Lily Allen in Calais

[parrots]

Couldn't find another thread on this. The situation in Calais is awful, but AIBU to see Lily Allen's overtures as slightly virtue signalling and self-indulgent?

Well she did say this:

'Drugs won't kill you', insists Lily Allen ('and yes, I've given up')

By Simon Cable for MailOnline
Updated: 10:15, 7 January 2009

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Lily Allen was condemned last night for suggesting that the risks of cocaine are overstated.

The 24-year-old singer said: 'The only story is that drugs are bad and they will kill you - you will become a prostitute, a rapist or a dealer. But that's not true.

'I know lots of people that take cocaine three nights a week and get up and go to work everyday, no problem at all.

I know a few myself TBH but it doesn't make it right.

You can not buy a product if it's not fairtrade or harmful.

She does say she's given up I suppose...

The fact is, has Lily Allen actually suggested workable solutions for this? Going and crying over stuff, well I could do that. But I'm not a popstar and nobody would take a blind bit of notice.

The fact is the whole situation needs an approach which actually gives people what they need, not what they say they want. Two often very different things.

You can not buy a product if it's not fairtrade or harmful.

Sure, and I really don't want to derail the thread but consider how many people would carry on buying alcohol if it were illegal. Black markets cause misery, not the product itself.

I don't think using coke means you don't have the right to condemn human rights abuses, it just means you're a flawed human being (like most).

Sure, and I really don't want to derail the thread but consider how many people would carry on buying alcohol if it were illegal. Black markets cause misery, not the product itself

That's irrelevant. The important thing is the widescale human misery it causes. Using it or not using it is a easy choice to make.

The thing with alcohol is that a great many people are actually capable of using it without harmful addictions being formed. Cocaine is a different beast, as she says it is possible to do this and still function. Yes taking it generally does form a harmful pschological addiction at best. I've seen people who started taking it socially go down some very dark paths indeed. Yes most people are flawed human beings indeed, myself included. I don't set myself up as representing any of you on here or indeed the whole country. I would never presume to speak on behalf of others because that implies I am setting myself up as better than them. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't speak for you Curry because you are your own independent person and I cannot know your life. Lily Allen doesn't know my life, I don't know hers except that she has far more money than I will ever have in my life!

I would have respected her far more had she gone over with a proper plan eg

" I am paying for top lawyer to come and look at this boys specific case, to try and get him into the uk." perhaps she could then report and highlight all the trials and tribulations of that - to bring media coverage? Something like that....

something specific, she can do with her money, that she can afford to give without the daily life and quality of life of her own family affected, same with Jude law and all the lovvies.

If I handed over a grand - my family would suffer.

she goes - hands out some donated clothes ( could be the stuff we have donated....who knows) and then buggers off back to her london mansion and she feels good because she gave her time.

I gave my time - packing up clothes and sorting through, I am also doing a package for syria and have done before. she has therefore done nothing much.

Contrast with Dawn O'Porter, who seems to spend a lot of time organising to help people in the Jungle.

Curry, there is a black market in Calais...it is the one in people.

The smugglers there are even possibly the same ones who bring in cocaine too...

People are leaping on her choice of words which has rubbed some up the wrong way. But the point is she was merely having a very human reaction to an awful situation and it's a shame that people care more about a popstar's choice of words than they do about the appalling conditions of the refugee camps and the whole sorry situation.

By "care more about" do you mean "are discussing ATM"?

Because that's all this is; A thread about a specific media item. There have been thousands of threads on MN in recent years about Syria and the so-called 'refugee crisis' and will be thousands more.

This is a thread about Lily Allen's weigh-in, so we're discussing that. Last night I was discussing a television programme on a thread. Neither choice reveals what I 'care most' about. So don't try to tell us what we think or feel.

And there is actually an important debate to be had about the media and why a situation has grown up whereby daft celebrities rocking up at a camp and saying stupid things gets much better coverage than the awful, urgent phenomenon itself.

i am in absolute shock that there are people out there who think UK hasn't played a gigantic part in all this.

Do you know what happens when your troops 'go over to help'?

let me tell you from first hand experience

UK and other members of NATO decided to come into our country and 'help' because Serbia didn't want Kosovo to become independent. Kosovo has a large number of Albanians living there and they asked us for independence, we said no! kosovo always was and always will be serbia, you can't rewrite history no matter how hard you try. For some 'uknown' reason UK was the first to say Albanians 'needed' help ;) so how did they help us?
they bombed the shit out of us for three months day and night! they bombed serbia because we wouldn't give something that was OURS?!?! we had no food, no water, no electricty for months. planes literally bombed every city and village! killed civillians were collateral damage! what the fuck did our situations have anything to do with you?!

surely it wasn't that russia sides with serbia and all the gas pipes from russia go through kosovo? or the fact that albania is uks biggest drugs supplier? or that nato now has a base in kosovo which we did not allow

of course not they just wanted to help us!

i feel physically sick when i watch old bbc news reportsfro that time youtube. the lies they fed you are sickening! so am i ever going to believe a word they say to me?! am i ever going to trust what they're actually doing there?!? fuck no!

[[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chaker-khazaal/no-arab-gulf-countries-ar_b_8280448.html I don't completely understand why GCC aren't taking more refugees.

Whilst I get that the UK is one of the most developed countries in the world, and we are extremely lucky (in theory) to live here, I just don't get how anybody can think that a country so small in land area can continue to take in thousands of asylum seekers. We cannot build and create infrastructure indefinitely.

It's a very sad situation but people cannot expect the UK, wealthy as it is, to welcome with open arms, thousands of people and then have nowhere to house them. Why not put money into creating new towns in places like Australia and Canada (yes I know they take an extremely high proportion of asylum seekers annually) but these are two examples of countries that actually ask for immigrants to boost their economy and population.

She certainly doesn't speak for me. I think she needs help, quite honestly. It looked to me as if she was crying for herself.

I've been to the jungle. I quite agree with her. I felt the same way - the sadness and desperation and injustice is completely overwhelming.

I strongly suggest you read these articles, as there's an awful lot of hypocrisy on MN about children based on race.

It's a well-known phenomenon that people perceive non-white kids as being older and more mature than white kids of the same age.

If a MN suggested allowing their 13-year-old out at night everyone would be screaming neglect at her. There are plenty of MNers who talk about babying and doing things for their older teenager (16-19) or even adult (university age) offspring, and no one thinks there's anything unusual in that. Whenever anyone gently suggests that maybe not doing everything for a university-age DS or DD is a good idea, they're shouted down.

But a non-white/non-European 13-year-old is perceived as being not only an adult man, but a hardened adult man capable of dealing with war, homelessness and extreme trauma.

www.salon.com/2014/03/11/study_police_see_black_children_as_less_innocent_and_less_young_than_white_children/

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-america-black-children-dont-get-to-be-children/2014/11/26/a9e24756-74ee-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html?utm_term=.a4704447e3ce

Can't believe people asking why refugees have phones. They come from the Middle East, not the 19th century.

How is the UK responsible for Eritrea and Sudan?

The coke thing is pure strawman. Unless you live in some kind of off-grid hippie commune and knit your own clothes out of mung beans, you've certainly purchased items with an unethical past.

Have you never in your entire life purchased: an item from Primark/Next/M&S/New Look/Gap etc. (sweatshops); a smartphone (Congolese war);
a Cadbury's chocolate bar (palm oil); a coffee from Starbucks (tax avoidance); anything from Amazon (tax avoidance and worker exploitation); pineapple (Dole's massive breach of labour safety standards, and worker exploitation); anything made by Nestle (water), etc. etc. etc.?

Setting up a situation in which only people who meet your arbitrary standard for moral/ethical pureness are allowed to express concerns for the less fortunate is nothing more than a censorship technique.

What a horrible thread.

I apologised to my colleagues from the EU after Brexit on behalf on the UK! I'm glad that the thought of that would disgust some of the bigots on this thread.

All these people sat on their arses saying Lily Allen should have gone here quietly, put her hand in her pocket, brought a refugee back with her etc. Oddly enough I think Lily grasps that she isn't going to single handedly solve the refugee crisis. She has gone to get media coverage to highlight the problem of lone children. Hence the publicity, hence this thread.

We need more intelligent media coverage than that, though. We won't get it by lapping up this dross appreciatively.

(And I'd have cringed if I saw you apologise on behalf of other people without a mandate to do so. That's not a bigotry thing, it's a logic thing.)

But princess, many of us have already said we do not presume to speak on behalf of others. I don't speak on behalf of Lily Allen so why does she think she can speak for me? She is presuming an awful lot.

Many of us try actively not to buy things with unethical pasts and have done so for many years. Of course I like any one else cannot guarantee it. But equally I do not potificate about it either.

I looked carefully at the photo of that 13 year old lad and I could see stubble. Now I appreciate that children do develop at different rates but I have friends whose DS's are that age and all of them have only a little fluffy facial hair at this stage (and some of them are of south asian origin). My DSS who is 19 does not have full stubble yet.

I don't see any child as less innocent on grounds of colour/ethnic origin but I do object to being told someone is an age that they are not. If you are an adult own up to it, it's not honest and puts children who are genuinely under 18 at risk. I do agree that children need protection and that is why children's services in France should be stepping in and protecting those who are minors and making sure they receive the care they require as they wait for verification of their claims/relatives to contact.

All these people sat on their arses saying Lily Allen should have gone here quietly, put her hand in her pocket, brought a refugee back with her etc. Oddly enough I think Lily grasps that she isn't going to single handedly solve the refugee crisis. She has gone to get media coverage to highlight the problem of lone children. Hence the publicity, hence this thread.

The publicity would have been far more compelling had she not said something that so predictably falls into the hands of her detractors. She is considerably lacking in self awareness.

She wasn't wrong to cry or even have an irrational response to seeing such human misery but she should know by now that even sensible pop stars get a hard time when stepping into the policitical fray, which is exactly what she did when she apologised on behalf of the nation.

That's something reserved for heads of state. Someone did this recently and I can't for the life of me remember who and what for.

I no more expect Lily Allen to apologise on my behalf than I would expect that young man she was talking to to apologise on behalf of his country for the killing and maiming of armed forces who as individuals were trying to help them.

It's a very sad situation but people cannot expect the UK, wealthy as it is, to welcome with open arms, thousands of people and then have nowhere to house them

But this is the thing - we do welcome them, 4 thousand are currently in care seeking a home in the UK.

We do help.

These people have suffered enough without adding lily bloody Allen to the mix. I doubt they know who she is anyway and she seems to have offered no practical assistance.

Oddly enough I think Lily grasps that she isn't going to single handedly solve the refugee crisis

who was saying she should?

The point is she has resources most of don't, in the form of oodles of cash, celebrity presence and the basics of houses and a comfortable life. She and most celebs therefore have much more power than joe on the street which is why she made headlines. But thats the only part of her power she has used isnt it.

Her ability to make a head line, no big deal to her is it? Hands out some clothes - many MN have probably donated. she has not done much more than me - and yet - she has so much more power.

there is a myriad of things any of them could actually do