From refugee, to hospital cleaner to national hero

Hospital cleaner, Hassan Akkad, pulled at the nation’s heartstrings when he Tweeted a video last week with an urgent message to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Obsessed by Brexit, while the world weeps

Britain is benumbed by Brexit. It’s as if nothing else is happening in the world. But beyond our shores, a kaleidoscope of horrific events is now crystallising across the planet. Are we too blinded by Brexit to see?

If the Pope can do it, we can do it

Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, showed true world leadership at the weekend​. He visited the Greek island of Lesbos, and rescued a dozen Syrian Muslim refugees by taking them home with him to the Vatican City in Rome.

Sun's story about Muslims 'seriously misleading' rules press regulator

The Sun newspaper’s front page story claiming that 1-in-5 Muslims had sympathy with ISIS was ‘seriously misleading’.

The press regulator, IPSO, ordered The Sun to publish a retraction on their page two yesterday.  This they did, but The Sun has still not apologised for their inaccurate report.

Refugees are not migrants

On the BBC television news channel yesterday the language used to describe people escaping across the sea to reach Europe was challenged by a fellow journalist.

Peter Hitchens: Refugees not welcome

Peter Hitchens, in his column for The Mail, described refugees coming to Britain in terms of an invasion from which we need to protect our country. If we let them in, he wrote, it would be tantamount to giving the country away to “complete strangers” only because “it makes us feel good about ourselves”.

Misleading claim about why Syrian boy drowned

A YouTube video posted yesterday by a UKIP supporter claims that the Syrian boy who was washed up on a Turkish beach drowned because ‘his father wanted new teeth.' The video has so far been viewed over 400,000 times and also posted by far-right groups.

The video shows a clip from a short Sky News interview to which has been added (not by Sky News) an opening title stating, ‘Syrian boy drowned because his Father wanted new teeth’.  

Refugees: 'There are too many, so we won't help any'

•  Some have strongly objected to the front page photo published today by The Independent of a dead Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach, whose family was trying to escape war and terror. This photo is too upsetting, said many.  However, similar objections were made when photos were released of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp after the Second World War, but only then did the world start to fully understand the true horrors of the Holocaust. Now, the world needs to understand this worldwide refugee crisis. Maybe this photo will at last open eyes - especially those of the British government, which has stated that it doesn't want to offer asylum to refugees.

The poor, the unemployed, the homeless, the disadvantaged - many of them in Britain think it’s them or us. Refugees fleeing terror, war and torture? We’re full. People here need looking after first. Charity begins at home. We don’t want them. We can’t afford them.

Those were the typical comments by some British people on what the country's response should be to the world's worst refugee crisis.  The new Conservative government seems to be taking them on board  - and ignoring urgent pleas by other Britons calling for a more humane response.*

The 8 steps to genocide

• The Daily Mail: One step, two step...?

This is how the Daily Mail chose to portray asylum seekers this month. 

In the first cartoon, by the Mail's resident cartoonist, 'Mac' (Stanley McMurtry), a British couple are advised to tell asylum-seekers in a bed to ‘shove over’ to make room for them in a hotel temporarily accommodating people seeking asylum in the UK.