A more than tiring day at work today. Every time a call ended there was a two second space while I got up what I was reading, then *ping* incoming call. Every time I had to stop myself saying “leave me alone. I don’t care about your fucking problems.” But managed to just about restrain myself. Everyone was angry, too, plus nobody I know was in.
Came home to watch the news, but had to turn it off in frustration. This election campaign is driving me crazy. I can’t wait to get away from this ridiculously parochial country again, especially after sitting through hours of supposed “debate” about immigration that would’ve been correctly dismissed as far right propaganda ten years ago. There’s this new consensus that there’s a huge immigration “problem” in the country, though how it manifests itself nobody’s clear about. People have even begun to use the phrase “asylum seeker” in a pejorative way, which is beyond disgusting. I could put up with it all if somebody was pointing out how stupid the whole issue is, but everyone’s keeping quiet right now since the country was taken over by Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail. Surely this is a human interest story? Where are the people being deported to face torture and death on the TV? Nobody is interested in that, apparently. Nobody’s interested in how each migrant adds to the economy by near twice what they take, nor how we have a severe skills shortage, nor how the number of applications has dropped by more than half this year.
Every superpower the world has ever known is the direct result of extensive immigration. Why can’t people live wherever they like, anyway? What’s the problem with that? Why should I care less about someone from Botswana than someone from Brighton? Or someone from Australia or the USA? I don’t hear the Mail complaining about the number of Australian bar staff in London. Could it be because they’re…. white?
I just did some reading up on the subject. Apparently an opinion poll last year suggested the British public believes the UK receives 23% of the world’s refugees. In reality, the entire European Union only accepts 3% of the world’s refugees. That’s how stupid this all is.

Generally furious. But this cheered me up.