Spot the military plane

We get a lot of these over Oxford because we are not far from RAF Brize Norton. I do not like them. This is probably a cargo plane, of the sort that brought Afghan refugees here 14 months ago, but even so...

A bit over 21 years ago, when I first started helping refugees to find work that matched their skills and aspirations, I was talking to a couple of Afghans whose jobs in Kabul had been loading cargo onto C130s. They missed their work and had found out what buses to catch to get to Brize Norton so they could stand at the perimeter fence and listen to the familiar engine sounds. Their day trip was planned for mid September.

We all know what happened on 11 September 2001. Of course they had the intelligence to realise that it wasn't a great idea for two Muslims looking like them to spend a day outside a military airfield gazing though the fence at planes. When they told me that they'd cancelled their trip they were bereft. Not only had they been deprived of the sound of C130 engines but they knew that in this country there was no hope of them ever being able to work with aircraft again.

Almost all skills are transferable but not those of Muslims who work with aircraft. Nor lawyers. Very light-touch allusion to that here.