Sin and the Home Secretary
Sin is generally accepted to be a transgression against divine law. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, shameful, harmful or alienating might be termed “sinful“. Synonyms form sin include offence, crime, violation, sinfulness, felony, trespass, wrongdoing.
All those secular alternatives bring us very swiftly to the doors of the Home Office and its Secretary of State, one Yvette Cooper. The Home Office’s responsibilities include public safety and policing, border security, immigration, passports and civil registration.
And it is border security and immigration that are currently exercising Ms Cooper’s mind.
Ever since the previous Tory government blocked off all conventional ways of applying for political asylum in the Untied Kingdom, the country has been experiencing a so-called migrant crisis, with desperate people risking their lives to cross the Channel in inflatable boats. Once they arrive in Blighty, they become the responsibility of the Home Office which is currently using hotels around the country to house the the massive backlog of applicants for asylum.
However, this arrangement has not found favour with the racists and xenophobes from the right wing of the Conservative Party, the Farage Fan Club and more extreme elements, who have been causing trouble outside hotels and trying to make the country look like a downmarket version of the Nazis’ Nuremberg rallies.
The response of Ms Cooper and the government has been to adopt the clothing of the far right in an attempt to appease the unappeasable. This has included suspending breaching the Human Rights Act provisions in respect of family life, an action some might regard as sinful.
Nevertheless, Ms Cooper is not content with this digression and lack of humanity, as was apparent from The Guardian’s live blog today, as per the following screenshot.
Yes you did read that correctly.
Warehouses.
This is indicative that Ms Cooper has ceased to regard these desperate people as human beings, since one stores objects in warehouses, not people.
This dehumanisation is dangerous, as was pointed out by the late Terry Pratchett in his Carpe Jugulum Discworld novel.
Below is a dialogue on sin between the witch Granny Weatherwax and the Omnian missionary priest Mightily Oats.
“And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” “It’s a lot more complicated than that—” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—” “But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
It is not known whether Ms Cooper has ever read Carpe Jugulum, but even if she hasn’t, your ‘umble scribe thinks that treating people as people and not things is the natural way of things.