were an adventure in how to cope with unsure young people. Muhammed was a lovely young man, studying our language to go onto a Manchester university to study clothing retail. I can remember him wanting to try my spinning wheel but saying that no one should watch him. He brought me Turkish coffee cups and a funny little tin jug to make the coffee, and his sister would often phone and as I answered the phone she would say 'good bye' instead of 'hello', no matter how many times I told her.
When I was in hospital with my fractured ankle, both surgeons were non-English, nurses came from a variety of countries, should we not be worrying about them and extending a more friendly hand and a promise that eviction is not about to take place. Yes I know about all the unwanted immigrants but aren't they just looking for a better life and shouldn't we address that problem instead of getting our knickers in a twist about being over run?
Thelma I have argued along these lines for many years. Nobody objects to 'immigrants' working in our health service just as nobody much objected to that Windrush generation coming in to do the jobs 'we' thought were beneath us in those days. It is all shameful. A human being is a human being - somebody's son/daughter, mother/father - we look alike apart from the colour of our skin. Why should anyone be treated differently? It needs shouting from the rooftops.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is I am occasionally unbraided by my granddaughter for being 'politically incorrect' which I maybe towards today's younger generation, but a simple brief about equality has got lost in a welter of sheer nonsense ;) Anyway we will probably be called by our contemporaries as 'naive!'
ReplyDeleteThese are also my thoughts, Thelma, and the vitriol that is now being displayed towards families who are escaping violence and war in their land breaks my heart. I grew up in NYC and lived among people of all nationalities and I am the better because of it. My family came over to escape the potato famine in Ireland. I am second generation American and have always been proud to live in the USA. Now, not so much. We seem to have lost our way and our values and what my country once stood for in previous times. I do not think it is a coincidence either that I see this happening in many parts of the free world and wonder, why now and what is really going on.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that we have been given a mouthpiece through social media, and that lets the nastiness out as well. As for Trump and his followers, what can you say, the ability to lie so blatantly in the public sphere, is a new one on all of us!
DeleteWe're all the same tribe. I take people on an individual basis not on where they come or came from.
ReplyDeleteArilx
As we should Aril.
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