Rogarian Dawn

“ON the day 30 citizens of Bulgaria and Romania were given the right to come to Britain, this was the queue for visas in Bucharest.”

So says the Mail’s front page. And sure enough there is a picture of a number of Rogarians forming a disorderly line somewhere.

But before you start counting heads – we estimate there to be no more than 50 – the Mail invites its readers to turn inside the paper, where they read: “Thousands join queue for a new life here.”
Thousands? Where? Are these Rogarians typically two-feet high and lost among the legs of their taller countrymen?

Or are we being shown a skewed image? Like those shots of angry men in dusty Middle-Eastern marketplaces burning the Union flag, can we mentally pan back and see them in isolation, a small knot of loons in an everyday scene. While the flag burns and Gaza ignites, the locals go about their business not looking at the men burning things in public, the Palestinian equivalent of shouting at pigeons.

But before we can draw our own conclusions, the Mail tells us what’s what. It senses a “stampede for passports to a new life in Britain”. Our borders have been “thrown open to Bulgaria and Romania”.

The Rogarians aren’t hiding, they’re massed high on the ridge. It’s Rogarian Dawn. You can hear the regular thump of rubber stamp on passport.

“Thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians get green light to invade Britain,” says the Express’s front page. “60,000 could quit Romania,” says the Express. “Guess where they will go?”

Spain? Greece? Israel? No, says the Express. They are coming to Blighty. And so keen are they to blend in, nay infiltrate, that one of them is wearing an England football top and a white baseball cap. He’s a Romanian chav.

Could it get worse? We’ll know soon enough. “SEE YOU IN JANUARY,” says the Sun’s headline above a picture of as many as nine Romanians standing in a “long queue” to Britain…

Posted: 27th, September 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink