Valentine's Day Cards for Strangers: When Safeguarding Meets Virtue Signaling.

Valentine’s Day Cards for Strangers: When Safeguarding Meets Virtue Signaling.

East Sussex Green councillor sparks safeguarding concerns with Valentine's card stunt to migrants, and forgot the condoms.

Let me get this straight. A Green Party councillor - a woman entrusted with actual governmental responsibility - thought the best way to welcome 500 single adult men to a military camp was to get her grandchildren to make Valentine’s Day cards for them.

Valentine’s. Day. Cards.

You know, that holiday specifically associated with romantic love, sexual attraction, and Hallmark’s quarterly earnings targets. That Valentine’s Day.

And she announced this at a council meeting like she’d just negotiated Middle East peace with construction paper and glitter glue.

The Three Questions.

Let’s run Anne Cross’s brilliant integration strategy through the analytical framework, shall we?

Is it practical?

Oh absolutely! Nothing says “practical asylum support” like crayon hearts delivered by minors to adult male strangers. I’m sure what those men really need - aside from housing security, employment pathways, language support, or actual community integration programs - is artwork from someone’s nan’s grandkids.

Hunger? Here’s a heart with googly eyes. Trauma? Have a doily. Legal uncertainty? Don’t worry, little Tarquin drew you a butterfly.

Problem solved.

Is it logical?

Let me think carefully. You’ve got thousands of local residents protesting for 13 straight weeks. Your own MP - the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons - is trying to get you to engage with legitimate community concerns. The town is divided, tensions are high, and people want actual answers about capacity, resources, and integration support.

So naturally, the logical response is to get children to deliver romantic holiday cards to hundreds of adult male strangers you’ve never met, while simultaneously refusing to meet with elected representatives or concerned citizens.

Yeah. That tracks. If you’re clinically insane.

What’s the likely outcome?

Well, you’ve managed to:

Raise legitimate safeguarding concerns about involving children with adult male strangers

Hand your political opponents the greatest PR gift since “let them eat cake”

Demonstrate that you care more about performative gestures than actual community engagement

Make the situation worse for everyone, including the asylum seekers you’re pretending to help

Prove that Green Party councillors have the situational awareness of a concussed goldfish

Outstanding work, Anne. Really top-notch governance.

The Safeguarding Catastrophe

Here’s what elevates this beyond ordinary political stupidity into genuine “what the fck is wrong with you” territory:

She involved children in delivering romantic-themed cards to adult male strangers.

Read that sentence again. Slowly.

Now imagine if literally anyone else suggested this. Your kid’s headteacher. Your neighbor. Some random bloke at the park. “Hey, fancy getting your grandkids to make Valentine’s cards for those 500 adult men over there they’ve never met?”

You’d call social services so fast the phone would melt.

But wrap it in the rainbow flag of “compassion” and suddenly basic safeguarding principles evaporate like common sense at a Green Party strategy meeting.

And let’s be brutally honest about what Valentine’s Day actually means. This isn’t “Welcome to the Neighborhood Day.” It’s not “Community Integration Appreciation Day.” It’s the day associated with romantic love and sexual relationships.

The woman might as well have included packs of condoms for those who, you know, feel inclined. The naivety is off the fucking scale.

This isn’t even about the asylum seekers themselves. You could replace them with any group of adult males - military personnel, homeless men, prison inmates, construction workers, chartered accountants - and the answer would be the same: No, Grandma, you absolute lunatic, you do not get children to make Valentine’s cards for adult male strangers.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s basic “don’t be a frigging moron” level awareness.

The Pattern of Lunacy.

But wait! There’s more!

This isn’t Anne Cross having a senior moment. This is part of a coordinated pattern of institutional insanity.

Last year, the Schools of Sanctuary Network got five-year-olds to write Valentine’s cards to asylum seekers. They denied it initially, claiming the cards were “anonymised messages” that stayed in classrooms. Then they admitted “in a small number of cases” the cards went to refugee support groups.

Translation: “We got caught and we’re doing damage control.”

Another school held a “Special Refugee Day” on Valentine’s Day where asylum seekers gave talks to young children, who then made hearts and messages for them.

See the theme? It’s always Valentine’s Day. It’s always children. It’s always performative emotional labor disguised as integration policy.

And it’s always run by people who are either genuinely too thick to understand the implications, or so ideologically committed they don’t want to understand the implications.

Because acknowledging the problem would mean admitting their gesture politics might actually endanger the children they’re using as props.

The Accountability Vacuum.

Here’s what really grinds my gears: Anne Cross won’t meet with her own MP. She won’t engage with community concerns. She won’t attend meetings about the actual policy implications of housing 500 men in a town that clearly wasn’t consulted properly.

But she’s got plenty of time for craft hour with the grandkids.

Priorities, see?

This is the Green Party governance model: Avoid actual accountability, double down on symbolism, and when challenged, wrap yourself in the flag of compassion so any criticism looks like cruelty.

Never mind that Nusrat Ghani - a woman who’s risen to Deputy Speaker - called this “disturbing” and raised safeguarding concerns.

Never mind that thousands are protesting in the rain for the 13th consecutive week.

Never mind that you’re supposed to represent all your constituents, not just perform compassion theater for the ones who agree with you.

Anne Cross has her glitter glue and her moral superiority, and that’s apparently sufficient qualification for local government.

The Middle-Class Savior Complex.

Because in Anne’s world - that rarefied atmosphere where good intentions excuse all consequences - the optics don’t matter. The safety doesn’t matter. The practicality doesn’t matter.

What matters is that she feels good about herself.

She gets to be the compassionate one. The welcoming one. The one who cares, unlike those horrible protesters (you know, the thousands of local residents she represents).

Never mind that this helps precisely no one. Never mind that it’s sexually suggestive and potentially dangerous. Never mind that it makes community integration harder.

She got to feel virtuous, and that’s what counts.

This is what happens when middle-class savior complex meets institutional power. You get policy-by-Pinterest-board. Governance-by-good-vibes. Public service as performance art with children as unwitting extras.

The Real Victims

You know who this actually hurts?

The asylum seekers themselves.

Because now they’re not people with legitimate claims fleeing genuine danger. They’re props in Anne Cross’s morality play. They’re recipients of pity-craft from children who’ve been instrumentalized to make a political point.

And how fucking awkward must it be for those men to receive romantic-holiday cards from children? What are they supposed to do with that? Display them? Bin them? Write thank-you notes?

“Dear small child I’ve never met, thank you for the Valentine’s card with the wonky heart. This isn’t weird at all.”

Every time some councillor pulls a stunt like this, it makes actual integration harder. It makes community relations worse. It infantilises asylum seekers and simultaneously puts children in inappropriate situations.

Good job, Anne. You’ve managed to make life worse for everyone involved, including the exact people you claim to be helping.

The Wider Context.

And let’s not forget the really delicious irony here: while Anne Cross is busy with her Valentine’s craft project, the Green Party elsewhere in Sussex is leading votes of no confidence against the Police and Crime Commissioner for attending a protest march about this exact same camp.

So protesting the camp? That’s beyond the pale, bringing policing into disrepute.

But getting your grandkids to make romantic cards for the camp residents while refusing to meet your own MP or community? That’s compassionate leadership.

The cognitive dissonance is breathtaking.

The Bottom Line.

This is what happens when ideology replaces practicality. When performance replaces governance. When feeling virtuous matters more than being effective or safe.

Anne Cross doesn’t want to solve problems. She wants to be seen caring about problems, which in her world is the same thing.

Actual solutions require meetings. Compromise. Listening to people you disagree with. Addressing legitimate concerns about resources, capacity, and integration.

That’s hard work.

Making Valentine’s cards with the grandkids? That’s easy. That’s fun. That gets you pats on the back from people who already agree with you.

And if it’s sexually inappropriate, unsafe, and counterproductive? Well, at least your heart was in the right place.

Even if your brain - and apparently all your safeguarding training - clearly wasn’t.

Welcome to Green Party Britain, where the policies are performative, the safeguarding is optional, and romantic holidays are appropriate vehicles for child-adult stranger interaction.

Meanwhile, problems remain unsolved, communities remain divided, and somewhere in Sussex, a councillor is probably planning her next craft project.

Because that’s definitely what we elected them for.