The Great British Shake-Off

"The whole world is full of refugees - just like you and just like me."

This is a line from the The Everlasting, a great song that I heard performed live by the Manic Street Preachers. The line has haunted me for several weeks as refugees, mainly from Syria, began arriving in Europe. Many people watched the news and wondered what they could do to help. People immediately organised marches and began collecting items to donate to those in need. The mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, organised the benefit concert With Love From Liverpool on 19 September to raise money. The band Crowded House will also release their song Help Is Coming to raise funds for the cause. I've pre-ordered a vinyl limited-edition copy and bought two tickets for the Liverpool gig. A few clicks online to buy a couple of things is the least I could do. Some people have even offered refugees accommodation in their own homes. Germans, in particular, have shown humbling humanitarianism.

Many other people, however, are engaged in cynical semantic antics online to muddle the narrative by differentiating - unhelpfully - between the terms 'migrant' and 'refugee', presumably as a justification for their own inaction. Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole wrote a very helpful piece, Migrants are welcome, the second section of which explains just how irrelevant these labels are in this case. Yet the shoulder-shruggers in the Great British Shake-Off believe that we should put our own homeless citizens first.

Irrespective of any criticism of the UK government's response to this or any other crisis, its pledge to home 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years will reportedly be funded from the foreign aid budget; so will not affect any support for the UK's homeless at all. The response of private individuals to the plight of the refugees is a matter for them. As a result, the "we" in the pleas for us to first look after our own suddenly becomes a "you".

What have YOU done personally to help the UK's homeless this week? If you've constructed this UK vs Syria either-or scenario and are unsure of how to proceed, allow me to make a couple of suggestions. These are in addition to calling on your politicians to do more for the homeless - which you're obviously already doing:

1. Empty your spare room/home of all the items you no longer use, sell them and give the money to a UK homeless person to help them find temporary accommodation and help. In the interests of fairness to the Syrians; this person should have lost all their possessions and ID, and should have no access to sustenance, sanitation or state or charitable assistance of any kind. They should also have been forced to flee from a war zone here in the UK. They will have watched loved ones die, either at the hands of others, or else on a perilous journey across the whole country, lasting weeks or months before reaching a place of safety.

2. Having now created more space in your home, offer to house a Syrian refugee temporarily. Alternatively, you can buy the charity single, go to the gig or support the refugees in some other small way.

Is this what you mean by putting the UK first? If it is, then by your own rationale, you should put Syrian refugees second, surely? Or is the plight of thousands of displaced refugees even further down your list of urgent causes to support? Of course, many charities need our help. But if you firmly believe in supporting people in the UK at the expense of, not in addition to, others in desperate need elsewhere; may I respectfully suggest that while the rest of us do what we can to help, you find some other, anti-social media on which to air your unhelpful opinions.