Convenience Big Store: Let’s get asylum seekers working

13 October, 2021

In the headlines

Britain's biggest container port is full and turning ships away. The cargo logjam at Felixstowe docks is a "perfect storm" of too few lorry drivers, Covid restrictions and booming demand for goods. "I don't want to sound like a Grinch, but there are going to be gaps on shelves this Christmas," a shipping boss tells the Times. The EU has offered to end the "sausage wars" and save the Northern Ireland protocol by lifting customs checks on a host of products. But European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic says the UK faces a trade bust-up unless it also compromises. Insulate Britain activists were dragged off the M25 by irate motorists this morning. One driver was seen ripping banners out of their hands.

Comment of the day

Migrants disembarking in Dungeness, Kent. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Let's get asylum seekers working

Here's one way to fill some of the million vacancies crippling British employers, says Polly Toynbee in The Guardian: get asylum seekers working. There are currently 125,000 people awaiting a decision on their claim or appeal, most of them "young, fit and eager to work". The overwhelming majority are "here to stay" because it's "virtually impossible" to get other countries to accept them: in 2019 Britain forced only 4,000 rejected asylum seekers to depart. Yet the Home Office's "draconian rules" forbid them from getting a job.

The government argues that giving asylum seekers the right to work would incentivise them to come here rather than go elsewhere. But that "quite deliberately" ignores research showing that "new arrivals know nothing about rules on work or benefits". In reality the biggest "pull factors" are Britain's ancient reputation for upholding human rights and the presence of relatives already settled here – both factors no immigration policy will alter. Boris Johnson probably won't change course on this. He thinks anti-immigration rhetoric helped secure his "great Brexit victory" and 80-seat majority. But it's something on which he'd have the public's support. Polls show that more than 70% think asylum seekers "should be allowed to earn their keep". For everyone's sake, the government should reconsider this "bogus" policy.

The young aren't to blame for the world's woes

Moaning about young people has always been "irresistible", says Samuel Earle in the Times Literary Supplement. Socrates had "a long list of gripes". A reader's letter in Town and Country magazine in 1771 dismissed young people as "a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles" – words that wouldn't be out of place in The Daily Telegraph now. Today young people are accused of being woke ideologues, "drunk on delusions of righteousness". The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie criticised their intolerance earlier this year, while The Economist accused them of posing an "illiberal threat from the left".

But the blame for cancel culture "lies less with the minds of millennials and more with social media platforms". Young people have always challenged the political status quo. What's new is the witch hunts, which are "endemic to the internet". The anonymity of the internet makes abusive language easier and social media fosters a culture of "unforgiving scrutiny", as foolish posts can be dredged up from the past. Blaming the young may be simple, but it shows a "lack of empathy" and a "disregard for a complicated reality". It's not easy to grow up with "the disruptions of the digital revolution".

Noted

The UK is one of the world's most nature-depleted countries, ranking in the bottom 10% of the Natural History Museum's new Biodiversity Intactness Index. That's lower than any other G7 country.

Property

This penthouse on the 96th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper nicknamed the Pencil is yours for $169m. Owned by a Saudi retail magnate, the 8,255 sq ft apartment has six bedrooms, a library and furnishings by Louis Vuitton, Bentley and Hermès. The asking price is nearly twice what it sold for five years ago, but the Pencil is not without problems: residents have complained about million-dollar plumbing leaks and walls "that creak like the galley of a ship" in high winds.

Inside politics

The three fur robes given to Donald Trump by the Saudi royal family in 2017 have turned out to be fake, says The New York Times. Wildlife inspectors found the linings were "dyed to mimic tiger and cheetah patterns". This will no doubt cause embarrassment to the House of Saud, which is worth more than $1 trillion.

On the way out

Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni in Dior at Paris Fashion Week last month. Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images

Cleavage, now that pandering to "red-blooded patriarchal tastes" has fallen out of fashion, says The Guardian. Instead we've entered an age of killer abs. "Fitness has been elevated from a chore to a religion" and toned obliques are a mark of the "truly devout". Conversely, miniskirts are making a comeback – often a sign of a booming economy.

Snapshot

Books

Agatha Christie coined the term "scene of the crime", mortician and writer Carla Valentine tells The Times. The creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple also improvised the detective's "crime scene kit" while writing her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. "Christie had this idea in fiction [in 1916] eight years before it was actually created in real life."

Snapshot answer

It's a pretend mission to Mars in the Negev Desert, Israel. Five male and one female "analog astronauts" will spend the rest of this month living in isolation on a cramped base. As well as testing drones and other vehicles, the experiment will measure how the crew get along. "It's like a marriage, except in a marriage you can leave, but on Mars you can't," mission supervisor Gernot Grömer told The Times of Israel.