The Refugee Pageant theme this yr has been storytelling and I’ve loved listening to first hand from refugees and asylum seekers in Glasgow their tales of hope, problem and the journeys.
It has been a tonic to the negativity and despair brought on by the UK Authorities’s scandalous Rwanda offshoring plan.
From the songs of solidarity sung by the Maryhill Integration Community Joyous Choir, Girls in Motion sharing African Girls’s tales and poems, to the very aggressive Refugee Soccer Match, there’s been loads to have fun.
Saturday evening’s United Yemeni Neighborhood in Scotland occasion featured conventional male dancing, with a police officer even getting as much as be a part of the festivities.
There have been in fact phrases of gratitude from asylum seekers and refugees for the sanctuary and the brand new life which they've discovered right here in Scotland but in addition profound disappointment on the lives they left behind, the folks they are going to by no means see once more.
They've additionally needed to take care of the lack of their very own nation, a basic a part of our identification. We should always at all times recognise that grief.
The Scottish Authorities’s New Scots plan speaks of integration from day one and I absolutely help this.
These I see at my surgical procedures and people I've been lucky sufficient to hearken to this previous fortnight, usually don’t really feel made welcome by the UK Authorities and the House Workplace.
Disbelieved, moved across the nation at quick discover, given little selection in the place they settle, having to ask permission to get married or to maneuver into additional and better schooling… the listing is limitless.
And for too many, ready in limbo for a lot of lengthy months and years for a distant forms to decide about their case.
This uncertainty provides to the nervousness many asylum seekers already expertise and makes it very troublesome for them to start the method of coping with trauma.
These left ready are normally unable to work throughout this time, dropping abilities they convey with them.
It makes little humanitarian or monetary sense to maintain individuals who could possibly be contributing to society depending on meagre state handouts.
The troublesome factor to just accept is that the House Workplace runs the asylum system like this fairly intentionally.
It's designed to grind folks down, to dehumanise and to make the UK as unattractive a spot for migrants as potential – the hostile atmosphere as Theresa Could described it.
The Unbiased Fee of Inquiry into Asylum Provision in Scotland beneath Baroness Kennedy goals to shed a brilliant gentle on the remedy of individuals within the asylum system, particularly throughout lockdown.
It's not a actuality Scotland ought to settle for. In listening to the expertise of asylum seekers and refugees, we will start to speak about options an unbiased Scotland may have.
Life could possibly be made simpler, eradicating the deep thread of concern embedded within the present House Workplace system and treating asylum seekers with dignity and respect.
We've got an obligation to the broader world to supply sanctuary to these fleeing persecution.
Scotland has loads to realize from this; folks with abilities, with willpower, bringing their tradition to complement our society.
Solely factor PM is main is a merry dance
The defeat of the Tories within the Wakefield & Tiverton and Honiton by-elections must have introduced some reflection from Boris Johnson and his backers.
Two very completely different seats, wherein the PM’s management (or lack of it) appears to have weighed closely within the minds of voters.
As an alternative, we had Johnson’s wild aspiration of governing into the 2030s.
Whether or not this involves cross or not, the course of journey beneath Westminster just isn't an amazing one.
Labour and Tories at the moment are wedded to a Brexit which is piling additional injury on to a weak economic system and don't have any plans for coping with the present price of dwelling disaster.
The Tory notion of dismantling the Human Rights Act ought to fear us all.
It’s simply the newest in a sequence of intolerant items of legislation which, like the ability seize, chip away on the obligations of the devolved administrations.
As at all times, devolution is an afterthought to Westminster.
When Shadow International Secretary David Lammy is content material to seek advice from his Scottish Labour colleagues because the department workplace and the Scottish Tories are within the throes of one other existential disaster, it actually doesn’t bode properly for Scotland’s place within the Union.
It’s extra essential than ever that Scotland will get the chance to re-evaluate our place.
For events with no mandate in Scotland to disclaim the folks of Scotland their say merely isn’t credible.
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