Windrush scandal is new low for government

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News.

Just when you think things can’t get worse for politics in the United Kingdom, new depths are plumbed.

Only in the case of the Windrush generation scandal, it’s people’s lives which are terribly affected.

In the last week, hundreds of people who moved to Britain from the Caribbean have discovered that their migration status could be challenged.

The disposal of landing cards belonging to Windrush generation residents has left a number of people scrambling to find documentation to prove they are on these shores legally.

There have been stories of people told they must leave – there are others of people who aren’t being allowed back in to the place they called ‘home’.

What a dreadful state of affairs. The UK Government is now attempting to right wrongs but the damage has long since been done. Saying sorry simply doesn’t cut the mustard on this one.

Occasionally thinking back to the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London, it told a story of a United Kingdom which was fair, open, tolerant, inclusive, together, proud and modern yet never forgetting where we had come from and what we had achieved.

That glorious production seems like a lifetime ago when you consider what we appear to have now – a United Kingdom bitterly divided and looking inwards, focusing on the past and not moving forward towards the future; a land of extreme views with the art of being pragmatic surrendered.

And now this: people who were welcome here being put through the mill because past political decisions and actions have consequences.

Just what have we become?