Homes for Ukraine scheme

My missus asked me to stand in for her at a meeting in the local (CofE) church yesterday which she led me to believe was about co-ordinating support for refugees and hosts should they ever be allowed into our small rural town - but turned out to be a meeting of "Churches Together" to determine their response. It was weird. A nice posh lady offered me a brew on arrival and as we sat down, another posh woman across the table asked me "where do you worship?"

The look on her face when I told her I don't attend church regularly was priceless. She turned out to be a representative of the local Quakers and the rest were made up of Catholics, Methodists of various hues and folk from the broader Christian diaspora - meeting chaired by the local CofE vicar Julie (also posh) Imagine a WI book club meeting to discuss the latest edition of Conservative Home.

Soon became obvious that whilst the will to help refugees was there, this lot couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. So after listening for 25 minutes to them planning to reinvent the wheel, go round in circles and witter on about their various congregations I couldn't stand it any longer and politely asked if I could say a few words.  Of course they said.

After 5 minutes I'd covered, scoping which other organisations were working on it, scoping what they were doing, potential partnerships, resource analysis, engagement of local businesses and schools, potential host database and single online portal, local resources including translator services, trauma counselling and TEFL volunteers, charity donations, and (heaven forfend) ....Ukranian Orthodox and Muslim refugees. A few nervous glances round the table at that last one but soon they were reasonably happy  and tasked a few people with actions around doing the research before they dived in - looks like they might get something sorted eventually but this scenario is being played out all across the country as they told me church groups throughout the land are "co-ordinating support". LOL.

When I asked about the role of the various churches' national role in working with the Homes for Ukraine scheme in helping refugees hook up with hosts....there was a long silence and then one by one they started to relate frustrating experience after frustrating experience their colleague's have endured. Given that this group was entirely made up of well-meaning dyed in the wool ageing Tories, I was shocked when the vicar nervously piped up with "it's almost as if the government doesn't want to let any refugees come here" - and they all thought about it for a second, checked each other's faces and then nodded solemnly.

Careful Lusty they'll have you signed up as chairman next 

It is shameful the way our Government is making this whole process as difficult as possible to put people off bothering volunteering and to stop refugees actually getting here.

Norpig wrote:Careful Lusty they'll have you signed up as chairman next 

No chance of me going anywhere near it mate. I've made it my mission not to accept any invitations to sit on any boards or committees since I retired because - well I'm retired. So I gave them my missus' email and phone number as it was her meeting in the first place and she still loves that kind of thing - and it keeps her out from under my feet I haven't got the patience these days. Pointed them in the right direction, but couldn't help feeling it's going to be tortuous - still the missus will make it work.

Still nothing happening with this in our area but apparently a grand total of 1000 refugees have arrived in the UK and 20k visas have allegedly been granted. Already there are stories of female refugees being sexually harrassed on arrival. Sponsors are getting very pissed off, me included.

"Earlier this week, it was reported that residents in North Moreton, Oxfordshire, had got together and submitted 39 applications to welcome refugees to their village but so far only three have been approved. 
Villager Polly Vacher, who is co-ordinating the initiative, said: ‘I feel huge frustration that we haven’t been able to welcome the refugees to our village yet.
‘We feel completely helpless, because the visa applications simply seem to be stuck. It’s shameful.’ 
‘Fifteen host families are still waiting and are part of this debacle. It is a travesty.
The system is simply shambolic,’ added Mrs Vacher, who became an amateur pilot aged 50, and has flown solo around the world twice in a single engine aircraft.
The minister in charge of the refugee scheme said on a radio phone-in that he found it ‘hard to disagree’ with a caller who described the initiative as ‘ridiculous, a shambles and a disgrace’.
More than 200,000 British families have volunteered to take in refugees for a minimum of six months under the scheme."

This explains a lot

...or it will do if Karly sorts it out.

Code:

<blockquote
 class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Priti Patel - We
have hundreds of Home Office staff doing Ukrainian visas applications on
 the ground.. <br><br>Mark Easton - You boasted about a
surge of staff to Calais... I went there, it was two guys, a table
& some crisps <a
href="https://t.co/nDJhVIZ4T2">pic.twitter.com/nDJhVIZ4T2</a></p>—
 Haggis_UK (@Haggis_UK) <a
href="https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1512354111903178757?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April
 8, 2022</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"
charset="utf-8"></script>


Can’t you use the embed method as per this post:

https://forum.boltonnuts.co.uk/t22934-easier-way-to-embed-content?highlight=Embed

Whilst I was in Morocco, the missus and I were chatting to one of the hotel managers - a 30 something Moroccan guy who has worked around the world in the hotel industry and on the face of it seemed a lovely young man.
Anyway he mentioned that he'd worked in Kyiv and the missus piped up with how terrible it was there and how we wanted to offer accommodation for a refugee.
Next day the guy said he  knew someone who was stuck there and could we help? A Ukranian woman he'd worked with in Kyiv and Doha.
Turns out to be the woman, her 3 yr old kid and her mother wanted to come.

The missus sprung into action setting up a Whatsapp group, and Facetime calls for the next few days. The woman and her kid were lovely, but on the 4th day the mother came online and after a while she said that the Moroccan guy wasn't just a work colleague. He'd knocked up her daughter, married her and then a week later she found out that he already had a wife and family back in Morocco - the guy was a bigamist.

Then it turns out that the mother is a Russian sympathiser and wants to live in Russia instead so the whole deal collapsed.

Anyway the latest is we have a 40 year old woman coming to stay in mid-June. She has her visa and can't wait but has to sort out some stuff in Kyiv first. Missus is chuffed.