Somewhere in the headquarters of the UK Border Agency a press officer heard about a succesful operation in France, and thought: “We can push out a press release about that.”
BBC Devon, presumably staffed by lazy, semi-racist journalists thought: “Cut and paste – job done.”
The resulting article reads:
Five people from Eritrea, east Africa, have been found hiding in a lorry destined for Devon, by a sniffer dog.
The three women and two men were found at about 0440 BST on 25 August at the port of Calais, France.
UK Border Agency officers searched the Polish-registered lorry and found the five people among the load of mixed goods.
The five were handed over to French border police. The vehicle was allowed to continue to Newton Abbot.
The Polish driver and haulage company will be fined if they are unable to prove that they secured the vehicles sufficiently.
The reference to a Polish driver is particularly telling. No thought given to the reason why five people might want to sneak themselves into a van and travel across Europe to get to a country that won’t torture or conscript them.
Many journalists are arseholes. Most press officers are too.
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