Customer Service Writes To The Home Office

Some people just have no manners:

I wrote to support my government thusly:

Dear Home Office,

I see the detainees were creating a bit of a stink in the Harmondsworth detention centre last night. I am writing to say that I find the whole situation to be absolutely disgusting. How dare these people, many of whom I’m reliably informed can’t even speak English, come over here unannounced and start creating such a ruckus?

I paint a purely hypothetical scenario. Imagine, if you will, going to visit your cousin for the day. You have a pleasant enough time, despite the fact they cook as if they had a personal grudge against food, and then you drive home. As you park your Volvo in the driveway and get out, you notice that your cousin has strapped himself to the roof rack while your attention was diverted retuning the car stereo to Radio 4 from whatever benighted racket your nephew had selected. Said cousin hops down off the car, and demands you put him up for a few days until he finds somewhere else to live. You’d be livid, wouldn’t you? I was, or rather would be, certainly.

Nevertheless, you put him up for the night in the spare room. And what do you find when you wake the next day? He has sprayed the walls with his own (presumably) faeces and set fire to the bed. Well that is hardly the behaviour of a good houseguest now is it? And you would be well within your rights to send him packing with a flea in his ear and a dry-cleaning bill in his pocket.

Now this is the same situation we find ourselves in with Harmondsworth. Granted, my cousin is unlikely to be fleeing from religious oppression, death threats or ethnic cleansing (although he does live in Croydon), but I think the analogy holds. I don’t feel that just because these people fear all manner of human rights abuses in their own country that excuses bad manners. Okay, they might fear false imprisonment (In their own country, not here. We’re merely detaining them. Totally different thing you understand) but is committing suicide going to help things? Of course not.

And so what if some of the guards take a firm line with their charges? Okay, not wanting to live in poverty and fear doesn’t make a detainee a criminal but you can see how the guards get a bit confused. And who could criticise a prison (or rather, detention centre) guard from giving prisoners (or rather detainees) the occasional slap? Not I.

I do think there is a possible solution, if you’d like to hear it. I read an article today about the RSPB.

( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6191410.stm )

I’m now an ex-twitcher myself, after all that silly business with the nurses’ home. I was watching the top floor of their accommodation because it had a stork on. I said this to the police when they arrived but I fear they may have misheard. Anyway, I hear the RSPB have bought a sizeable plot of land in Poland because some sort of rare bird lives there. My wife feels it’s a shame that the £400,000 spent by the RSPB (from public donations) couldn’t be spent on providing a better life for human beings but she’s a sentimental sort that way.

According to my like-minded friends and the newspaper I take, most of these immigrant sorts are from that neck of the woods, or as near as makes no difference (Ukraine or what have you). Why not use this apparently very pretty piece of land to release the immigrants back into their natural environment? I’m sure they’d love it there. Now I’m not going so far as to suggest turning it into some sort of human safari park to ensure it stays self-funding. That’s hardly my job. But I would merely ask you bear it in mind.

Anyway, keep up the good work arresting terrorists and what have you. And don’t let people get you down. You can’t be right all the time.

Yours etc.