Europe could easily absorb all the refugees

THE movies are all about rescue at the moment. Hollywood has just sent Nasa and its Chinese equivalent to Mars to bring back Matt Damon, while Everest focuses on the attempted rescue of a group of rich people who climbed the mountain simply because they could afford to. Spoiler alert — loads of them die. Apart from Matt Damon, obviously.

Meanwhile, another dead baby is washed up on the beach in Kos. This is not a Hollywood movie, but real life. Nobody rescued him. Unlike the three-year-old Alyan Kurdi, nobody knows who this one is. Just a baby boy, aged around one, in a babygrow. His body has been taken off for DNA testing to find out where he might be from, but beyond that, he remains anonymous, another casualty of desperate people escaping war. The Greek couple who found him said they are going to bury him as though he was their own child.

It’s not like ordinary people don’t want to help. Literally lorryloads of donated stuff arrived from Cork to Calais the other day; all over Europe, people are reaching out. Depots and warehouses are full, with volunteers working like mad to sort out donations and distribute them as quickly and effectively as possible.