Best Of

Evening all

Not sure I want to poke a sick bear either - hope you feel better soon, Robert.

I always enjoy a good rant on immigration - we now see the two aspects to the question. In simple terms, what do we do to stop "them" coming? What do we do about the ones already here?

No one, it seems to me, has come up with a coherent approach to net zero migration apart from having it as a policy objective but that's up there with good public services, balanced public finances, strong defences and low inflation as platitudes which we all know to be largely unachievable currently.

What does "net zero migration" look like? One out, one in presumably. Not sure how that would work in practice - all those arriving illegally immediately deported without process (genuine refugees?) but how else would this be monitored without a considerable bureaucracy monitoring arrivals and departures?

While we're struggling with that, what about those already here, whether legally or illegally? The immediate deportation of all foreign-born criminals irrespective of the crime and sentence but do we go for a one strike and you're out whereby any non-British citizen convicted of any custodial offence gets immediately deported?

We'd need to spend a lot on enhancing the border protection side of law enforcement to hunt down visa overstayers (presumably mainly students) and deport them as well.

What about re-migration (or voluntary repatriation as it used to be called)? Do we offer those from for example Syria money to return? What about those from other countries (including EU members)?

Some of these questions may seem harsh but they seem to be to the main obstacles to the implementation of the kind of policies being put forward by Reform and others. There seem to be some serious financial aspects to all this in terms of needing to spend a lot of money to make the policy work.

Besides the practical questions about immigration and migration, there's the cultural angle to all of this. That's where the waters get even murkier.

I think there will be an Islamic Political party here within the next decade or two which will see UK politics change like never before. I doubt there is anything that can be done by those who wish immigration should have been limited in the past now. It is over. I feel like a white man living in late 1960s Salisbury, Rhodesia

My guess is there will be a new country formed in the Eastern European nations which haven't succumbed to Islamic immigration and people will start to move there. A bit like Orania in South Africa.

You feel like "a white man living in late 1960s Salisbury, Rhodesia"? What the actual fuck?! Do you thinklate '60s Rhodesia is a model we should be following?

Yes, I feel like England is still a nice place to live for a middle class, white man, and they/I enjoy an amount of privilege that fifty years ago would have been considered perfectly normal. But the country is changing, and soon "we" won't be in charge any more and so I think the comparison with late 60s Rhodesia is apt. The white/Europeans there were basking in the twilight of their gilded lives, knowing in the back of their mind that it was all going to end soon, and that's how I feel about England.

I am a human. I feel like England is a nice place to live for humans. You talk of “we”, but my idea of “we” is not based on other people matching my skin tone or my gender, it’s not based on whether someone was born near or far.

Maybe it, the pleasantness of England, will end, but if it does, it won’t end because immigrants exist and some people’s ancestors worshipped a different sky god. No, it will end because racists and misogynist sociopaths gain power through lies and propaganda, as has happened in the US.

Do you think that’s it? One user in particular does like to wind up and freely admits it, but you can always just ignore.

With the amount they spam and post in certain threads it’s basically impossible. I’d support a posting limit for us all, maybe 5 posts a day maximum.

It's fascinating to me that so many people on the left today have become so averse to free speech.

Not this laughable nonsense again. Trump has shown us the light. Trump has shown us what happens when the radical right gain power. Freedom of speech is rapidly disappearing in the US, with law firms and universities forced to kowtow to Trump’s whims, with museums and websites removing mentions of women or black people, with books getting banned, with the media under pressure. The real threat to free speech comes from the radical right.

Do you think that’s it? One user in particular does like to wind up and freely admits it, but you can always just ignore.

With the amount they spam and post in certain threads it’s basically impossible. I’d support a posting limit for us all, maybe 5 posts a day maximum.

It’s not impossible, and imposing a limit on posts would be a death knell for comments. You current account has nearly a thousand days of posts on that scale.

I don't post as often as I used to (among other things getting married again on Wednesday, hooray), but I think the current system still works well. There are one or two posters who I tend to skim past (maybe they skim me too), but that's no more of a problem than the newsstand having papers that I don't usually read. PB still works well IMO, giving a flow of news and opinion from people with a common interest in how we're governed.

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You've all enjoyed @Leon's photos of his drinks occasionally accompanied by food in various exotic locations. And @IanB2's well-travelled dog.

I now bring you the anti-photo: dinner at 5:15 in a north-western hospital while staring at the rain and police van.



Those who provide the dinner and the endless tea and biscuits at regular intervals plus lunch and breakfast are relentlessly and charmingly cheerful and friendly. The doctors and nurses have been equally solicitous, which has taken a little of the edge off their remarks which both suggest something potentially very serious which must be tested for and explored while also not actually telling you the worst. It's an odd experience going in for X to be told that the real problems are likely Y and Z. It allows you to be hopeful and scared at the same time.

At any event they have been very efficient so far and last night's madwoman has disappeared.

I knew I shouldn't have been so gleeful at the end of my contract. I was skipping around merrily on Saturday in glorious sunshine. Now I'm facing God knows what.

"Uomo propone. Dio dispone"

That'll learn me. Again.

Thoughts etc….

The food looks like someone tried. I know - but they seem to have tried.

There is, however, no dog for scale. How could you?

Are you seeing the same doctors? Or is it a new chap looking at the chart, each time?

I am seeing 3 different specialists for 3 issues. And more new diagnostic interventions. When the first doctor who saw me said they would "throw the book at me" I never realised he meant it to this extent. 😨

The good news is that if there is something seriously wrong, hopefully, it will have been caught in time. Unless it's too late, of course. But I am going to firmly tell that thought to take a hike because I'd like to get some sleep tonight.

You've all enjoyed @Leon's photos of his drinks occasionally accompanied by food in various exotic locations. And @IanB2's well-travelled dog.

I now bring you the anti-photo: dinner at 5:15 in a north-western hospital while staring at the rain and police van.



Those who provide the dinner and the endless tea and biscuits at regular intervals plus lunch and breakfast are relentlessly and charmingly cheerful and friendly. The doctors and nurses have been equally solicitous, which has taken a little of the edge off their remarks which both suggest something potentially very serious which must be tested for and explored while also not actually telling you the worst. It's an odd experience going in for X to be told that the real problems are likely Y and Z. It allows you to be hopeful and scared at the same time.

At any event they have been very efficient so far and last night's madwoman has disappeared.

I knew I shouldn't have been so gleeful at the end of my contract. I was skipping around merrily on Saturday in glorious sunshine. Now I'm facing God knows what.

"Uomo propone. Dio dispone"

That'll learn me. Again.

A reporter asks Bukele if Kilmar Ábrego García will be returned to the US.

"How can I return a criminal to the US? Smuggle a terrorist in?," Bukele replies.

He then calls the question "absurd" and says he won't release Ábrego García because he isn't fond of releasing people from his prisons.

"The question is preposterous," Bukele says. "I don't have the power to return him to the United States."

Which means, if the US government doesn't contradict this, that the Trump administration has taken to itself the power to disappear people, innocent or guilty.

Number 3 just happened.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bukele-abrego-garcia-and-red-lines
...But if it’s number 3?

Let us speak plainly: Nayib Bukele is a minor strongman who will do whatever Donald Trump demands of him. If Trump wants Abrego Garcia in the United States, then Bukele will return him. By the same token, if Bukele understands that Trump does not want Abrego Garcia returned, then he will keep the man.

Bukele has no interests in this game other than pleasing his political patron. His exercise of Salvadoran “sovereignty” can only be read as an expression of Donald Trump’s will.

Anyone who asserts otherwise is either a villain or a fool.

So if Bukele affirmatively refuses to repatriate Abrego Garcia, it will mean that Trump has told him not to.

At which point the Supreme Court will face a choice.

Surrender or escalation?..

Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
·
13m
Watching Trump and Bukele in the Oval Office just now made me feel physically ill.

He makes the skin crawl of any right thinking person anywhere. Oh America, what the hell have you done?

It’s the inevitable endpoint of woke leftism. The people will voluntarily elect right wing strongmen

The exact same thing will happen in the UK if we don’t reverse course on multiple crucial issues. Firstly, migration

How many times do the centrist dads need to be told this?

He doesn't make my skin crawl whatsoever.

I think most would quite like a bit of the Bukele approach within the British justice system, rather than it being populated with people who think a 'by no means bleeding-heart liberal' view is that people from ethnic and religious minorities should serve lower sentences for the same severity of crime.

What, being sent to a foreign prison at the whim of an erratic PM having committed no crime and having never been convicted of anything?

Absolutely fucking not. And if a lefty PM tried to do that to someone like you, I'd be out on the streets fighting your cause even if you would never return the favour.

(Your last bit is a blatant inverted lie. The purpose of the guidance was to try and mitigate the issue of minorities getting longer sentences for the same crimes).

Who has Bukele sent abroad for comitting no crime?

OH! I see.

"No crime" here is a bit of a trap by the Right as it is quite possible that the individual concerned has committed a crime. However Bukele and Trump are between them imprisoning a person who is not subject to a prison sentence.

Habeas Corpus is still a law in this country. Doubtless you'd see it repealed as a bleeding-heart woke lefty inconvenience.

Does habeus corpus have any relevance in a society which literally seeks to imprison white people more often than black and brown people, on the basis of their skin colour? No. It doesn’t

We live in a society that locks up black and brown people more often than white people. And a society that has the courage to recognise that and seek to do something about it. We should be proud of it.

A reporter asks Bukele if Kilmar Ábrego García will be returned to the US.

"How can I return a criminal to the US? Smuggle a terrorist in?," Bukele replies.

He then calls the question "absurd" and says he won't release Ábrego García because he isn't fond of releasing people from his prisons.

"The question is preposterous," Bukele says. "I don't have the power to return him to the United States."

Which means, if the US government doesn't contradict this, that the Trump administration has taken to itself the power to disappear people, innocent or guilty.

Number 3 just happened.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bukele-abrego-garcia-and-red-lines
...But if it’s number 3?

Let us speak plainly: Nayib Bukele is a minor strongman who will do whatever Donald Trump demands of him. If Trump wants Abrego Garcia in the United States, then Bukele will return him. By the same token, if Bukele understands that Trump does not want Abrego Garcia returned, then he will keep the man.

Bukele has no interests in this game other than pleasing his political patron. His exercise of Salvadoran “sovereignty” can only be read as an expression of Donald Trump’s will.

Anyone who asserts otherwise is either a villain or a fool.

So if Bukele affirmatively refuses to repatriate Abrego Garcia, it will mean that Trump has told him not to.

At which point the Supreme Court will face a choice.

Surrender or escalation?..

Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
·
13m
Watching Trump and Bukele in the Oval Office just now made me feel physically ill.

He makes the skin crawl of any right thinking person anywhere. Oh America, what the hell have you done?

It’s the inevitable endpoint of woke leftism. The people will voluntarily elect right wing strongmen

The exact same thing will happen in the UK if we don’t reverse course on multiple crucial issues. Firstly, migration

How many times do the centrist dads need to be told this?

He doesn't make my skin crawl whatsoever.

I think most would quite like a bit of the Bukele approach within the British justice system, rather than it being populated with people who think a 'by no means bleeding-heart liberal' view is that people from ethnic and religious minorities should serve lower sentences for the same severity of crime.

What, being sent to a foreign prison at the whim of an erratic PM having committed no crime and having never been convicted of anything?

Absolutely fucking not. And if a lefty PM tried to do that to someone like you, I'd be out on the streets fighting your cause even if you would never return the favour.

(Your last bit is a blatant inverted lie. The purpose of the guidance was to try and mitigate the issue of minorities getting longer sentences for the same crimes).