Do we really want a white-breaded Brexited flatland?
Suspiciously…erm…foreign people are being denied visas for the Edinburgh book festival, because you can’t be too careful with…erm…foreign people. Certain kinds of foreign people that is. Foreign people from Norway are fine, but people who are not quite so…erm…northern are not entirely welcome.
A dozen authors who were planning to attend this year’s Edinburgh international book festival have had their visas refused, according to the director, Nick Barley, who warned that the “humiliating” application process would deter artists from visiting the UK.
The festival, which starts on Saturday and includes appearances from 900 authors and illustrators from 55 countries, routinely provides assistance for visa applications. It has reported a jump in refusals over the last few years.
This year, about a dozen individuals had gone through an extremely difficult process to obtain a visa, Barley said. They were from Middle East and African countries, with one author from Belarus, and had had their applications refused at least once.
Well you know how it is. Middle East. African countries. Belarus. Foreign.
“We’ve had to draw on the help of MPs, MSPs, ambassadors and senior people in the British Council and Home Office to overturn visa decisions that looked set to be rejected,” Barley said. “We’ve had so many problems with visas, we’ve realised it is systematic. This is so serious. We want to talk about it and resolve it, not just for [this festival], but for cultural organisations UK-wide. The amount of energy, money and time that has gone into this is problematic. There needs to be a fix.”
Barley’s comments echo that of Peter Gabriel, the Womad festival founder, who last week criticised UK foreign policy when at least three musical acts found they could not perform due to visa complications. “Do we really want a white-breaded Brexited flatland?” Gabriel said. “A country that is losing the will to welcome the world?”
Or do we want a shiny gilded brassy Trumpland?
I’m sure that the fact that the vote went their way has encouraged all sorts of people to think that their racism can now be exercised at work. I’m not suffering anything like the problems that people with ‘foreign’ accents are suffering in Britain, but I had a small taste of the xenophobia last month.
When I was in England, we came back to our legally parked vehicle to find a (very soggy – it had been pelting down) parking violation notice on the windscreen. Claiming that we were parked illegally in a disabled bay because we had failed to display a valid Blue Badge. Despite the vote to leave, the UK is still part of the European Union; and so is still bound by the Blue Badge mutual recognition treaty that allows people from all current member states to display a valid Blue Badge from any issuing state in any other member state and be treated exactly the same as someone displaying a locally-issued Blue Badge. My badge, displayed exactly as the sign by the parking bays required, clearly states that it has been issued in Ireland, and is current.
We’ve appealed, of course, but it is ridiculous that the fine was even issued.
The ghastly possibility exists of a rise by that political mountebank Boris Johnson in the UK to match Trump in the US.
My belief is that we need a constitutional means for denying power to anyone who seeks it. After all, if I hung around courtrooms offering my services as a juror on any case handy, I would probably be arrested as a public nuisance. Or at least told to bugger off.
I’ve always assumed, after the Brexit vote, that the British would recover their common sense and the entire circus would gradually fade away, after some chest thumping by the imperial fossils. Perhaps not.
@tigger: my guess (and it’s nothing more than that) is that the ticket was due to incompetence rather than evil. I mean, ffs, half the shops in England fly into a panic when you try to pay with Scottish notes.
@RJW:
I think that has happened to some extent. Now the realities are starting to set in, polls show that a lot of people are increasingly regretting voting leave. There have been numerous calls for another referendum because we’re idiots and fucked it up the first time but there’s also a feeling (particularly in government) that now the momentum has finally been worked up, we have to go our own way regardless of the cost.
So basically: no. No common sense is being shown at all. We’re blundering into it whether people want it or not and despite the carnage it will inevitably cause.
latsot @4
Yes, it’s the momentum that puzzles me. The Brexit vote wasn’t like referendums we have here in Australia which are legally binding on the government. That’s why I assumed that the momentum would be lost while your political elites pissed about and waited for the plebs to forget about Brexit. Another ‘referendum’ does seem ludicrous, however it might just work for the remainers. The reality is that the UK has nowhere to go, the ‘Commonwealth’, such as it is these days, really doesn’t care.