While I was appalled by the patronising tone of the BBC Scotland televised coverage of the Gateway resettlement programme for Congolese refugees in Scotland's North Lanarkshire, I'm also very intrigued by it.

It's a new and old approach to enable small numbers of refugees to resettle in the UK. It's been done before with Kosovar refugees in 1999/2000. This time, the programme is called Gateway and only one council is involved, namely North Lanarkshire, who provide housing and support for 77 individuals, all from the Congo, all resettled from dire circumstances in refugee camps, and all very deserving in being given a second chance.

It's a drop on a hot stone of course, and won't really affect the human tragedy of refugee camps in the Congo or other places. What was even more disconcerting for me was that this comes at the very same time, just 10 days or so, after the forceful removal of a whole plane load of Congolese refugees from the UK who were found not to be worthy of being granted asylum. I can't help but think that it would have been easier and more humane to allow those who were already here for years, some up to 6 years waiting for a final decision on their case, and who all also fled the same disastrous situation in the war torn Congo, had been given leave to remain on humanitarian grounds.

While both groups of people, those now resettled through the Gateway project, and those already in the UK, have fled from the same situation, with similar experiences, one group is villanised as "bogus" because they were able to made the journey on their own, while the other is welcomed with open arms, Christian charity and smug "we're doing some good humanitarian work here in Motherwell".

Then the TV coverage went on to show a woman struggle with opening a tin and using a tin opener, a tool unknown to her, and her resignation to using a massive and dangerous looking knife to get the beans out for the toast. I felt like writing to the complaints department of the BBC.

In spite of my reservations though, I'm delighted for those lucky few who have made it onto the programme, who will be given a warm welcome rather than the racial harrassment that asylum seekers in Glasgow have had to experience, and who will receive very focused support for integration such as English lessons and guidance to life in Scotland thanks to the perfect size of the group and relative homogeneity, as well as the location in one small local authority of Scotland, with their immigration status sorted even prior to their arrival. Add to this the sympathetic, if condescending and patronising, news coverage, they will have a much easier path to integration than the 5,000 Glasgow asylum seekers. And that in itself is not a bad thing at all.