"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.
Right wing Populism pushes the idea of popular sovereignty above the independence of democratic institutions and the professionalism of the representatives and leaders of those institutions - populism as populist opportunism, masquerading as values and agenda for government like a crusading ideology pretending it is voice of all the people, whilst acting undemocratically deaf to anyone with a different view. Likewise the undermining of civil service and attack on all the counterbalances of power, this is very opposite ideology to UK Conservatism. With the rise of the internet, UK culture and our worldly views likely influenced too much, and being changed too strongly by ideas and concepts from out the US.
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%.
And then you need schools and medical care on top of that.
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.
There was a survey across the EU in I think 2017 where they asked people of African/Afro-Caribbean heritage about their experience of racism. Britain was the second least racist country of the then 28 in the EU. Malta was slightly less racist, Finland was the worst.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
"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.
One thing I don't get.
I can see how populist tail-tweaking, "telling the truth the others are afraid of" works if you are Farage, GB News, The Spectator and so on. People whose role is to chuck bricks.
But if you are the actual Home Secretary, and you have the actual power to do stuff, don't you end up looking stupid or worse?
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
It's a very long term solution, though, and you still need to deal with the shorter-term problem.
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%.
And then you need schools and medical care on top of that.
So, deport those without valid claims, and let those with valid claims get jobs where they can contribute to the economy and pay for things like schools and medical care.
The current Government lets in more people to fill job vacancies than it does asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are not the driving force behind increases in population.
"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.
It does seem to be the case that the Tories have learned nothing from Johnson’s time in office and his fall from grace.
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
Having the Netherlands at the top of that list immediately makes me think the authors don't know what the fuck they are talking about. I worked there for many years and would count it as one of the most openly racist countries in Western Europe. Certainly, I have not been to another country in the last 30 years where the use of racist slurs and labels is so completely normalised and where genuinely racist ideas are discussed so openly by all levels of society.
The only other country on the list I can comment on is Norway which I would agree is far less racist than the UK or any other country I have lived and worked in. But then they have a very aggressive integrationist policy for their immigrant population - something that would probably be attacked by many if it were introduced into the Uk as being, well, racist (For the record, it isn't).
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
Ah, but if you tell people that means an increase in the foreign aid budget they’ll huff and puff with indignation and tell you charity begins at home.
Lack of joined up thinking, short termism and fairytale government is much easier for politicians, im afraid.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
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?
"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.
"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.
One thing I don't get.
I can see how populist tail-tweaking, "telling the truth the others are afraid of" works if you are Farage, GB News, The Spectator and so on. People whose role is to chuck bricks.
But if you are the actual Home Secretary, and you have the actual power to do stuff, don't you end up looking stupid or worse?
It’s all the Tories have got.
They’ve been trying this (charitably) since at least Patel - ie we can’t be bothered to really fix the system (because it needs properly funded, medium and long term solutions which aren’t going to please anyone on the left or the right) but let’s put a HS in office who will shout and scream about how terrible the system is whilst throwing out red meat for the Tory press. And hope the mood music gets you through.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
Beneath the liberal progressive exterior lurks an unbreakable sense of exceptionalism.
You think we should go around the world telling other countries how to run themselves? I don't think they are short of advice...
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.
Hopefully drier than recent winters, would far prefer the cold frosty, snowy winters of the past than constant rain we get now.
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.
Hopefully drier than recent winters, would far prefer the cold frosty, snowy winters of the past than constant rain we get now.
Cold does mean more deaths though?
Plus more energy consumption heightens chance of blackouts.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
People fleeing economic conditions, whether they be called economic migrants or refugees, are still emigrants. And it is the rich people in poor countries who emigrate predominantly, and as countries develop, the amount of emigration increases it doesn't fall.
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
One of the Brexit opportunities is that we get to keep all migrants who cross the channel because we no longer have to abide by the pesky Dublin convention which allowed us to send them back to the EU country from which they came We took back control https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1587383060227624963
Money, borders, laws, and waters...
A PM gone for rule-breaking, a PM sacked by markets, UK hands tied by treaty, Protocol fallout, fisheries in bad shape, Dover crossings.
All four need management and cooperation. Delusion of 'control' made all four worse.
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.
So the "accepted at first stage" reate is ~72%, and a further 7% of total applicants (from the 28% refusals) are accepted on appeal. So the total is currently ~79% which is, I assume, where the 80% figure comes from.
ETA: and on a point of order: it is wrong to call them illegal immigrants. Only ~20% are illegal immigrants. The rest are legitimate asylum seekers (as per their claim being accepted!)
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.
But also only marginally (25% chance cold, 60% near average, 15% mild). And also about as much use as a chocolate teapot. We are getting better at longer range forcecasts but three months is about global circulation patterns (things like La Nina/El nino, NAO, etc). The shorter range is showing nothing cold, which helps keep the heating off for now.
One of the Brexit opportunities is that we get to keep all migrants who cross the channel because we no longer have to abide by the pesky Dublin convention which allowed us to send them back to the EU country from which they came We took back control https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1587383060227624963
Money, borders, laws, and waters...
A PM gone for rule-breaking, a PM sacked by markets, UK hands tied by treaty, Protocol fallout, fisheries in bad shape, Dover crossings.
All four need management and cooperation. Delusion of 'control' made all four 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.
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.
We did not know what racism was when I was growing up, ignorance through innocence was more likely. The only non white person ( outside of TV) I saw before my teens was the sikh guy who came round now and again selling curtains, perfumes etc out of a suitcase and he was a gentleman. Certainly plenty of abuse among our peers mind you.
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
There is no doubt that two things can be true at once:
a) too many people who are highly unlikely to qualify for asylum are trying to, and sometimes succeeding in, getting in to the UK. b) too many genuine, legitimate asylum seekers are being mistreated by the byzantine bureaucracy and the excessive time it takes to be 'processed' ( a horrible word), exacerbated now by the poor conditions they have to tolerate.
It strikes me that both a) and b) need to be sorted out by serious statecraft, appropriate investment of resources, and grown-up conversations with other countries to implement solutions.
Who do you think would be better suited to implement such statecraft and improve the situation? Suella Braverman or Yvette Cooper? I know what I think.
"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.
One thing I don't get.
I can see how populist tail-tweaking, "telling the truth the others are afraid of" works if you are Farage, GB News, The Spectator and so on. People whose role is to chuck bricks.
But if you are the actual Home Secretary, and you have the actual power to do stuff, don't you end up looking stupid or worse?
I suppose hence all the talk about 'leftie lawyers' and the ECHR. Looking completely powerless is a key part of the performance.
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.
You polished your jack boots , donned brown shirt , trimmed small moustache and are ready to abuse innocent people then Adolf Foreskin
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.
But also only marginally (25% chance cold, 60% near average, 15% mild). And also about as much use as a chocolate teapot. We are getting better at longer range forcecasts but three months is about global circulation patterns (things like La Nina/El nino, NAO, etc). The shorter range is showing nothing cold, which helps keep the heating off for now.
Certainly this is the latest I can remember going without putting my heating on - I would say last week in October is usually the latest I’ve done it before. I think a lot of people are in the same boat, anecdotally. Of course some of this is driven by the fear of the bills but it has felt much milder than usual this winter, so far.
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.
So the "accepted at first stage" reate is ~72%, and a further 7% of total applicants (from the 28% refusals) are accepted on appeal. So the total is currently ~79% which is, I assume, where the 80% figure comes from.
ETA: and on a point of order: it is wrong to call them illegal immigrants. Only ~20% are illegal immigrants. The rest are legitimate asylum seekers (as per their claim being accepted!)
Glad to see someone making your second point. It's not illegal to be a refugee and to seek refuge.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
It's a very long term solution, though, and you still need to deal with the shorter-term problem.
And in the short term our policy doesn't work: We don't have a navy resourced or able to do tow backs We don't have a Border Force resourced to even properly staff the border at Heathrow never mind handle asylum seekers in large numbers We don't have a Home Office resourced to process asylum seekers We don't have sufficient police officers to fight crime never mind manage this We don't have a functional legal system able to process cases
Braverman rightly says the system is broken - but her government did so much of the breaking. An immediate relief to the system would be to allow legal routes for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans to claim asylum. That takes a big chunk off the boats. But we won't. Because apparently we don't want them here. But as they are coming anyway, what else do we do?
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.
Hopefully drier than recent winters, would far prefer the cold frosty, snowy winters of the past than constant rain we get now.
Cold does mean more deaths though?
Plus more energy consumption heightens chance of blackouts.
Doubt it can be worse than the rain and wind. We need heating on October to May regardless, it is very cold up here in winter.
One of the Brexit opportunities is that we get to keep all migrants who cross the channel because we no longer have to abide by the pesky Dublin convention which allowed us to send them back to the EU country from which they came We took back control https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1587383060227624963
Money, borders, laws, and waters...
A PM gone for rule-breaking, a PM sacked by markets, UK hands tied by treaty, Protocol fallout, fisheries in bad shape, Dover crossings.
All four need management and cooperation. Delusion of 'control' made all four worse.
This will be controversial inside the Commons and out. The House is in recess for some of the I’m a Celebrity fortnight but not all. During that time Mr Hancock’s constituents will not have representation in Parliament, instead he’ll be in Australia. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/20284864/matt-hancock-im-a-celebrity-line-up-australia/
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.
You polished your jack boots , donned brown shirt , trimmed small moustache and are ready to abuse innocent people then Adolf Foreskin
Bit early even for you to be drinking. Even for you that is pretty incoherent. For the record, dickhead, unlike you, I am a centrist. You really are an objectionable little twat, but you do serve a purpose: you remind people that supporters of Alex Salmond are not only of very low intellect, but you are simply prejudiced small minded little fascists who believe in a kind of bizarre white supremacy; where pure-bred Scots are some kind of Aryan race. But as we all know, the few people that support Salmond are people like those that support Nick Griffin; thick hate filled morons who believe in their supremacy, but in fact are the lowest pond life.
Have a lovely day shouting at your telly in your rented bungalow, but do keep the noise down, your wife is very embarrassed at your behaviour
One of the Brexit opportunities is that we get to keep all migrants who cross the channel because we no longer have to abide by the pesky Dublin convention which allowed us to send them back to the EU country from which they came We took back control https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1587383060227624963
Money, borders, laws, and waters...
A PM gone for rule-breaking, a PM sacked by markets, UK hands tied by treaty, Protocol fallout, fisheries in bad shape, Dover crossings.
All four need management and cooperation. Delusion of 'control' made all four worse.
How many were we actually sending back to EU countries before? I would hazard a guess at near zero.
Tens of thousands were being sent back to EU countries, at the peak in the early part of the Blair administration (just after it had come in, and when asylum claims were at a peak).
The number of asylum grants (and returns) dropped to a low throughout the Brown administration, steadily grew through the Coalition years, dipped towards the end of the coalition and then (barring the abnormality of 2020) have been sharply back up in 2019/2021. The notable thing about 2021 is that there have been very few returns, and a very high proportion of acceptances.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
People fleeing economic conditions, whether they be called economic migrants or refugees, are still emigrants.
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
You're raising a range of interesting points. However, this is an area where there are various overlapping issues and I think it's useful to be clear what we're talking about.
There's a lot of immigration to the UK from Germany, the US, China, India, Australia etc. Most of these people are economic migrants. They are coming for jobs. They are not claiming asylum. They are not entering the country via a small boat traversing the Channel.
Asylum seekers only constitute about 6% of immigration to the UK. They are largely fleeing conflict.
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.
DDMs are the poor man's analytic tool, though.
Because if you are in steady state ex-growth then it might make sense but people value companies based upon expected growth over and above the cost of capital.
Why not buy back 100% of the shares and have done with it.
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.
You polished your jack boots , donned brown shirt , trimmed small moustache and are ready to abuse innocent people then Adolf Foreskin
Bit early even for you to be drinking. Even for you that is pretty incoherent. For the record, dickhead, unlike you, I am a centrist. You really are an objectionable little twat, but you do serve a purpose: you remind people that supporters of Alex Salmond are not only of very low intellect, but you are simply prejudiced small minded little fascists who believe in a kind of bizarre white supremacy; where pure-bred Scots are some kind of Aryan race. But as we all know, the few people that support Salmond are people like those that support Nick Griffin; thick hate filled morons who believe in their supremacy, but in fact are the lowest pond life.
Have a lovely day shouting at your telly in your rented bungalow, but do keep the noise down, your wife is very embarrassed at your behaviour
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.
So the "accepted at first stage" reate is ~72%, and a further 7% of total applicants (from the 28% refusals) are accepted on appeal. So the total is currently ~79% which is, I assume, where the 80% figure comes from.
ETA: and on a point of order: it is wrong to call them illegal immigrants. Only ~20% are illegal immigrants. The rest are legitimate asylum seekers (as per their claim being accepted!)
It is also useful to note from that link that the figures were much, much lower. They haven't been 79% for years. They have (temporarily? time will tell) peaked at 79%.
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.
But also only marginally (25% chance cold, 60% near average, 15% mild). And also about as much use as a chocolate teapot. We are getting better at longer range forcecasts but three months is about global circulation patterns (things like La Nina/El nino, NAO, etc). The shorter range is showing nothing cold, which helps keep the heating off for now.
Certainly this is the latest I can remember going without putting my heating on - I would say last week in October is usually the latest I’ve done it before. I think a lot of people are in the same boat, anecdotally. Of course some of this is driven by the fear of the bills but it has felt much milder than usual this winter, so far.
We are on oil, so its a bit different for us (you buy a lump of oil - minimum was 500 litres). We have had the heating on already - some cold days at the end of sept, but its been off for the last few weeks.
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 "former UK colony" isn't trolling the US....
Surely just a statement of fact.
Except that technically it is thirteen former UK colonies.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
People fleeing economic conditions, whether they be called economic migrants or refugees, are still emigrants.
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
You're raising a range of interesting points. However, this is an area where there are various overlapping issues and I think it's useful to be clear what we're talking about.
There's a lot of immigration to the UK from Germany, the US, China, India, Australia etc. Most of these people are economic migrants. They are coming for jobs. They are not claiming asylum. They are not entering the country via a small boat traversing the Channel.
Asylum seekers only constitute about 6% of immigration to the UK. They are largely fleeing conflict.
Read the link I gave, we're not talking about the developed world, we're talking about developing nations.
Developing nations sees more people emigrating/fleeing the economic situation (choose your language as you please) the more they come out of absolute poverty, not the less they are.
Recent decades has seen the biggest reduction in absolute poverty the world has ever seen. That should be celebrated. As a result, migration has increased to unprecedented levels. That is not a bad thing.
Reducing poverty further will increase the desire for people to take advantage of their newfound opportunities and travel to the developed world, it won't reduce it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and even if it were keeping people impoverished in order to dampen emigration is a horrid notion.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
People fleeing economic conditions, whether they be called economic migrants or refugees, are still emigrants.
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
You're raising a range of interesting points. However, this is an area where there are various overlapping issues and I think it's useful to be clear what we're talking about.
There's a lot of immigration to the UK from Germany, the US, China, India, Australia etc. Most of these people are economic migrants. They are coming for jobs. They are not claiming asylum. They are not entering the country via a small boat traversing the Channel.
Asylum seekers only constitute about 6% of immigration to the UK. They are largely fleeing conflict.
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.
Distant family member sought asylum in the UK. Claimed persecution etc. but I personally know this not to be true. He was an economic migrant looking for work opportunities/better life for children.
Might have been a bit of an ethical dilemma to be honest, but UK authorities processed and rejected them. Now settled in France as asylum seekers.
Edit: just remembered another family member who significantly overstayed his student visa - I think that's technically an illegal immigrant. To be honest he was just a bit disorganized/depressed after bombing in his exams - he's back in home country and unlikely to return I would guess.
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.
The answer to the refugee problem is to ensure that peoples' homelands are attractive places to live; just as the answer to Islamic terrorism is to persuade its proponents that Western liberal democracy is attractive and superior to violent religious fundamentalism.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
One of the Brexit opportunities is that we get to keep all migrants who cross the channel because we no longer have to abide by the pesky Dublin convention which allowed us to send them back to the EU country from which they came We took back control https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1587383060227624963
Money, borders, laws, and waters...
A PM gone for rule-breaking, a PM sacked by markets, UK hands tied by treaty, Protocol fallout, fisheries in bad shape, Dover crossings.
All four need management and cooperation. Delusion of 'control' made all four worse.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
People fleeing economic conditions, whether they be called economic migrants or refugees, are still emigrants.
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
You're raising a range of interesting points. However, this is an area where there are various overlapping issues and I think it's useful to be clear what we're talking about.
There's a lot of immigration to the UK from Germany, the US, China, India, Australia etc. Most of these people are economic migrants. They are coming for jobs. They are not claiming asylum. They are not entering the country via a small boat traversing the Channel.
Asylum seekers only constitute about 6% of immigration to the UK. They are largely fleeing conflict.
In the briefing paper I quote below, they give the figure as 12% in 2020.
Gone from Brazilian Trump to Brazilian Corbyn.....
Do you think the threat of Ukraine joining NATO was Russia’s real reason for invading?
That’s the argument they put forward. If they have a secret one, we don’t know. The other issue was Ukraine joining the E.U. The Europeans could have said: “No, now is not the moment for Ukraine to join the E.U., we’ll wait.” They didn’t have to encourage the confrontation.
But I think they did try to speak to Russia.
No, they didn’t. The conversations were very few. If you want peace, you have to have patience. They could have sat at a negotiating table for 10, 15, 20 days, a whole month, trying to find a solution. I think dialogue only works when it is taken seriously.
Can you really say that to Zelensky? He didn’t want a war, it came to him.
He did want war. If he didn’t want war, he would have negotiated a little more.....
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
The West has spent the last 50 years pouring huge amounts of aid money into poor countries.
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.
The answer to the refugee problem is to ensure that peoples' homelands are attractive places to live; just as the answer to Islamic terrorism is to persuade its proponents that Western liberal democracy is attractive and superior to violent religious fundamentalism.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
We should make people's homelands attractive places to live, because its the right thing to do, but it will increase the number of people trying to get here not reduce it.
The wealthier people are, the more they can afford to invest in their future by taking opportunities to move to the developed 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
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
The West has spent the last 50 years pouring huge amounts of aid money into poor countries
And its worked. Its increased development to levels we've never seen before, vastly reducing poverty. 👍
As a result migration has increased. The more we aid development, the more it will increase further too.
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.
The answer to the refugee problem is to ensure that peoples' homelands are attractive places to live; just as the answer to Islamic terrorism is to persuade its proponents that Western liberal democracy is attractive and superior to violent religious fundamentalism.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
We should make people's homelands attractive places to live, because its the right thing to do, but it will increase the number of people trying to get here not reduce it.
The wealthier people are, the more they can afford to invest in their future by taking opportunities to move to the developed world.
We want to make their world the developed world. How many economic migrants or asylum seekers do we get from South Korea?
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.
Distant family member sought asylum in the UK. Claimed persecution etc. but I personally know this not to be true. He was an economic migrant looking for work opportunities/better life for children.
Might have been a bit of an ethical dilemma to be honest, but UK authorities processed and rejected them. Now settled in France as asylum seekers.
Sounds like the system is working. How long did the process take, out of interest?
None of this looks good for the government. The racists are asking themselves If this lot can't even keep the foreigners out what are they good at? And though there's a feeling (certainly on PB ) that hate of 'the other' goes down well with Tory voters there are more than a few who are repulsed by it.
The Nasty Party flag is fluttering like we haven't seen for years and that doesn't usually spell a good result for the Tories
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.
DDMs are the poor man's analytic tool, though.
Because if you are in steady state ex-growth then it might make sense but people value companies based upon expected growth over and above the cost of capital.
Why not buy back 100% of the shares and have done with it.
Expected growth means future dividends are expected to be higher, it still all comes back ultimately to what the shareholders can expect to get in the future.
You can't buy back 100% of the shares, there must always be one share outstanding at the very least. But many firms can and do go private and remove publicly traded shares, so there's no reason you can't do that in theory.
Most firms can't afford to. Publicly traded shares normally are a needed form of raising capital, at the price of diluting the share of ownership other shareholders have.
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.
The answer to the refugee problem is to ensure that peoples' homelands are attractive places to live; just as the answer to Islamic terrorism is to persuade its proponents that Western liberal democracy is attractive and superior to violent religious fundamentalism.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
We should make people's homelands attractive places to live, because its the right thing to do, but it will increase the number of people trying to get here not reduce it.
The wealthier people are, the more they can afford to invest in their future by taking opportunities to move to the developed world.
We want to make their world the developed world. How many economic migrants or asylum seekers do we get from South Korea?
Alongside that, the scare stories peddled about mass migration, driven by hunger and climate change devastation, would be considerably less likely were less developed countries to have greater economic resources to address those coming challenges.
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.
Distant family member sought asylum in the UK. Claimed persecution etc. but I personally know this not to be true. He was an economic migrant looking for work opportunities/better life for children.
Might have been a bit of an ethical dilemma to be honest, but UK authorities processed and rejected them. Now settled in France as asylum seekers.
Sounds like the system is working. How long did the process take, out of interest?
Honestly don't know - not really in touch, more heard updates on the family grapevine. I think it was a long time though definitely, there was a lot of concern for the wife & child who were separated from the husband and running out of money waiting for the application result. And had pretty unrealistic expectations about going to England soon.
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.
There was a survey across the EU in I think 2017 where they asked people of African/Afro-Caribbean heritage about their experience of racism. Britain was the second least racist country of the then 28 in the EU. Malta was slightly less racist, Finland was the worst.
I’m also dubious about the survey posted earlier suggesting Russia isn’t a racist country - the way they’ve treated Ukrainians is hardly consistent with that.
Similarly Indonesia, I frequently hear upper middle class educated professional people casually make remarks (which their peers nod along in agreement to) that would stun a U.K. dinner party into silence followed by the mother of all rows. I tell them if they ever visit the U.K. not to make remarks like that which is greeted with incomprehension.
Win Predictor model again showing it is horseshit. No way it is 50/50. NZ know the target, they are ahead of the scoring rate, run rate required isn't insane, 2 set batsman, lots of wicket in hand.
Given how insane this views were, would be quite a road to Damascus conversion (and I would struggle to believe it). May, Russia had already invaded and clear to everybody what they were doing. And it also had all the classic tropes, its NATO fault, its EU / European countries fault, if only Ukraine had negotiated properly...
None of this looks good for the government. The racists are asking themselves If this lot can't even keep the foreigners out what are they good at? And though there's a feeling (certainly on PB ) that hate of 'the other' goes down well with Tory voters there are more than a few who are repulsed by it.
The Nasty Party flag is fluttering like we haven't seen for years and that doesn't usually spell a good result for the Tories
I don't believe that every person who is concerned about economic migrants abusing the system (for example coming from Albania) is a racist. At heart the UK is a country of fair play - just try queue jumping at the post office or pub and see what happens. Most people are willing to help genuine refugees, but they no longer believe that the 40,000 arriving over the channel from France are genuine. That might be wrong, but that is the impression that they have.
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.
You polished your jack boots , donned brown shirt , trimmed small moustache and are ready to abuse innocent people then Adolf Foreskin
Bit early even for you to be drinking. Even for you that is pretty incoherent. For the record, dickhead, unlike you, I am a centrist. You really are an objectionable little twat, but you do serve a purpose: you remind people that supporters of Alex Salmond are not only of very low intellect, but you are simply prejudiced small minded little fascists who believe in a kind of bizarre white supremacy; where pure-bred Scots are some kind of Aryan race. But as we all know, the few people that support Salmond are people like those that support Nick Griffin; thick hate filled morons who believe in their supremacy, but in fact are the lowest pond life.
Have a lovely day shouting at your telly in your rented bungalow, but do keep the noise down, your wife is very embarrassed at your behaviour
Adof Foreskin has got his panties in a bunch.
Lol. Such a silly post from a political numbskull. I can imagine your fat ugly bald head almost exploding with anger. Alex Salmond, like Nick Griffin, attracts political illiterates; those of low education, low intellect, low achievement, often with extreme prejudiced and anger management problems. You clearly tick all of these boxes.
Anyone who frequents this site seeing you trying to project your fascism onto a centrist, will just further realise what a thick idiot you are.
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.
The answer to the refugee problem is to ensure that peoples' homelands are attractive places to live; just as the answer to Islamic terrorism is to persuade its proponents that Western liberal democracy is attractive and superior to violent religious fundamentalism.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
We should make people's homelands attractive places to live, because its the right thing to do, but it will increase the number of people trying to get here not reduce it.
The wealthier people are, the more they can afford to invest in their future by taking opportunities to move to the developed world.
We want to make their world the developed world. How many economic migrants or asylum seekers do we get from South Korea?
Most Korean migrants head for the US, followed by Japan, China, Australia and Canada.
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.
DDMs are the poor man's analytic tool, though.
Because if you are in steady state ex-growth then it might make sense but people value companies based upon expected growth over and above the cost of capital.
Why not buy back 100% of the shares and have done with it.
Expected growth means future dividends are expected to be higher, it still all comes back ultimately to what the shareholders can expect to get in the future.
You can't buy back 100% of the shares, there must always be one share outstanding at the very least. But many firms can and do go private and remove publicly traded shares, so there's no reason you can't do that in theory.
Most firms can't afford to. Publicly traded shares normally are a needed form of raising capital, at the price of diluting the share of ownership other shareholders have.
Dividends are a distraction. While BP is not a high growth company investors assign higher value to higher growth prospects. Dividends can also be manipulated by management. What was the dividend payout ratio, and PEx of Google.
Generally, although I appreciate you have many years of investment analysis under your belt, investors are wary of share buybacks and DDM valuations.
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.
The answer to the refugee problem is to ensure that peoples' homelands are attractive places to live; just as the answer to Islamic terrorism is to persuade its proponents that Western liberal democracy is attractive and superior to violent religious fundamentalism.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
We should make people's homelands attractive places to live, because its the right thing to do, but it will increase the number of people trying to get here not reduce it.
The wealthier people are, the more they can afford to invest in their future by taking opportunities to move to the developed world.
We want to make their world the developed world. How many economic migrants or asylum seekers do we get from South Korea?
South Korea is (was? I think still is) part of the Youth Mobility scheme along with AU, NZ etc. They had ~1000 places per year for that which lets young people live and work in the UK for up to 2 years.
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.
I posted about this yesterday. People flee dirt poor and violent countries. Much of the violence comes from poverty and inequality. So we could work with these countries to make them less poor and reduce the drive for people to flee. It would be cheaper...
We can and should do what we can to help the rest of the world develop, and have done extremely successfully for many decades, but because its the right thing to do and not to reduce the drive for people to flee.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
Increased emigration, but that's not the same as increased refugee numbers. RP was talking about reducing refugee numbers.
People fleeing economic conditions, whether they be called economic migrants or refugees, are still emigrants.
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
You're raising a range of interesting points. However, this is an area where there are various overlapping issues and I think it's useful to be clear what we're talking about.
There's a lot of immigration to the UK from Germany, the US, China, India, Australia etc. Most of these people are economic migrants. They are coming for jobs. They are not claiming asylum. They are not entering the country via a small boat traversing the Channel.
Asylum seekers only constitute about 6% of immigration to the UK. They are largely fleeing conflict.
Read the link I gave, we're not talking about the developed world, we're talking about developing nations.
Developing nations sees more people emigrating/fleeing the economic situation (choose your language as you please) the more they come out of absolute poverty, not the less they are.
Recent decades has seen the biggest reduction in absolute poverty the world has ever seen. That should be celebrated. As a result, migration has increased to unprecedented levels. That is not a bad thing.
Reducing poverty further will increase the desire for people to take advantage of their newfound opportunities and travel to the developed world, it won't reduce it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and even if it were keeping people impoverished in order to dampen emigration is a horrid notion.
Indeed. And most of those people will apply for work visas, not for asylum. So, are we discussing UK policy on work visas (which currently appears to be increase numbers) or are we discussing UK policy on asylum seekers, or both?
Given how insane this views were, would be quite a road to Damascus conversion (and I would struggle to believe it). May, Russia had already invaded and clear to everybody what they were doing. And it also had all the classic tropes, its NATO fault, its EU / European countries fault, if only Ukraine had negotiated properly...
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There's lots of discussion about political issues happening, and no discussion of cricket. What's going on?
Two wickets down.
Britain was the second least racist country of the then 28 in the EU.
Malta was slightly less racist, Finland was the worst.
According to Carsales base they sold just under 600.
I can see how populist tail-tweaking, "telling the truth the others are afraid of" works if you are Farage, GB News, The Spectator and so on. People whose role is to chuck bricks.
But if you are the actual Home Secretary, and you have the actual power to do stuff, don't you end up looking stupid or worse?
The current Government lets in more people to fill job vacancies than it does asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are not the driving force behind increases in population.
Standards in public life matter
The only other country on the list I can comment on is Norway which I would agree is far less racist than the UK or any other country I have lived and worked in. But then they have a very aggressive integrationist policy for their immigrant population - something that would probably be attacked by many if it were introduced into the Uk as being, well, racist (For the record, it isn't).
Lack of joined up thinking, short termism and fairytale government is much easier for politicians, im afraid.
Doing so actually increases migration. People who are utterly impoverished generally can't afford to traverse the world. People who come out of poverty can afford to survive but also want more than mere survival and can see opportunities around the globe that are better.
Poor countries that reduce absolute poverty on global measurements end up seeing more emigration, not less.
We should still support them and reduce poverty and accept migration because its the right thing to do, not out of selfish desires.
They’ve been trying this (charitably) since at least Patel - ie we can’t be bothered to really fix the system (because it needs properly funded, medium and long term solutions which aren’t going to please anyone on the left or the right) but let’s put a HS in office who will shout and scream about how terrible the system is whilst throwing out red meat for the Tory press. And hope the mood music gets you through.
You think we should go around the world telling other countries how to run themselves? I don't think they are short of advice...
Plus more energy consumption heightens chance of blackouts.
The data is overwhelming, unambiguous and clear. Reducing poverty increases emigration, it doesn't reduce it. Anyone who claims that we should reduce poverty to reduce emigration is on a hiding to nothing. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/emigration-rises-along-economic-development-aid-agencies-should-face-not-fear-it
But we shouldn't seek to keep poor countries poor to reduce migration. Migration, development etc are good things and people should make the case for that honestly and not try to exploit prejudice to further their own agenda.
We took back control
https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1587383060227624963
Money, borders, laws, and waters...
A PM gone for rule-breaking, a PM sacked by markets, UK hands tied by treaty, Protocol fallout, fisheries in bad shape, Dover crossings.
All four need management and cooperation. Delusion of 'control' made all four worse.
This is the lesson. https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1587389425687855104/photo/1
ETA: and on a point of order: it is wrong to call them illegal immigrants. Only ~20% are illegal immigrants. The rest are legitimate asylum seekers (as per their claim being accepted!)
Certainly plenty of abuse among our peers mind you.
a) too many people who are highly unlikely to qualify for asylum are trying to, and sometimes succeeding in, getting in to the UK.
b) too many genuine, legitimate asylum seekers are being mistreated by the byzantine bureaucracy and the excessive time it takes to be 'processed' ( a horrible word), exacerbated now by the poor conditions they have to tolerate.
It strikes me that both a) and b) need to be sorted out by serious statecraft, appropriate investment of resources, and grown-up conversations with other countries to implement solutions.
Who do you think would be better suited to implement such statecraft and improve the situation? Suella Braverman or Yvette Cooper? I know what I think.
I'M A CELEB MP:
Former health secretary Matt Hancock joins I’m A Celebrity as bombshell extra campmate
- breaker with @RodMcPheeTheSun
http://thesun.co.uk/tv/20284864/matt-hancock-im-a-celebrity-line-up-australia/
We don't have a navy resourced or able to do tow backs
We don't have a Border Force resourced to even properly staff the border at Heathrow never mind handle asylum seekers in large numbers
We don't have a Home Office resourced to process asylum seekers
We don't have sufficient police officers to fight crime never mind manage this
We don't have a functional legal system able to process cases
Braverman rightly says the system is broken - but her government did so much of the breaking. An immediate relief to the system would be to allow legal routes for Syrians, Iranians, Afghans to claim asylum. That takes a big chunk off the boats. But we won't. Because apparently we don't want them here. But as they are coming anyway, what else do we do?
Have a lovely day shouting at your telly in your rented bungalow, but do keep the noise down, your wife is very embarrassed at your behaviour
The number of asylum grants (and returns) dropped to a low throughout the Brown administration, steadily grew through the Coalition years, dipped towards the end of the coalition and then (barring the abnormality of 2020) have been sharply back up in 2019/2021. The notable thing about 2021 is that there have been very few returns, and a very high proportion of acceptances.
ETA: data https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01403/SN01403.pdf
ETA2: Ah - specifically under the Dublin Convention. You are correct that net it was less than zero!
There's a lot of immigration to the UK from Germany, the US, China, India, Australia etc. Most of these people are economic migrants. They are coming for jobs. They are not claiming asylum. They are not entering the country via a small boat traversing the Channel.
Asylum seekers only constitute about 6% of immigration to the UK. They are largely fleeing conflict.
Because if you are in steady state ex-growth then it might make sense but people value companies based upon expected growth over and above the cost of capital.
Why not buy back 100% of the shares and have done with it.
https://twitter.com/janinegibson/status/1587393606607847424
Except that technically it is thirteen former UK colonies.
Developing nations sees more people emigrating/fleeing the economic situation (choose your language as you please) the more they come out of absolute poverty, not the less they are.
Recent decades has seen the biggest reduction in absolute poverty the world has ever seen. That should be celebrated. As a result, migration has increased to unprecedented levels. That is not a bad thing.
Reducing poverty further will increase the desire for people to take advantage of their newfound opportunities and travel to the developed world, it won't reduce it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and even if it were keeping people impoverished in order to dampen emigration is a horrid notion.
Might have been a bit of an ethical dilemma to be honest, but UK authorities processed and rejected them. Now settled in France as asylum seekers.
Edit: just remembered another family member who significantly overstayed his student visa - I think that's technically an illegal immigrant. To be honest he was just a bit disorganized/depressed after bombing in his exams - he's back in home country and unlikely to return I would guess.
These are not short term fixes. But we continue to try to find short term fixes for these problems and are amazed when they don't work.
Do you think the threat of Ukraine joining NATO was Russia’s real reason for invading?
That’s the argument they put forward. If they have a secret one, we don’t know. The other issue was Ukraine joining the E.U. The Europeans could have said: “No, now is not the moment for Ukraine to join the E.U., we’ll wait.” They didn’t have to encourage the confrontation.
But I think they did try to speak to Russia.
No, they didn’t. The conversations were very few. If you want peace, you have to have patience. They could have sat at a negotiating table for 10, 15, 20 days, a whole month, trying to find a solution. I think dialogue only works when it is taken seriously.
Can you really say that to Zelensky? He didn’t want a war, it came to him.
He did want war. If he didn’t want war, he would have negotiated a little more.....
https://time.com/6173232/lula-da-silva-transcript/
The wealthier people are, the more they can afford to invest in their future by taking opportunities to move to the developed world.
As a result migration has increased. The more we aid development, the more it will increase further too.
The Nasty Party flag is fluttering like we haven't seen for years and that doesn't usually spell a good result for the Tories
You can't buy back 100% of the shares, there must always be one share outstanding at the very least. But many firms can and do go private and remove publicly traded shares, so there's no reason you can't do that in theory.
Most firms can't afford to. Publicly traded shares normally are a needed form of raising capital, at the price of diluting the share of ownership other shareholders have.
https://www.reuters.com/world/lulas-ukraine-comments-are-russian-attempts-distort-truth-ukrainian-official-2022-05-05/
Does anyone actually know his current views ?
https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2019-being-black-in-the-eu-summary_en.pdf
I’m also dubious about the survey posted earlier suggesting Russia isn’t a racist country - the way they’ve treated Ukrainians is hardly consistent with that.
Similarly Indonesia, I frequently hear upper middle class educated professional people casually make remarks (which their peers nod along in agreement to) that would stun a U.K. dinner party into silence followed by the mother of all rows.
I tell them if they ever visit the U.K. not to make remarks like that which is greeted with incomprehension.
Anyone who frequents this site seeing you trying to project your fascism onto a centrist, will just further realise what a thick idiot you are.
Generally, although I appreciate you have many years of investment analysis under your belt, investors are wary of share buybacks and DDM valuations.