Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
PORTSMOUTH, England — Recently, the Portsmouth Marriott Hotel was the site of a spirited protest after a group gathered outside the hotel to declare their dissatisfaction with the hotel for letting a bus full of asylum seekers rent a suite of rooms. Their outrage quickly turned to embarrassment after it was revealed that while the “migrants” were indeed from another country, they were actually a visiting cricket team from Pakistan. Perhaps the only thing that got them to disperse was the clarification that they would go back to where they came from.
This is another Pakistan cricket team who are also not illegal immigrants (Samiullah Shah/Creative Commons)
While there appears to be a lot of anger in the States about immigrants, despite the fact that they literally built this country, it’s not only an issue over here. The context of the UK protest was that earlier this week, a boat of 120 asylum seekers was brought to Portsmouth’s Eastney Marina. That didn’t sit well with the far-right Reform UK group, which apparently doesn’t care about asylum, or seeking, for that matter. The relatively small group was met by 500 demonstrators who blocked roads leading out of the lifeboat station, as the migrants were placed on a bus to be processed. The extremely calm protesters threw bricks at emergency personnel and pushed some of them off their bikes.
The protesters must have been too caught up in throwing stuff at police to notice where the bus with the asylum seekers wound up, as misinformation spread online that the bus showed up at the Marriott. This time, it was a smaller group of about 40 to 50 idiots who showed up to protest foreigners on their soil. It turned out that there was indeed a group from another country staying at the Marriott, and they even had bats! Unfortunately for the mob, they were informed that it was indeed a Pakistani cricket team.
Reform UK Group Leader George Madgwick, whose group seems to delight in spreading anti-immigrant propaganda online, admitted his mistake. “I visited the manager, and the hotel explained it was a Pakistani Cricket team staying,” he said. “The cricket team coach came to speak to me personally, and I saw proof. I then went to speak to the crowd gathering of 40/50 people and confirmed with them and assured them that it was a cricket team. Immediately, the crowd respectfully accepted that, called for calm, and asked the rest of them to leave now. Within five minutes they were gone.”
The Reform UK Group learned immediately from their mistake and are opting to tone down the rhetoric online, right? Nope, in fact, word spread afterward that the Travelodge in Kingston Crescent was also sheltering migrants. Staff at the hotel replied that that’s not the case, but so far haven’t produced any athletes to dispel the rumors.
