And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
My parents both help out at the local asylum reception centre in the midlands. This is where they go after the initial application and screening. Thankfully the conditions are somewhat better than Manston. Most there are from the usual locations: Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iran. Typical reasons for leaving the source country are local level persecution, beatings, death threats e.g. by local police or officials usually because the individual has unorthodox political views, religion or sexuality (there are quite a few gay men from orthodox Muslim countries) or have got on the wrong side of the local mafia which happens to run the police force.
One family are Iranians who escaped after the husband converted to Christianity and was first jailed then beaten. They have just been confirmed at the local church. Their application will probably be accepted. They went round to my parents' house for dinner a few weeks ago. Daughter appears to be a little child genius.
Residents are allowed to do unpaid work in the community and several of them do things like helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns, visiting nursing homes to learn English while keeping someone company. A number of others though seem to be either so bored and listless, or in such a deep depression, that they barely leave their accommodation, including some families.
From what I can tell it seems a large proportion, including the Iranian family I mentioned, arrived on small boats. Several had all their possessions stolen from them by the traffickers on the way.
People, essentially.
Don't call them that. They are INVADERS. Brutes the lot of them. Listen to what you posted. "helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns" - stealing OUR jobs that we don't want to do.
And they arrived illegally on a boat instead of not claiming asylum legally as there is no legal route. So an CRIMINALS surely it's only right that we warehouse them illegally in unsanitary conditions until we can deport them to be beaten to death.
Its what Churchill would have wanted.
White flight satire at its best
Immigration causes no problem to anyone EXCEPT THE POOR. Serve them right for being poor.
I mean, even if we accept that as true (which I don't) isn't that an issue with this political issue as a whole, not just illegal immigration? We know that many asylum seekers and refugees are banned from working whilst their applications are being considered, leaving them destitute. We know that it is easier to target poor people than rich people when doing crime, because the resources to protect oneself are more available for the rich. Immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees etc. are statistically less prone to criminal acts than other groups (mostly because they know their ability to stay in this country is at risk if they do act in a criminal way) and I'm sure you're not saying that some nationalities or ethnicities are just more prone to crime. So these are the outcomes of the political choices made that will not go away just by disappearing all immigrants. The poor will not be better off if we cannon every dinghy on the channel - some may feel better because they can identify someone else worse off than them, but it doesn't help them - if anything it diverts resources away from programmes which could uplift all poor people (including those claiming asylum or who are refugees)
1st November and our heating still isn't on. I reckon over the past month in this house, for central heating purposes, we've used less than 10% of the gas we used last year. Obviously we're still cooking and washing as much, and using a similar amount og electricity (though we're wfh marginally less), but still, if we're typical, gas consumption must be well down on last year. Helpedby a mild Autumn of course. Whether we can maintain this into December and January remains to be seen. But still. All helps, surely.
In a flat and not turned heating on yet but general room temperature still at 24 degrees unless I open the windows. Assume the flats around me must be roasting, nice of them to pay for my heating!
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
A couple of times I went to property fires in or above fast food takeaways, proper fires, smoke billowing out the windows, kebab grease on fire in extractor vents (nearly as poetic as assault ships on fire off the shoulder of orion🤣). On both occasions, I was in the first BA team through the door and up the stairs, to be met by at least 10 dazed and coughing illegal immigrants who were too scared to evacuate as they knew the police were outside. Had to literally punch, kick and drag them down the stairs to safety. Once outside, they all took off running in different directions. Turns out that by day they worked at a couple of local car washes and at night delivered takeaways for various bosses and slept in shifts on mattresses in derelict flats above the shops that weren't legally habitable (no seperation from the cooking area, no fire alarms or suppression, amongst many other issues). So in all, not really good or bad for me (although one of the shops was my main source of food on a night out before I turned hippy!) Bad for the poor immigrants, no more than slaves really.
Thanks. I think it was always eg @isam who spoke (whether of experience or anecdote) of immigrants living 10 to a room and hence able to undercut local workers in terms of wages, etc.
I think the main issue as you allude to is that if they are illegal they are hardly going to petition the authorities because they are not receiving the minimum wage.
Which of course means the source of the problem lies elsewhere.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
The issue is the Tories have had 12 years to sort this out and during that time it has only got worse.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
This is the most stupid comment I've ever read on PB.
An acquaintance who went to live in America in 1990-odd was astonished that the richest country in the world could not reliably distribute electricity, where blackouts and brownouts were almost weekly occurrences. Did we import the name? iirc Britain in the 1970s had power cuts; blackouts were a wartime tactic to confuse the Luftwaffe.
ETA power cuts and WFH will be an uncertain combination. It would be ironic if the lights stay off because National Grid staff can't turn on their PCs to restore power to the rest of us.
I remember very well the blackouts of the early 70s. 4hr blackouts at various parts of the daytime. Fridays were always 10am til 2pm , then 6pm till 10pm in our area, and other weekdays were of a reverse pattern. I also remember schools being off for 6weeks in January/February due to lack of coal etc. I think it was either 71 or 72.
I also remember streetlights being on at odd times of the day/night due to their timers being upset by the power cuts.
Candles throwing weird shadows in the evenings, house fire numbers rising...
I remember them being a fairly frequent occurrence in rural Gloucestershire in the late 1980s as well.
I've no idea why they were so common. At least twice it was due to major faults in the local grid, until it was upgraded. And bad weather could also be a factor as winds would bring down the power lines.
But I think sometimes because of the reliance on coal and nuclear, which are very inflexible, the power suppliers simply couldn't balance demand properly and would cut power to smaller areas in the hope nobody important would notice what had happened.
Winds bringing down powerlines was the most common for rural wilts in the 80's. One memorable weekend saw the power off for about 72 hours. I distinctly recall writing an essay in the kitchen by candlelight.
Not long after the village had a second power feed connected and the power cuts stopped (mostly).
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
Citation please.
Rubbish of course, everyone knows that furth of Gretna is a hotbed of anti English racism, with possible pockets in Wales as well.
Aston Martin and Lotus aren't mass market car makes, they need bigger carmakers.
The new Lotus Eletre SUV is going to be built in Wuhan (JUST LIKE SOMETHING ELSE THAT WAS MANUFACTURED THERE!) so they aren't going to be shipping battery packs to China for that.
AM have no definite BEV model on their roadmap and their hybid, the fucking awful Valhalla, uses a Merc powertrain.
I honestly think they've just chucked out the names of two semi-prestigous UK manufacturers to catch the eye.
I've not yet understood what their value proposition is. Why would anyone loop them into their supply chain? Seems high risk for no obvious benefit.
The UK government will probably pay Nissan to use them. That seems to be the obvious play given their location.
They are being very cagey about where this 30m quid suddenly appeared from this week.
This is going to be one of those “oh look, we paid £10,000,000 per job to employ 1000 people in the NE for ten years instead of actually spending that money on anything substantive, because that takes work” stories in a few years isn’t it? Just like the abortive attempt to fund a wind turbine assembly company in the NE a few years ago.
Battery production offers massive returns to scale & the big players are already building huge plants. A teensy, late, relatively uncompetitive production facility in the NE which employs a bunch of locals in low skill assembly line production at vast government expense is not going to fix the NE’s economic problems, no matter how hard the government hopes it will.
Do these people have no political memory before 2016? David Blunkett regularly used similar rhetoric, talking about migrants 'swamping' the south coast and telling people coming to Britain from Kosovo and Afghanistan that they he had 'no sympathy' and they should 'go home'.
More than 1% of the male population of Albania has arrived in the UK.
" "What they have done is that they have created an Albanian-speaking satellite community in the United Kingdom, parallel to the one established in other neighbouring states, such as in the Scandinavian countries after the Kosovo crisis,” says to IrpiMedia Tony Saggers, former head of the anti-drug section of the National Crime Agency. From such satellite communities, Albanian criminal groups have then started recruiting new fellow citizens among the newly arrived in the UK who were experiencing social marginalisation and were struggling with economic resources being exploited in the agricultural, construction or industrial sectors. Cocaine, prostitution, and human trafficking are the illicit businesses that helped the Tirana bosses build their empires."
Pretty remarkable that after one week, opinion polls suggest Sunak has closed the gap between Labour & Tories on which party has best candidate for PM, while some polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour on economic competence 1/
Ofc Conservatives still trail Labour heavily in opinion polls. But one key question now is whether voters will have long enough memories to punish Tories for Truss’s disastrous reign at next election, or whether a period of stable Govt by Sunak allows public anger to subside 2/2
He'll probably close the gap in the polls as well over the next 6 months.
Narrow the gap quite likely (barring any more SBAFUs) close it would be surprising. I suspect he’ll get the Tories to low/mid thirties with Labour low/mid forties.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
No better example of someone fighting a strawman and failing to do anything about it than Braverman, Patel and May.
Aston Martin and Lotus aren't mass market car makes, they need bigger carmakers.
The new Lotus Eletre SUV is going to be built in Wuhan (JUST LIKE SOMETHING ELSE THAT WAS MANUFACTURED THERE!) so they aren't going to be shipping battery packs to China for that.
AM have no definite BEV model on their roadmap and their hybid, the fucking awful Valhalla, uses a Merc powertrain.
I honestly think they've just chucked out the names of two semi-prestigous UK manufacturers to catch the eye.
I've not yet understood what their value proposition is. Why would anyone loop them into their supply chain? Seems high risk for no obvious benefit.
I think they are angling for government to become a customer, relying on the sunk cost fallacy in a few years time.
I said several years ago that Brexit would stop us participating in the re-engineering of European car manufacturing, and got a lot of pushback. Not so much recently.
To be fair - Brexit simply distracted the government's attention. It's a longer term problem of failing to understand heavy industry.
The big problem with selling off assets to foreign owners is that they privilege domestic manufacturing sites when the industry changes. (Look where the Japs are designing and assembling their most sophisticated models).
Like the looming pensions mess - it's a serious Tory failure that escapes serious scrutiny. Still if the West Midlands voters know what they want, they deserve to get it good and hard, as Mencken put it.
Brexit certainly provided a distraction; but it also removed any incentive for the big players who are building new factories in Europe to put any of it here. (Without Brexit, we'd probably have the Tesla factory which is now in Germany.)
It's not impossible for a country the size of the UK to develop it's own industry - look at South Korea, which has three of the world's top 10 battery manufacturers - but we've never shown any such intention.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
The problem is that the government has a policy of making it near impossible to apply for safe and legal applications for asylum, presenting desperate people with the only option to come in in an illegal way. That means they can immediately be called "criminal" or "illegal" despite the fact that they should be allowed in to apply for asylum if we were actually following international law and our agreements to it. It's an absurd Catch-22 for people who, at the end of the day, are typically in desperate situations outside of their control.
Children as young as nine were prescribed puberty blockers at a Scottish gender identity clinic branded "Sturgeon's Tavistock," a report has revealed….
The report also showed a “disproportionately” high number of children undergoing gender treatment who were referred to endocrinologists at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow from 2011 to 2019 had autism. Nearly 40 per cent of children referred suffered from mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression.
Psychiatrists and campaigners have demanded that the Scottish Government immediately close down the clinic over its readiness to medicate "clearly vulnerable and troubled" children with "experimental" and "dangerous" drugs. They have accused Nicola Sturgeon's administration of pursuing an "ideologically-driven activist agenda" based on affirming children's feelings rather than on medical evidence.
Puberty blockers are not "experimental" or "dangerous" drugs - they have been used for decades for children with precocious puberty and the effects are pretty well understood. The issue now is that some people wish to eliminate treatment known to make trans children more comfortable.
I don't expect people to watch, but I find videos like this a great resource:
Pretty remarkable that after one week, opinion polls suggest Sunak has closed the gap between Labour & Tories on which party has best candidate for PM, while some polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour on economic competence 1/
Ofc Conservatives still trail Labour heavily in opinion polls. But one key question now is whether voters will have long enough memories to punish Tories for Truss’s disastrous reign at next election, or whether a period of stable Govt by Sunak allows public anger to subside 2/2
He'll probably close the gap in the polls as well over the next 6 months.
Narrow the gap quite likely (barring any more SBAFUs) close it would be surprising. I suspect he’ll get the Tories to low/mid thirties with Labour low/mid forties.
Tories mid-30's/Labour low 40's is very much still game on for the next election.
Bear in mind just how dire Labour's finances are. They will be fixed for an election by the Unions - but their pound of flesh will then become part of the election campaign itself.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Only once. I went to the external utility room at work and found someone squatting there. He'd forced the lock and had food, clothes and all his [not many] belongings it seems in there.
I both felt sorry for him, and was utterly horrified that he was using the very large and rather old [1980s] commercial gas boiler as an ashtray. No idea how long he'd been living there, but clearly had been smoking a lot and there was a lot of ash and cigarette butts stomped out on the boiler. The many large "NO SMOKING" and "DANGER GAS" signs had clearly been ignored. I hate to think what would have happened had that behaviour sparked a fire.
I tried to explain to him he couldn't be there and pointed to the signs, but it was hard to talk to him as he didn't speak English. But he started packing his bags straight away and was gone within the hour and I never saw him again.
Horrible situation for him, life in England was clearly not what he'd been expecting. I feel awful for him, but it was a very dangerous situation he was putting himself and possibly us in living and smoking in the utility room like that, and using a boiler as an ashtray.
Very interesting thanks did you get from him where he was from.
No, the language barrier meant there wasn't much of a conversation. Hence suspected rather than definite. I suspect from somewhere in Eastern Europe that migration wasn't yet legal from. May have also been an impoverished and homeless legal migrant.
On other news, England have a terrible run-rate considering this is a must-win game and so few wickets have fallen. Need to swing the bat more.
Pretty remarkable that after one week, opinion polls suggest Sunak has closed the gap between Labour & Tories on which party has best candidate for PM, while some polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour on economic competence 1/
Ofc Conservatives still trail Labour heavily in opinion polls. But one key question now is whether voters will have long enough memories to punish Tories for Truss’s disastrous reign at next election, or whether a period of stable Govt by Sunak allows public anger to subside 2/2
He'll probably close the gap in the polls as well over the next 6 months.
Narrow the gap quite likely (barring any more SBAFUs) close it would be surprising. I suspect he’ll get the Tories to low/mid thirties with Labour low/mid forties.
Tories mid-30's/Labour low 40's is very much still game on for the next election.
Bear in mind just how dire Labour's finances are. They will be fixed for an election by the Unions - but their pound of flesh will then become part of the election campaign itself.
Will the Tories carry on accepting hundreds of £k from those connected with Putin?
What Braverman is doing is so bloody dangerous. It's not just the awful rhetoric (tho it is awful) but substituting awful rhetoric for actually doing the hard work (co-operating with France, ensuring asylum decisions taken speedily etc). Rage is all she has
worst of all, I think she's deploying it now to cover up for personal mistakes. What would today's headlines be if not invasion, out of control, etc? Braverman on the ropes over allegedly ignoring official advice/security breaches/etc.
no doubt she'd rather we were arguing about her language (popular with some Tory voters) than her alleged conduct in office. Obv it's really important to challenge her language. But I'd guess it's the conduct on which she feels vulnerable.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
A couple of times I went to property fires in or above fast food takeaways, proper fires, smoke billowing out the windows, kebab grease on fire in extractor vents (nearly as poetic as assault ships on fire off the shoulder of orion🤣). On both occasions, I was in the first BA team through the door and up the stairs, to be met by at least 10 dazed and coughing illegal immigrants who were too scared to evacuate as they knew the police were outside. Had to literally punch, kick and drag them down the stairs to safety. Once outside, they all took off running in different directions. Turns out that by day they worked at a couple of local car washes and at night delivered takeaways for various bosses and slept in shifts on mattresses in derelict flats above the shops that weren't legally habitable (no seperation from the cooking area, no fire alarms or suppression, amongst many other issues). So in all, not really good or bad for me (although one of the shops was my main source of food on a night out before I turned hippy!) Bad for the poor immigrants, no more than slaves really.
Thanks. I think it was always eg @isam who spoke (whether of experience or anecdote) of immigrants living 10 to a room and hence able to undercut local workers in terms of wages, etc.
I think the main issue as you allude to is that if they are illegal they are hardly going to petition the authorities because they are not receiving the minimum wage.
Which of course means the source of the problem lies elsewhere.
Yup. We're part of the problem though. We want cheap services, but don't realise ( or prefer not to realise) that the poor sod cleaning our car in the freezing cold lives like those fellas above a kebab shop. I did a bit of work for a posh hotel a few years ago, with a mate who is a tree surgeon. The hotel owner was pleased with the work but moaned about the cost, as he told us he often paid a car wash gangmaster in the next village 40 quid to borrow 2 blokes for the day to do work around the grounds!
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
Change that to one of the least racist countries, and I'd completely agree with you. And most evidence says the same.
Pretty remarkable that after one week, opinion polls suggest Sunak has closed the gap between Labour & Tories on which party has best candidate for PM, while some polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour on economic competence 1/
Ofc Conservatives still trail Labour heavily in opinion polls. But one key question now is whether voters will have long enough memories to punish Tories for Truss’s disastrous reign at next election, or whether a period of stable Govt by Sunak allows public anger to subside 2/2
He'll probably close the gap in the polls as well over the next 6 months.
Narrow the gap quite likely (barring any more SBAFUs) close it would be surprising. I suspect he’ll get the Tories to low/mid thirties with Labour low/mid forties.
Tories mid-30's/Labour low 40's is very much still game on for the next election.
Bear in mind just how dire Labour's finances are. They will be fixed for an election by the Unions - but their pound of flesh will then become part of the election campaign itself.
Will the Tories carry on accepting hundreds of £k from those connected with Putin?
I think you'll find the money was from those very much opposed to Putin.
More than 1% of the male population of Albania has arrived in the UK.
I am unclear how accurate this statistic is. It's been claimed that more than 2% of the adult male population has arrived. One would have more faith in the claim if what was claimed was more consistent: what percentage, of what total? Some of the claims Patel has made about Albanians remain unproven: see https://fullfact.org/immigration/home-office-albania-small-boat-crossing-60-percent/
Proportions claiming asylum and proportions with successful asylum applications are much lower among Albanians than, say, Syrians, Iranians, Eritreans etc. We could be deporting most of these Albanian arrivals, yet the time taken to process claims is way up and deportations way down under Conservative governments. So, what are the solutions? (1) Invest in the current mechanisms so that they can act quicker (2) Vote out the Conservatives.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
Citation please.
Anecdotally: Mrs J has been in the UK for well over two decades (+ more as a child), and has never encountered overt racism in this country. She was spat at once in London, but she did not know if that was because she was foreign, a woman, or the guy just had problems.
Compare and contrast with our experience ten years ago. We drove through Germany to a wedding, and on our first night she suffered racist abuse from a bunch of men outside the motel.
But as she says: she fits in. She is obviously foreign born, but speaks English well with virtually no accent. She is also middle-class and has a well-paid job. Her experiences might be different otherwise.
Yet I had a Pakistani friend at school who did suffer racism, both inside and outside school. It was a bit of an eye-opener.
But generally, I don't think we are a deeply racist society. There is some racism, and some people always want to find a 'other' group to hate. But it is not particularly deeply-ingrained, and if anything is thankfully getting shallower.
Pretty remarkable that after one week, opinion polls suggest Sunak has closed the gap between Labour & Tories on which party has best candidate for PM, while some polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour on economic competence 1/
Ofc Conservatives still trail Labour heavily in opinion polls. But one key question now is whether voters will have long enough memories to punish Tories for Truss’s disastrous reign at next election, or whether a period of stable Govt by Sunak allows public anger to subside 2/2
He'll probably close the gap in the polls as well over the next 6 months.
Narrow the gap quite likely (barring any more SBAFUs) close it would be surprising. I suspect he’ll get the Tories to low/mid thirties with Labour low/mid forties.
Tories mid-30's/Labour low 40's is very much still game on for the next election.
Bear in mind just how dire Labour's finances are. They will be fixed for an election by the Unions - but their pound of flesh will then become part of the election campaign itself.
Will the Tories carry on accepting hundreds of £k from those connected with Putin?
I think you'll find the money was from those very much opposed to Putin.
I think you'll find as well that the Tories have been consistently opposed to Putin too, while those countries that have compromised their integrity most are those who have been giving money to Putin.
The issues we have with the immigration system and the channel crossings is again symptomatic of a political system that has told people what they want to hear for too long.
Both sides of the debate engage in fairytales on this. The right pretend that by talking tough they can solve the problem without putting in place the sustainable, properly funded security solutions and international agreements in place, and back this up with a robust but equitable asylum system. The left meanwhile start from the position of downplaying the fact there are real legitimate concerns about border security, and like to believe that everyone who seeks to enter the country illegally is of a certain character that reinforces their worldview.
To be fair to Labour, they at least talking more sense on this than Braverman and co, but this together with so many other issues does make me fear for the future. We need to move away from the fantasy politics and engage with the real world if we’re going to have success as a country, and there is no sign of any great shift on that front any time soon.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
My parents both help out at the local asylum reception centre in the midlands. This is where they go after the initial application and screening. Thankfully the conditions are somewhat better than Manston. Most there are from the usual locations: Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iran. Typical reasons for leaving the source country are local level persecution, beatings, death threats e.g. by local police or officials usually because the individual has unorthodox political views, religion or sexuality (there are quite a few gay men from orthodox Muslim countries) or have got on the wrong side of the local mafia which happens to run the police force.
One family are Iranians who escaped after the husband converted to Christianity and was first jailed then beaten. They have just been confirmed at the local church. Their application will probably be accepted. They went round to my parents' house for dinner a few weeks ago. Daughter appears to be a little child genius.
Residents are allowed to do unpaid work in the community and several of them do things like helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns, visiting nursing homes to learn English while keeping someone company. A number of others though seem to be either so bored and listless, or in such a deep depression, that they barely leave their accommodation, including some families.
From what I can tell it seems a large proportion, including the Iranian family I mentioned, arrived on small boats. Several had all their possessions stolen from them by the traffickers on the way.
People, essentially.
Don't call them that. They are INVADERS. Brutes the lot of them. Listen to what you posted. "helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns" - stealing OUR jobs that we don't want to do.
And they arrived illegally on a boat instead of not claiming asylum legally as there is no legal route. So an CRIMINALS surely it's only right that we warehouse them illegally in unsanitary conditions until we can deport them to be beaten to death.
Its what Churchill would have wanted.
White flight satire at its best
Immigration causes no problem to anyone EXCEPT THE POOR. Serve them right for being poor.
Ah, it's on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE that we are so upset.
I am on balance against the persecution of Jews, gays, trans and black people too, despite being neither j g t nor b. Or perhaps just pretending to be against it. That article is the nadir of the dm on both logical and comic grounds and I don't know why you keep linking to it.
Because it's so true.
There is some nebulous link to "the poor" which, being the kind, generous person you are, you are concerned for in some abstract way. But that's it. You are not really sure of the dynamics of schools, hospitals, housing, etc. Not really. You just feel it will be bad. Moreso than other immigration and yes absolutely, we should be doing something about illegal immigration - as @148grss notes upthread.
Plus well done for an early godwin.
The dynamics of the social housing market are not, in any relevant way, complicated. Are you better placed if you are competing for a house with 5 other people, or 10 other people? Whether it's a council flat in Hartlepool or a rather nice Georgian rectory with 10 acres and manege which you saw in Country Life?
what Godwin? Do you think the nazis were the only people who ever persecuted jews?
Thank god Britain has FPTP protecting it from governments where the ministers argue with each other and negotiate policy after the election is over. Instead we have such fine politicians as Sunak and Braverman.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
The Vestmannaeyjar - Vestmann islands off the south Iceland coast, just now
Historically famous for many things, rebellious British slaves, the new volcanic isle of Surtsey (born in 1973), but mainly because I was the first person to do Ecstasy in Iceland, on that very archipelago, in the late 1980s
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Only once. I went to the external utility room at work and found someone squatting there. He'd forced the lock and had food, clothes and all his [not many] belongings it seems in there.
I both felt sorry for him, and was utterly horrified that he was using the very large and rather old [1980s] commercial gas boiler as an ashtray. No idea how long he'd been living there, but clearly had been smoking a lot and there was a lot of ash and cigarette butts stomped out on the boiler. The many large "NO SMOKING" and "DANGER GAS" signs had clearly been ignored. I hate to think what would have happened had that behaviour sparked a fire.
I tried to explain to him he couldn't be there and pointed to the signs, but it was hard to talk to him as he didn't speak English. But he started packing his bags straight away and was gone within the hour and I never saw him again.
Horrible situation for him, life in England was clearly not what he'd been expecting. I feel awful for him, but it was a very dangerous situation he was putting himself and possibly us in living and smoking in the utility room like that, and using a boiler as an ashtray.
Very interesting thanks did you get from him where he was from.
No, the language barrier meant there wasn't much of a conversation. Hence suspected rather than definite. I suspect from somewhere in Eastern Europe that migration wasn't yet legal from. May have also been an impoverished and homeless legal migrant.
On other news, England have a terrible run-rate considering this is a must-win game and so few wickets have fallen. Need to swing the bat more.
My contribution: a fella from Eritrea cutting my hair. This was an established barber's in suburban south Manchester, owned, or at least managed, by Middle-Eastern looking chaps (why are so many barbers Turkish? Surely men have hair in other countries too?) He told me, in slightly broken English, how he had walked for a week, at nights, out of Eritrea into Sudan, before making his way across Africa to the North Coast over the course of several more weeks and crossing the Med in some unspecified but illicit way, then across Europe by traffickers (I would have thought he'd already done the difficult bit by then - it is of course entirely possible I misunderstood). I didn't glean how he came to be working as a barber in South Manchester. I used to get my hair cut there roughly monthly, but never saw him again, and six months later covid struck and I haven't been to a barbers' since. It's possible we simply failed to intersect, or he's moved on to other things, or been deported. His conversational tone was entirely factual - he didn't appear to be trying to spin a hard luck story. On the face of it, there was nothing about him individually which you'd want to keep out of the country, and every reason why you'd want to get him out of Eritrea. The problem is that there is an almost infinite number of such people about whom that is true (on top of the rather better resourced like the Albanians) and we can only accommodate a finite number.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
And yet a fair number of the countries in the list above have elected governments which are rather more robust than ours in their approach to non-European immigrants. It genuinely seems hard to credit than Austria appears in the list above the UK.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
It has a stated target of zero asylum seekers, and also evicts people living in Denmark to enforce compliance with its 'ghetto' law.
You seem to have your own personal Overton window that is very narrow but allows you to react with feigned incredulity to any other view.
Children as young as nine were prescribed puberty blockers at a Scottish gender identity clinic branded "Sturgeon's Tavistock," a report has revealed….
The report also showed a “disproportionately” high number of children undergoing gender treatment who were referred to endocrinologists at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow from 2011 to 2019 had autism. Nearly 40 per cent of children referred suffered from mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression.
Psychiatrists and campaigners have demanded that the Scottish Government immediately close down the clinic over its readiness to medicate "clearly vulnerable and troubled" children with "experimental" and "dangerous" drugs. They have accused Nicola Sturgeon's administration of pursuing an "ideologically-driven activist agenda" based on affirming children's feelings rather than on medical evidence.
Puberty blockers are not "experimental" or "dangerous" drugs - they have been used for decades for children with precocious puberty and the effects are pretty well understood. The issue now is that some people wish to eliminate treatment known to make trans children more comfortable.
I don't expect people to watch, but I find videos like this a great resource:
So the Cass interim review and new NHS England guidelines are wrong?
The Cass interim review says it is unwilling to provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers / hormone therapy and discusses the fact that these are politically controversial topics - essentially flagging that this added scrutiny is due to this political controversy. There is zero political controversy about using puberty blockers and hormones for cis children who have precocious puberty, and this practice is common. So why is the same medication which has the same effect a questionable practice for one group (children with gender dysphoria) versus another (children with precocious puberty)? Clearly the politics.
This language is not used for other things which people regularly use and still have negative side effects. The contraceptive pill, a form of hormone treatment, is not called "dangerous" despite it being more a risk than hormone treatment (https://bit.ly/3zt0Rkr). Again, this became an issue when it became a trans issue - (https://bit.ly/3sPedDG)
More than 1% of the male population of Albania has arrived in the UK.
I am unclear how accurate this statistic is. It's been claimed that more than 2% of the adult male population has arrived. One would have more faith in the claim if what was claimed was more consistent: what percentage, of what total? Some of the claims Patel has made about Albanians remain unproven: see https://fullfact.org/immigration/home-office-albania-small-boat-crossing-60-percent/
Proportions claiming asylum and proportions with successful asylum applications are much lower among Albanians than, say, Syrians, Iranians, Eritreans etc. We could be deporting most of these Albanian arrivals, yet the time taken to process claims is way up and deportations way down under Conservative governments. So, what are the solutions? (1) Invest in the current mechanisms so that they can act quicker (2) Vote out the Conservatives.
So why not take a sample of hair and DNA-test it? You would then at least know the ethnicity of those arriving with no papers.
I have huge sympathy for those who are genuinely escaping tyranny, oppression and abuse in their home countries because of ethnic, sexual or religious reasons. We should rightly do all we can to help them. I do however have considerable contempt for those who have broken the asylum system by gatecrashing our borders for their own selfish ends.
I would have no problem with a working assumption that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. Anything that helps the lot of the true asylum seeker should be considered.
1st November and our heating still isn't on. I reckon over the past month in this house, for central heating purposes, we've used less than 10% of the gas we used last year. Obviously we're still cooking and washing as much, and using a similar amount og electricity (though we're wfh marginally less), but still, if we're typical, gas consumption must be well down on last year. Helpedby a mild Autumn of course. Whether we can maintain this into December and January remains to be seen. But still. All helps, surely.
In a flat and not turned heating on yet but general room temperature still at 24 degrees unless I open the windows. Assume the flats around me must be roasting, nice of them to pay for my heating!
I live in a poorly-insulated detached bungalow. Without the heating on it's generally no warmer inside than outside. I'm entirely dependent on the beneficence of the weather. I'm hoping to get my roof replaced by a rather better one over the winter, which should help next winter.
Aston Martin and Lotus aren't mass market car makes, they need bigger carmakers.
The new Lotus Eletre SUV is going to be built in Wuhan (JUST LIKE SOMETHING ELSE THAT WAS MANUFACTURED THERE!) so they aren't going to be shipping battery packs to China for that.
AM have no definite BEV model on their roadmap and their hybid, the fucking awful Valhalla, uses a Merc powertrain.
I honestly think they've just chucked out the names of two semi-prestigous UK manufacturers to catch the eye.
Manufacturers really need to be rethinking their ‘offshoring’ strategy with regards to China. Unless there is a change in the trajectory of the current regime it likely will end in tears.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
My parents both help out at the local asylum reception centre in the midlands. This is where they go after the initial application and screening. Thankfully the conditions are somewhat better than Manston. Most there are from the usual locations: Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iran. Typical reasons for leaving the source country are local level persecution, beatings, death threats e.g. by local police or officials usually because the individual has unorthodox political views, religion or sexuality (there are quite a few gay men from orthodox Muslim countries) or have got on the wrong side of the local mafia which happens to run the police force.
One family are Iranians who escaped after the husband converted to Christianity and was first jailed then beaten. They have just been confirmed at the local church. Their application will probably be accepted. They went round to my parents' house for dinner a few weeks ago. Daughter appears to be a little child genius.
Residents are allowed to do unpaid work in the community and several of them do things like helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns, visiting nursing homes to learn English while keeping someone company. A number of others though seem to be either so bored and listless, or in such a deep depression, that they barely leave their accommodation, including some families.
From what I can tell it seems a large proportion, including the Iranian family I mentioned, arrived on small boats. Several had all their possessions stolen from them by the traffickers on the way.
People, essentially.
Don't call them that. They are INVADERS. Brutes the lot of them. Listen to what you posted. "helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns" - stealing OUR jobs that we don't want to do.
And they arrived illegally on a boat instead of not claiming asylum legally as there is no legal route. So an CRIMINALS surely it's only right that we warehouse them illegally in unsanitary conditions until we can deport them to be beaten to death.
Its what Churchill would have wanted.
White flight satire at its best
Immigration causes no problem to anyone EXCEPT THE POOR. Serve them right for being poor.
Ah, it's on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE that we are so upset.
I am on balance against the persecution of Jews, gays, trans and black people too, despite being neither j g t nor b. Or perhaps just pretending to be against it. That article is the nadir of the dm on both logical and comic grounds and I don't know why you keep linking to it.
Because it's so true.
There is some nebulous link to "the poor" which, being the kind, generous person you are, you are concerned for in some abstract way. But that's it. You are not really sure of the dynamics of schools, hospitals, housing, etc. Not really. You just feel it will be bad. Moreso than other immigration and yes absolutely, we should be doing something about illegal immigration - as @148grss notes upthread.
Plus well done for an early godwin.
The dynamics of the social housing market are not, in any relevant way, complicated. Are you better placed if you are competing for a house with 5 other people, or 10 other people? Whether it's a council flat in Hartlepool or a rather nice Georgian rectory with 10 acres and manege which you saw in Country Life?
what Godwin? Do you think the nazis were the only people who ever persecuted jews?
Illegal immigrants are not going to compete for social housing unless and until their asylum claim is approved, just saying.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
No, I'm not. Those international treaties worked in an era when there were as many people in Europe as subsaharan Africa (currently 1 European for 1.55 SSAs; due to reach 1:3 by 2050 and 1:6 by 2100), travel across borders was much more difficult, and you couldn't look on your smartphone to see how fantastic the life you were missing out on was. I'm entirely willing to support refugees in the closest country to the one they're fleeing, which as an added bonus means we can support far more of them - for the cost of bringing 20,000 Afghan refugees to the UK, we could have taken care of 325,000 in Pakistan. But the idea that being conscripted in Eritrea or converting to Christianity in Iran gives you a golden ticket to move to a first world country and never leave is simply unworkable - let alone the idea that you can get that golden ticket by the state you arrive in being unable to prove that you're not an Eritreian conscript or an Iranian Christian. The sooner we change that idea, the less cruelty we will inflict on people overall.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
And yet a fair number of the countries in the list above have elected governments which are rather more robust than ours in their approach to non-European immigrants. It genuinely seems hard to credit than Austria appears in the list above the UK.
Sweden, at number 4, now has a far right anti-immigrant party which regularly polls as one of the most popular in the country and which exercises power in the government
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Only once. I went to the external utility room at work and found someone squatting there. He'd forced the lock and had food, clothes and all his [not many] belongings it seems in there.
I both felt sorry for him, and was utterly horrified that he was using the very large and rather old [1980s] commercial gas boiler as an ashtray. No idea how long he'd been living there, but clearly had been smoking a lot and there was a lot of ash and cigarette butts stomped out on the boiler. The many large "NO SMOKING" and "DANGER GAS" signs had clearly been ignored. I hate to think what would have happened had that behaviour sparked a fire.
I tried to explain to him he couldn't be there and pointed to the signs, but it was hard to talk to him as he didn't speak English. But he started packing his bags straight away and was gone within the hour and I never saw him again.
Horrible situation for him, life in England was clearly not what he'd been expecting. I feel awful for him, but it was a very dangerous situation he was putting himself and possibly us in living and smoking in the utility room like that, and using a boiler as an ashtray.
Very interesting thanks did you get from him where he was from.
No, the language barrier meant there wasn't much of a conversation. Hence suspected rather than definite. I suspect from somewhere in Eastern Europe that migration wasn't yet legal from. May have also been an impoverished and homeless legal migrant.
On other news, England have a terrible run-rate considering this is a must-win game and so few wickets have fallen. Need to swing the bat more.
My contribution: a fella from Eritrea cutting my hair. This was an established barber's in suburban south Manchester, owned, or at least managed, by Middle-Eastern looking chaps (why are so many barbers Turkish? Surely men have hair in other countries too?) He told me, in slightly broken English, how he had walked for a week, at nights, out of Eritrea into Sudan, before making his way across Africa to the North Coast over the course of several more weeks and crossing the Med in some unspecified but illicit way, then across Europe by traffickers (I would have thought he'd already done the difficult bit by then - it is of course entirely possible I misunderstood). I didn't glean how he came to be working as a barber in South Manchester. I used to get my hair cut there roughly monthly, but never saw him again, and six months later covid struck and I haven't been to a barbers' since. It's possible we simply failed to intersect, or he's moved on to other things, or been deported. His conversational tone was entirely factual - he didn't appear to be trying to spin a hard luck story. On the face of it, there was nothing about him individually which you'd want to keep out of the country, and every reason why you'd want to get him out of Eritrea. The problem is that there is an almost infinite number of such people about whom that is true (on top of the rather better resourced like the Albanians) and we can only accommodate a finite number.
People who came to the UK seeking asylum make up 0.6% of the UK's total resident population (2019 figure).
0.6%.
That's about one in 167.
It doesn't feel to me like we're accommodating as many as we could.
One in 27 people in Poland, approx., are currently Ukrainian refugees. (Obviously, there are additional refugees from other places -- Russia, Belarus, Syria etc. -- in Poland as well.)
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
Citation please.
Anecdotally: Mrs J has been in the UK for well over two decades (+ more as a child), and has never encountered overt racism in this country. She was spat at once in London, but she did not know if that was because she was foreign, a woman, or the guy just had problems.
Compare and contrast with our experience ten years ago. We drove through Germany to a wedding, and on our first night she suffered racist abuse from a bunch of men outside the motel.
But as she says: she fits in. She is obviously foreign born, but speaks English well with virtually no accent. She is also middle-class and has a well-paid job. Her experiences might be different otherwise.
Yet I had a Pakistani friend at school who did suffer racism, both inside and outside school. It was a bit of an eye-opener.
But generally, I don't think we are a deeply racist society. There is some racism, and some people always want to find a 'other' group to hate. But it is not particularly deeply-ingrained, and if anything is thankfully getting shallower.
I agree. Yes there is racism about and some groups receive far more of it than others. But for me its less about race than it is "the other". Our fear and distrust of outsiders is still widespread, especially outside the cities. The "local shop for local people" parody is based on reality, and "you weren't born here you're not one of us" mentality pervades even if "the other" is from the next town / county and looks like the people who suffer parochial bigotry against them.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
My parents both help out at the local asylum reception centre in the midlands. This is where they go after the initial application and screening. Thankfully the conditions are somewhat better than Manston. Most there are from the usual locations: Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iran. Typical reasons for leaving the source country are local level persecution, beatings, death threats e.g. by local police or officials usually because the individual has unorthodox political views, religion or sexuality (there are quite a few gay men from orthodox Muslim countries) or have got on the wrong side of the local mafia which happens to run the police force.
One family are Iranians who escaped after the husband converted to Christianity and was first jailed then beaten. They have just been confirmed at the local church. Their application will probably be accepted. They went round to my parents' house for dinner a few weeks ago. Daughter appears to be a little child genius.
Residents are allowed to do unpaid work in the community and several of them do things like helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns, visiting nursing homes to learn English while keeping someone company. A number of others though seem to be either so bored and listless, or in such a deep depression, that they barely leave their accommodation, including some families.
From what I can tell it seems a large proportion, including the Iranian family I mentioned, arrived on small boats. Several had all their possessions stolen from them by the traffickers on the way.
People, essentially.
Don't call them that. They are INVADERS. Brutes the lot of them. Listen to what you posted. "helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns" - stealing OUR jobs that we don't want to do.
And they arrived illegally on a boat instead of not claiming asylum legally as there is no legal route. So an CRIMINALS surely it's only right that we warehouse them illegally in unsanitary conditions until we can deport them to be beaten to death.
Its what Churchill would have wanted.
White flight satire at its best
Immigration causes no problem to anyone EXCEPT THE POOR. Serve them right for being poor.
Ah, it's on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE that we are so upset.
I am on balance against the persecution of Jews, gays, trans and black people too, despite being neither j g t nor b. Or perhaps just pretending to be against it. That article is the nadir of the dm on both logical and comic grounds and I don't know why you keep linking to it.
Because it's so true.
There is some nebulous link to "the poor" which, being the kind, generous person you are, you are concerned for in some abstract way. But that's it. You are not really sure of the dynamics of schools, hospitals, housing, etc. Not really. You just feel it will be bad. Moreso than other immigration and yes absolutely, we should be doing something about illegal immigration - as @148grss notes upthread.
Plus well done for an early godwin.
The dynamics of the social housing market are not, in any relevant way, complicated. Are you better placed if you are competing for a house with 5 other people, or 10 other people? Whether it's a council flat in Hartlepool or a rather nice Georgian rectory with 10 acres and manege which you saw in Country Life?
what Godwin? Do you think the nazis were the only people who ever persecuted jews?
Illegal immigrants are not going to compete for social housing unless and until their asylum claim is approved, just saying.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
Denmark is rather more robust than us in its approach to immigration though.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
And yet a fair number of the countries in the list above have elected governments which are rather more robust than ours in their approach to non-European immigrants. It genuinely seems hard to credit than Austria appears in the list above the UK.
The methodology seems a little suspect, to be honest - it's essentially a large survey so may not account for people saying what they think they are expected to say; certainly it may not correlate with actions.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
The Social Democratic government in Denmark confiscates valuables from migrants in order to pay for their accommodation, etc. They force migrants to live in white areas to prevent ghettos from developing. They ran an advertising campaign telling immigrants that they weren't welcome in Denmark. This is the main centre-left party in Denmark.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
It has a stated target of zero asylum seekers, and also evicts people living in Denmark to enforce compliance with its 'ghetto' law.
You seem to have your own personal Overton window that is very narrow but allows you to react with feigned incredulity to any other view.
Its funny how "whatabout" this is. Denmark for all that you lot uphold it as the benchmark treats people far better than we do. And not just asylum seekers - their welfare system makes ours look like the third world.
Also unclear about your argument that it is ok to kick people in the head because look that other place is also doing it. Not that its even a direct comparison. "They're sending people to Rwanda" you all triumphantly proclaim! Yes, to process asylum claims. Unlike us, who aren't sending people there but when we do we won't process asylum claims.
For a "zero asylum" country they seem to have very clear policies and processes set out on their website about how to claim asylum and what treatment and support you will get...
More than 1% of the male population of Albania has arrived in the UK.
I am unclear how accurate this statistic is. It's been claimed that more than 2% of the adult male population has arrived. One would have more faith in the claim if what was claimed was more consistent: what percentage, of what total? Some of the claims Patel has made about Albanians remain unproven: see https://fullfact.org/immigration/home-office-albania-small-boat-crossing-60-percent/
Proportions claiming asylum and proportions with successful asylum applications are much lower among Albanians than, say, Syrians, Iranians, Eritreans etc. We could be deporting most of these Albanian arrivals, yet the time taken to process claims is way up and deportations way down under Conservative governments. So, what are the solutions? (1) Invest in the current mechanisms so that they can act quicker (2) Vote out the Conservatives.
So why not take a sample of hair and DNA-test it? You would then at least know the ethnicity of those arriving with no papers.
I have huge sympathy for those who are genuinely escaping tyranny, oppression and abuse in their home countries because of ethnic, sexual or religious reasons. We should rightly do all we can to help them. I do however have considerable contempt for those who have broken the asylum system by gatecrashing our borders for their own selfish ends.
I would have no problem with a working assumption that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. Anything that helps the lot of the true asylum seeker should be considered.
I think most people have sympathy for those genuinely escaping tyranny and abuse, but contempt for those "gatecrashing" our borders. So, let's quickly and efficiently work out who is who, rather than having long wait times and leaving people in appalling conditions, which also costs the taxpayer lots of money. Invest money to bring down the processing times, and invest money to speed up deportations. Processing times are up under the Tories; deportation rates are down under the Tories.
I don't think there's any fundamental problem with how the systems work for determining who is a genuinely an asylum seeker. It's just that the systems are underfunded compared to the workload. We don't need to re-write the rules. We could just apply the current rules more speedily.
I see a lot of problems with presuming that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. There can be many reasons why someone fleeing persecution may not have papers.
Children as young as nine were prescribed puberty blockers at a Scottish gender identity clinic branded "Sturgeon's Tavistock," a report has revealed….
The report also showed a “disproportionately” high number of children undergoing gender treatment who were referred to endocrinologists at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow from 2011 to 2019 had autism. Nearly 40 per cent of children referred suffered from mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression.
Psychiatrists and campaigners have demanded that the Scottish Government immediately close down the clinic over its readiness to medicate "clearly vulnerable and troubled" children with "experimental" and "dangerous" drugs. They have accused Nicola Sturgeon's administration of pursuing an "ideologically-driven activist agenda" based on affirming children's feelings rather than on medical evidence.
Puberty blockers are not "experimental" or "dangerous" drugs - they have been used for decades for children with precocious puberty and the effects are pretty well understood. The issue now is that some people wish to eliminate treatment known to make trans children more comfortable.
I don't expect people to watch, but I find videos like this a great resource:
So the Cass interim review and new NHS England guidelines are wrong?
The Cass interim review says it is unwilling to provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers / hormone therapy and discusses the fact that these are politically controversial topics - essentially flagging that this added scrutiny is due to this political controversy. There is zero political controversy about using puberty blockers and hormones for cis children who have precocious puberty, and this practice is common. So why is the same medication which has the same effect a questionable practice for one group (children with gender dysphoria) versus another (children with precocious puberty)? Clearly the politics.
This language is not used for other things which people regularly use and still have negative side effects. The contraceptive pill, a form of hormone treatment, is not called "dangerous" despite it being more a risk than hormone treatment (https://bit.ly/3zt0Rkr). Again, this became an issue when it became a trans issue - (https://bit.ly/3sPedDG)
You didn't really equate a physical condition with a psychological/mental condition and expect people not to notice, did you?
Children as young as nine were prescribed puberty blockers at a Scottish gender identity clinic branded "Sturgeon's Tavistock," a report has revealed….
The report also showed a “disproportionately” high number of children undergoing gender treatment who were referred to endocrinologists at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow from 2011 to 2019 had autism. Nearly 40 per cent of children referred suffered from mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression.
Psychiatrists and campaigners have demanded that the Scottish Government immediately close down the clinic over its readiness to medicate "clearly vulnerable and troubled" children with "experimental" and "dangerous" drugs. They have accused Nicola Sturgeon's administration of pursuing an "ideologically-driven activist agenda" based on affirming children's feelings rather than on medical evidence.
Puberty blockers are not "experimental" or "dangerous" drugs - they have been used for decades for children with precocious puberty and the effects are pretty well understood. The issue now is that some people wish to eliminate treatment known to make trans children more comfortable.
I don't expect people to watch, but I find videos like this a great resource:
So the Cass interim review and new NHS England guidelines are wrong?
There is zero political controversy about using puberty blockers and hormones for cis children who have precocious puberty, and this practice is common. So why is the same medication which has the same effect a questionable practice for one group (children with gender dysphoria) versus another (children with precocious puberty)? Clearly the politics.
The politics of the “affirmative care” model. Because it sure as heck isn’t evidence based medicine.
Children with precocious puberty come off puberty blockers and go through puberty.
Children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria overwhelmingly go on to cross sex hormones. But as the NHS England guidelines note most children presenting with gender dysphoria also have other conditions such as autism and depression - and for most it is a phase. Unless they’ve been medicalised by the affirmative care model.
Is it also politics in Finland, Sweden and France?
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
No, I'm not. Those international treaties worked in an era when there were as many people in Europe as subsaharan Africa (currently 1 European for 1.55 SSAs; due to reach 1:3 by 2050 and 1:6 by 2100), travel across borders was much more difficult, and you couldn't look on your smartphone to see how fantastic the life you were missing out on was. I'm entirely willing to support refugees in the closest country to the one they're fleeing, which as an added bonus means we can support far more of them - for the cost of bringing 20,000 Afghan refugees to the UK, we could have taken care of 325,000 in Pakistan. But the idea that being conscripted in Eritrea or converting to Christianity in Iran gives you a golden ticket to move to a first world country and never leave is simply unworkable - let alone the idea that you can get that golden ticket by the state you arrive in being unable to prove that you're not an Eritreian conscript or an Iranian Christian. The sooner we change that idea, the less cruelty we will inflict on people overall.
An honest answer. And there are plenty of other people in the country who won't dress up their response with detailed rationale, its simply "we don't want them here" and "we're full" and "what about our veterans".
The slippery slope is that people want to elect hard line brutalist politicians who shut out others so that they can be treated better. And then wonder why they are being treated with hard line brutalist policies. Leopards who Eat Faces Party voters always react in shock when the elected leopards eat their faces.
Is the other surprise return of Gove also a problem?
My start the week FaceTime with Yorkshire has got me wondering if he is a help or problem for Sunak.
When Gove launched rebellion against Truss, the Mail and other organs went for him, and my mum bought into all that. Now she’s struggling with him popping up on the TV as the spokesperson for the Tory’s, so soon after being the rebel leader decried by the Ayatollah voice of the Mail who told her not to like or trust him.
Do you trust him?
Does anyone.
But the point I’m making, for those who gather daily for the word of their Prophet, the Mail, has it all come too soon since
The poor dears are confused. He’s untrustworthy sadist plotter, who done Truss in. But at least he’s on our side so let’s get behind him.
See?
Yes. Why would anyone trust the current Conservative party ?
Because the Daily Mail tells them to Trust the Tories, and they trust the Daily Mail.
But a few weeks ago Daily Mail had Gove as conniving sadistic assassin, but there he was at the Weekend as the spokesman for the government.
The problem with Sunak’s contrived cabinet is more than Braverman perhaps , the whole thing built on something not strong and stable in the mind of its own supporters, the hard core Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph Pretorian Guard aren’t convinced by Sunak, or his government, particularly it’s economic policies, hence the poor Sunak polls?
If BP use their larger profits to buy back shares in their own company, does that mean the money used is now sheltered from tax?
Does it also mean the share price of their own company rises, thus increasing the value of their company?
?
Not exactly.
Tax gets extremely complicated, any tax due should still be due, but there's always potential loopholes which is why we need tax simplification making it harder to avoid tax.
Share buybacks increase the value of the shares that remain typically, but don't generally increase the value of the company. Market Cap of a firm is value of shares multiplied by number of shares. Share buybacks increase share price, but reduce number of shares outstanding, so the increase in share price would have to more than offset the reduction in shares outstanding.
TL;DR - Maybe. Maybe not. Should be not, but can't rule it out.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
Generally, the most tolerant countries in both studies were Scandinavian countries, Latin countries, and the United Kingdom and its former colonies (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). In contrast, the least racially tolerant countries (Qatar, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka) tended to be located in Africa and Asia. There were also outliers. For example, although other former U.K. colonies landed near the top of the list, the United States ranked 69th out of 78 countries in 2020
If BP use their larger profits to buy back shares in their own company, does that mean the money used is now sheltered from tax?
Does it also mean the share price of their own company rises, thus increasing the value of their company?
?
Not exactly.
Tax gets extremely complicated, any tax due should still be due, but there's always potential loopholes which is why we need tax simplification making it harder to avoid tax.
Share buybacks increase the value of the shares that remain typically, but don't generally increase the value of the company. Market Cap of a firm is value of shares multiplied by number of shares. Share buybacks increase share price, but reduce number of shares outstanding, so the increase in share price would have to more than offset the reduction in shares outstanding.
TL;DR - Maybe. Maybe not. Should be not, but can't rule it out.
Thanks Barty
every day is a school day, (even in Welsh Half Term)
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
My parents both help out at the local asylum reception centre in the midlands. This is where they go after the initial application and screening. Thankfully the conditions are somewhat better than Manston. Most there are from the usual locations: Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iran. Typical reasons for leaving the source country are local level persecution, beatings, death threats e.g. by local police or officials usually because the individual has unorthodox political views, religion or sexuality (there are quite a few gay men from orthodox Muslim countries) or have got on the wrong side of the local mafia which happens to run the police force.
One family are Iranians who escaped after the husband converted to Christianity and was first jailed then beaten. They have just been confirmed at the local church. Their application will probably be accepted. They went round to my parents' house for dinner a few weeks ago. Daughter appears to be a little child genius.
Residents are allowed to do unpaid work in the community and several of them do things like helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns, visiting nursing homes to learn English while keeping someone company. A number of others though seem to be either so bored and listless, or in such a deep depression, that they barely leave their accommodation, including some families.
From what I can tell it seems a large proportion, including the Iranian family I mentioned, arrived on small boats. Several had all their possessions stolen from them by the traffickers on the way.
People, essentially.
Don't call them that. They are INVADERS. Brutes the lot of them. Listen to what you posted. "helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns" - stealing OUR jobs that we don't want to do.
And they arrived illegally on a boat instead of not claiming asylum legally as there is no legal route. So an CRIMINALS surely it's only right that we warehouse them illegally in unsanitary conditions until we can deport them to be beaten to death.
Its what Churchill would have wanted.
White flight satire at its best
Immigration causes no problem to anyone EXCEPT THE POOR. Serve them right for being poor.
Ah, it's on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE that we are so upset.
I am on balance against the persecution of Jews, gays, trans and black people too, despite being neither j g t nor b. Or perhaps just pretending to be against it. That article is the nadir of the dm on both logical and comic grounds and I don't know why you keep linking to it.
Because it's so true.
There is some nebulous link to "the poor" which, being the kind, generous person you are, you are concerned for in some abstract way. But that's it. You are not really sure of the dynamics of schools, hospitals, housing, etc. Not really. You just feel it will be bad. Moreso than other immigration and yes absolutely, we should be doing something about illegal immigration - as @148grss notes upthread.
Plus well done for an early godwin.
The dynamics of the social housing market are not, in any relevant way, complicated. Are you better placed if you are competing for a house with 5 other people, or 10 other people? Whether it's a council flat in Hartlepool or a rather nice Georgian rectory with 10 acres and manege which you saw in Country Life?
what Godwin? Do you think the nazis were the only people who ever persecuted jews?
Illegal immigrants are not going to compete for social housing unless and until their asylum claim is approved, just saying.
Yes, but the conversion rate is over 80%.
Which argument of course leads to the we don't want any immigrants conclusion.
If you say that legitimate asylum seekers are responsible for a housing shortage then you are saying you don't want legitimate asylum seekers.
More than 1% of the male population of Albania has arrived in the UK.
I am unclear how accurate this statistic is. It's been claimed that more than 2% of the adult male population has arrived. One would have more faith in the claim if what was claimed was more consistent: what percentage, of what total? Some of the claims Patel has made about Albanians remain unproven: see https://fullfact.org/immigration/home-office-albania-small-boat-crossing-60-percent/
Proportions claiming asylum and proportions with successful asylum applications are much lower among Albanians than, say, Syrians, Iranians, Eritreans etc. We could be deporting most of these Albanian arrivals, yet the time taken to process claims is way up and deportations way down under Conservative governments. So, what are the solutions? (1) Invest in the current mechanisms so that they can act quicker (2) Vote out the Conservatives.
So why not take a sample of hair and DNA-test it? You would then at least know the ethnicity of those arriving with no papers.
I have huge sympathy for those who are genuinely escaping tyranny, oppression and abuse in their home countries because of ethnic, sexual or religious reasons. We should rightly do all we can to help them. I do however have considerable contempt for those who have broken the asylum system by gatecrashing our borders for their own selfish ends.
I would have no problem with a working assumption that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. Anything that helps the lot of the true asylum seeker should be considered.
I think most people have sympathy for those genuinely escaping tyranny and abuse, but contempt for those "gatecrashing" our borders. So, let's quickly and efficiently work out who is who, rather than having long wait times and leaving people in appalling conditions, which also costs the taxpayer lots of money. Invest money to bring down the processing times, and invest money to speed up deportations. Processing times are up under the Tories; deportation rates are down under the Tories.
I don't think there's any fundamental problem with how the systems work for determining who is a genuinely an asylum seeker. It's just that the systems are underfunded compared to the workload. We don't need to re-write the rules. We could just apply the current rules more speedily.
I see a lot of problems with presuming that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. There can be many reasons why someone fleeing persecution may not have papers.
On the papers, reading reports of those who cross, it appears to be standard procedure for those who smuggle them in to confiscate anything that might demonstrate their true identity. For those waiting to claim asylum, there should be a means for them to file/post/e-mail their papers - even a facility in northern France that the French could assist with - so that they can be retrieved when their case is heard in the UK.
It would make life so much easier for the genuine.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
No, I'm not. Those international treaties worked in an era when there were as many people in Europe as subsaharan Africa (currently 1 European for 1.55 SSAs; due to reach 1:3 by 2050 and 1:6 by 2100), travel across borders was much more difficult, and you couldn't look on your smartphone to see how fantastic the life you were missing out on was. I'm entirely willing to support refugees in the closest country to the one they're fleeing, which as an added bonus means we can support far more of them - for the cost of bringing 20,000 Afghan refugees to the UK, we could have taken care of 325,000 in Pakistan. But the idea that being conscripted in Eritrea or converting to Christianity in Iran gives you a golden ticket to move to a first world country and never leave is simply unworkable - let alone the idea that you can get that golden ticket by the state you arrive in being unable to prove that you're not an Eritreian conscript or an Iranian Christian. The sooner we change that idea, the less cruelty we will inflict on people overall.
The vast majority of refugees are in the country closest to the one they're fleeing. The highest number of refugees in a country are in Türkiye, with 3.7 million, coming mostly from Syria. Second highest is Colombia, with 2.5 million (from Venezuela). Shouldn't the rest of the world help these countries by spreading the load a bit?
1st November and our heating still isn't on. I reckon over the past month in this house, for central heating purposes, we've used less than 10% of the gas we used last year. Obviously we're still cooking and washing as much, and using a similar amount og electricity (though we're wfh marginally less), but still, if we're typical, gas consumption must be well down on last year. Helpedby a mild Autumn of course. Whether we can maintain this into December and January remains to be seen. But still. All helps, surely.
In a flat and not turned heating on yet but general room temperature still at 24 degrees unless I open the windows. Assume the flats around me must be roasting, nice of them to pay for my heating!
I live in a poorly-insulated detached bungalow. Without the heating on it's generally no warmer inside than outside. I'm entirely dependent on the beneficence of the weather. I'm hoping to get my roof replaced by a rather better one over the winter, which should help next winter.
If BP use their larger profits to buy back shares in their own company, does that mean the money used is now sheltered from tax?
Does it also mean the share price of their own company rises, thus increasing the value of their company?
?
Not exactly.
Tax gets extremely complicated, any tax due should still be due, but there's always potential loopholes which is why we need tax simplification making it harder to avoid tax.
Share buybacks increase the value of the shares that remain typically, but don't generally increase the value of the company. Market Cap of a firm is value of shares multiplied by number of shares. Share buybacks increase share price, but reduce number of shares outstanding, so the increase in share price would have to more than offset the reduction in shares outstanding.
TL;DR - Maybe. Maybe not. Should be not, but can't rule it out.
Plus it is legitimate for investors to question what their growth/investment strategy is if the best use of surplus cash is to spend it enhancing eps rather than growing the business.
Why does Italy receive so comparatively few asylum applications considering its geography?
Again, this whole issue is filed with murkiness and half-truths. No wonder Farage is making hay.
It's economy is sclerotic, it's politically unpredictable, racism is rife and few speak Italian.
Italy is just a doormat. Serious migrants will go to Germany, Sweden or the UK.
Economically sclerotic and politically unpredictable you say?
They are not so generous there , perhaps they have enough trouble sorting out their own local migrants, homeless , etc. Why do the roasters in Westminster not just give Scottish government the billions they squander and send them all north.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
Generally, the most tolerant countries in both studies were Scandinavian countries, Latin countries, and the United Kingdom and its former colonies (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). In contrast, the least racially tolerant countries (Qatar, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka) tended to be located in Africa and Asia. There were also outliers. For example, although other former U.K. colonies landed near the top of the list, the United States ranked 69th out of 78 countries in 2020
1st November and our heating still isn't on. I reckon over the past month in this house, for central heating purposes, we've used less than 10% of the gas we used last year. Obviously we're still cooking and washing as much, and using a similar amount og electricity (though we're wfh marginally less), but still, if we're typical, gas consumption must be well down on last year. Helpedby a mild Autumn of course. Whether we can maintain this into December and January remains to be seen. But still. All helps, surely.
In a flat and not turned heating on yet but general room temperature still at 24 degrees unless I open the windows. Assume the flats around me must be roasting, nice of them to pay for my heating!
I live in a poorly-insulated detached bungalow. Without the heating on it's generally no warmer inside than outside. I'm entirely dependent on the beneficence of the weather. I'm hoping to get my roof replaced by a rather better one over the winter, which should help next winter.
Since we had insulation installed about 15 years ago we hardly ever have to put the heating on, no matter how cold it is. And when we do it's usually just for a couple of hours in the evening.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
And yet a fair number of the countries in the list above have elected governments which are rather more robust than ours in their approach to non-European immigrants. It genuinely seems hard to credit than Austria appears in the list above the UK.
It also seems hard to credit a poster who is (bar one) the most Anglophobic, and therefore arguably a type of racist, could be so lacking in self-awareness to post anything about racism and the additional irony that he posts it in further advancement of his hate filled prejudice.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
It has a stated target of zero asylum seekers, and also evicts people living in Denmark to enforce compliance with its 'ghetto' law.
You seem to have your own personal Overton window that is very narrow but allows you to react with feigned incredulity to any other view.
Its funny how "whatabout" this is. Denmark for all that you lot uphold it as the benchmark treats people far better than we do. And not just asylum seekers - their welfare system makes ours look like the third world.
Also unclear about your argument that it is ok to kick people in the head because look that other place is also doing it. Not that its even a direct comparison. "They're sending people to Rwanda" you all triumphantly proclaim! Yes, to process asylum claims. Unlike us, who aren't sending people there but when we do we won't process asylum claims.
For a "zero asylum" country they seem to have very clear policies and processes set out on their website about how to claim asylum and what treatment and support you will get...
You originally said that wanting not only to stop the boats but also to stop the asylum seekers would make us a pariah state, but your answer above suggests that you would actually approve of this as long as it were done with a sufficient veneer of respectability.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recently announced that Denmark's goal is to receive 'zero' asylum seekers. Achievement of this goal seems to be rapidly approaching. Last year only 1 547 people asked for asylum in Denmark, a quarter of whom already had a residence permit (usually via family reunification).
This is the lowest registered number of asylum requests since the current counting method was introduced in 1998, and only a tenth of the number registered in 2016. It also represents a drop of 57% from 2019. The recognition rate was 43%, resulting in 432 new refugees settling down in Denmark in 2020, a country of almost six million people.
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
My parents both help out at the local asylum reception centre in the midlands. This is where they go after the initial application and screening. Thankfully the conditions are somewhat better than Manston. Most there are from the usual locations: Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iran. Typical reasons for leaving the source country are local level persecution, beatings, death threats e.g. by local police or officials usually because the individual has unorthodox political views, religion or sexuality (there are quite a few gay men from orthodox Muslim countries) or have got on the wrong side of the local mafia which happens to run the police force.
One family are Iranians who escaped after the husband converted to Christianity and was first jailed then beaten. They have just been confirmed at the local church. Their application will probably be accepted. They went round to my parents' house for dinner a few weeks ago. Daughter appears to be a little child genius.
Residents are allowed to do unpaid work in the community and several of them do things like helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns, visiting nursing homes to learn English while keeping someone company. A number of others though seem to be either so bored and listless, or in such a deep depression, that they barely leave their accommodation, including some families.
From what I can tell it seems a large proportion, including the Iranian family I mentioned, arrived on small boats. Several had all their possessions stolen from them by the traffickers on the way.
People, essentially.
Don't call them that. They are INVADERS. Brutes the lot of them. Listen to what you posted. "helping out at the local nature reserve, mowing the church lawns" - stealing OUR jobs that we don't want to do.
And they arrived illegally on a boat instead of not claiming asylum legally as there is no legal route. So an CRIMINALS surely it's only right that we warehouse them illegally in unsanitary conditions until we can deport them to be beaten to death.
Its what Churchill would have wanted.
White flight satire at its best
Immigration causes no problem to anyone EXCEPT THE POOR. Serve them right for being poor.
Ah, it's on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE that we are so upset.
I am on balance against the persecution of Jews, gays, trans and black people too, despite being neither j g t nor b. Or perhaps just pretending to be against it. That article is the nadir of the dm on both logical and comic grounds and I don't know why you keep linking to it.
Because it's so true.
There is some nebulous link to "the poor" which, being the kind, generous person you are, you are concerned for in some abstract way. But that's it. You are not really sure of the dynamics of schools, hospitals, housing, etc. Not really. You just feel it will be bad. Moreso than other immigration and yes absolutely, we should be doing something about illegal immigration - as @148grss notes upthread.
Plus well done for an early godwin.
The dynamics of the social housing market are not, in any relevant way, complicated. Are you better placed if you are competing for a house with 5 other people, or 10 other people? Whether it's a council flat in Hartlepool or a rather nice Georgian rectory with 10 acres and manege which you saw in Country Life?
what Godwin? Do you think the nazis were the only people who ever persecuted jews?
Illegal immigrants are not going to compete for social housing unless and until their asylum claim is approved, just saying.
And the alt-right gears up for what it really really wants - race war, literally. Half of them have probably been "playing" it "virtually" for years already. This is very scary, and the "just accept Brexit and move on" mantra even when it comes from reasonably kind people with good intentions doesn't get to grip with the real divisions and how they are developing - as sadly the "culture war" strategists on the racist right know all too well.
The UK is probably the least racist country in the world.
16th actually.
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands Canada New Zealand Sweden Denmark Finland Switzerland Norway Belgium Austria
And yet a fair number of the countries in the list above have elected governments which are rather more robust than ours in their approach to non-European immigrants. It genuinely seems hard to credit than Austria appears in the list above the UK.
Methodology (including sampling) is key, I suspect. I've seen studies that ask about whether someone has ever witnessed racism to measure this kind of thing. That can skew results as witnessing racism would be more likely (if actual racist attitudes are similarly prevalent) in a society with more non-white people present.
I'm pretty sure that racist attitudes were reasonably prevalent where I grew up, but I recall exactly one racist comment, ever, during my time at school.* That probably had more to do with there being only two non-white children in my year group than to the attitudes.
*the two non-white children, I'd suspect, would recall a lot more than that, but I only recall witnessing it once.
1st November and our heating still isn't on. I reckon over the past month in this house, for central heating purposes, we've used less than 10% of the gas we used last year. Obviously we're still cooking and washing as much, and using a similar amount og electricity (though we're wfh marginally less), but still, if we're typical, gas consumption must be well down on last year. Helpedby a mild Autumn of course. Whether we can maintain this into December and January remains to be seen. But still. All helps, surely.
In a flat and not turned heating on yet but general room temperature still at 24 degrees unless I open the windows. Assume the flats around me must be roasting, nice of them to pay for my heating!
I live in a poorly-insulated detached bungalow. Without the heating on it's generally no warmer inside than outside. I'm entirely dependent on the beneficence of the weather. I'm hoping to get my roof replaced by a rather better one over the winter, which should help next winter.
Since we had insulation installed about 15 years ago we hardly ever have to put the heating on, no matter how cold it is. And when we do it's usually just for a couple of hours in the evening.
From early hope of a mild winter, MET office now predicting a colder than usual one.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Do you think Denmark is a pariah state?
The same Denmark who doesn't have our asylum policies?
It has a stated target of zero asylum seekers, and also evicts people living in Denmark to enforce compliance with its 'ghetto' law.
You seem to have your own personal Overton window that is very narrow but allows you to react with feigned incredulity to any other view.
Its funny how "whatabout" this is. Denmark for all that you lot uphold it as the benchmark treats people far better than we do. And not just asylum seekers - their welfare system makes ours look like the third world.
Also unclear about your argument that it is ok to kick people in the head because look that other place is also doing it. Not that its even a direct comparison. "They're sending people to Rwanda" you all triumphantly proclaim! Yes, to process asylum claims. Unlike us, who aren't sending people there but when we do we won't process asylum claims.
For a "zero asylum" country they seem to have very clear policies and processes set out on their website about how to claim asylum and what treatment and support you will get...
You originally said that wanting not only to stop the boats but also to stop the asylum seekers would make us a pariah state, but your answer above suggests that you would actually approve of this as long as it were done with a sufficient veneer of respectability.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recently announced that Denmark's goal is to receive 'zero' asylum seekers. Achievement of this goal seems to be rapidly approaching. Last year only 1 547 people asked for asylum in Denmark, a quarter of whom already had a residence permit (usually via family reunification).
This is the lowest registered number of asylum requests since the current counting method was introduced in 1998, and only a tenth of the number registered in 2016. It also represents a drop of 57% from 2019. The recognition rate was 43%, resulting in 432 new refugees settling down in Denmark in 2020, a country of almost six million people.
Again, someone else kicking people in the head does not provide cover for us to do so. Denmark is not a shining light on the hill for us to copy with regards to asylum. Though even at its worst, its "send them to Rwanda" policy is significantly better than ours.
"She's out of control". "She's an extremist". Suella Braverman isn't. She's pursuing a very clear, very calculated populist political strategy. And a key part of that strategy is provoking a reaction from her opponents. Who at the moment, are falling into every trap she sets.
Discussion today. Child: Who's the new President? TA: We don't have a president we have a new Prime Minister. Child: So what's his name? TA: (Perhaps ahead of the game) Keir Starmer. Child: No. The one who looks like Roddy from Flushed Away. Me: Rishi Sunak. Puts up picture of Roddy and Rishi. Child and TA: Ha ha. Yes he does. Useless.
. .
Let's represent an Indian as a monkey with a tail. I don't see any problem with that, provided there's no bananas in shot.
You seem confused between a mouse/rat with a tail and a monkey. That was taken from a film I suspect
If BP use their larger profits to buy back shares in their own company, does that mean the money used is now sheltered from tax?
Does it also mean the share price of their own company rises, thus increasing the value of their company?
?
Not exactly.
Tax gets extremely complicated, any tax due should still be due, but there's always potential loopholes which is why we need tax simplification making it harder to avoid tax.
Share buybacks increase the value of the shares that remain typically, but don't generally increase the value of the company. Market Cap of a firm is value of shares multiplied by number of shares. Share buybacks increase share price, but reduce number of shares outstanding, so the increase in share price would have to more than offset the reduction in shares outstanding.
TL;DR - Maybe. Maybe not. Should be not, but can't rule it out.
Plus it is legitimate for investors to question what their growth/investment strategy is if the best use of surplus cash is to spend it enhancing eps rather than growing the business.
Possibly, but if your investment is maxed out then there are legitimate reasons to engage in share buybacks, especially if you have surplus cash. Its really not much different to issuing dividends in rewarding shareholders which is what all firms are there for at the end of the day.
Firms share values are ultimately related to a risk-adjusted TVM of expected future dividends per share. If there's fewer shares outstanding, the TVM of expected future dividends per share increases.
If you think about it, in theory if a firm has the cash to buy back half its outstanding shares without affecting future cash available for dividends, then the future dividends per share doubles.
"She's out of control". "She's an extremist". Suella Braverman isn't. She's pursuing a very clear, very calculated populist political strategy. And a key part of that strategy is provoking a reaction from her opponents. Who at the moment, are falling into every trap she sets.
I am far less bothered by her "invaders" language than I am her repeated breaches of the law, the ministerial code and national security. Nor are the opposition being distracted from pursuing these.
Dan does seem to blow in the wind with regards to what he is thinking.
"She's out of control". "She's an extremist". Suella Braverman isn't. She's pursuing a very clear, very calculated populist political strategy. And a key part of that strategy is provoking a reaction from her opponents. Who at the moment, are falling into every trap she sets.
I would argue that populism, whether of the right, the left or the separatist variety, is an extremist position. It encourages and creates division and is often a trojan horse for even more extremist ideologies.
"She's out of control". "She's an extremist". Suella Braverman isn't. She's pursuing a very clear, very calculated populist political strategy. And a key part of that strategy is provoking a reaction from her opponents. Who at the moment, are falling into every trap she sets.
I am far less bothered by her "invaders" language than I am her repeated breaches of the law, the ministerial code and national security. Nor are the opposition being distracted from pursuing these.
Dan does seem to blow in the wind with regards to what he is thinking.
He’s not much of a thinker. Political commentator isn’t really his forte.
No Home Secretary serious about public safety or national security would use the language Suella Braverman did the day after a petrol bomb attack on a Dover centre.
But that’s the point. She isn’t serious about any of those things
Who on here has had any experience with illegal immigrants. Or suspected illegal immigrants.
Was it a good or bad or only read about in the right wing press experience.
TIA.
Elderly lady in Kent on r4 yesterday saying she found a teenage Albanian bloke in her living room. No personal experience because I live in a remote and agreeable part of the country. Then again I have no personal experience of racism, but am still allowed to have views on its consequences for other people. And I have personal experience of paying taxes for all those hotel bills
So no in other words.
Thx. Next.
Albanian child thieves in my local Oriental supermarket, Longdan, Camden
Next
Thanks. Did they rob you? Or did you see them steal from the shop?
Saw them steal, flagrantly. And simply walk out the shop
They were so blatant and unafraid I just stood there. Bewildered. Then asked the shopkeeper who explained
Thanks.
Of course I have surely encountered illegal immigrants in multiple other ways - much more benign or sad or whatever. It’s simply that you don’t know, most of the time - the criminality here meant there had been police involved which meant the shopkeeper had the info
Indeed on reflection my lovely Thai cleaner Nok was - I reckon - probably an illegal immigrant for a while. Certainly her status was unsure
She’s friendly, kind, generous, hard working, completely honest, loves the UK and its freedoms - and she has fought for years to get settled status (which she now has) via the legal routes
It’s people like her who probably suffer most from these Albanians waltzing in. She spent half a decade doing it the right way, they spend half an hour on a boat and treat us as laughable fools
People don't like large numbers of people taking the piss.
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I have to ask a question. People want the boats stopped and the piss-taking stopped. A significant driver for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans etc being on the boats is that we offer them no legal route to claim asylum. So are people willing to accept them coming *legally* via a reopened route?
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
No, I'm not. Those international treaties worked in an era when there were as many people in Europe as subsaharan Africa (currently 1 European for 1.55 SSAs; due to reach 1:3 by 2050 and 1:6 by 2100), travel across borders was much more difficult, and you couldn't look on your smartphone to see how fantastic the life you were missing out on was. I'm entirely willing to support refugees in the closest country to the one they're fleeing, which as an added bonus means we can support far more of them - for the cost of bringing 20,000 Afghan refugees to the UK, we could have taken care of 325,000 in Pakistan. But the idea that being conscripted in Eritrea or converting to Christianity in Iran gives you a golden ticket to move to a first world country and never leave is simply unworkable - let alone the idea that you can get that golden ticket by the state you arrive in being unable to prove that you're not an Eritreian conscript or an Iranian Christian. The sooner we change that idea, the less cruelty we will inflict on people overall.
The vast majority of refugees are in the country closest to the one they're fleeing. The highest number of refugees in a country are in Türkiye, with 3.7 million, coming mostly from Syria. Second highest is Colombia, with 2.5 million (from Venezuela). Shouldn't the rest of the world help these countries by spreading the load a bit?
Frankly, I find it creepy that so many people are only pro-refugee when they get to bring them home and coo over them like some sort of pet. Aww, look at him: he's learning English and volunteering in the community.
Comments
They just want the boats stopped and an end to the criminality and the exploitation of loopholes. It's about confidence in control and fairness.
The subhuman/far-right argument is a non-sequitur, usually used by those who don't really want to do anything about it and would prefer to fight a strawman.
I think the main issue as you allude to is that if they are illegal they are hardly going to petition the authorities because they are not receiving the minimum wage.
Which of course means the source of the problem lies elsewhere.
Not long after the village had a second power feed connected and the power cuts stopped (mostly).
I suspect the answer is no. Which means that when you say people want the boats stopped, they want the asylum seekers to stop coming completely. Which puts us as some kind of pariah state refusing to follow the international treaties we are party to.
Battery production offers massive returns to scale & the big players are already building huge plants. A teensy, late, relatively uncompetitive production facility in the NE which employs a bunch of locals in low skill assembly line production at vast government expense is not going to fix the NE’s economic problems, no matter how hard the government hopes it will.
https://irpimedia.irpi.eu/en-albanian-mafia-uk-cocaine-supply/
It's not impossible for a country the size of the UK to develop it's own industry - look at South Korea, which has three of the world's top 10 battery manufacturers - but we've never shown any such intention.
Oh, it's not solving the immigrant crisis, but it's dog-whistling her supporters and "owning the libs"
And Rishi is happy for her to continue
Bear in mind just how dire Labour's finances are. They will be fixed for an election by the Unions - but their pound of flesh will then become part of the election campaign itself.
On other news, England have a terrible run-rate considering this is a must-win game and so few wickets have fallen. Need to swing the bat more.
worst of all, I think she's deploying it now to cover up for personal mistakes. What would today's headlines be if not invasion, out of control, etc? Braverman on the ropes over allegedly ignoring official advice/security breaches/etc.
no doubt she'd rather we were arguing about her language (popular with some Tory voters) than her alleged conduct in office. Obv it's really important to challenge her language. But I'd guess it's the conduct on which she feels vulnerable.
https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1587372617346043911
Former prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen could be in the position of kingmaker"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/01/danish-election-mette-frederiksen-new-party-support
Proportions claiming asylum and proportions with successful asylum applications are much lower among Albanians than, say, Syrians, Iranians, Eritreans etc. We could be deporting most of these Albanian arrivals, yet the time taken to process claims is way up and deportations way down under Conservative governments. So, what are the solutions? (1) Invest in the current mechanisms so that they can act quicker (2) Vote out the Conservatives.
Compare and contrast with our experience ten years ago. We drove through Germany to a wedding, and on our first night she suffered racist abuse from a bunch of men outside the motel.
But as she says: she fits in. She is obviously foreign born, but speaks English well with virtually no accent. She is also middle-class and has a well-paid job. Her experiences might be different otherwise.
Yet I had a Pakistani friend at school who did suffer racism, both inside and outside school. It was a bit of an eye-opener.
But generally, I don't think we are a deeply racist society. There is some racism, and some people always want to find a 'other' group to hate. But it is not particularly deeply-ingrained, and if anything is thankfully getting shallower.
Lab 498
Con 58
SNP 52
Lib Dem 18
PC 4
Grn 1
NI 18
Speaker 1
Ref 0
Labour majority of 346
Both sides of the debate engage in fairytales on this. The right pretend that by talking tough they can solve the problem without putting in place the sustainable, properly funded security solutions and international agreements in place, and back this up with a robust but equitable asylum system. The left meanwhile start from the position of downplaying the fact there are real legitimate concerns about border security, and like to believe that everyone who seeks to enter the country illegally is of a certain character that reinforces their worldview.
To be fair to Labour, they at least talking more sense on this than Braverman and co, but this together with so many other issues does make me fear for the future. We need to move away from the fantasy politics and engage with the real world if we’re going to have success as a country, and there is no sign of any great shift on that front any time soon.
what Godwin? Do you think the nazis were the only people who ever persecuted jews?
*Part of a trade delegation of 30 or so, not quite tête-à-tête, although he did apparently invite her to an after party, which she declined
The Top 10 Least Racist Countries in the World in 2022 - Best Countries Report
Netherlands
Canada
New Zealand
Sweden
Denmark
Finland
Switzerland
Norway
Belgium
Austria
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/least-racist-countries
Historically famous for many things, rebellious British slaves, the new volcanic isle of Surtsey (born in 1973), but mainly because I was the first person to do Ecstasy in Iceland, on that very archipelago, in the late 1980s
This was an established barber's in suburban south Manchester, owned, or at least managed, by Middle-Eastern looking chaps (why are so many barbers Turkish? Surely men have hair in other countries too?) He told me, in slightly broken English, how he had walked for a week, at nights, out of Eritrea into Sudan, before making his way across Africa to the North Coast over the course of several more weeks and crossing the Med in some unspecified but illicit way, then across Europe by traffickers (I would have thought he'd already done the difficult bit by then - it is of course entirely possible I misunderstood).
I didn't glean how he came to be working as a barber in South Manchester.
I used to get my hair cut there roughly monthly, but never saw him again, and six months later covid struck and I haven't been to a barbers' since. It's possible we simply failed to intersect, or he's moved on to other things, or been deported.
His conversational tone was entirely factual - he didn't appear to be trying to spin a hard luck story.
On the face of it, there was nothing about him individually which you'd want to keep out of the country, and every reason why you'd want to get him out of Eritrea. The problem is that there is an almost infinite number of such people about whom that is true (on top of the rather better resourced like the Albanians) and we can only accommodate a finite number.
It genuinely seems hard to credit than Austria appears in the list above the UK.
You seem to have your own personal Overton window that is very narrow but allows you to react with feigned incredulity to any other view.
This language is not used for other things which people regularly use and still have negative side effects. The contraceptive pill, a form of hormone treatment, is not called "dangerous" despite it being more a risk than hormone treatment (https://bit.ly/3zt0Rkr). Again, this became an issue when it became a trans issue - (https://bit.ly/3sPedDG)
I have huge sympathy for those who are genuinely escaping tyranny, oppression and abuse in their home countries because of ethnic, sexual or religious reasons. We should rightly do all we can to help them. I do however have considerable contempt for those who have broken the asylum system by gatecrashing our borders for their own selfish ends.
I would have no problem with a working assumption that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. Anything that helps the lot of the true asylum seeker should be considered.
I'm hoping to get my roof replaced by a rather better one over the winter, which should help next winter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/far-right-sweden-democrats-poised-to-wield-influence-in-new-government
A ludicrous list
0.6%.
That's about one in 167.
It doesn't feel to me like we're accommodating as many as we could.
One in 27 people in Poland, approx., are currently Ukrainian refugees. (Obviously, there are additional refugees from other places -- Russia, Belarus, Syria etc. -- in Poland as well.)
Question for the economic gurus here
If BP use their larger profits to buy back shares in their own company, does that mean the money used is now sheltered from tax?
Does it also mean the share price of their own company rises, thus increasing the value of their company?
?
Also unclear about your argument that it is ok to kick people in the head because look that other place is also doing it. Not that its even a direct comparison. "They're sending people to Rwanda" you all triumphantly proclaim! Yes, to process asylum claims. Unlike us, who aren't sending people there but when we do we won't process asylum claims.
For a "zero asylum" country they seem to have very clear policies and processes set out on their website about how to claim asylum and what treatment and support you will get...
I don't think there's any fundamental problem with how the systems work for determining who is a genuinely an asylum seeker. It's just that the systems are underfunded compared to the workload. We don't need to re-write the rules. We could just apply the current rules more speedily.
I see a lot of problems with presuming that anybody arriving without papers was not a legitimate asylum seeker. There can be many reasons why someone fleeing persecution may not have papers.
Children with precocious puberty come off puberty blockers and go through puberty.
Children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria overwhelmingly go on to cross sex hormones. But as the NHS England guidelines note most children presenting with gender dysphoria also have other conditions such as autism and depression - and for most it is a phase. Unless they’ve been medicalised by the affirmative care model.
Is it also politics in Finland, Sweden and France?
The slippery slope is that people want to elect hard line brutalist politicians who shut out others so that they can be treated better. And then wonder why they are being treated with hard line brutalist policies. Leopards who Eat Faces Party voters always react in shock when the elected leopards eat their faces.
But a few weeks ago Daily Mail had Gove as conniving sadistic assassin, but there he was at the Weekend as the spokesman for the government.
The problem with Sunak’s contrived cabinet is more than Braverman perhaps , the whole thing built on something not strong and stable in the mind of its own supporters, the hard core Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph Pretorian Guard aren’t convinced by Sunak, or his government, particularly it’s economic policies, hence the poor Sunak polls?
Tax gets extremely complicated, any tax due should still be due, but there's always potential loopholes which is why we need tax simplification making it harder to avoid tax.
Share buybacks increase the value of the shares that remain typically, but don't generally increase the value of the company. Market Cap of a firm is value of shares multiplied by number of shares. Share buybacks increase share price, but reduce number of shares outstanding, so the increase in share price would have to more than offset the reduction in shares outstanding.
TL;DR - Maybe. Maybe not. Should be not, but can't rule it out.
every day is a school day, (even in Welsh Half Term)
If you say that legitimate asylum seekers are responsible for a housing shortage then you are saying you don't want legitimate asylum seekers.
It would make life so much easier for the genuine.
https://www.gowallpaper.co.uk/wallrock-thermal-liner.html?utm_source=google_shopping&gclid=CjwKCAjwh4ObBhAzEiwAHzZYU7CNupDg51fwyiBAtqhQJDUMS8lmeJY0uMaelO_VLiubf_RSLWdRcBoCbswQAvD_BwE
It's great stuff, and can be used on internal walls and even ceilings.
Why do the roasters in Westminster not just give Scottish government the billions they squander and send them all north.
https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/news/denmark-lowest-number-asylum-seekers-ever_en
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recently announced that Denmark's goal is to receive 'zero' asylum seekers. Achievement of this goal seems to be rapidly approaching. Last year only 1 547 people asked for asylum in Denmark, a quarter of whom already had a residence permit (usually via family reunification).
This is the lowest registered number of asylum requests since the current counting method was introduced in 1998, and only a tenth of the number registered in 2016. It also represents a drop of 57% from 2019. The recognition rate was 43%, resulting in 432 new refugees settling down in Denmark in 2020, a country of almost six million people.
Just as well. Less cygnet, more ugly duckling.....
I'm pretty sure that racist attitudes were reasonably prevalent where I grew up, but I recall exactly one racist comment, ever, during my time at school.* That probably had more to do with there being only two non-white children in my year group than to the attitudes.
*the two non-white children, I'd suspect, would recall a lot more than that, but I only recall witnessing it once.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1587364744549335042
Firms share values are ultimately related to a risk-adjusted TVM of expected future dividends per share. If there's fewer shares outstanding, the TVM of expected future dividends per share increases.
If you think about it, in theory if a firm has the cash to buy back half its outstanding shares without affecting future cash available for dividends, then the future dividends per share doubles.
Dan does seem to blow in the wind with regards to what he is thinking.
But that’s the point. She isn’t serious about any of those things
Ramps up rhetoric because has no answers.
https://twitter.com/YvetteCooperMP/status/1587383932076662785
https://twitter.com/dominicpenna/status/1587344816177922049
Frankly, I find it creepy that so many people are only pro-refugee when they get to bring them home and coo over them like some sort of pet. Aww, look at him: he's learning English and volunteering in the community.