HOME FROM HOME ?

This photo was obviously taken on a nice day but my mind goes back to the bleak mid winter of 1960, when the snow was on the ground, the days were short, the nights seemingly endless and a keen biting wind whipped across the outposts of Catterick Camp from the North Yorkshire wilderness.  We new recruits to National Service had by early March completed our `basic training,` so we could now move forwards, turn left and right, clean kit, shoot things and we had become used to the verbal and psychological ranting of drill sergeants and upstart corporals. 

We were then relocated to the edge of Catterick Camp to do our `trade training,` which might have consisted of things like signalling, driving military vehicles, completing various tests, coming to terms with the vagaries of `good order and military discipline` and all the while being accommodated in blocks very much like the one in the picture above.  There were about 20 or so of us in one of these buildings so not much room and no real privacy.  The `facilities` were basic and, being mid winter, it was bitterly cold inside as well as outside.  There was one stove type heater in the middle of the room which was woefully inadequate to provide any heating - even if there had been a supply of coal to get it going. 

But for all of that, it never ever crossed our minds to complain.  No point really, no-one would take any notice and I suspect there would have been `consequences` for having the temerity to grumble about anything.

So I`m intrigued by the notion that people who enter this country illegally - and so shouldn`t be here anyway - do have the temerity to complain about the accommodation they are offered whilst their situation is being assessed, allegedly deliberately setting fire to some of the accommodation, instructing lawyers at taxpayers` expense to lodge formal complaints, suing the government for the alleged inadequacy of their accommodation and now demanding that the Home Secretary resigns as the accommodation they complain about is still being used.   Not sure you could make it up.

I wonder what the heroic and thoroughly admirable Ghurkhas make of it all