The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
The Rwandan policy is obviously absurd and about as close to people trafficking as a western government has got but the problem it claims (falsely) to fix remains. The statistics down thread shows that the vast majority of boat people qualify for asylum. They do so because they come from utter shit holes of which, sadly, there are all too many on the planet.
How can you possibly say to a Syrian, an Iraqi, a Yemini, someone from the Sudan or an Uyghur from China that it is safe to go home? The few that fail are almost certainly those who do not persist with a process that makes Kafka look like top quality administration.
The reality is that our immigration procedure, built around UN conventions, is not fit for purpose in a world that is far more mobile than ever before. There are hundreds of millions around the world who qualify under it for asylum in the UK. We try to reduce the flow by making it very difficult to get here legally (as if that matters at all for asylum) dragging out the process for years in the simplest cases so that people go away and making their lives an utter misery whilst they are in limbo, not able to work, open a bank account, get a private rental, the whole hostile environment.
Personally, I think we need to have a grown up conversation about this. We should, as a country, be able to choose who we want to help, whether it is Hong Kong Chinese or Ukrainians. We can be mercantilist about the rest, choosing the skilled or young as we see fit. The pretense that we take all comers should be abandoned. We simply can't.
I think it would be far more honest to withdraw from the 1951 Refugee Convention, or at least the 1967 annex that extended it beyond Europe.
Exactly, that is what I am saying. The right to asylum should cease to exist. Our right to choose who we want should replace it. Its harsh and brutal but so is the present system.
I don't think that will happen. People may support actions that contradict the right to asylum but would want to think they are still within the 'rules' of it. It's why nations are so flexible in their interpretations of if they act within international law.
There's a hilarious clip of an American talking about being happy with immigration if done legally, and then they're told its legal to claim asylum and their face does a double take and they say they hope that changes.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
The Rwandan policy is obviously absurd and about as close to people trafficking as a western government has got but the problem it claims (falsely) to fix remains. The statistics down thread shows that the vast majority of boat people qualify for asylum. They do so because they come from utter shit holes of which, sadly, there are all too many on the planet.
How can you possibly say to a Syrian, an Iraqi, a Yemini, someone from the Sudan or an Uyghur from China that it is safe to go home? The few that fail are almost certainly those who do not persist with a process that makes Kafka look like top quality administration.
The reality is that our immigration procedure, built around UN conventions, is not fit for purpose in a world that is far more mobile than ever before. There are hundreds of millions around the world who qualify under it for asylum in the UK. We try to reduce the flow by making it very difficult to get here legally (as if that matters at all for asylum) dragging out the process for years in the simplest cases so that people go away and making their lives an utter misery whilst they are in limbo, not able to work, open a bank account, get a private rental, the whole hostile environment.
Personally, I think we need to have a grown up conversation about this. We should, as a country, be able to choose who we want to help, whether it is Hong Kong Chinese or Ukrainians. We can be mercantilist about the rest, choosing the skilled or young as we see fit. The pretense that we take all comers should be abandoned. We simply can't.
I think you are correct about this policy being ineffective and that procedures don't work and our response cruel.
I cant quite get to a position of an entirely mercantilist approach, but it does seem the case that if you believe in borders at all, there is problem given there will always been loads more people, even genuine seekers, than places wanting to accept them.
I am not saying entirely mercantilist. We can still show compassion or moral obligations like Afghan translators, people who have helped us, people whose terrible plight can pull our heart strings but the key is that it is our choice and no longer a right.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Let's face it, they are being sent to Rwanda because they are generally further from the UK than their starting point. As a cynical answer to stopping economic migration in its tracks, it's very canny.
If you are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, west Africa, north Africa, are you going to want to give a snakehead ten grand to risk your life in a small boat, for a ticket to Rwanda? Or stay in France instead. Or any of the other dozen countries you have gone through to get to Calais. It will end the camps in Calais, For which I guess the French will delighted.
How badly do you think this policy will play in, say, Kent? Spoiler: it will be very popular. Scotland? Maybe not so much.
If it successfully deters people from making the crossing, then it will be a success.
However...
I suspect the draw of the UK (where it is easy to find work as an undocumented migrant), and the fact that the capacity of the Rwandan scheme is a tiny fraction of the number of asylum seekers reaching the UK, means that its effect will likely be limited.
As @Malmesbury and I have argued, by far the best thing we can do is to reduce the demand pull, by incentivizing people to report on those who hire people in the UK illegally.
I agree, but the two in combination may well have been more effective still.
It does need to be properly funded, mind.
If it's just a few hundred a year, then it will deter virtually no one.
The policy is a success nonetheless.
a) It has deflected attention from Partygate.
b) It has enthused a particular kind of Conservative voter and Conservative MPs.
The fact that it is expensive, unwieldy, is morally questionable, possibly pushes the envelope of international treaties, and deters no one, matters not a jot.
HYUFD made the point yesterday that BJ's immediate focus is on his core vote and his MPs. Once he has ridden out the present danger he can work on slightly less shitty, sunlit uplands policies for the rest of us in 2023-4.
HY et al seem to miss the basic point. "Can't remove Boris cos Ukraine".
Yes. We're supposedly standing up to freedom and truth and justice. Against a man who lies to his people using state-sanctioned propaganda and thinks the law doesn't apply to him....
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
It is the case that people sent to Rwanda would have no right of return even if they were found to be legitimate refugees. See Paras 9-10 in Part 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (esp 10.1).
Can’t say I agree with that. I’m now in the anti camp rather than the don’t know camp.
Surely there is a way to help genuine asylum seekers, and sift out economic migrants, without resorting to such a policy.
We seem to have a situation where Refugee charities/groups/lawyers and many politicians on the left regard all migrants as genuine and demand an open door and the reverse is true of those on the other side of the debate.
We cannot punish the genuinely needy. It’s barbaric.
The greatest problem is that the man on the street cannot understand how someone is not safe in France. You can make any number of arguments about how many people different countries take, but at heart, people see migrants shopping to come to Britain rather than claim asylum in France. And that is what angers them.
A lot of people wrongly believe that refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. They don't. They are not doing anything wrong by preferring Britain to France. Politicians and the right wing press repeatedly insist the opposite, but that does not make it true. If the UK does not want such a law, the logical conclusions are to withdraw from international humans right treaties or campaign internationally for them to be changed, not scapegoat the refugees who think we are a good place to re-make their lives.
To be clear, I’m not making this argument. The man on the street thinks if they were in danger in the U.K., and made it to Ireland, or Belgium etc, they would claim help at that point. They don’t understand why the refugees don’t do that, and they don’t care or know the legal standpoint. To them it looks like it is blurring the lines of refugee and economic migrant.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Let's face it, they are being sent to Rwanda because they are generally further from the UK than their starting point. As a cynical answer to stopping economic migration in its tracks, it's very canny.
If you are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, west Africa, north Africa, are you going to want to give a snakehead ten grand to risk your life in a small boat, for a ticket to Rwanda? Or stay in France instead. Or any of the other dozen countries you have gone through to get to Calais. It will end the camps in Calais, For which I guess the French will delighted.
How badly do you think this policy will play in, say, Kent? Spoiler: it will be very popular. Scotland? Maybe not so much.
If it successfully deters people from making the crossing, then it will be a success.
However...
I suspect the draw of the UK (where it is easy to find work as an undocumented migrant), and the fact that the capacity of the Rwandan scheme is a tiny fraction of the number of asylum seekers reaching the UK, means that its effect will likely be limited.
As @Malmesbury and I have argued, by far the best thing we can do is to reduce the demand pull, by incentivizing people to report on those who hire people in the UK illegally.
I agree, but the two in combination may well have been more effective still.
It does need to be properly funded, mind.
If it's just a few hundred a year, then it will deter virtually no one.
The policy is a success nonetheless.
a) It has deflected attention from Partygate.
b) It has enthused a particular kind of Conservative voter and Conservative MPs.
The fact that it is expensive, unwieldy, is morally questionable, possibly pushes the envelope of international treaties, and deters no one, matters not a jot.
HYUFD made the point yesterday that BJ's immediate focus is on his core vote and his MPs. Once he has ridden out the present danger he can work on slightly less shitty, sunlit uplands policies for the rest of us in 2023-4.
Free stuff always goes down well.
If he can jettison Sunak for someone more pliable that doesn't demand taxation to payback the free stuff, it's a win, win for the voters.
And remember Johnson lives in a world where he can have his cake and eat it, so why shouldn't we?
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
It is the case that people sent to Rwanda would have no right of return even if they were found to be legitimate refugees. See Paras 9-10 in Part 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (esp 10.1).
Can’t say I agree with that. I’m now in the anti camp rather than the don’t know camp.
Surely there is a way to help genuine asylum seekers, and sift out economic migrants, without resorting to such a policy.
We seem to have a situation where Refugee charities/groups/lawyers and many politicians on the left regard all migrants as genuine and demand an open door and the reverse is true of those on the other side of the debate.
We cannot punish the genuinely needy. It’s barbaric.
The greatest problem is that the man on the street cannot understand how someone is not safe in France. You can make any number of arguments about how many people different countries take, but at heart, people see migrants shopping to come to Britain rather than claim asylum in France. And that is what angers them.
A lot of people wrongly believe that refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. They don't. They are not doing anything wrong by preferring Britain to France. Politicians and the right wing press repeatedly insist the opposite, but that does not make it true. If the UK does not want such a law, the logical conclusions are to withdraw from international humans right treaties or campaign internationally for them to be changed, not scapegoat the refugees who think we are a good place to re-make their lives.
To be clear, I’m not making this argument. The man on the street thinks if they were in danger in the U.K., and made it to Ireland, or Belgium etc, they would claim help at that point. They don’t understand why the refugees don’t do that, and they don’t care or know the legal standpoint. To them it looks like it is blurring the lines of refugee and economic migrant.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Nice to see staunch offshore patriot James Dyson still doing business in Russia.
That sucks.
Brexiteers suck. Time to call a spade a spade
More than half the nation then, in 2016.
Yep. Shocking isn't it. Fortunately in real life I don't think I know any. They live in different habitats.
Don’t you live in France? Hardly surprising then! However this is a common thing. I work at a Uni, and many of my colleagues profess not to know anyone who voted leave, because all their friends are university educated academics. Real life is just as split as social media.
Before people were risking death and the possibility of being sent home. Now they are risking death and the possibility of being sent to Rwanda. If you are already risking death, Rwanda isnt going to make a difference.
This just underlines the core point. This is a dog whistle for those at home in their armchairs.
I suspect the other part of the story, the RN taking over will have more impact.
The Hate Mail is already attacking the Navy for using the wrong type of ships. Erm, the Navy are not remotely equipped for this operation. Just ask them. They'll tell you. But the Bully Patel doesn't care as it can fail as far as she cares as long as she can find someone to blame that isn't her.
Royal Marines are, I drove past Lympstone yesterday and they have a socking great 30 man RIB parked outside the gates, just the job and cheap as chips.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
It's a pattern of behaviour, not an honest mistake.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
It is the case that people sent to Rwanda would have no right of return even if they were found to be legitimate refugees. See Paras 9-10 in Part 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (esp 10.1).
Can’t say I agree with that. I’m now in the anti camp rather than the don’t know camp.
Surely there is a way to help genuine asylum seekers, and sift out economic migrants, without resorting to such a policy.
We seem to have a situation where Refugee charities/groups/lawyers and many politicians on the left regard all migrants as genuine and demand an open door and the reverse is true of those on the other side of the debate.
We cannot punish the genuinely needy. It’s barbaric.
Isn't the point that those who have made it to the English channel are no longer asylum seekers?
Why would that be the case? Unless you are perpetuating the myth they have to claim asylum in the first safe country they come to? I don't believe you are stupid, and I know that PBers aren't stupid. You aren't a Tory minister telling lies to morons who applaud being lied to. So why bother?
Oh Rob is posting rubbish again.
You can claim asylum in any country. You don’t become illegal until your application is declined. Until then that’s the law.
You cannot by definition immigrate legally to claim an asylum.
I wasn't claiming they were illegal, I was commenting on the phrase "genuine asylum seeker". Those currently in France are just the ones that can afford to pay someone to get out. Wouldn't it be better to help those left behind, rather than those that are already in France?
I don’t see that this Govt is doing anything to better help those left behind.
Indeed, allowing British embassies overseas to accept applications for asylum in UK would be a logical part of a fair asylum policy. This would allow legal entry, and encourage applicants to make progress in applications and appeals rather than string them out.
I have actually been meaning to ask about this. Is that not actually a path to request asylum? Absurd if so.
No, since 2011 the UK governments explicit policy is not to do so.
"As a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UK fully considers all asylum applications lodged in the UK. However, the UK’s international obligations under the Convention do not extend to the consideration of asylum applications lodged abroad and there is no provision in our Immigration Rules for someone abroad to be given permission to travel to the UK to seek asylum.
The policy guidance on the discretionary referral to the UK Border Agency of applications for asylum by individuals in a third country who have not been recognised as refugees by another country or by the UNHCR under its mandate, has been withdrawn. No applications will be considered by a UK visa-issuing post or by the UK Border Agency pending a review of the policy and guidance.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
The Rwandan policy is obviously absurd and about as close to people trafficking as a western government has got but the problem it claims (falsely) to fix remains. The statistics down thread shows that the vast majority of boat people qualify for asylum. They do so because they come from utter shit holes of which, sadly, there are all too many on the planet.
How can you possibly say to a Syrian, an Iraqi, a Yemini, someone from the Sudan or an Uyghur from China that it is safe to go home? The few that fail are almost certainly those who do not persist with a process that makes Kafka look like top quality administration.
The reality is that our immigration procedure, built around UN conventions, is not fit for purpose in a world that is far more mobile than ever before. There are hundreds of millions around the world who qualify under it for asylum in the UK. We try to reduce the flow by making it very difficult to get here legally (as if that matters at all for asylum) dragging out the process for years in the simplest cases so that people go away and making their lives an utter misery whilst they are in limbo, not able to work, open a bank account, get a private rental, the whole hostile environment.
Personally, I think we need to have a grown up conversation about this. We should, as a country, be able to choose who we want to help, whether it is Hong Kong Chinese or Ukrainians. We can be mercantilist about the rest, choosing the skilled or young as we see fit. The pretense that we take all comers should be abandoned. We simply can't.
I think you are correct about this policy being ineffective and that procedures don't work and our response cruel.
I cant quite get to a position of an entirely mercantilist approach, but it does seem the case that if you believe in borders at all, there is problem given there will always been loads more people, even genuine seekers, than places wanting to accept them.
I am not saying entirely mercantilist. We can still show compassion or moral obligations like Afghan translators, people who have helped us, people whose terrible plight can pull our heart strings but the key is that it is our choice and no longer a right.
What happens if every country in the world does that?
Nice to see staunch offshore patriot James Dyson still doing business in Russia.
That sucks.
Brexiteers suck. Time to call a spade a spade
More than half the nation then, in 2016.
Yep. Shocking isn't it. Fortunately in real life I don't think I know any. They live in different habitats.
Don’t you live in France? Hardly surprising then! However this is a common thing. I work at a Uni, and many of my colleagues profess not to know anyone who voted leave, because all their friends are university educated academics. Real life is just as split as social media.
I saw this earlier, a quote from John Peel:
In 1967 John Peel was puzzled by the lack of success of the first Country Joe album: ‘I said to the record company, “Why isn’t this in the charts? Everybody I know has a copy.” But what I didn’t realize was that it was the other way around: I knew everybody who’d got a copy.’
Nice to see staunch offshore patriot James Dyson still doing business in Russia.
That sucks.
Brexiteers suck. Time to call a spade a spade
More than half the nation then, in 2016.
no, not true.
Really? If you don’t vote, tough shit. From a statistics point of view the actual data was a pretty big sample of the whole, so I think it’s a justified statement.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
Before people were risking death and the possibility of being sent home. Now they are risking death and the possibility of being sent to Rwanda. If you are already risking death, Rwanda isnt going to make a difference.
This just underlines the core point. This is a dog whistle for those at home in their armchairs.
I suspect the other part of the story, the RN taking over will have more impact.
The Hate Mail is already attacking the Navy for using the wrong type of ships. Erm, the Navy are not remotely equipped for this operation. Just ask them. They'll tell you. But the Bully Patel doesn't care as it can fail as far as she cares as long as she can find someone to blame that isn't her.
Royal Marines are, I drove past Lympstone yesterday and they have a socking great 30 man RIB parked outside the gates, just the job and cheap as chips.
And yet the Commandos get ignored and "Send In The Navy" is intoned. Then again, I have to ask just how many RIBs and just how many commandos we can muster for 24/7 patrol of the straights of Dover.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
I dont think you are correct on the policy. Transportation to Rwanda ends any UK asylum application.
An interesting tweet about a repair to the railway line to allow trains to run back to Chernihiv. It is easy to forget that as well as troops and militia, there are millions of people working in Ukraine just to keep the basic infrastructure of life going, from power to water, from food distribution to medical work.
Yes, so much infrastructure was taken out by both sides, especially around Kiev and its approaches, in the early days of the war. We need to work out how to help Ukraine rebuild bridges, roads and railways, in areas now outside the Eastern war zone. This is absolutely vital to getting their economy back up and running quickly.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
No-one sent to Rwanda will be able to come to the UK.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
It's a pattern of behaviour, not an honest mistake.
No I was watching Gogglebox last night and Giles and Mary could see that the cake offence was an honest mistake, maybe the next three are also honest mistakes too. That would make it a pattern of honest mistakes.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
It’s also reasonable. Imagine if after the first event, it had been discovered and fines issued. The subsequent events would be less likely to have happened.
I've played the French nicely so far - in and out of Le Pen at 10 and 5 and rolled the profit onto Macron at 1.2. The Header is good and convinces me to throw another shape before the music stops - lay that Manu back at what I agree with Q is a too short 1.1.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
There was a very good movie recently about asylum seekers dispersed to a remote village in Scotland, well worth a watch, with both comedy and tragedy.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
And after they have had their status confirmed? Surely they become eligible at that point? Now I believe almost all economic migrants taking this route want to work and build a better life. We really need to look at how best to accommodate that. And frankly accommodate is the key word. We don’t have enough housing as it is, hence house prices. It’s also true that no country could accept all who want to come.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
That sounds VERY 'Bartholomew Roberts'. It's uncanny.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
The Labour plan was to encourage those from Africa to use that method to apply for asylum not to ship them out there and other avenues for claiming asylum would still be open to those who arrived in Britain . This is totally different from the no 10 plan . Nice try but it’s a false equivalence!
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
And the final sentence differentiates the two systems rather markedly. The rationale for introducing the Tunisian project (which also looked like it couldn't work) was steeped in compassion rather than xenophobia.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
I dont think you are correct on the policy. Transportation to Rwanda ends any UK asylum application.
To be fair, lots of people have that misunderstanding. Such as the people who wrote that Daily Mail poll.
It's the bit that makes this not seem like 5D Chess. Processing in Rwanda before allowing successful claimants into the UK would have wound up the left and united the right and had some sort of point and might actually have made a difference.
The Patel Plan is so far out there that the wedge has landed inside the Conservative coalition. Even politically, it only makes sense from deep within a bunker.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
In the debate around Blunkett's plan, there seemed to be a consensus that the objective was to reduce the number of people coming here. The German Social Democratic interior minister Otto Schily initially critisised the idea on the grounds that it wouldn't reduce the numbers but then supported it, saying: "The problems of Africa should be solved with the help of Europe in Africa, they cannot be solved in Europe."
I love polls like this, revealing how messy the British public's opinions are on things in contrast to the clean (and ideological) consistency of activists. 47% support vs 26% oppose, but 47% think it is bad value for money vs 39% who think good value. So at least some people think it is bad value for money but we should still do it.
I’m always impressed how educated and informed they are to have a view on something like “value for money”
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
And after they have had their status confirmed? Surely they become eligible at that point? Now I believe almost all economic migrants taking this route want to work and build a better life. We really need to look at how best to accommodate that. And frankly accommodate is the key word. We don’t have enough housing as it is, hence house prices. It’s also true that no country could accept all who want to come.
We really should have some sort of 'presence', information office or whatever in Calais.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
There was a very good movie recently about asylum seekers dispersed to a remote village in Scotland, well worth a watch, with both comedy and tragedy.
That looks really good! Of course the Scottish government has a modern humanitarian approach to refugees and would like more up here if they were allowed.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
You ain 't ever coming back to UK, however it is vapourware to get the Tory racists to stick with Bozo
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
I dont think you are correct on the policy. Transportation to Rwanda ends any UK asylum application.
Also, the purpose of this policy presumably is to deport genuine asylum seekers (the majority of all claims) before their claims can be assessed. Economic migrants can be deported now.
"Russian trucks are stuck in 80-kilometer queues to leave Poland, as a ban on their stay in the EU under the fifth package of sanctions against Russia comes into force at midnight on April 16. This was reported by the Financial Times."
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Let's face it, they are being sent to Rwanda because they are generally further from the UK than their starting point. As a cynical answer to stopping economic migration in its tracks, it's very canny.
If you are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, west Africa, north Africa, are you going to want to give a snakehead ten grand to risk your life in a small boat, for a ticket to Rwanda? Or stay in France instead. Or any of the other dozen countries you have gone through to get to Calais. It will end the camps in Calais, For which I guess the French will delighted.
How badly do you think this policy will play in, say, Kent? Spoiler: it will be very popular. Scotland? Maybe not so much.
Yes, I think we all inderstand this is not about anything other than shoring up the core Tory vote. Whether it actually works or not remains to be seen.
Doing something that the electorate likes and supports is a bad thing?
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
It is the case that people sent to Rwanda would have no right of return even if they were found to be legitimate refugees. See Paras 9-10 in Part 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (esp 10.1).
Can’t say I agree with that. I’m now in the anti camp rather than the don’t know camp.
Surely there is a way to help genuine asylum seekers, and sift out economic migrants, without resorting to such a policy.
We seem to have a situation where Refugee charities/groups/lawyers and many politicians on the left regard all migrants as genuine and demand an open door and the reverse is true of those on the other side of the debate.
We cannot punish the genuinely needy. It’s barbaric.
The greatest problem is that the man on the street cannot understand how someone is not safe in France. You can make any number of arguments about how many people different countries take, but at heart, people see migrants shopping to come to Britain rather than claim asylum in France. And that is what angers them.
A lot of people wrongly believe that refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. They don't. They are not doing anything wrong by preferring Britain to France. Politicians and the right wing press repeatedly insist the opposite, but that does not make it true. If the UK does not want such a law, the logical conclusions are to withdraw from international humans right treaties or campaign internationally for them to be changed, not scapegoat the refugees who think we are a good place to re-make their lives.
To be clear, I’m not making this argument. The man on the street thinks if they were in danger in the U.K., and made it to Ireland, or Belgium etc, they would claim help at that point. They don’t understand why the refugees don’t do that, and they don’t care or know the legal standpoint. To them it looks like it is blurring the lines of refugee and economic migrant.
I think that is right. A lot of irritation for this is put onto the French.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
And after they have had their status confirmed? Surely they become eligible at that point? Now I believe almost all economic migrants taking this route want to work and build a better life. We really need to look at how best to accommodate that. And frankly accommodate is the key word. We don’t have enough housing as it is, hence house prices. It’s also true that no country could accept all who want to come.
At that point they are no longer asylum seekers - they have legal right to live and work here having been granted asylum. People we choose to make legal are entirely different from "they're coming on these boats, sink them", are they not?
As for houses, feel free to try and sell or rent the houses they go into on Teesside. Or in Sunderland. Or most other places. The houses the housing associations cannot let to anyone are the ones allocated to asylum seekers. Who then face the appalling crime and ASB and general scumbagness that comes from being in Hendon's famous Murder Mile or Thornaby's delightful Mandale estate.
Only 14 per cent of Britons think he is telling the truth when he says he did not realise at the time that he was breaking the rules, compared with 76 per cent who think that he is not telling the truth.
Voters are overwhelmingly against Johnson on the issue. Sixty-eight per cent believe he intentionally misled parliament, including 48 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters and 32 per cent of present Conservative voters. Only 18 per cent of Britons believe he did not intentionally mislead.
Which 'he?' Sunak or Johnson?
PM
I am amazed.
Who are these 14% who think he's telling the truth?
I think he might be telling the truth about the birthday gathering. Pretty sure he's not telling the truth about the general picture though.
Doesn't matter. He should have said instantly 'Aw shucks, how kind of you, but this really isn't on - back to work, but let's have a piece sent round with our coffee/tea at elevenses'.
Wlat else?
He is a lying today who thinks he makes the rules not follows them. He cannot have thought that at the dozen or so parties he attended. Omnicom has lost the plot of he believes that, if bozo moved his lips the creature is sure to be lying.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
There was a very good movie recently about asylum seekers dispersed to a remote village in Scotland, well worth a watch, with both comedy and tragedy.
That looks really good! Of course the Scottish government has a modern humanitarian approach to refugees and would like more up here if they were allowed.
I saw it on MUBI.
Limbo is a very well done film, covering both the sadness of the asylum seekers and the humour of their situation. The Scottish villagers seem as bemused as the refugees with the culture clash.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
No-one sent to Rwanda will be able to come to the UK.
But we can see from the confusion that it is intended to make the average person think that is what is happening.
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
You can start to sympathise with the embarrassment of non Putin supporting Russians who have to watch impotently as appaling policies are carried out in their name. The worse part must be knowing that a large swathe of your own population are in sympathy with the policy as appears to be the case here
Our international reputation will be shot. Even Ukraine will feel dirty dealing with us.
No one cares about the detail of the policy. Just that we're planning deportations of immigrants to Rwanda.
It reads like something the Nazis were planning for the Jews in the 30's.
Odd then, that the article quoted upthread includes a French Muslim family moving to Birmingham, because they so disliked the way they were treated in your country of choice.
We are as bad as the French according to story of one Muslim family does not negate the facts.
I'm amused by reasonable people who seem to lose all reason when it comes to politics. I chat regularly to a Corynite who thinks the Ukraine is stuffed to the gills with Nazis because Putin said so. He knows his views are way out in left field, but he thinks others are perfectly entitled to their views. We can discuss politics and occasionally do. It never becomes heated
The reason I voted Leave in the end was because some Remainers showed what I can only call spite when confronted by democracy. Telling potential Leave voters they are thick. ignorant, scum, and they shouldn't be allowed to vote tends to have that effect.
I like the discussions on here, but even some perfectly reasonable posters tend to go barmy when Brexit comes up. Face to face, is different to writing anonymously, and I suspect both sides would temper their views then. But overall, this remains realtively civilsed.
Good thread. Emergency measures which may have been useful pre-vaccination (by postponing infections until vaccines available) haven't been shown to reduce Covid deaths once population immunity is v. high & those who continue to call for them need to provide the evidence
that they are:
i) effective ii) don't cause more health harm than benefit. iii) are cost-effective and the money wouldn't be better spent on another intervention.
Just like we have to for every health care intervention. There has been enough time now to have that evidence.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
In the debate around Blunkett's plan, there seemed to be a consensus that the objective was to reduce the number of people coming here. The German Social Democratic interior minister Otto Schily initially critisised the idea on the grounds that it wouldn't reduce the numbers but then supported it, saying: "The problems of Africa should be solved with the help of Europe in Africa, they cannot be solved in Europe."
There is a pan-European problem with refugees. From warzones in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen. From despotic regimes like Iran. They arrive in vast numbers utterly swamping border countries like Greece. So a pan-European solution is needed. Which is what Blunkett was trying to propose.
Ultimately the stats don't lie. We take in a small percentage of asylum seekers and refugees. So we don't have the bulk of the problem despite the wailing and gnashing of some "no more forrin" types like Sir Edward Leigh complaining that the vast empty flatlands of Lincolnshire are full of eastern Europeans.
Mr. Pioneers, my understanding, and I'm open to correction, of course, was that if an application for asylum was successful then residency rights went hand-in-hand with benefits eligibility.
If that's wrong, then fair enough, but people can make errors without malevolence necessarily being involved.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Legitimate asylum seekers will come to the UK once their claim succeeds. The point of the Rwanda processing centre is to reduce demand from economic migrants who pay people smugglers thousands of euros to chance a channel crossing and then disappear into the underground economy of the UK. Worse, for some women they end up in indentured servitude for sex gangs because their debt to the people smugglers is so high.
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
No-one sent to Rwanda will be able to come to the UK.
But we can see from the confusion that it is intended to make the average person think that is what is happening.
Blair: "In the end, the only way of dealing with this is stop the numbers coming in. Once people get in, unless you can discover what country they have come from and get that country to agree to take them back, then it is very difficult to get them back."
A confidential government plan to slash the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain by deporting most of them to UN "protection areas" in their regions of origin has been drawn up by Whitehall and is to be presented to the prime minister this week.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
Stupid, but there may be a more logical variant.
I recall with the advent of speed cameras it was (and maybe still is) questioned whether it is fair that on a single journey from, say, York to London on the A1 at 80mph someone is caught in five speed traps and receives sufficient totted-up penalty points to trigger suspension of license. This of course is not fair because at the juncture of offenses 2-5 the driver wasn't aware of the points that were totting up, i.e. if he knew that he had been caught at speed camera 1 he would have adapted his driving accordingly.
If I were writing a spread of the FPNs Johnson will be served with I'd have it at 3-4.
“Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
Correct me if I’m wrong: Kazakhstan MoD has basically said that instead of celebrating Soviet Russian May 9 version of the V-day, they are instead preparing for a now plausible Russian “special operation” scenario on their territory“
I think we would struggle to support Kazakhstan in the same way from a logistical perspective given the lack of accessible borders.
That would look horrible from a PR perspective but would just reflect the reality on the ground. We’d need China to take the lead - and they would love the opportunity to embed their suzerainty over Kazakhstan
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Let's face it, they are being sent to Rwanda because they are generally further from the UK than their starting point. As a cynical answer to stopping economic migration in its tracks, it's very canny.
If you are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, west Africa, north Africa, are you going to want to give a snakehead ten grand to risk your life in a small boat, for a ticket to Rwanda? Or stay in France instead. Or any of the other dozen countries you have gone through to get to Calais. It will end the camps in Calais, For which I guess the French will delighted.
How badly do you think this policy will play in, say, Kent? Spoiler: it will be very popular. Scotland? Maybe not so much.
Yes, I think we all inderstand this is not about anything other than shoring up the core Tory vote. Whether it actually works or not remains to be seen.
Doing something that the electorate likes and supports is a bad thing?
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
How do you know the electorate likes and supports it?
A key point (I think) about economic migrants versus genuine asylum seekers is that economic migrants don't apply for asylum. They just disappear into the economy. This policy is only for those that claim asylum, most of whom have genuine claims. This policy does essentially nothing to tackle informal economic migration to the UK, or for that matter people smuggling. It is targeted firmly at genuine asylum seekers to prevent them making their justified claims.
On topic - yes, Le Pen has a ceiling. Her brand has both strong positives and strong negatives.
The proportion of switchers from Melenchon, while low enough to reduce the probability of a Le Pen victory to virtually zero, is of interest. It suggests that the distance from the hard left and hard right, in France, is not as great some would like them to be.
Then again, this is precisely the direction that Le Pen has been working towards - interventionist economics ("The Proper French Way").
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
I'm amused by reasonable people who seem to lose all reason when it comes to politics. I chat regularly to a Corynite who thinks the Ukraine is stuffed to the gills with Nazis because Putin said so. He knows his views are way out in left field, but he thinks others are perfectly entitled to their views. We can discuss politics and occasionally do. It never becomes heated
The reason I voted Leave in the end was because some Remainers showed what I can only call spite when confronted by democracy. Telling potential Leave voters they are thick. ignorant, scum, and they shouldn't be allowed to vote tends to have that effect.
I like the discussions on here, but even some perfectly reasonable posters tend to go barmy when Brexit comes up. Face to face, is different to writing anonymously, and I suspect both sides would temper their views then. But overall, this remains realtively civilsed.
As James O'Brien endlessly says, compassion for the conned. Whilst some people really are thick ignorant scum (in general, not just politics) there is a real problem in this country where manipulative politicians and their client media sing any old lie and people now accept the lie as truth. We can't even say they don't know its a lie - most now do but accept it because it winds up "the left", "the woke", "the liberals" etc etc.
I have no problem at all with people who reach different conclusions to me by a different read of the facts. Great - we all have opinions are we're entitled to them. I am less sympathetic to people whose opinions are based on entrenched lies or worse still are told to knowingly spread something they know is a lie to people they think won't know better.
You mentioned a Corbynite which demonstrates this is not a left vs right party political issue - the hard left are as bad as the hard right. Its just that the hard right happen to be in government at the moment, so more people read the lies in the Daily Mail than the lies in Socialist Appeal.
Interesting thought that had a Priti Patel's policy existed in the 60s she'd now either be living in Rwanda or have been butchered in the genocide there
It is always a mistake on this issue to divert onto Patel's heritage.
It's a distraction and gets rather uncomfortable when people essentially state, though you've not quite done so but others do, that she she hold certain opinions due to her race
Not her race but her history. It's why Jews were prominent in the anti apartheid movement. They understood what it meant and where it lead.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
In the debate around Blunkett's plan, there seemed to be a consensus that the objective was to reduce the number of people coming here. The German Social Democratic interior minister Otto Schily initially critisised the idea on the grounds that it wouldn't reduce the numbers but then supported it, saying: "The problems of Africa should be solved with the help of Europe in Africa, they cannot be solved in Europe."
Blunkett's plan was to process asylum seekers elsewhere and allow those whose applications were successful to come to the UK. The current plan is to transport people elsewhere with no opportunity to live in the UK, whatever their circumstances. That looks like quite a big difference to me.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
It is the case that people sent to Rwanda would have no right of return even if they were found to be legitimate refugees. See Paras 9-10 in Part 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (esp 10.1).
Can’t say I agree with that. I’m now in the anti camp rather than the don’t know camp.
Surely there is a way to help genuine asylum seekers, and sift out economic migrants, without resorting to such a policy.
We seem to have a situation where Refugee charities/groups/lawyers and many politicians on the left regard all migrants as genuine and demand an open door and the reverse is true of those on the other side of the debate.
We cannot punish the genuinely needy. It’s barbaric.
The best way to do it is to proactively select asylum seekers from refugee camps.
The vast bulk of real refugees don’t have the energy and funds to travel thousands of miles in search of a better life. They stop, often exhausted, as soon as they research a place of safety
I'm amused by reasonable people who seem to lose all reason when it comes to politics. I chat regularly to a Corynite who thinks the Ukraine is stuffed to the gills with Nazis because Putin said so. He knows his views are way out in left field, but he thinks others are perfectly entitled to their views. We can discuss politics and occasionally do. It never becomes heated
The reason I voted Leave in the end was because some Remainers showed what I can only call spite when confronted by democracy. Telling potential Leave voters they are thick. ignorant, scum, and they shouldn't be allowed to vote tends to have that effect.
I like the discussions on here, but even some perfectly reasonable posters tend to go barmy when Brexit comes up. Face to face, is different to writing anonymously, and I suspect both sides would temper their views then. But overall, this remains realtively civilsed.
I don't remember leavers being told they are scum etc. I feel they are just finding excuses for voting one way and then finding it's turned to crap.
The Rwandan policy is obviously absurd and about as close to people trafficking as a western government has got but the problem it claims (falsely) to fix remains. The statistics down thread shows that the vast majority of boat people qualify for asylum. They do so because they come from utter shit holes of which, sadly, there are all too many on the planet.
How can you possibly say to a Syrian, an Iraqi, a Yemini, someone from the Sudan or an Uyghur from China that it is safe to go home? The few that fail are almost certainly those who do not persist with a process that makes Kafka look like top quality administration.
The reality is that our immigration procedure, built around UN conventions, is not fit for purpose in a world that is far more mobile than ever before. There are hundreds of millions around the world who qualify under it for asylum in the UK. We try to reduce the flow by making it very difficult to get here legally (as if that matters at all for asylum) dragging out the process for years in the simplest cases so that people go away and making their lives an utter misery whilst they are in limbo, not able to work, open a bank account, get a private rental, the whole hostile environment.
Personally, I think we need to have a grown up conversation about this. We should, as a country, be able to choose who we want to help, whether it is Hong Kong Chinese or Ukrainians. We can be mercantilist about the rest, choosing the skilled or young as we see fit. The pretense that we take all comers should be abandoned. We simply can't.
I think you are correct about this policy being ineffective and that procedures don't work and our response cruel.
I cant quite get to a position of an entirely mercantilist approach, but it does seem the case that if you believe in borders at all, there is problem given there will always been loads more people, even genuine seekers, than places wanting to accept them.
I am not saying entirely mercantilist. We can still show compassion or moral obligations like Afghan translators, people who have helped us, people whose terrible plight can pull our heart strings but the key is that it is our choice and no longer a right.
The policy is far too expensive anyway. We should adopt the policy of the rest of Europe. They pay the Libyan ... militias to catch and store refugees for them. The Libyans even provide the accommodation for free. And provide a work scheme to keep the detainees occupied.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
A colleague of mine did that successfuly with 4 speeding tickets in a short period of time on the same road.
An interesting tweet about a repair to the railway line to allow trains to run back to Chernihiv. It is easy to forget that as well as troops and militia, there are millions of people working in Ukraine just to keep the basic infrastructure of life going, from power to water, from food distribution to medical work.
Yes, so much infrastructure was taken out by both sides, especially around Kiev and its approaches, in the early days of the war. We need to work out how to help Ukraine rebuild bridges, roads and railways, in areas now outside the Eastern war zone. This is absolutely vital to getting their economy back up and running quickly.
Another way would be to confiscate that 80km of Russian vehicles at the Poland border. Send them to Ukraine as war reparations, part 1. And their cargoes.
“Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
Correct me if I’m wrong: Kazakhstan MoD has basically said that instead of celebrating Soviet Russian May 9 version of the V-day, they are instead preparing for a now plausible Russian “special operation” scenario on their territory“
I think we would struggle to support Kazakhstan in the same way from a logistical perspective given the lack of accessible borders.
That would look horrible from a PR perspective but would just reflect the reality on the ground. We’d need China to take the lead - and they would love the opportunity to embed their suzerainty over Kazakhstan
Back to Ghengis Khan's days without the bloodshed? Except that he, of course, was Mongolian.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
In the debate around Blunkett's plan, there seemed to be a consensus that the objective was to reduce the number of people coming here. The German Social Democratic interior minister Otto Schily initially critisised the idea on the grounds that it wouldn't reduce the numbers but then supported it, saying: "The problems of Africa should be solved with the help of Europe in Africa, they cannot be solved in Europe."
Blunkett's plan was to process asylum seekers elsewhere and allow those whose applications were successful to come to the UK. The current plan is to transport people elsewhere with no opportunity to live in the UK, whatever their circumstances. That looks like quite a big difference to me.
The New Labour plan was very much intended to prevent people coming to the UK. They were talking about deporting people to camps in safe zones and keeping them there for at least six months until their home countries had 'stabilised'. The prospect of settlement in the UK was to be made as remote as possible.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
In the debate around Blunkett's plan, there seemed to be a consensus that the objective was to reduce the number of people coming here. The German Social Democratic interior minister Otto Schily initially critisised the idea on the grounds that it wouldn't reduce the numbers but then supported it, saying: "The problems of Africa should be solved with the help of Europe in Africa, they cannot be solved in Europe."
Blunkett's plan was to process asylum seekers elsewhere and allow those whose applications were successful to come to the UK. The current plan is to transport people elsewhere with no opportunity to live in the UK, whatever their circumstances. That looks like quite a big difference to me.
The New Labour plan was very much intended to prevent people coming to the UK. They were talking about deporting people to camps in safe zones and keeping them there for at least six months until their home countries had 'stabilised'. The prospect of settlement in the UK was to be made as remote as possible.
Mr. Pioneers, my understanding, and I'm open to correction, of course, was that if an application for asylum was successful then residency rights went hand-in-hand with benefits eligibility.
If that's wrong, then fair enough, but people can make errors without malevolence necessarily being involved.
You are correct! But after you successfully claim asylum and are granted residency, in no way are you an asylum seeker. People argue for controlled migration do they not? Having been through a lengthy process of assessment and granted the right to live and work here is that not us making a controlled choice about that person?
The Malevolence is the lie that asylum seekers get benefits. They get nothing. Why is this lie endlessly told? Well it helps whip up petty jingosim which helps a certain type of politician, but it goes deeper than that.
The economic migrants paying to slip across on boats who then disappear off into the night. Or even the ones who get caught and processed then abscond. They are not here for benefits. they are here to work. Illegally. For the same kind of people who want to promote jingistic hate against genuine asylum seekers as a smoke screen.
We could go after these scumbag employers. Who exploit people by paying low wages in cash and no tax. Taking jobs from us. Laughing at the system we all obey. But we don't. Its too hard. And besides which why attack your friends and patrons? So instead lets sing lying songs about the asylum seeker getting free golf lessons and a fortune in benefits.
On topic - yes, Le Pen has a ceiling. Her brand has both strong positives and strong negatives.
The proportion of switchers from Melenchon, while low enough to reduce the probability of a Le Pen victory to virtually zero, is of interest. It suggests that the distance from the hard left and hard right, in France, is not as great some would like them to be.
Then again, this is precisely the direction that Le Pen has been working towards - interventionist economics ("The Proper French Way").
I think this is where Le Pen fails at the debates. Macron is erudite, but Le Pen has the impossible task of explaining her contradictory policies.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
You 'shouldn't' consistently exceed the limit over a 200+ mile journey of course. If you stopped for coffee, then for petrol, then for a toilet break they're still the same journey.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
A colleague of mine did that successfuly with 4 speeding tickets in a short period of time on the same road.
Not sure it works for Partygate though.
Not sure it should work for your colleague either! Unless his defence was there is a bomb that will go off if my speed drops below 86 mph, officer....
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
And after they have had their status confirmed? Surely they become eligible at that point? Now I believe almost all economic migrants taking this route want to work and build a better life. We really need to look at how best to accommodate that. And frankly accommodate is the key word. We don’t have enough housing as it is, hence house prices. It’s also true that no country could accept all who want to come.
At that point they are no longer asylum seekers - they have legal right to live and work here having been granted asylum. People we choose to make legal are entirely different from "they're coming on these boats, sink them", are they not?
As for houses, feel free to try and sell or rent the houses they go into on Teesside. Or in Sunderland. Or most other places. The houses the housing associations cannot let to anyone are the ones allocated to asylum seekers. Who then face the appalling crime and ASB and general scumbagness that comes from being in Hendon's famous Murder Mile or Thornaby's delightful Mandale estate.
One of the problems in discussing this issue, seriously, is getting people to admit that economic migrant to refugee is a continuum, not a binary choice.
The number of people who are fleeing their homeland simply because The Bad guys re coming to arrest them, tonight, is quite low.
The numbers who are from a persecuted minority, and decide that rather than waiting for the next time The Admiral General has a brain fart and starts a pogrom, that they are leaving for the UK now. Because the girls can get into university there, and cousin Fred has a job there and....
Equally, from the economic end, a lot of "economic migrants" are coming from a shitty place where The Admiral General bas brain farts on a regular basis. Their reasons may be 80% economic, but even so...
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
No, it’s nothing like that as UK asylum claims will not be processed from Rwanda.
In the debate around Blunkett's plan, there seemed to be a consensus that the objective was to reduce the number of people coming here. The German Social Democratic interior minister Otto Schily initially critisised the idea on the grounds that it wouldn't reduce the numbers but then supported it, saying: "The problems of Africa should be solved with the help of Europe in Africa, they cannot be solved in Europe."
Blunkett's plan was to process asylum seekers elsewhere and allow those whose applications were successful to come to the UK. The current plan is to transport people elsewhere with no opportunity to live in the UK, whatever their circumstances. That looks like quite a big difference to me.
The New Labour plan was very much intended to prevent people coming to the UK. They were talking about deporting people to camps in safe zones and keeping them there for at least six months until their home countries had 'stabilised'. The prospect of settlement in the UK was to be made as remote as possible.
To prevent people coming *to Europe* not just the UK. Because despite the trickle who come to the UK refugees is a massive problem in Europe especially for the border countries like Greece and Poland who get literally inundated by them.
Mr. Pioneers, in addition to altering the benefits system as I previously outlined, going after illegal employers is something that should be emphasised.
The flaw with your approach on asylum seekers is the much publicised cases of people failing but still not being sent back (I have to admit, I have no idea how common these are), such as sex criminals who can't go home because it isn't safe there (either generally or for them in particular). A failure to build trust and competence in the state's ability to eject failed asylum seekers is a serious problem.
And that's before we consider whether we should rework the international approach to asylum seekers, as the rules were written up an age ago.
“Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
Correct me if I’m wrong: Kazakhstan MoD has basically said that instead of celebrating Soviet Russian May 9 version of the V-day, they are instead preparing for a now plausible Russian “special operation” scenario on their territory“
I think we would struggle to support Kazakhstan in the same way from a logistical perspective given the lack of accessible borders.
That would look horrible from a PR perspective but would just reflect the reality on the ground. We’d need China to take the lead - and they would love the opportunity to embed their suzerainty over Kazakhstan
Russia is already facing stalemate at least and catastrophic defeat at worst in Ukraine. Putin would have to be mad to open a further front in Kazakstan.
On topic - yes, Le Pen has a ceiling. Her brand has both strong positives and strong negatives.
The proportion of switchers from Melenchon, while low enough to reduce the probability of a Le Pen victory to virtually zero, is of interest. It suggests that the distance from the hard left and hard right, in France, is not as great some would like them to be.
Then again, this is precisely the direction that Le Pen has been working towards - interventionist economics ("The Proper French Way").
I think this is where Le Pen fails at the debates. Macron is erudite, but Le Pen has the impossible task of explaining her contradictory policies.
Having contradictory policies has never stopped politicians before. It will be about debating skill.
And Macron has plenty of contradictory policies - unless he is prepared to stand up and declare Full Fat Thatcherism, he will be defending economic liberalisation and The Proper French Way.
EDIT: If Macron backed 100% free market liberalisation, then I would consider that Le Pen has a chance at victory. So he won't.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
A colleague of mine did that successfuly with 4 speeding tickets in a short period of time on the same road.
Not sure it works for Partygate though.
The Two Ronnies. 'A man was charged with being drunk and disorderley at Beechers Brook during the Grand National. He asked for four other fences to be taken into consideration"
Benefits are better in France so refugees wanting to move to the UK are doing so for other reasons . Family connections and the English language are the main pull factors . This is why refugees there are not generally from old French colonies who because of similar reasons will want to stay in France .
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Refugees do not get benefits in the UK. None. Zero.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
What happens when they be unite leave to remain and no longer deemed refugees ?
“Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
Correct me if I’m wrong: Kazakhstan MoD has basically said that instead of celebrating Soviet Russian May 9 version of the V-day, they are instead preparing for a now plausible Russian “special operation” scenario on their territory“
That sounds ominous.
I said a while back that Kazakhstan should be congratulated in the long run for the stance they have taken on the war in Ukraine. I can imagine that Putin is really very, very angry with them. Given the cultural and economic ties between them and Russia, it cannot have been an easy decision.
Though the question is what troops Putin can field to perform yet another 'special operation', especially if he does not declare war on Ukraine.
This evil (*) Russian regime must be stopped now, because stopping it later will be even more costly.
(*) I know some people grasp their handbags at my using their term. Again I ask them what they'd prefer me to use.
It isn't "grasping handbags". It is merely an objection to the implication that certain persons are under the influence of mysterious outside malevolent forces. Thus downplaying Putin, and by extension, Russia, full agency in their moral choices. Evil doesn't exist. Horrendous choices do.
I disagree. I am using it in the form of "profoundly immoral and wicked."
Evil acts do exist. And I also disagree with "Horrendous choices do". A 'horrendous choice' might be whether I have my left leg chopped off or my right arm. They had a very easy choice: not to start the war. They chose to perform an evil act.
Call a spade a spade. Putin's, and the Russian regime's, actions are evil. And repeatedly so.
Sure. Their actions are. If you choose to use that term. I just don't like the blanket use of the term for people or societies. It is rooted in sin. And suggests there is no prospect of change, nor that they could have acted any other way. And. Although you can use it that way, it is still redolent of superstition. Why did Putin invade the Ukraine? Because he's evil. (Implication. It was inevitable). It doesn't get anyone very far in coming up with answers as to how it could have been prevented nor where we go from here.
The problem is “horrendous choices” suggests they are independent of each other.
“Evil” is describing the mindset of someone who repeatedly makes choices that others wouldn’t. Normally you could argue whether a psychopath is “mentally ill” or “evil” for example… but where it is the leader of a nation it’s a little harder
I agree with Pip. We focus too much on the result and not enough on vote shares when assessing the accuracy of polling.
Pollster says 51% Remain and 49% Leave = fail
Pollster says Labour get 50% in 1997 = success.
I seem to remember a newspaper in '97 having a a sweepstake spread on the likely result with the biggest option of about 20 to 30 was a Labour majority of 150 plus. It's weird that the polls overstated them and yet no-one saw the size of the majority coming.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
Stupid, but there may be a more logical variant.
I recall with the advent of speed cameras it was (and maybe still is) questioned whether it is fair that on a single journey from, say, York to London on the A1 at 80mph someone is caught in five speed traps and receives sufficient totted-up penalty points to trigger suspension of license. This of course is not fair because at the juncture of offenses 2-5 the driver wasn't aware of the points that were totting up, i.e. if he knew that he had been caught at speed camera 1 he would have adapted his driving accordingly.
If I were writing a spread of the FPNs Johnson will be served with I'd have it at 3-4.
You mean, like a burglar shouldn't be prosecuted for stealing from a house because no policeman came forward when he first broke into the window of the house and arrested him for breaking and entering and warned him not to steal any more? I can't see that that works.
Also: different police forces, different geographical areas.
Mr. Pioneers, in addition to altering the benefits system as I previously outlined, going after illegal employers is something that should be emphasised.
The flaw with your approach on asylum seekers is the much publicised cases of people failing but still not being sent back (I have to admit, I have no idea how common these are), such as sex criminals who can't go home because it isn't safe there (either generally or for them in particular). A failure to build trust and competence in the state's ability to eject failed asylum seekers is a serious problem.
And that's before we consider whether we should rework the international approach to asylum seekers, as the rules were written up an age ago.
Realistically, the Rwanda scheme could be useful for deportees whose countries won't accept them, or flights from the UK.
Whether Rwanda is willing to accept them is unclear.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Let's face it, they are being sent to Rwanda because they are generally further from the UK than their starting point. As a cynical answer to stopping economic migration in its tracks, it's very canny.
If you are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, west Africa, north Africa, are you going to want to give a snakehead ten grand to risk your life in a small boat, for a ticket to Rwanda? Or stay in France instead. Or any of the other dozen countries you have gone through to get to Calais. It will end the camps in Calais, For which I guess the French will delighted.
How badly do you think this policy will play in, say, Kent? Spoiler: it will be very popular. Scotland? Maybe not so much.
If it successfully deters people from making the crossing, then it will be a success.
However...
I suspect the draw of the UK (where it is easy to find work as an undocumented migrant), and the fact that the capacity of the Rwandan scheme is a tiny fraction of the number of asylum seekers reaching the UK, means that its effect will likely be limited.
As @Malmesbury and I have argued, by far the best thing we can do is to reduce the demand pull, by incentivizing people to report on those who hire people in the UK illegally.
I agree, but the two in combination may well have been more effective still.
It does need to be properly funded, mind.
If it's just a few hundred a year, then it will deter virtually no one.
The policy is a success nonetheless.
a) It has deflected attention from Partygate.
b) It has enthused a particular kind of Conservative voter and Conservative MPs.
The fact that it is expensive, unwieldy, is morally questionable, possibly pushes the envelope of international treaties, and deters no one, matters not a jot.
HYUFD made the point yesterday that BJ's immediate focus is on his core vote and his MPs. Once he has ridden out the present danger he can work on slightly less shitty, sunlit uplands policies for the rest of us in 2023-4.
HY et al seem to miss the basic point. "Can't remove Boris cos Ukraine".
Yes. We're supposedly standing up to freedom and truth and justice. Against a man who lies to his people using state-sanctioned propaganda and thinks the law doesn't apply to him....
And whose hero became PM at a time of high wartime crisis precisely because the Conservatives (more precisely, the wartime coalition, but Tory-dominated) didn't apply that argument.
“Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
Correct me if I’m wrong: Kazakhstan MoD has basically said that instead of celebrating Soviet Russian May 9 version of the V-day, they are instead preparing for a now plausible Russian “special operation” scenario on their territory“
I think we would struggle to support Kazakhstan in the same way from a logistical perspective given the lack of accessible borders.
That would look horrible from a PR perspective but would just reflect the reality on the ground. We’d need China to take the lead - and they would love the opportunity to embed their suzerainty over Kazakhstan
Russia is already facing stalemate at least and catastrophic defeat at worst in Ukraine. Putin would have to be mad to open a further front in Kazakstan.
And your assessment, as a physician, of the chance are.......?
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
You 'shouldn't' consistently exceed the limit over a 200+ mile journey of course. If you stopped for coffee, then for petrol, then for a toilet break they're still the same journey.
I once drove from my parents' house in North Yorkshire to South London and then home to Yeovil in one day picking up three distinct FPNs. My lawyer got two chucked out. I felt bullied. Equipment used on the operation: E92 335i with a 'single jingle' turbo conversion.
The big flaw with that poll is that it entirely misrepresents the policy. People are not being sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed, they are being sent to Rwanda, with no chance of return to the UK.
Yep.
Is this a deliberate mistake by Mail to engineer the poll? Or just journos not on top of their brief commissioning a shite poll?
Is it actually the case they have no chance at all of a return to the U.K. or is that someone complainining about a poll misrepresenting the policy just misrepresenting the policy.
I’m not really that up on it but the reactions, both pro and anti, seem to verge on the hysterical.
It is the case that people sent to Rwanda would have no right of return even if they were found to be legitimate refugees. See Paras 9-10 in Part 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (esp 10.1).
Can’t say I agree with that. I’m now in the anti camp rather than the don’t know camp.
Surely there is a way to help genuine asylum seekers, and sift out economic migrants, without resorting to such a policy.
We seem to have a situation where Refugee charities/groups/lawyers and many politicians on the left regard all migrants as genuine and demand an open door and the reverse is true of those on the other side of the debate.
We cannot punish the genuinely needy. It’s barbaric.
The greatest problem is that the man on the street cannot understand how someone is not safe in France. You can make any number of arguments about how many people different countries take, but at heart, people see migrants shopping to come to Britain rather than claim asylum in France. And that is what angers them.
A lot of people wrongly believe that refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. They don't. They are not doing anything wrong by preferring Britain to France. Politicians and the right wing press repeatedly insist the opposite, but that does not make it true. If the UK does not want such a law, the logical conclusions are to withdraw from international humans right treaties or campaign internationally for them to be changed, not scapegoat the refugees who think we are a good place to re-make their lives.
To be clear, I’m not making this argument. The man on the street thinks if they were in danger in the U.K., and made it to Ireland, or Belgium etc, they would claim help at that point. They don’t understand why the refugees don’t do that, and they don’t care or know the legal standpoint. To them it looks like it is blurring the lines of refugee and economic migrant.
Which in fact it is, crazy system where you can just choose to which country you want to go to. Can anyone do that, ie can I pick a country and just turn up, genuine question. If so it Really is a crazy system.
The No10 defence if more fines come: “If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
...but you do lose your licence on points accumulated!
Yes but if all four offences occurred on the same road (that just happened to have four sets of speed cameras along it) you would have a good argument for them to be treated as one continual offence.
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
You 'shouldn't' consistently exceed the limit over a 200+ mile journey of course. If you stopped for coffee, then for petrol, then for a toilet break they're still the same journey.
I once drove from my parents' house in North Yorkshire to South London and then home to Yeovil in one day picking up three distinct FPNs. My lawyer got two chucked out. I felt bullied. Equipment used on the operation: E92 335i with a 'single jingle' turbo conversion.
Was that a Special Operation against the speed laws?
Nice to see staunch offshore patriot James Dyson still doing business in Russia.
That sucks.
Brexiteers suck. Time to call a spade a spade
More than half the nation then, in 2016.
Yep. Shocking isn't it. Fortunately in real life I don't think I know any. They live in different habitats.
Don’t you live in France? Hardly surprising then! However this is a common thing. I work at a Uni, and many of my colleagues profess not to know anyone who voted leave, because all their friends are university educated academics. Real life is just as split as social media.
They did a poll among the advertising industry and from memory it was 96% Remain.
Comments
“If you’re caught speeding at 35mph four times, that doesn’t mean that you were speeding at 140mph. It doesn’t mean that you really endangered life because the cumulative effect of all your speeding in 30mph zones amounts to 140pmh, does it?”
There's a hilarious clip of an American talking about being happy with immigration if done legally, and then they're told its legal to claim asylum and their face does a double take and they say they hope that changes.
The Rwandan policy is something dreamt up by no 10 not to tackle the refugee problem but to start a fight with lawyers and the Lords and eventually use that as a vehicle to remove the UK from the ECHR .
The uninformed will of course cheer the government on as their rights are flushed down the toilet and they become sheep parroting the Daily Mail and the rest of the right wing press .
The Orbanisation of the UK will only stop once the criminal cabal and moral cesspit in no 10 are shown the door.
Yes. We're supposedly standing up to freedom and truth and justice. Against a man who lies to his people using state-sanctioned propaganda and thinks the law doesn't apply to him....
If he can jettison Sunak for someone more pliable that doesn't demand taxation to payback the free stuff, it's a win, win for the voters.
And remember Johnson lives in a world where he can have his cake and eat it, so why shouldn't we?
However this is a common thing. I work at a Uni, and many of my colleagues profess not to know anyone who voted leave, because all their friends are university educated academics.
Real life is just as split as social media.
"As a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UK fully considers all asylum applications lodged in the UK. However, the UK’s international obligations under the Convention do not extend to the consideration of asylum applications lodged abroad and there is no provision in our Immigration Rules for someone abroad to be given permission to travel to the UK to seek asylum.
The policy guidance on the discretionary referral to the UK Border Agency of applications for asylum by individuals in a third country who have not been recognised as refugees by another country or by the UNHCR under its mandate, has been withdrawn. No applications will be considered by a UK visa-issuing post or by the UK Border Agency pending a review of the policy and guidance.
20 September 2011"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/20/eu.immigration
A plan by the home secretary, David Blunkett, to establish processing camps outside of Europe to deal with asylum seekers has been revived after being taken up by the German and Italian governments.
Tunisia has been named by the German government as a possible site for the European Union camps, which will allow asylum seekers heading for Britain and the rest of Europe to apply for refugee status without having to pay people traffickers to smuggle them to London.
We really need to attack this myth. Being dumped into the housing association property that nobody sane will live in due to rampant crime, or months in a dump hotel nobody will stay in. With non-cash vouchers for food. Hardly the life of riley is it?
Have read several times on this thread this morning that benefits are a pull factor. When those people getting off the boats aren't entitled to any.
In 1967 John Peel was puzzled by the lack of success of the first Country Joe album:
‘I said to the record company, “Why isn’t this in the charts? Everybody I know has a copy.” But what I didn’t realize was that it was the other way around: I knew everybody who’d got a copy.’
This policy is pure New Labour/Blair and Blair would have been annoyed that someone got this policy before he did. It's tough on illegal immigrants and keeps the door open for legitimate asylum seekers.
https://youtu.be/3O--8AuuhgA
It’s also true that no country could accept all who want to come.
It's the bit that makes this not seem like 5D Chess. Processing in Rwanda before allowing successful claimants into the UK would have wound up the left and united the right and had some sort of point and might actually have made a difference.
The Patel Plan is so far out there that the wedge has landed inside the Conservative coalition. Even politically, it only makes sense from deep within a bunker.
"Russian trucks are stuck in 80-kilometer queues to leave Poland, as a ban on their stay in the EU under the fifth package of sanctions against Russia comes into force at midnight on April 16. This was reported by the Financial Times."
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/u4qgn7/russian_trucks_are_stuck_in_80kilometer_queues_to/
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
As for houses, feel free to try and sell or rent the houses they go into on Teesside. Or in Sunderland. Or most other places. The houses the housing associations cannot let to anyone are the ones allocated to asylum seekers. Who then face the appalling crime and ASB and general scumbagness that comes from being in Hendon's famous Murder Mile or Thornaby's delightful Mandale estate.
Limbo is a very well done film, covering both the sadness of the asylum seekers and the humour of their situation. The Scottish villagers seem as bemused as the refugees with the culture clash.
The reason I voted Leave in the end was because some Remainers showed what I can only call spite when confronted by democracy. Telling potential Leave voters they are thick. ignorant, scum, and they shouldn't be allowed to vote tends to have that effect.
I like the discussions on here, but even some perfectly reasonable posters tend to go barmy when Brexit comes up. Face to face, is different to writing anonymously, and I suspect both sides would temper their views then. But overall, this remains realtively civilsed.
that they are:
i) effective
ii) don't cause more health harm than benefit.
iii) are cost-effective and the money wouldn't be better spent on another intervention.
Just like we have to for every health care intervention.
There has been enough time now to have that evidence.
https://twitter.com/drraghibali/status/1515249461051674626
Ultimately the stats don't lie. We take in a small percentage of asylum seekers and refugees. So we don't have the bulk of the problem despite the wailing and gnashing of some "no more forrin" types like Sir Edward Leigh complaining that the vast empty flatlands of Lincolnshire are full of eastern Europeans.
If that's wrong, then fair enough, but people can make errors without malevolence necessarily being involved.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/feb/08/immigrationandpublicservices.immigration
Blair: "In the end, the only way of dealing with this is stop the numbers coming in. Once people get in, unless you can discover what country they have come from and get that country to agree to take them back, then it is very difficult to get them back."
Safe havens plan to slash asylum numbers
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/feb/05/asylum.immigrationasylumandrefugees
A confidential government plan to slash the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain by deporting most of them to UN "protection areas" in their regions of origin has been drawn up by Whitehall and is to be presented to the prime minister this week.
I recall with the advent of speed cameras it was (and maybe still is) questioned whether it is fair that on a single journey from, say, York to London on the A1 at 80mph someone is caught in five speed traps and receives sufficient totted-up penalty points to trigger suspension of license. This of course is not fair because at the juncture of offenses 2-5 the driver wasn't aware of the points that were totting up, i.e. if he knew that he had been caught at speed camera 1 he would have adapted his driving accordingly.
If I were writing a spread of the FPNs Johnson will be served with I'd have it at 3-4.
That would look horrible from a PR perspective but would just reflect the reality on the ground. We’d need China to take the lead - and they would love the opportunity to embed their suzerainty over Kazakhstan
https://twitter.com/Peter__Leonard/status/1514956458990915596?s=20&t=gxlpVfcxugwmtlQsoSAj9Q
The President of Tajikistan being photographed alongside his body double.
The proportion of switchers from Melenchon, while low enough to reduce the probability of a Le Pen victory to virtually zero, is of interest. It suggests that the distance from the hard left and hard right, in France, is not as great some would like them to be.
Then again, this is precisely the direction that Le Pen has been working towards - interventionist economics ("The Proper French Way").
As turbotubbs points out, being aware of the first offence would make you committing the subsequent ones less likely. (And if you did them despite knowing, then you deserve what you have coming)
I have no problem at all with people who reach different conclusions to me by a different read of the facts. Great - we all have opinions are we're entitled to them. I am less sympathetic to people whose opinions are based on entrenched lies or worse still are told to knowingly spread something they know is a lie to people they think won't know better.
You mentioned a Corbynite which demonstrates this is not a left vs right party political issue - the hard left are as bad as the hard right. Its just that the hard right happen to be in government at the moment, so more people read the lies in the Daily Mail than the lies in Socialist Appeal.
The vast bulk of real refugees don’t have the energy and funds to travel thousands of miles in search of a better life. They stop, often exhausted, as soon as they research a place of safety
Not sure it works for Partygate though.
The Malevolence is the lie that asylum seekers get benefits. They get nothing. Why is this lie endlessly told? Well it helps whip up petty jingosim which helps a certain type of politician, but it goes deeper than that.
The economic migrants paying to slip across on boats who then disappear off into the night. Or even the ones who get caught and processed then abscond. They are not here for benefits. they are here to work. Illegally. For the same kind of people who want to promote jingistic hate against genuine asylum seekers as a smoke screen.
We could go after these scumbag employers. Who exploit people by paying low wages in cash and no tax. Taking jobs from us. Laughing at the system we all obey. But we don't. Its too hard. And besides which why attack your friends and patrons? So instead lets sing lying songs about the asylum seeker getting free golf lessons and a fortune in benefits.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61126391
Butthurt by A Johnson? Sounds like the Russian government is buggered!
The number of people who are fleeing their homeland simply because The Bad guys re coming to arrest them, tonight, is quite low.
The numbers who are from a persecuted minority, and decide that rather than waiting for the next time The Admiral General has a brain fart and starts a pogrom, that they are leaving for the UK now. Because the girls can get into university there, and cousin Fred has a job there and....
Equally, from the economic end, a lot of "economic migrants" are coming from a shitty place where The Admiral General bas brain farts on a regular basis. Their reasons may be 80% economic, but even so...
The flaw with your approach on asylum seekers is the much publicised cases of people failing but still not being sent back (I have to admit, I have no idea how common these are), such as sex criminals who can't go home because it isn't safe there (either generally or for them in particular). A failure to build trust and competence in the state's ability to eject failed asylum seekers is a serious problem.
And that's before we consider whether we should rework the international approach to asylum seekers, as the rules were written up an age ago.
And Macron has plenty of contradictory policies - unless he is prepared to stand up and declare Full Fat Thatcherism, he will be defending economic liberalisation and The Proper French Way.
EDIT: If Macron backed 100% free market liberalisation, then I would consider that Le Pen has a chance at victory. So he won't.
“Evil” is describing the mindset of someone who repeatedly makes choices that others wouldn’t. Normally you could argue whether a psychopath is “mentally ill” or “evil” for example… but where it is the leader of a nation it’s a little harder
Pollster says 51% Remain and 49% Leave = fail
Pollster says Labour get 50% in 1997 = success.
I seem to remember a newspaper in '97 having a a sweepstake spread on the likely result with the biggest option of about 20 to 30 was a Labour majority of 150 plus. It's weird that the polls overstated them and yet no-one saw the size of the majority coming.
Also: different police forces, different geographical areas.
Whether Rwanda is willing to accept them is unclear.
(I don't live in France I have a home in France)