Let’s be honest and just say it.
We are waiting for one of them to drown on camera, aren’t we?
Some - not all - of our media are looking increasingly like rubberneckers craning their necks in morbid fascination at a motorway smash.
They can’t wait for death to be captured on camera and to be able to palm the blame onto the authorities. It makes you sick to your stomach.
How the hell did we get to a place where a group of immigrants’ desperate bid to save their lives became entertainment?
What does it say about us that, rather than help, we are considering the number of views, likes and retweets it will rack up on social media?
Remember our revulsion three years ago when some notorious columnists expressed themselves unmoved by the plight of those risking their lives by crossing the Mediterranean?
Are we that different if we see the suffering of immigrants risking their lives as acceptable fare over our cornflakes before we move on with our day?
Are we that inured to the suffering of others that we can accept this, perhaps the lowest form of reality TV yet?
We are a in a vile, grotesque place and the worst thing is, we don’t even appreciate how low we have gone.
Clearly there is a job to be done, by reporters who do it extremely well, on the peril that these human beings, lest we forget, find themselves in.
The situation that they find themselves in is unacceptable.
As a father myself my heart goes out to any parent forced to accept the nightmare scenario that the risk of death is better than the appalling conditions they find themselves in.
But I’ll be honest, I’m sick to death of seeing non-white peril or trauma on a loop all day. I’ve had it with seeing George Floyd gasping for his dying breath all day.
If your reaction to all this is to complain about the drain on the UK’s resources and that age old garbage about ‘them’ taking the jobs and houses of British people then, really, head somewhere else.
It’s tiring, infuriating, dispiriting and straight up disgusting that we are here. Let’s not kid ourselves that we are making progress.
Not if you are prepared to watch human beings suffer in the English Channel and move on.
