There is a better way

This is an update to one of the earliest posts I ever wrote on this blog, back in 2006, some 500 or more rants ago.

If you recall, Molly/Misbah was a little girl who ran away from a council estate in Scotland where she lived with her mother to be with her father in Lahore, Pakistan, sparking an Interpol search.

It subsequently transpired that the child wanted to live with her father and other siblings there, and was very unhappy at the prospect of being with her mother in poverty and deprivation in Scotland.

There was, at the time, concerns about the mother's drinking too.

In the end, Molly got to live in Pakistan with dad, but one wonders whether that would have been the case had the evidence not stacked up so strongly that it was the best place for her. Had she not expressed her own desire so dramatically to leave, had her mother not been drinking, had her father not been affluent enough to fight the case, it could have been very different.

Anyhow, the update is that she has now, as a near-adult, moved back to Scotland to be with her mother and one of her sisters. Reading between the lines (Mum's had a child by another relationship taken from her custody) the girls are looking after their mother rather than the other way around.

But what's crucially important about this development is that it came about as the result of out-of-court negotiations between all the parties. IE the dad Sajad Rana could have sat in Pakistan and ignored all the mother's claims, but he didn't. He facilitated her visits and permitted his children to return to be with her when they expressed that interest.

There is a better way to resolve custody disputes than the traumatic and dramatic adversarial court system that put this family through the ringer over 3 years ago. And these people have found that way. It is to talk, mediate, negotiate and put the children first at all times.

I congratulate Sajad Rana for showing grace by allowing his children to be with their mother, and I congratulate Louise Campbell for having grown into a responsible relationship with her children and her co-parent.

And I'm delighted for little Molly/Misbah, who I suspect will never again feel the desperate need to run away sparking an international manhunt because she was so unhappy about the situation created by her parents' break-up.

Many couples can learn from the example here. The lessons are myriad - mothers who vindictively use their children against their exes may find those children come to reject them. Parents who show dignity and respect their children's need to see their other parents are rewarded with love and loyalty. And no one need enrich the parasites of the legal profession in resolving the issues that arise when a relationship breaks up.

There is a better way. Perhaps it's time we all migrated to it.

Can we now admit that they weren't refugees?

Irish economy booms. Suddenly, out of the blue, the place is swamped with hundreds of thousands of asylum applications, largely from countries which, though poorer than here, are not experiencing notable civil unrest or war.

Irish economy collapses. Suddenly, out of the blue, the number of asylum applications crashes overnight. Nothing has notably changed in the countries from which the vast majority of our 'asylum seekers' originate - Nigeria, China and Pakistan, in other words. Pakistan is no more unstable than it ever was, China is no more open than it was five years ago and Nigeria remains stable though corrupt oil-rich nation.

Department of Justice figures have repeatedly revealed that the vast majority of such claimants are simply lying, and are nothing more than economic migrants. Now the economy is in the shitter, obviously the number of claimants is drying up, vindicating the Department's statistical claim that these are not, were not and never were political refugees.

So can we now admit that the bulk of asylum seekers were simply chancers on the make? Or will we continue squandering much needed public funds denying reality in the name of political correctness?

Such a strategy has finally become too much of a burden for one Irish council, it seems. For years, the Dun Laoghaire 'Festival of Cultures' was heralded as the flagship event of multicultural Ireland - a public festival that celebrated diversity and the rich heritages of the many migrant communities in Ireland.

Now that it's been scrapped, the council has revealed that actually the festival was a financial disaster, sucking half a million quid out of its much stretched budget and resulting in street violence.

Why couldn't they have told us this earlier? And why was the state paying for this at all? The Chinese community celebrate their New Year in Dublin annually. They pay for it themselves. There are St Patrick's Day parades all over the world. They are primarily funded by local Irish-descended community groups.

But here we have an occasion for public disorder, that cost the council a fortune annually, dressed up as a beneficial interaction of migrant cultures.

Over the past fifteen years, we have seen some seismic changes in Ireland, irreversible changes that have not all been beneficial to the state. After the Celtic Tiger rollercoaster, we find ourselves once again bankrupt and exporting our brightest youth to other shores, where they will not receive political asylum with its free housing, food and education. Nor will they receive 200 euro a week benefits or find the local council spending half a million to promote their culture.

A scan of the origins of PPS number recipients by nationality over the past decade or more reveals just how our immigration and asylum system was abused. How our good nature and hospitality was effectively abused.

Yes, there are a few Iraqis and Afghans. Not many Congolese, or Darfurians, though. No, what we received were primarily lying Nigerians, from one of the richest of all African countries, who circumvented the Dublin protocol on asylum to claim where the benefits were greatest.

Now, I'm the first to accept that they're not leaving. The days of a homogenous and pasty white Ireland are gone for good, and I won't particularly miss them.

But in our newfound poverty, can we also emulate the actions of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown council and introduce some honesty at last into the diversity debate?

The 'festival of cultures' was a money-sucking excuse for public order offences. Can we similarly now admit that the vast majority of asylum seekers to Ireland weren't actually refugees at all, but simply economic migrants who lied their way into the country?

The real axis of evil

Anyone recall the Bush baby's hilarious 'axis of evil' speech?

It was basically his shit-list of countries that he didn't like. And wanted to threaten. It included various rum locations like North Korea and Iran. None of them places you'd like to wake up a peasant in, but equally none of them currently occupying other people's countries.

So I thought it might be useful to put together an alternative axis of evil list, based on the proportion of misery particular countries are responsible for in the world today.

1. United States of America. Well, who else? Two foreign occupations, the ongoing 'wars' on 'terror' and 'drugs', state-sponsored kidnap and torture, funding Israel. They're really in a class of their own.

2. China. Repeated famines of their own population, the ongoing occupation of sovereign Tibet, the suppression of internal minorities, the sabre-rattling at Taiwan, and some extremely dodgy dealings in Africa.

3. Israel. An illegal state formed on other people's land, currently engaged in a particularly vociferous and unjustifiable genocide of the indigenous inhabitants. 300 dead in Gaza in the past couple of days alone. Israel is the terrorist state destabilising the entire Middle East, with American assistance.

4. 'Great' Britain. America's lapdogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. So that makes at least three foreign countries their military are currently engaged in, including their occupation of the North of Ireland.

5. Zimbabwe. Mugabe's syphilitic insanity should not be permitted to stand in the way of the self-determination of these beleaguered people any more.

6. Russia. Putin has seen how America has been permitted by the international community to wander into other countries with impugnity and has decided to emulate them. Their 'near abroad' of former Soviet states remains under constant risk of invasion if they don't tow Putin's line, as Georgia discovered this year and the Ukraine may well the next.

7. Pakistan. Politically in ruins, riven by terrorists in the tribal areas, deeply repressive to women and non-Muslims, Pakistan is a nuclear power with a series of border disputes with equally nuclear neighbours India and China.

8. Somalia. Without any apparatus of government for many years now, Somalia is now a devastated zone of anarchy from which pirates flood in droves to prey on the world's transit traffic.

The list of honourable mentions, where the people are denied democracy and self-determination by unelected elites, runs into dozens, sadly. There is no room to list all the states, on every continent, which refuse to permit their people free rein over their own destinies.

2008 Predictions

I made a few predictions this time last year. I'll return to see how wrong I was about 2007 in my next post.

In the meantime, here is my doom-mongering for 2008.

1. Pakistan becomes the no. 1 threat to world peace. By no. 1, I mean the return of the nuclear fear and five minutes to midnight.

2. Bertie gets dumped at long last by Fianna Fail. When the chairman starts offering support to the manager in soccer, it's invariably followed by a sacking. So how else to read the fact that half the cabinet are sympathising with El Berto's ongoing tribunal antics?

3. A Republican, possibly Romney, will be the next US President. Pace Richard Delevan, who's been proselytising for Obama for some time (which is odd as eggs for an American right-winger), I can't see the US electing a black man. If he ran as Hilary's Veep, they could do it, but the 'dream ticket' will never come off, now that Obama thinks he can gain the nomination.

4. Man Utd for the premiership, annoyingly. Ferguson to again fail in Europe, and again to delay his retirement, much to Carlos Queiroz's chagrin. Real or Sevilla for the champion's league. Rafa Benitez to leave Liverpool in the summer after row with the club owners.

5. The SDLP and UUP to leave the Northern executive and set up in proper opposition. The SDLP will be courted by FF and Irish Labour who both finally formally set up as Northern parties, thus simultaneously copper-fastening the union and pissing off the unionists.

6. British final pull-out from Iraq, and probably Afghanistan too.

7. Ongoing dollar collapse, commodity surges, oil spikes, banking crises and falling house prices in Northern Europe, especially the bubbles like NI and Spain. In other words, job losses, house repos, and the end of living beyond your means on credit. There will be no credit available this time next year.

8. No boycotts of the Beijing Olympics, despite the appalling behaviour of the Chinese government. The Chinese will finally outperform America in the medals table. People will mutter about drugs, as if that's a surprise. The 13 year old British diver will be the new Eddie the Eagle Edwards. In other words, he'll be crap but the British public will love him.

9. People will realise that 'social networking' sites are a waste of their time. Others will migrate from one site to another with increasing frequency. Astronomical share valuations in these firms will collapse. Call it Dot-bomb 2.0.

10. I will finish my damn novel. Really, I will.

Mommy knows best, even when she doesn't

Further evidence that courts all over the world believe Mommy knows best, even when she doesn't came with the news today that the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan, has ruled that Misbah Rana must leave her loving, affluent family and return to a bleak housing estate on the Scottish isle of Stornoway to live with her mother.

When I first wrote about this case, I noted how the child had sought her sister's help in fleeing her mother's care, and fervently desired to live with her father in Pakistan. This fact was confirmed again in court, when the child burst into uncontrollable weeping when the verdict that she would be forced to return to Scotland was announced.

It seems that the great social experiment of our era - the eradication of fathers from their children's lives - is continuing apace, even in countries previously seen to have tendencies to rule in favour of fathers, such as Muslim Pakistan.

Despite the fact that Misbah (or Molly as she was once known) has repeatedly acted and stated that she wishes to live with her family and father in Pakistan, where he is an affluent and caring man well respected in the community, it seems that the courts in two countries are insistent on ignoring her wishes.

Instead, they wish to foist her back into a bleak, windswept housing estate that is riven with drugs, and where she suffered racism, into the care of a mother who refused to even attend the hearing in Pakistan such is her love for her daughter.

A mother whose marriage fell apart after she had an affair, a mother who is apparently physically unwell, a mother who is accused of plying her own underage daughter with alcohol, a mother whose son Adam, Molly's older brother, left to return to his father as soon as he turned 18.

How is any of this in the interests of the child? Her interests have been expressed and utterly ignored. Instead, the British media were more than happy to accuse her father of abducting her, and reprinted her mother's lies that she was being taken to Pakistan for an arranged marriage. Thankfully, now that the full truth has emerged, their tone has changed somewhat.

But despite the augmentation of the media coverage, the facts remain heartbreaking. A child must be separated from the environment and family she loves because her selfish mother, who was not even inclined to attend the hearing about her daughter's future, wants her back.

And that's that, because Mommy knows best, even when she doesn't, in the eyes of the law the world over.