Geometry and bigotry

The Moon, as it springs out into view on these evenings from the setting Sun, will pass close above Mars.

But the slender Moon and the reddish dot of the plane will be hard to pick out, low to the horizon. Though both Mars and Moon are in parts of their orbits north of the ecliptic, the ecliptic itself on an August evening lies – for north-hemisphere observers – at an unfavorably low angle.

Guess what constellation that star is in – the one that shows theoretically on the south-south-western horizon.

Home Planet Department

Mars symbolizes war, so its civilization, before destroying its own climate and going extinct, must have spawned even more numerous and miserable refuges than Earth has.

Those who seek asylum in Britain (relatively few compared with other countries such as Turkey and Germany) wait a year or more for their claims to be processed. Then, if they are accepted, they used to be told they had 28 days to find somewhere to live, and a job to pay for it, before being evicted from temporary accommodation. Charities urged that this was unreasonably short for people – many of them torture-survivors, understanding little English. People, including infants, elderly, sick, would be out on the streets, homeless. It should be increased to at least 56 days.

So the government has changed the grace time: to 7 days.

This is one of the methods by which the party ruling Britain (with a minority of support) works to maintain its reputation as the Nasty Party. It tolerates despicable racists like the MP Lee Anderson, who said that if asylum seekers don’t like being warehoused in a floating steel container they should “fuck off back to France.”

Poland’s prime minister, not to be outdone by Britain, has devised a referendum question designed to wreck the EU’s plan for sharing refugees among countries:

“Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”  – accompanied by a photo of a Black man in Paris licking a knife.

This was Poland’s winning entry in the competition for most blatantly prejudiced survey question ever. It beat Britain’s entry, in a leaflet distributed by another racist MP, named David TC Davies:

“Would you like to see a Gypsy or Traveller encampment next to your home?”

To which my answer would be “Yes.” But I’ve been lucky. I’ve already lived next to Gypsies.

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