How Desperate Must Their Lives Be To Risk This?

[sandyRoe]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31414009

[wolf63]

I think that we are very lucky in this country.

Politically there is relative stability. The parties all do their best (but could do much much better). Some of the politicians are *** – a total waste of space.

The NHS is not perfect but there is no cash demanded of us when we are ill.

The benefits system is a mess, but I am not sure what we can do to improve it. It is also very complicated.

I can't imagine what these people have gone through that makes risking their lives in such a way as a sensible move to make to improve life for them.

I do get annoyed at those who take the pizz when they get here and abuse our benefits system. But the system is designed to ensure that all persons entitled to help is given it – even if it means that some will benefit unfairly. (I know that there is a clearer way to explain this but it is not currently available in my brain).

[Old_Geezer]

The answer must be to find a way that means folk are not desperate simply because they are in an African Country rather than an EU one. No target area can continually absorb a string of never ending economic refugees. Can one see land across the water at that point ? Would that convince folk it was a a reasonable thing to cross ?

[Canary42]

Hundreds of Europeans perished trying to round Cape Horn to get to Australia - how desperate were they ?

[Hypognosis]

The article specifies West Africans, who could be fleeing Boko Haram, and Syrians who are escaping both ISIS and president ***. So pretty desperate, I'd say.

I suppose it wouldn't be feasible to setup large advertising hoardings in North African ports with pictures of rough seas, casualty statistics, pictures of migrants sleeping under railway arches in cold, wet, miserable Britain?

Even if feasible, scare tactics might not work because they still perceive gains to be made by getting to the EU.

Don't forget that the ones who attempt the crossing are the relatively well-off ones, who can afford the four-figure sum demanded by the boat owners. They're middle class, in their home country. The ones who are poor are stuck in the situation these refugees are managing to escape from.

[Svejk]

Don't tell me President Assad is proscribed.

[Hypognosis]

Oops. I wrote his name as (slang: buttocks)-hat

Because anyone who pretends barrel-bomb dropping helicopters are not his, is an a**hat.

[naomi24]

'Desperate' is rather over-dramatic. They’re not necessarily desperate. They just think the streets of Europe are paved with gold - metaphorically speaking.

[Svejk]

Have you ever stopped to consider that these deaths are your fault, Sandy? (and your fellow AB happy-clappers)

[sandyRoe]

I don't see how offering support to people who are looking to make a safer, better, life for themselves and their families can be twisted into blame or guilt when their attempt goes wrong.