To think that UK bound lorry drivers should boycott Calais?

[Libitina]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33240475

The local police would soon do something to protect them then. If it was my husband (he's not a lorry driver) I would be so worried about his personal saftey. How long before someone is hurt or killed?

pubes, I am sure its only a matter of time before truckers are killed and dragged from their lorries by people desperate to come here. They are becoming more and more brazen in their attempts.

kiss do you really believe your own scaremongering stupid comments?

Every year it seems there is this problem with economic and asylum seekers trying to get to the UK. Its time something was done, all I ever hear on the TV and radio are 'experts' waffling on about a solution but never seeming to actually find one.

Drivers have already been threatened with knives.

Have a look at some of the videos of these people getting into moving trucks & banging on the drivers doors.

A lot of drivers carry machetes or clubs in their cabs now because they're so afraid of being attacked.

They're not all "stupid" or "scaremongering" comments.

These people are dangerous and desperate, some of them will be the ones that threw their shipmates overboard for being Christian on the way to Europe - it is only a matter of time before something awful happens.

I'd be fucking scared of drivers carrying machetes (which wouldn't be allowed onto the ship either). It's great (not) to see though how the way migrants plight is being reported is effective in making people forget that they're humans, and happily conflate migrant with nasty criminal

woodhill if you say there is no space for more people that means no space at all, not just space for the people you'd like to be here. Saying we have no room but it's ok for the British population to grow is contradicting yourself. Where is the correlation between desperate people gathering in Calais and the deterioration of your area?

Where are all of these unskilled young men kiss is talking about?.

So glad to see there are some people with compassion for other humans on this thread widow

These are people 'fleeing war, violence and oppression'. Really? Didn't realise they had a lot of the old 'war, violence and oppression' in Calais. They are in a safe country, they have already passed through several safe countries. They don't need to get here to be safe, their reasons are purely economic. And these are people who are actively trying to break the law. Yet we're supposed to believe the moment they enter the UK they will become model citizens working as teachers and doctors.

I've been through Calais very recently. It is frightening, I wouldn't have got out of the car. And it's not just Calais, we have seen several gangs of men roaming the French countryside trying to get there.

I feel sorry for people in Calais and the French. I agree with them completely that the problem is ours because we need to make our country less attractive by tightening up on illegal working and introducing measures to stop living here illegally being so easy.

Maybe people are seeing "desparate" and equating that with "dangerous".

The big problem is we also have "ruthless" in the mix - those who are more than willing to exploit others for a profit, and happily traffic people without giving a toss if they make it to a better life, or even any life. The people trafficers are the key to the current immediate problems. (Similarly with the drugs problems as well)

And the much bigger and longer term problem of inequality - both within countries and across the world. It is very human for people to want to have a better life, and if the richer parts aren't willing to share then the poorer ones will eventually come and take it for themselves - leading to a fortress mindset for the haves and a mad risk taking mindset for those that have nothing to lose. :(

But letting everyone flood across borders to another place won't solve that - they just end up being at the bottom of the heap in the new place - rarely much better off than where they left.

i feel so sorry for the lorry drivers, they are just working and do not deserve this.

Patapouf, 943000 people aged 16-24 were NEET in the first quarter of 2015. Is a million unskilled, unemployed people not enough for you? But you don't care about them do you? I tend to find that people who are rampantly in favour of immigration tend to be the people who already have their own home, a skilled job and live in 'naice' areas. Who are cosseted in a little bubble where the only effect immigration has on them is a cheap nanny or cleaner or gardener.

If you don't believe immigration causes a determination in poorer areas then please visit Page Hall in Sheffield. No, don't visit, move there. Or Burngreave. Where the ski centre that supplied our gold medal winning Winter Olympians has closed because the lovely locals kept burning it down.

Most British people tend to have 2.4 children, Africans see children as proof of their virility and tend to have large families whether they are capable of feeding them or not. This wont change when they move here.

Deterioration flipping autocorrect.

Patapouf don't see it that way at all, surely the people already here should be our priority not the people coming from Calais, yes of course I want people who are already here to have access to affordable housing and services, particularly people who have paid N.I. and actually made a contribution to the treasury.

Immigration has changed the area I live in e.g. the local primary school in the road I live in has expanded and there are more parents and cars and they are mostly from other countries which wasn't the case when my dc attended.

It's great (not) to see though how the way migrants plight is being reported is effective in making people forget that they're humans, and happily conflate migrant with nasty criminal

When that "plight" involves breaking into vehicles and threatening people then they quite firmly fall into the "nasty criminal" category.

Personally I think the camps should be bulldozed and the riot police sent in. Then they'd have something to flee from....

I find the island mentality that helping refugees should be a problem for continental Europe only quite disgusting. Why should we not take our fair share and help?

We have taken so many economic migrants over the last 50 years' so IMO we have already taken our 'fair share' over and over again and granted amnesty etc. Where will it end?

I find the island mentality that helping refugees should be a problem for continental Europe only quite disgusting. Why should we not take our fair share and help?

True. But I think if you claim asylum on one EU country you can later migrate to any other - so no reason, if you are a genuine asylum seeker to not ask for asylum in the first country you get to.

The presumption must be that they are in the main not asylum seekers, but economic migrants in search of a better life (and who can blame them ?). There is a moral argument that we need to take our share of asylum seekers. But no way UK (or even Europe) can take all the economic migrants in the world just because they want to come here.

Quick back of envelope.

There are 50 million refugees in the world right now.

The population of OECD countries is 1.022 billion. Keep in mind OECD includes Mexico, which is a basket case country at the moment and excludes Singapore and some others which are bastions of stability and prosperity.

UK has population = 63 million, or 6.2% of the OECD group. 6.2% of 50 million = 3.08 million. Could we handle that influx on top of economic and other migrants? How else to calculate a 'fair share'?

Throckenholt, I'm sure lorry drivers will be pleased to hear that people waving knives in their faces are just in fact desperate and not dangerous at all.

Perhaps lorry drivers could lock the cab doors as well as the back doors?

As usual a thread on migrants has descended into racism and half-truths :(

It's true there are a lot of problems in the Calais area and lorry drivers are understandable nervous.

I'd be interested to know where aermingers has been though as my best friend lives and works in the area (she does freelance work at companies based at Calais and Dunkerque ports) and doesn't feel threatened. I visit her regularly and it's distressing to see people living in such squalid conditions - there are little camps everywhere especially on scrubland bordering dual carriageways - but there is no sense of danger.

Lots of misinformation too regarding the potential refugee status of these people. Refugees do not always claim refugee status in the first country they reach - of course this is what they are supposed to do, but I don't think it's fundamentally unreasonable to them to want to reach a stable country with work opportunities and an existing community of their compatriots. This is why refugees/ migrants often head for places like Scandinavia and Germany which have large migranf communities - it's not just the UK that is affected.

It's wrong to second guess the likely status of these people since many are fleeing countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea and may well qualify for refugee status. Until their applications have been processed somewhere we simply don't know whether they are economic migrants or genuine refugees.

Maybe your friend would like to try driving a lorry through Calais to UK, she might feel differently when she is confronted by a mass of migrants with iron bars and knives. Just saying.

Throckenholt, I'm sure lorry drivers will be pleased to hear that people waving knives in their faces are just in fact desperate and not dangerous at all.

I don't remember saying that. Desperate people tend to more dangerous than they would normally be - and far more willing to do risky dangerous things.

Personally I would hate to be a lorry driver going through Calais at the moment (not that it is recent - it has been going on albeit not quite so dramatically - for years). I personally have chosen not to travel through Calais this year - I did it last year and didn't feel at all comfortable.

I said that lorry drivers are understandably nervous - provably more about the legal ramifications of having a stowaway than being personally at risk of violence.

However my friend drives a small car through the port areas every day of her life, and has yet to be confronted by gangs of knife wielding savages.