Irritation

Perhaps it is the hot weather, but I found yesterday's Guardian particularly irritating.

Some newspapers (and most politicians) peddle the illusion that you can have public services without raising the taxes needed to pay for them.

While the Guardian peddles a completely different illusion, the illusion that there is a nice way to deal with migration. It does not seem to recognise that as long as the supply of migrants exceeds the demand, which given, for example, the conditions in most parts of Africa and those in most parts of Western Europe, is likely to be the case for a long time, there have to be barriers of one kind or another. And when  migrants are determined, which some of them will be, this is going to get unpleasant. There is going to be crime and there are going to be innocent victims.

It's easy for us to be holy when we have the natural barrier of the Channel. Not so easy for countries in the front line, like, for example, Hungary, Turkey and Libya.

So let's try and behave in a decent and humane way - while recognising that there are limits to what we can do. As the suit said to the president on West Wing, there is a lot of bad stuff going on out there and you can't fix all of it.