Exodus

It is very disturbing to me. Very disturbing that a photo of a dead child can cause world leaders to forget anything other than having a misguided concept of 'doing the right thing'.
Unfortunately, the right thing is not to throw open the borders of European countries. Although a dead child is tragic and very emotive, it should not be the basis of foreign policy. Inevitably, relaxing our border controls will lead to more dead bodies and help no-one.
Before asking where my compassion is, you should first ask yourself two basic questions -

• Why was the Syrian family on a boat travelling from Turkey? They were already in a safe country and did not need to get into an unsafe boat. In fact the beach the child washed up on is a popular destination for many British tourists, yet there have been no warnings from the government not to travel there.
• If Syria was so unsafe that the family needed to flee, how come they were able to return to bury their child? Indeed, if you were fleeing in terror why on earth would you even want to return?

So, although a tragic case, the cause of this child dying is not immigration policies of European countries. Why then are European leaders in some sort of grotesque competition to open their borders to prove they are more compassionate than all the rest? Ultimately these actions will encourage many more to make dangerous journeys and therefore more tragic deaths.
Is it perhaps a sense of guilt? After all, our foreign policies over the last few years are at least partly to blame for the current situation in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan etc. - you know, the countries where this mass exodus of people are coming from.

And let's be clear - are they really refugees? The vast majority are male and working age - do refugees leave their young and their women behind when fleeing from danger? Should refugees really be demanding which country they are to be transported to? Or should they be relieved that they have reached safety. Many seem to be dissatisfied with the safety and protection they now have because they are not yet in the country of their choice. You'd have thought that they would feel relief, not some indignant sense of entitlement as soon as they cross a border into a 'lesser' European country.
I have no doubt that there are genuine refugees coming to Europe and they should be helped. But by opening the borders and allowing thousands of people in almost unchecked, how many terrorists are also being allowed across our borders? What hashtag poster will the posturing politicians be holding up in self-publicising poses when a terrorist beheads someone in this country? #terroristswelcome?

Politics

Well, only 3 weeks until the UK decides who gets the keys to number 10. It must be difficult for those who haven't decided who they are voting for. I just wish the politicians would tell the truth once in a while.
David Cameroon - no, you're not going to win an outright majority. Live with it and plan your campaign accordingly. Stop living in denial.
Ed Rubberband - Liar liar pants on fire. Of course you're going to go into coalition with the SNP if it means you can get into Downing Street. But of course you can't say this openly because it'll stop people voting for you - I mean come on, who wants the SNP to have any sort of influence over decision making in any government?
Nicola Stir-up - What planet are you on? What gives Scottish Nationalists this belief of entitlement? The Scots already get more money per head than the rest of the UK but you seem to think you are hard done by? Oh, and stop lying about the NHS. The SNP (who have control over health spending in Scotland) increased their spending on the NHS last year by 15.5 % and in the same period, the evil Tory party who are strangling the NHS to death increased spending by 22.8% - It seems to me that one of the biggest claims the SNP makes about the Tories is in fact a load of rubbish - but hey, it's politics, you're allowed to tell lies.
Nigel 'one-of-the-boys' Farage - well at least you have passion. I don't suppose UKIP will be anywhere near as popular at the ballot box as predicted but you never know. At least we sometimes see you telling the truth, even if it is unpopular. But please - explain how you can be such a hypocrite by being an MEP when your fundamental political belief is that we shouldn't be in the EU!
Oh, and I nearly forgot Nick Clogg. Not surprising really - have the Lib Dems even bothered campaigning this time around? They just seem to want to sell themselves to the highest bidder in a desperate attempt to stay in power. Not exactly the best thing for the country now is it?

So what are the choices?

A party who have scrimped and saved now promising to spend spend spend.
A party that put us into massive debt in the first place also promising to spend spend spend but make bigger cuts too.
A party that wants to move the treasury north of the border and spend it all on Scotland.
A party that wants to leave Europe, chuck out all immigrants and then spend spend spend.
A party that doesn't really know what it wants to do.

I think I may have to emigrate!

Middle East - What's in a name?

Well,  I don't know about you but I'd be a lot more confident of the Western world being able to help out in the Middle East if the various governments, politicians etc. could manage to agree who they are taking action against. No - not physically who they want to take action against - I think they may have managed to decide on that, but what they are calling them.... When they first started being talked about on the news they were 'IS, formally known as <something or other that I don't even remember>'. That was obviously too much of a mouthful so had been shortened to IS by a lot of the media. However, apparently IS should not be used because they are considered to be neither Islamist or a State (although I'm not sure who made the unilateral decision to stop using the term - it obviously must have taken up hours of debating time by some unheard-of and unelected body of people!). Anyway, now we have politicians and the media calling them either IS, ISIS or ISIL. And the French have decided to call them Daesh because that is what the Arabic speaking media use. You can witness interviews on the TV where one person is using one acronym and the other is using a different acronym - oh and it has happened in exchanges in the House of Commons too. It would be nice if everyone could just pick one of the names and stick to it!