Hello and welcome to The Week. It’s back to normal this week with a look at what’s been going on in the world. Of course there is the immigrant issue, rumbling on and on with Macedonia rushing soldiers to its borders to try and stop the huge flow of refugees while Britain sits on the periphery of it all, not allowing a few thousand in. My feelings on this is that I have no issue with inward and outward migration and anyone who says that our remaining British culture is being diluted and all that blah blah blah well, I say, we don’t have a culture so what’s the problem? I don’t think we have had a culture since the Victorian era. British, American, Canadian, Australian We are all pretty similar – we can move so freely between each country so not to have such a massive culture shock which sounds good to me. I know we brits like to think we have a distinct culture, part of me really wants to believe that too, so we talk of ‘stiff upper lip’  and being devilishly witty, if slightly sinister but the reality is that we are just a mixed bag – like most other nations. There is one concern with immigration that is worth some consideration, Britain is a very small country and even though we have swathes of rural land we don’t want to build on that and I don’t want our major cities to grow exponentially, I think they’re too big already so realistically my only issue is with the practicalities, such as the size of the country.  I’ll be honest with you, if I were in power I would quite happily throw out 4 million UK citizens who are useless and bring in maybe one million hard-working immigrants any day of the week. I have no love for people who claim to be British by birth and think that gives them some kind of right over others – as I said I don’t think we have a culture any more. Better to have a multi-cultural society of hard working folk than people who claim to be British as a cover for racism. A prime example is the EDL English defence league – I don’t see them as being what Britain is about.

Anyhow, moving on, Pluto was pretty awesome. I assume the majority of you saw the pictures. I was blown away. I know there is a negative aspect about how many billions went into those few snapshots of a rock, one we are not even sure is a planet any more, but I think you have to be fairly cynical to actually go on about that when you see those pictures, incredible and well done to our space pioneers. What else is going on? Well the war in Syria rumbles on with Isis taking more and more territory regardless of the amount of ordinance we drop. It looks like we now have North Korea mobilising with its million strong army again. I know they do this every few month or so and it is really just postulating but it’s always slightly worrying, I feel the potential of what could happen is hanging over us, if you look around the globe. This may be the one of the reasons I couldn’t really face doing only a round-up of the news every week, as nearly every story is fairly negative. I just took a look at the BBC News over the past few days and there are no good news stories, there is no positivity in the world really. It’s just all about how everyone is killing each other or screwing each other over, it is easy to despair. However, we have to hope things sort themselves out. I am always happy to throw in my pennies worth of how so let’s look at the main headlines and what I think we could do;

Syria – send special forces in and define their area of operation, give them laser target designators and tell them to seek and destroy all Isis units – simple.  Immigration issue – If every European Country put in the money that they would spend on asylum support, aid and the like and allocate it to set up a super city in Tunisia, potentially under European guard with European troops and a mixed police force to create a safe place where immigrants can move to seek asylum through the correct channels. More importantly this city would be a place where the refugees would be able to work and live in a peaceful environment. Just look at the amount of refugees, with the numbers you can have a supercity in 18 months, with its own economy, its own commerce, decent housing, where there could be a real life carved out by the people and Europe could defend them. That is the obvious solution, it stops immigration into Europe which is obviously causing huge nationalistic issues and right-wing stirrings – this just stops that at source by taking away the potential conflict but at the same time acting humanely. In addition Europe has an obligation to oversee the rebuilding of Africa, almost on a colonial obligation and deploy troops, aid, engineers and the like and to repair and develop these countries and bring them up to standard for the people to want to live there, we can’t go on ignoring what is driving these people out.

That’s just a quick roundup of what’s gone on and my responses. Later this week there will be an interesting piece on young people in response to the annual publication of GCSEs and A-levels at a time when it is reported that the UK is second in the ranking for the most depressed children on the planet and has  one of the highest suicide rates. I’ll approach this later in the week along with other stories coming about China and the political and economic issues facing that country and why Brazil is not ready for the Olympics. Plus a series on the Battle of Britain – so lots coming up.

I hope you have a good week and if you haven’t read Rose’s Story do buy a copy to support me. Links to get them are here:   Kindle   Lulu.com    Kobo  ibooks