Best Of

The illegal immigrants who are trying to claim false asylum are to blame for any genuine asylum seekers being poorly treated. The temptation to put it on the public, who are rightly concerned about tens of thousands of chancers slipping into their society, should be resisted.

I doubt many people are against genuine refugees being given a home and integrated into British life, but what we are actually getting is thousands of young men with no real claim to be here, making Britain resemble the third world they came from

I’m afraid the conversation has moved on . Reform and the Tories don’t want even genuine asylum seekers. If you’re non white and here legally you’re likely get more abuse as the atmosphere becomes even more toxic .

I do not accept your generalisation that conservatives dont want genuine asylum seekers and do not forget it was the conservatives who offered sanctuary to Ukranians and those from Hong Kong

Immigration into the UK has to be controlled, and it is not helpful for some to label those wanting the boats and migrants hotels to be stopped as far right and racist, because this has spread way beyond the far right to many in the population who just want fairness

Everyone, no matter their ethnicity, living here are integral to our community and if someone can stop the boats this issue will lanced

Yes, immigration has to be controlled (and it largely is). I think nearly everyone wants the boats to stop. It is government policy to get rid of migrant hotels. It is not far right or racist to want these things.

However, clearly some of the people protesting outside hotels and some of the people posting here are more generally anti-immigrant and want, in the words of one poster, more white babies.

There are extremes on both the right and the left but on the question of the boats and asylum hotels, it is unhelpful to brand those protesting and objecting as far right and racist when this is a view shared across many in the population and of course Starmer and Cooper would not be talking about deportation and even reclusing parts of the ECHR if they did not know this is a serious issue for them

It is a serious issue, yes. We agree on wanting to reduce the numbers coming over on boats and reduce the numbers staying in asylum hotels. However, those organising the hotel protests are objectively far right and racist. Those in the Epping Forest protests include, "Eddy Butler, a former British National Party (BNP) organiser previously linked to a violent neo-Nazi group; Callum Barker, an activist for the fascist Homeland Party; Toni Collins (AKA Ginger Toni), a key figure in the circle surrounding Tommy Robinson; Lance Wright, involved in the neo-Nazi music network Blood & Honour; former Combat 18 activist Phil Curson; and activists associated with the anti-Muslim group Britain First." See https://hopenothate.org.uk/2025/07/18/violence-at-the-bell-hotel-far-right-footprints-in-epping-forest/

Indeed but again you miss the point that this is way beyond these agitators and is becoming the view of many of the population that the whole issue is unfair and has to be stopped

Both conservative and labour governments have singularity failed to address the problem which is spinning out of control

And the public dont just want the boats reduced, they want them stopped altogether

As I've said, I think we all agree that we want no boats and no asylum hotels. That's government policy. That has widespread support.

Yes, you're right that past governments have done badly at delivering on this. It was worst under Johnson, but hotel numbers fell under Sunak and have fallen further under Starmer. Those coming over on boats has gone up and done and has proven harder to stop, but criminal action against people smugglers is up. The first deportations under the new deal with France start soon. I hope these will be successful in reducing boat numbers.

Yes, we want boats stopped altogether, but the way to do that is to reduce the current numbers. The public want a solution, but I don't think the public want to give up traditional British values to get a solution immediately as long as we're moving in the right direction.

In the mean time, we shouldn't ignore the far right agitators who are bringing disorder to our streets. We shouldn't pretend that Eddy Butler and Ginger Toni and Tommy Robinson have legitimate concerns. We shouldn't let people legally in Britain be terrorised in parks because they have brown skin.

If you arrive here from France, you are not fleeing persecution.

So either piss off somewhere else, or live destitute on the street. Your choice.

Ultimately this is the issue for many, many people. Legally the applicant does not have to claim asylum in the first safe country. Morally people in this country think that they should.

If you are being attacked in your home and you flee, where do you go for help? The closest door or the one with the nicest furniture?

Because those in France are asylum shopping, to many it diminishes the strength of the claim.

Now PB'ers will no doubt now reel off a list of things why this post is wrong (factually, morally, legally) but to the person on the Clapham omnibus this is what they think. And its why my next door neighbour, unprovoked, told me he was listening to Farage "because he's right".

I am on a train heading to LEuston. When I get there I will be tens of miles from my work laptop. Later tonight I will board the Caledonian Sleeper and tomorrow I will be in Edinburgh and hundreds of miles from my work laptop. My usual "ohshitohshit" work worry is being replaced by a more diffuse sense of unhappiness, revolving around the fact that if things go wrong I can't fix it. When I was a kid holidays were done when school broke up, but now work is a 24/7 experience and I can't relax because there is always work coming in. My clients are nice people but contact me at all hours requiring work to be done Right Now Tonight, so if they contact me and I'm On Holiday the work will just pile up until I return. I love my job but damn it is taking its toll. ☹️

That’s tough

You could literally tell your clients “step away for two weeks I’m on a family holiday”

I may be deluded but a lot of people respect that?

Yes...and no. Let me explain.

My present employers are an unnamed research and study organisation. They subcontracted their stats out but were being charged thru the nose. In an attempt to get one on the cheap they advertised for a statto who could demonstrate flexibility. Cue me. I'm held as an ad-hoc resource: the work isn't assigned to me via my line management but passed to me by the higher staff as a lure to attract work - "look, we have an in-house statistician who can answer your questions" - and it usually works. But the price of being a free-floating resource is that you can't say no. Some of them are high up (to the extent I have to Google their titles to see which one they use) and their time is *very* precious and you never tell them no. In fairness to them these are extraordinarily accomplished individuals and they have a very exact understanding of the value of time, so it's understandable, especially when the budgets are in the millions, the funding deadlines are tight, and I'm the only statto on staff.

Sometimes it's a pleasure. One of my clients is an expert in her field and has just given birth, so convos take place late at night when feeding the sprog. You can't expect somebody in that position to keep office hours. Sometimes it's a chore: one of my clients gives you five days of work and expects it done in five days, despite only paying me for two days a week and I have other clients to service. I normally end up working weekends to keep the balls in the air.

The stress occurs when the numbers have to be produced fast, or there are lots of them. A study document with fifteen tables, each with several columns and SD/IQR/% will require hundreds of numbers and each one has to be right. It's not a question of getting the computer to do it, since I design the study, write the codes, and write the reports, and if it fucks up there's a big red arrow pointing at my head, especially if somebody might die if I fuck up. So you double check like crazy.

The fun occurs in the learning. I can design a stepped-wedge study and write the code for it. Four years ago I didn't know what a stepped-wedge design was. Technically I am now a subject-matter expert in some of the obscurer conditions. I now have R, SAS and Stata on my CV which is the trifecta for a statto, provided you ignore the Python jobs which I am very pleased to do. So I have no regrets except that I wish I'd had this job twenty years ago...☹️