Black Friday, Migrants and Islamic State
The Christmas decorations are emerging from their year-long hibernation and appearing in our streets. Christmas card lists are being prepared, presents planned. The average British person will spend £350 on presents this year. This year £16.5bn will be spent on Christmas in the UK. A walk in Knightsbridge, glancing into shop windows brings a reminder of the luxuriant affluence of this part of the world. Black Friday sweeps all before it, and the financial crash seems a distant memory. This affluence provokes very different reactions. Over recent months we have been painfully aware of two major crises facing us: the migrant issue and the incursion of Islamic radicalism onto the streets of western Europe. One of the reactions that western wealth provokes is envy. People become migrants for all kinds of reasons. Some are fleeing exactly the kind of murderous terror that the citizens of Paris experienced, and yet many others come from north Africa, or other Middle Eastern countries