I think it is about time the American government designates the Mexican cartels as terror organizations. Start a policy of going after one cartel at a time - whoever has been the most violent over the last few years. You quickly create an interest among druglords that they should carry out their business with as little killing and torture as possible.
How is that going to work? Just invade Mexico in an SMO?
I think if the US military just drive hard towards the south they can cut the Mexicans off from their drug supply lines and win the war on drugs. Or something.
Simple. Legalise and control.
Cocaine costs £50 a kilo to make as legal product, IIRC.
Undercut the cartels by a margin, the rest is tax.
Use the tax money to buy Jericho 3 nuclear missiles and warheads for Ukraine.
This will piss off
- the drug cartels - the drug dealers - the Republicans - Putin - The Lib Dem’s
Perhaps bring the whole sector into public ownership. That way we can have price controls - eg charge according to ability to pay - and all profit goes to schools and hospitals. And given the product is toxic set a long term business plan not for expansion but decline.
Decline not expansion is pretty much automatic under those circumstances!
Interesting grammar school article, discussing how non grammar school kids perform worse than in areas without selection, while grammar schools remain the preserve of the middle class.
Appalling article from the BBC there which I tweeted the journalist concerned to complain about.
Completely ignored evidence from Bristol University that working class pupils get better GCSE results at grammar schools than pupils of similar ability do in comprehensive schools
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
You're replying to Heathener - perhaps the biggest partisan of all on here (and, yes, I haven't forgotten that HY exists)!
We discuss Leicester and East Ham – two of the most mundane places on Earth – more on this forum than all other locales in the UK combined.
I'm happy to talk about other places instead. Where would you suggest was more interesting to talk about? Could you perhaps get us started?
Epping is very nice! 👍
I have never been to Epping. What am I missing out on?
Epping Forest, a 19th century church and Medieval church in nearby Epping Upland, the Town show in July and Christmas market, a green where Churchill regularly spoke from and an excellent butchers
But are there any cosy cafes where one might knit with tea and a scone?
Plenty, including on the recreation ground which does cream teas
This is the sort of local knowledge that is invaluable, because looking at Google maps I can only see two recreation grounds around Epping, and neither of them seem to have a cafe selling cream teas. Where would this be then?
We discuss Leicester and East Ham – two of the most mundane places on Earth – more on this forum than all other locales in the UK combined.
I'm happy to talk about other places instead. Where would you suggest was more interesting to talk about? Could you perhaps get us started?
Can I suggest anywhere other than Leicester or East Ham, just to ring the changes? I’m not hugely fussy!
We end up talking about Leicester and East Ham because a couple of our regular posters live in those places and talk about them.
We talk about other places when people say something about them. So, say something about somewhere else.
Hot news from the island - council contractors dumped a large pile of building materials, needed to do an emergency repair on the water main, onto flowers planted by Ventnor’s volunteer guerilla-gardener ‘flower fairy’, forcing the town council to promise to pay for replacing the flowers once the water board work is done.
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
Iraq had little to do with it, Blair was re elected in 2005 after the invasion after all. Brown's appalling economic mismanagement and Cameron's modernisation helped but never forget the Tories even in 1997 got a higher voteshare than Labour did in 1983 and I don't recall ad agencies then deciding Labour had to abandon its name and identity, correctly so apart from the addition of New Labour with Blair
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
@Leon A man who spends a lot of his time travelling around the world for fancy food and lots of casual sex. Yet also spends a considerable amount of time telling random strangers on the internet just how much fun he has doing it. Why would someone spend so much time boasting about such trivialities?
Perhaps to try and give meaning to things which are utterly meaningless. You quote Martin Amis, I'll quote Marcus from Bad Santa:
"Your soul is dog sh*t. Every single thing about you is ugly."
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
@Leon A man who spends a lot of his time travelling around the world for fancy food and lots of casual sex. Yet also spends a considerable amount of time telling random strangers on the internet just how much fun he has doing it. Why would someone spend so much time boasting about such trivialities?
Perhaps to try and give meaning to things which are utterly meaningless. You quote Martin Amis, I'll quote Marcus from Bad Santa:
"Your soul is dog sh*t. Every single thing about you is ugly."
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
The trouble is that by Mike's own admission he is guessing: he even uses that word.
Whereas the opinion polls are clearcut. The latest has Labour on 50% with a 26% lead.
Sorry but you simply don't come back from this. I've seen it before in 1992-97. An irreversible seachange has occurred and Labour will win a MASSIVE majority.
Whatever you saw in 92-97 ain’t this, because the maths are different. 97 Tory’s barely majority, 2024 start with a Landslide to defend, 2024 Labour can gain a hundred seats and still don’t have any majority. The maths is different.
We know you have a weak argument when you point to one poll from one pollster. Labour are not 26 points ahead on average of pollsters right now. It’s hard to say exactly what, probably lower end of 15-19%. If that true lead narrows over the next 19 months to just single digits, and Tory’s lift to 33 or 34%, not only no Labour majority, but we could have a well hung parliament where Starmer is only PM with a very shaky ultra rainbow coalition.
The grey man with the rainbow coalition the History books would call his tumultuous three years as PM.
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
You're replying to Heathener - perhaps the biggest partisan of all on here (and, yes, I haven't forgotten that HY exists)!
My answer was to anyone who thinks a brand can instantly repair itself. It's like a whole load of cogs and when the linchpin comes out the whole edifice collapses and you wonder how it ever held together in the first place. Brexit and Boris were the NEW Tory Party and now they've crashed and burned in a couple of years we'll collectively reflect on how the brand will ever function again.
My apologies for interupting these discussions with a comment that is about politics -- and may even inform a few bettors.
Trump won the CPAC straw poll. Is that good news for him? Probably not, says Henry Olsen: "In fact, however, this seemingly good news is a historic harbinger of defeat. The CPAC straw poll has been conducted regularly for decades. The winner of the poll conducted in the year just before a presidential election in which there is no Republican incumbent has always gone on to lose the primary contest." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/07/trump-cpac-poll-harbinger-defeat/
Olsen concludes with this: "Writing Trump’s political obituary is a fool’s errand. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t seeing him decay before our eyes. CPAC 2023 might in hindsight be Trump’s high-water mark rather than his launchpad."
But I think there are reasons that these precedents might, in fact, tell us something about Trump's chances. First, what appeals to extremists in America might not appeal to broader groups. Second, attendance at CPAC was way down this year, so it is likely that the attendees were even less representative than in the past.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
You're replying to Heathener - perhaps the biggest partisan of all on here (and, yes, I haven't forgotten that HY exists)!
My answer was to anyone who thinks a brand can instantly repair itself. It's like a whole load of cogs and when the linchpin comes out the whole edifice collapses and you wonder how it ever held together in the first place. Brexit and Boris were the NEW Tory Party and now they've crashed and burned in a couple of years we'll collectively reflect on how the brand will ever function again.
People said the same about Labour after 2019 and 2010, the Tories after 1997, Labour after 1983, the Tories after 1966 and 1945 and 1906 and 1832 etc. Yet they all eventually came back.
The only exception being the Liberals after their trouncing in 1918 which led to their replacement by the Labour Party as the main alternative to the Conservatives
My apologies for interupting these discussions with a comment that is about politics -- and may even inform a few bettors.
Trump won the CPAC straw poll. Is that good news for him? Probably not, says Henry Olsen: "In fact, however, this seemingly good news is a historic harbinger of defeat. The CPAC straw poll has been conducted regularly for decades. The winner of the poll conducted in the year just before a presidential election in which there is no Republican incumbent has always gone on to lose the primary contest." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/07/trump-cpac-poll-harbinger-defeat/
Olsen concludes with this: "Writing Trump’s political obituary is a fool’s errand. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t seeing him decay before our eyes. CPAC 2023 might in hindsight be Trump’s high-water mark rather than his launchpad."
But I think there are reasons that these precedents might, in fact, tell us something about Trump's chances. First, what appeals to extremists in America might not appeal to broader groups. Second, attendance at CPAC was way down this year, so it is likely that the attendees were even less representative than in the past.
Cpac members think there is an incumbent Republican President.....
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
You're replying to Heathener - perhaps the biggest partisan of all on here (and, yes, I haven't forgotten that HY exists)!
My answer was to anyone who thinks a brand can instantly repair itself. It's like a whole load of cogs and when the linchpin comes out the whole edifice collapses and you wonder how it ever held together in the first place. Brexit and Boris were the NEW Tory Party and now they've crashed and burned in a couple of years we'll collectively reflect on how the brand will ever function again.
But you're assuming the brand is beyond repair. Which given your own political leanings is perhaps not entirely safe to rely on. And the 1997-2010 period, when the brand was not significantly changed, is an argument against the position you're taking, not in favour of it.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I was asking a genuine question, though.
Is there some way in which it can be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but still compatible with "international law"?
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
You're replying to Heathener - perhaps the biggest partisan of all on here (and, yes, I haven't forgotten that HY exists)!
My answer was to anyone who thinks a brand can instantly repair itself. It's like a whole load of cogs and when the linchpin comes out the whole edifice collapses and you wonder how it ever held together in the first place. Brexit and Boris were the NEW Tory Party and now they've crashed and burned in a couple of years we'll collectively reflect on how the brand will ever function again.
People said the same about Labour after 2019 and 2010, the Tories after 1997, Labour after 1983, the Tories after 1966 and 1945 and 1906 and 1832 etc. Yet they all eventually came back.
The only exception being the Liberals after their trouncing in 1918 which led to their replacement by the Labour Party as the main alternative to the Conservatives
I think you underestimate how wrecked the Tories were in 1997. There was talk at the time and over the next few years of it not recovering. Steve Hilton's the one who should be up for a knighthood. Stanley should be put up against a wall for his contribution.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I was asking a genuine question, though.
Is there some way in which it can be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but still compatible with "international law"?
I've no idea. Given it's Braverman, the statement has no substantive meaning. Let's wait for analysis of the actual legislation.
@Sandpit, I don't think you realise just how much anger there is out there with the Conservatives. It's forgivable because you are a Dubai expat but I think the latter affects your judgement on this and clouds your analysis.
There is real, visceral, anger. A seachange occurred and it will not be reversed for a generation. That's how bad it is for brand tory.
I remember in 1999/00 one of the TV stations asked the Ad agency TBWA to come up with a campaign that could make the Tories electable again. They put several teams on it and all decided they'd needed to start from the beginning with a new corporate identity and a new name.
Then after several days deliberation they concluded it wasn't salvageable. In fact they turned out to be correct. David Cameron with the help of Steve Hilton created a party that was barely recognisable from the one that collapsed in '97.
I often wondered whether without Iraq they might have have had to wait for at least another five years.
You're replying to Heathener - perhaps the biggest partisan of all on here (and, yes, I haven't forgotten that HY exists)!
My answer was to anyone who thinks a brand can instantly repair itself. It's like a whole load of cogs and when the linchpin comes out the whole edifice collapses and you wonder how it ever held together in the first place. Brexit and Boris were the NEW Tory Party and now they've crashed and burned in a couple of years we'll collectively reflect on how the brand will ever function again.
People said the same about Labour after 2019 and 2010, the Tories after 1997, Labour after 1983, the Tories after 1966 and 1945 and 1906 and 1832 etc. Yet they all eventually came back.
The only exception being the Liberals after their trouncing in 1918 which led to their replacement by the Labour Party as the main alternative to the Conservatives
I think you underestimate how wrecked the Tories were in 1997. There was talk at the time and over the next few years of it not recovering. Steve Hilton's the one who should be up for a knighthood. Stanley should be put up against a wall for his contribution.
Yet the Conservatives recovered within 13 years to get back into government. It took Labour 18 years after losing power in 1979 by contrast to get back into power in 1997.
Let us also not forget Stanley's son won a bigger majority in 2019 for the Conservatives than Cameron did in 2015 either
A ‘Free Our Streets’ event has been organised by @ReconnectingOx at the Wesley Memorial Church from 7pm on Thursday. Please note this is not the same as the Communist Corresponding Society @CCSoc ‘Frankenstein & the Politics of Nature’ which starts at 7.30pm in a different room.
Interesting grammar school article, discussing how non grammar school kids perform worse than in areas without selection, while grammar schools remain the preserve of the middle class.
Presumably some references to the sectarian preferences of the Pope and the defecatory habits of bears too.
There is some interesting stuff in the sociology of school selection, though.
Where I live, there were two primary schools in a catchment areas. State schools. one was terrible, one was darn near private levels of success.
The successful one was very middle class. The people from the council houses, some of whose gardens backed onto the school ground of the top notch school, sent their children (nearly always) to the poorly performing one.
A couple of them broke the mold. I was interested to talk with one lady, who was a bit nervous of us weird posh people. Apparently, all her neighbours and friends were a bit alarmed at her sending her child to the "posh" school. Homework, uniform policy, strict rules about term time holidays... and "not for the likes of us" all got a mention apparently.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I was asking a genuine question, though.
Is there some way in which it can be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but still compatible with "international law"?
I've no idea. Given it's Braverman, the statement has no substantive meaning. Let's wait for analysis of the actual legislation.
OK. Thanks. It just seemed unusually nonsensical, even for a Tory Cabinet Minister - "There's a more than 50% chance my right leg has gone, but I am confidence I still have two legs" type of thing.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I was asking a genuine question, though.
Is there some way in which it can be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but still compatible with "international law"?
I've no idea.
Given it's Braverman, the statement has no substantive meaning. Let's wait for analysis of the actual legislation.
Not sure how this bill works and I expect legal challenges
I hope Sunak and Macron, who have a much improved relationship, are able to work together to address the issue
Linking the thread header, which I think is sound, with the continued drip, drip, drip of Tories standing down; if they do much better than many think (and I think there’s an outside chance they even win) then the Tory Party will look very different. I hope they still get some of these people and don’t just assume they are paper candidates…. I am assume Labour will, post 2017, in case it does more than blow the doors off again.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I watched some of the questions in the commons earlier (or rather it was on in the background while I was getting lunch). It was an illustration of the worst aspects of how our parliament operates. Each speaker, and the minister herself, saying their pre-prepared piece. No questions actually substantively answered. No questioner picking up on the previous response and continuing the conversation. So a totally disjointed debate. Not even a dialogue of the deaf, because it wasn't a dialogue.
55 years old so 57 at the next election. You would have thought that after 26 years in Parliament he would be continuing until his 60s before retiring.
Now he's either about to become one of those layabouts who should be going back to work or he needs at the age of 57 to find a new career.
I think it is about time the American government designates the Mexican cartels as terror organizations. Start a policy of going after one cartel at a time - whoever has been the most violent over the last few years. You quickly create an interest among druglords that they should carry out their business with as little killing and torture as possible.
How is that going to work? Just invade Mexico in an SMO?
I think if the US military just drive hard towards the south they can cut the Mexicans off from their drug supply lines and win the war on drugs. Or something.
Simple. Legalise and control.
Cocaine costs £50 a kilo to make as legal product, IIRC.
Undercut the cartels by a margin, the rest is tax.
Use the tax money to buy Jericho 3 nuclear missiles and warheads for Ukraine.
This will piss off
- the drug cartels - the drug dealers - the Republicans - Putin - The Lib Dem’s
Perhaps bring the whole sector into public ownership. That way we can have price controls - eg charge according to ability to pay - and all profit goes to schools and hospitals. And given the product is toxic set a long term business plan not for expansion but decline.
Decline not expansion is pretty much automatic under those circumstances!
Incidentally, the had already been tested in the UK.
If you are a celebrity/rich type, you don't go to Danny The Drug Dealer. You go to a very, very expensive trick cyclist who will prescribe for you. All absolutely legal and tip top. Better yet, the private doc will find you an NHS doc to rewrite the prescription, as a patient. So it is even cheaper. Probably if you get a pre pay card, yet cheaper.
So we have drugs on the NHS. Big reductions in celebrity drug deaths....
Linking the thread header, which I think is sound, with the continued drip, drip, drip of Tories standing down; if they do much better than many think (and I think there’s an outside chance they even win) then the Tory Party will look very different. I hope they still get some of these people and don’t just assume they are paper candidates…. I am assume Labour will, post 2017, in case it does more than blow the doors off again.
This was very much the mood music in 1997, especially "and I think there’s an outside chance they even win" - something felt inside the Labour camp, too, by all accounts. This focused minds and contributed to the scale of Labour's win.
I realise that this would be a monumental turnaround and that makes everyone cautious, but...
55 years old so 57 at the next election. You would have thought that after 26 years in Parliament he would be continuing until his 60s before retiring.
Now he's either about to become one of those layabouts who should be going back to work or he needs at the age of 57 to find a new career.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
Such obscene talk is popular.
This government sure knows what it's doing. There's no way Reform UK will damage the Tories now.
Cue a Tory poll lead by 1 September?
I remain of the view that faced with a choice between hammering the immigrants who come here on all those boats and doing something about the "cost of living crisis", the British people will choose hammering the immigrants any day of the week.
55 years old so 57 at the next election. You would have thought that after 26 years in Parliament he would be continuing until his 60s before retiring.
Now he's either about to become one of those layabouts who should be going back to work or he needs at the age of 57 to find a new career.
Graham’s next job could be in cyber (he just don’t know it yet).
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I was asking a genuine question, though.
Is there some way in which it can be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but still compatible with "international law"?
I've no idea.
Given it's Braverman, the statement has no substantive meaning. Let's wait for analysis of the actual legislation.
Not sure how this bill works and I expect legal challenges
I hope Sunak and Macron, who have a much improved relationship, are able to work together to address the issue
Macron is under enormous pressure as he tries to raise the French retirement age to 64. Under these circumstances he's (sadly) likely to prefer a fight with les rosbif to drum up a bit of positive publicity.
The Princess of Wales is now the most popular senior royal after the Queen's death according to a new RedfieldWilton poll.
The Princess is on +52%, the Prince on +49%, the King on +27%, the Queen Consort on +1%, the Duke of Sussex on -22%, the Duchess of Sussex on -33% and the Duke of York on -53%
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I watched some of the questions in the commons earlier (or rather it was on in the background while I was getting lunch). It was an illustration of the worst aspects of how our parliament operates. Each speaker, and the minister herself, saying their pre-prepared piece. No questions actually substantively answered. No questioner picking up on the previous response and continuing the conversation. So a totally disjointed debate. Not even a dialogue of the deaf, because it wasn't a dialogue.
Well it is difficult to properly debate a bill which hasn't been published. That's not on the opposition.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying? If you are a refugee, your status is about getting safety from persecution. It isn't based on getting the best place to live or the best place to have a job or the place where you have extended relatives.
We discuss Leicester and East Ham – two of the most mundane places on Earth – more on this forum than all other locales in the UK combined.
I'm happy to talk about other places instead. Where would you suggest was more interesting to talk about? Could you perhaps get us started?
Epping is very nice! 👍
I have never been to Epping. What am I missing out on?
Epping Forest, a 19th century church and Medieval church in nearby Epping Upland, the Town show in July and Christmas market, a green where Churchill regularly spoke from and an excellent butchers
But are there any cosy cafes where one might knit with tea and a scone?
Plenty, including on the recreation ground which does cream teas
This is the sort of local knowledge that is invaluable, because looking at Google maps I can only see two recreation grounds around Epping, and neither of them seem to have a cafe selling cream teas. Where would this be then?
Interesting grammar school article, discussing how non grammar school kids perform worse than in areas without selection, while grammar schools remain the preserve of the middle class.
Presumably some references to the sectarian preferences of the Pope and the defecatory habits of bears too.
There is some interesting stuff in the sociology of school selection, though.
Where I live, there were two primary schools in a catchment areas. State schools. one was terrible, one was darn near private levels of success.
The successful one was very middle class. The people from the council houses, some of whose gardens backed onto the school ground of the top notch school, sent their children (nearly always) to the poorly performing one.
A couple of them broke the mold. I was interested to talk with one lady, who was a bit nervous of us weird posh people. Apparently, all her neighbours and friends were a bit alarmed at her sending her child to the "posh" school. Homework, uniform policy, strict rules about term time holidays... and "not for the likes of us" all got a mention apparently.
"Not for the likes of us" is a frustrating and real phenomenon. But I wonder if the posher parents always go out of their way to be welcoming to those who don't fit in with the yummy mummy mafia. It's not necessary deliberate, either.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I watched some of the questions in the commons earlier (or rather it was on in the background while I was getting lunch). It was an illustration of the worst aspects of how our parliament operates. Each speaker, and the minister herself, saying their pre-prepared piece. No questions actually substantively answered. No questioner picking up on the previous response and continuing the conversation. So a totally disjointed debate. Not even a dialogue of the deaf, because it wasn't a dialogue.
Well it is difficult to properly debate a bill which hasn't been published. That's not on the opposition.
It's not a second reading debate, but it shouldn't be beyond MPs to listen to the questions already asked and modify their own contribution accordingly.
I've pretty much given up on following Commons statements beyond the leaders' speeches because almost invariably 20 oppposition MPs all ask substantively the same question so that they each have a soundbite of them asking the question for their Twitter followers.
I'm pleased to note that Yvette Cooper launched a withering and meticulous attack on the government's latest effort to improve the asylum system, after it has overseen that system deteriorate to an abysmal degree during its 13 years of power. She rightly pointed out that the ink has barely dried on the Nationality and Borders Act, enacted in 2022 to solve the problem (as I've pointed out previously), but obviously totally ineffective.
I'd had a slight fear that Starmer/Cooper would be fearful of opposing such a harsh policy on asylum seekers - fearful of the court of public opinion. I'm delighted they haven't gone down that route.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
Potentially if the ECHR is itself incompatible with the Refugee Convention?
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
Human Rights law is, in principle, a good thing. But as with all law, it is something that needs to be modified from time to time to ensure there are not loopholes and exploitations of it. The purpose is to allow people to flee persecution, not to keep on going to their country of choice once they have already escaped it.
Interesting grammar school article, discussing how non grammar school kids perform worse than in areas without selection, while grammar schools remain the preserve of the middle class.
Presumably some references to the sectarian preferences of the Pope and the defecatory habits of bears too.
There is some interesting stuff in the sociology of school selection, though.
Where I live, there were two primary schools in a catchment areas. State schools. one was terrible, one was darn near private levels of success.
The successful one was very middle class. The people from the council houses, some of whose gardens backed onto the school ground of the top notch school, sent their children (nearly always) to the poorly performing one.
A couple of them broke the mold. I was interested to talk with one lady, who was a bit nervous of us weird posh people. Apparently, all her neighbours and friends were a bit alarmed at her sending her child to the "posh" school. Homework, uniform policy, strict rules about term time holidays... and "not for the likes of us" all got a mention apparently.
"Not for the likes of us" is a frustrating and real phenomenon. But I wonder if the posher parents always go out of their way to be welcoming to those who don't fit in with the yummy mummy mafia. It's not necessary deliberate, either.
All very liberal, West London etc.
I did make an effort to explain that offers of boxes of clothes, books etc weren't patronising. It was just the parent swap meet thing they do between years. For those without kids - they grow so fast that clothes have little time to be worn before going out of size. Second hand they are not worth much, so plastic crates of them get given to the previous year.
I think it is about time the American government designates the Mexican cartels as terror organizations. Start a policy of going after one cartel at a time - whoever has been the most violent over the last few years. You quickly create an interest among druglords that they should carry out their business with as little killing and torture as possible.
How is that going to work? Just invade Mexico in an SMO?
I think if the US military just drive hard towards the south they can cut the Mexicans off from their drug supply lines and win the war on drugs. Or something.
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
Journalist ?
It’s an opinion piece from a guy who has been on the news campaigning against this law change and he is from the Refugee Council.
Some solutions that might actually work....
1) Conscription of all the small boat types into the Royal Navy 2) Take back the Pale of Calais. 3) Send them to Northern Ireland to civilise the locals. 4) ?
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
Potentially if the ECHR is itself incompatible with the Refugee Convention?
You mean if the provisions of the ECHR were not considered to be part of international law?
That does seem to be implied logically by what she is saying, but can she really be saying that?
I think at the moment we can safely call this one "statistically insignificant".
The notable point is not the number but type. I think that many, if not all, Labour MPs calling it a day are over 60. Whereas the Conservative ones are typically much younger - mainly in their 30s, 40s and 50s (including Brady).
It's entirely plausible that someone who is in their 60s (and would be late 60s by the following election, in around 2028) is simply retiring. Someone standing down aged 40 or so isn't - they are giving up for other reasons.
There are a fair number of older Labour MPs because those who survived the 2019 meltdown tended on average to be longstanding MPs in safer seats who'd survived 2010 and 2015, which were also poor elections for Labour.
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
And the French say 'people are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from Italy'. And so on. France takes a lot more refugees/asylum seekers than we do.
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
According to reputable aid agencies the conditions are intolerable for refugees in France.
Probably the locals are huntings them for cannibal feasts or something.
One thing that is rarely touched on, how do people afford to pay £1000s to the people smugglers. The reality is most work illegally in France for many months to raise the money. But that's a bit inconvenient if your position is France is not a safe country to claim asylum in.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
Potentially if the ECHR is itself incompatible with the Refugee Convention?
You mean if the provisions of the ECHR were not considered to be part of international law?
That does seem to be implied logically by what she is saying, but can she really be saying that?
I'm thinking that it's a possible argument that the proposed Bill is compatible with the Refugee Convention and hence with "international law".
This is probably a dubious argument, but it's the best I've come up with (not that I would pretend to be an expert).
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
According to reputable aid agencies the conditions are intolerable for refugees in France.
Probably the locals are huntings them for cannibal feasts or something.
One thing that is rarely touched on, how do people afford to pay £1000s to the people smugglers. The reality is most work illegally in France for many months to raise the money. But that's a bit inconvenient if your position is France is not a safe country to claim asylum in.
All the money they can scrape together back home is one answer.
Another is debt slavery to the criminal gangs involved. Which is then being used as a reason to claim persecution.....
The latter policy (fast track) is sensible. People from countries like Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, Eritrea and the like will almost inevitably succeed in their asylum claims so why clog up the system with them? Conversely, claims from the likes of Albania have very poor prospects and should again be brought to a swift conclusion with action taken on removal.
Why should they succeed, though?
Are we obliged to take in anyone from any really poor/crap country who makes it to our shores. There are hundreds of millions of such people.
On this I think the fundamentals of the question hinge.
We cannot house all our own people. Sooner or later the "We are full up" sign will have to go up.
But why can't we house everyone?
It's not lack of land and it's not lack of money to buy bricks or pay builders.
It's just that we don't want to build stuff. And that works less well as an excuse.
This.
The policy of not building houses to match population is institutionally racist, incidentally.
Everything is racist if you can find an excuse for it to be so. Its more likely to be racist against the wwc.
The main issue is probably old vs. young. Older WWC people who bought their council houses under Maggie are sitting relatively prettily.
Does the UK's racial mix look different for young and old people?
I think that the intersection of age and racial demographics are an underappreciated source of some of the political dynamics in this country. In a lot of ways the defining difference between Baby Boomers and Millenials or Gen Z is how racially diverse the latter groups are compared to the former. I think this helps to explain the lack of understanding, perhaps even lack of empathy, between the generations. It probably helps to account for the intensified political polarisation by age for one thing, as well as the politics of housing.
Since race is not a very polarising political issue in this country (unlike America) I still think its housing, not race, that's the key issue in the UK.
Thank goodness we aren't like America where everything boils down to race.
As I already posted the vast majority in the UK as in the US own property, only in inner London like inner New York City do most rent.
The difference in the UK has historically been class more than race.
Though increasingly there is more of an age difference in both
The fact that most own their property, because property was affordable when old people were young, is utterly irrelevant and not the killer point you think it is.
Most young people should be able to afford a house. They can't. That's a problem and it needs solving urgently.
YOu really are dumb, young people have always struggled to buy houses, it was mainlky social housing till Thatcher sold them off dirt cheap and caused the boom for Tory toffs to build up BTL portfolios and rip off the public purse. Just a transfer of the value of eth public housing stock to a handful of Tories.
Young people have not always struggled to buy houses, relative to today, that is factually incorrect and betrays your ignorance.
The BTL buildup that happened under Blair/Brown onwards is very problematic and needs addressing whether it be via taxation or failing that via extending Right to Buy to BTL tenants.
The BTL build up isn't the problem. It' the price of housing.
BTL is in part driving the price of housing, though, is it not?
It's more a side effect of the increasing prices. The classic is "he bought a flat in London, back in the day, she did the same". They get married, buy a house by extracting value, and rent out the flats. Because the rises in house prices make keeping property forever the best plan.
The problem isn't really people owning and renting flats. It's the prices and the constrained supply meaning that every shitbox can be rented out, no matter how bad, at a high price.
Imagine if the price of renting a house in the London suburbs was, say £250 a month for a 3 bedroom house. No one would give a shit about house prices/rents. Or who owned them.
Rent vs Ownership - it's just pushing the same pile of beans about. What we need is a lot more beans.
Again this is mainly a London problem and to a lesser extent a Home counties problem.
Go north of Watford and property prices and rents are far cheaper (though even in parts of Outer London and the Home counties like Dagenham or Bexley or East Kent or South Essex outside Brentwood and Epping Forest property prices are far cheaper)
Bullshit.
When was the last time you tried to buy a home up North on a Northern wage? Or tried to rent one?
Housing is a problem across the entire country. That its a more severe problem in London doesn't make it not a problem elsewhere.
Its like cancer. Just because someone else as a stage 4 terminal diagnosis doesn't mean that someone else with cancer should ignore it because they're better off. Quite the opposite in fact.
The main reason for the housing crisis is that the population is 10 million higher than it was in the 1990s.
The population grows, if we'd had ten million more houses built then we wouldn't be in this mess.
And we can't turn back the clock and deport ten million people. Even if net migration dropped to zero today, which it won't, we'd still be short on housing supply.
Free movement without free construction was a terrible mistake. Nothing wrong with free movement, but it needs to be accompanied by free construction too.
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
Your other half showed me the other night. Most entertaining.
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
The Princess of Wales is now the most popular senior royal after the Queen's death according to a new RedfieldWilton poll.
The Princess is on +52%, the Prince on +49%, the King on +27%, the Queen Consort on +1%, the Duke of Sussex on -22%, the Duchess of Sussex on -33% and the Duke of York on -53%
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
According to reputable aid agencies the conditions are intolerable for refugees in France.
Probably the locals are huntings them for cannibal feasts or something.
One thing that is rarely touched on, how do people afford to pay £1000s to the people smugglers. The reality is most work illegally in France for many months to raise the money. But that's a bit inconvenient if your position is France is not a safe country to claim asylum in.
All the money they can scrape together back home is one answer.
Another is debt slavery to the criminal gangs involved. Which is then being used as a reason to claim persecution.....
I can't find the link, but research was done and it was found the most common was to arrive in Italy and France, work illegally, particularly in agricultural sector, then often after 6+ months make their way to Northern France.
The prevalence of the debt slavery claim is a more recent one, that seems to be tied to particularly Albanian claims for asylum, because Albanians won't be granted asylum without extra circumstances around their situation.
Strikes me that the Small Boats bill is about 75% calculated to give the Tories a line against the ECHR at the next GE and 25% towards helping Cruella’s 2024 leadership ambitions.
If it were me, I would not be trusting this to Suella Braverman. Her ability is spectacularly limited.
What does it mean that she thinks that there is a more than 50% chance it is incompatible with the ECHR but that she is confident that it is compatible with international law.
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Here's a clue. Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today. https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
I watched some of the questions in the commons earlier (or rather it was on in the background while I was getting lunch). It was an illustration of the worst aspects of how our parliament operates. Each speaker, and the minister herself, saying their pre-prepared piece. No questions actually substantively answered. No questioner picking up on the previous response and continuing the conversation. So a totally disjointed debate. Not even a dialogue of the deaf, because it wasn't a dialogue.
Well it is difficult to properly debate a bill which hasn't been published. That's not on the opposition.
It's not a second reading debate, but it shouldn't be beyond MPs to listen to the questions already asked and modify their own contribution accordingly.
I've pretty much given up on following Commons statements beyond the leaders' speeches because almost invariably 20 oppposition MPs all ask substantively the same question so that they each have a soundbite of them asking the question for their Twitter followers.
That's exactly the problem. Not only does the secretary of state not actually answer the questions asked, but there is never any comeback from doing this because the next questioner just goes randomly on to their own. I would love just for once to see something like:
Q1: "the right honourable lady bemoans the 'massive backlog of claims we inherited' but has she forgotten which party has been in charge of the home office for the last 13 years. Why have they failed to address these issues in all that time?" A: "we are focused on doing something about the asylum system including cracking those criminal gangs who prey on vulnerable people, not like the naive Labour party who are more interested in hand wringing and banging on about human rights than actually doing anything about the problem" Q2 "I refer to the right honourable lady's last answer, which did not answer my RH friend's question. Is the reason she cannot answer the question because in the last 13 years successive conservative governments have slashed the border force budget by £x, closed down our asylum reception centres in x and y, ceased cooperation with the French police on the grounds of cost and is now resorting to the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of scuttling around hiring taxis to deliver refugee families to expensive hotels because there's no resources left in the system?"
But it's never that because Q2 will be something about how inhumane the policy is or a fawning paeon of praise to the home secretary from her own benches or a lament about how if only Scotland were independent then those much more broad minded non-racist true Scots could have their own humane asylum system and send all the English back.
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
And the French say 'people are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from Italy'. And so on. France takes a lot more refugees/asylum seekers than we do.
In that case France needs to revisit its border policy with Italy. Or take a common EU asylum policy.
The Princess of Wales is now the most popular senior royal after the Queen's death according to a new RedfieldWilton poll.
The Princess is on +52%, the Prince on +49%, the King on +27%, the Queen Consort on +1%, the Duke of Sussex on -22%, the Duchess of Sussex on -33% and the Duke of York on -53%
New: it's easy to forget quite how far and recently GB has changed in social attitudes: - in 2009 just 33% thought homosexuality was justifiable, 66% now - divorce went from 30% to 64% - casual sex from 12% to 42% - abortion from 20% to 48%
So 58% still think casual sex morally unjustifiable and 52% think abortion morally unjustifiable.
That is actually far higher than I would have thought would be the case in the UK of 2023. Maybe hope for Jacob Rees Mogg and Kate Forbes yet?
Read the small print. 58% gave casual sex a score of 7 or lower on a 10-point scale where 1 was always unjustifiable and 10 was always justifiable.
We don't know how many people gave a score of 3-7, but we can be confident that some people will have done so, and that they wouldn't agree with your interpretation of their answer.
Even a score of 5 for casual sex would be far lower than I would have expected in the UK of 2023 and Tinder etc
Why? This survey says that 90% of British people think that 'casual sex' is either sometimes or always justifiable. A plurality (25%) of people say it is 'Always justifiable'. If anything those figures are higher than I would have expected.
Only 25% saying casual sex is always justifiable is astonishingly low for the supposedly live and let live, secular and socially liberal UK we now live in
What? I am very surprised that a full 25% of people can't think of any circumstances in which casual sex isn't justifiable: I suspect that most of those 25% just put 'Always' (rather than 9 or 8) as a reaction against the 10% of annoying moralisers who say it's never justified, rather than because they genuinely couldn't think of any context in which casual sex could be wrong.
Yes I'm a pretty liberal kind of chap but I don't really approve of casual sex. I think it's best to only have sex with people you are in a committed loving relationship with or at least planning to be. I wouldn't try to stop other people from doing it of course, even if I thought that was possible, which it isn't.
This is the opinion of a man unable to actually get casual sex
I have no interest in getting casual sex, I'm married!
What is it about casual sex that you object to?
Is it the horrendous idea that two adult consenting people might enjoy intense/amusing/kinky/frivolous physical intimacy without the laborious need for any more significant or prolonged emotional connection? Is it the fact they might both have a really good time (or not, but you always take risk) and want to do it again with someone else who is also hot?
Or is it the fact that you basically never got any, as a young man, and this REALLY fucks you off?
I suspect the latter
Ha ha, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life other than to say I have had nothing to complain about. Personally I think sex without love or the prospect of it seems like a rather empty experience. But if it's your thing nobody is stopping you, least of all me!
But you actually use the words “I don’t really approve of casual sex” - like it’s any of your damn business
It’s like me saying “I don’t really approve of gay sex” or “I don’t really approve of oral sex” - at best it is pompous sententious nonsense and at worst it would display some very peculiar attitudes under the surface
Well I don't approve of it. I agree with you that what other people do is none of my damn business. I just don't think it's a course of action that will deliver most people happiness and fulfillment in their lives in the long term. If that's a peculiar attitude then apologies.
This just gets weirder. What course of action “delivers most people happiness in the long term” - 3.4 sexual partners in a lifetime followed by a faithful marriage where the sex dies in your 40s but you still chat? Is that better? Better in what way? Better for whom?
Any answer will sound mad, at best, because it is mad. Human life is infinitely various, thank god, big no thanks to the lefty Anti Sex league.
Orwell skewered the Puritanism in the left superbly. The Khmer Rouge hated sex as well. Tried to stop it. Literally
One way to be happy is not to use social media and smartphones.
Do you mean during sex?
I regularly use my smartphone during sex....would you like to see the video?
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
According to reputable aid agencies the conditions are intolerable for refugees in France.
Probably the locals are huntings them for cannibal feasts or something.
One thing that is rarely touched on, how do people afford to pay £1000s to the people smugglers. The reality is most work illegally in France for many months to raise the money. But that's a bit inconvenient if your position is France is not a safe country to claim asylum in.
All the money they can scrape together back home is one answer.
Another is debt slavery to the criminal gangs involved. Which is then being used as a reason to claim persecution.....
I can't find the link, but research was done and it was found the most common was to arrive in Italy and France, work illegally, particularly in agricultural sector, then often after 6+ months make their way to Northern France.
The prevalence of the debt slavery claim is a more recent one, that seems to be tied to particularly Albanian claims for asylum, because Albanians won't be granted asylum without extra circumstances around their situation.
As I said, all law needs to be updated now and again to prevent these sort of exploitations. Unfortunately, stuff like the ECHR is determined by international judges with no democratic check on their decisions.
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
I am quite encouraged at all these reports of impending draconian crackdowns - I thought that the scheme was just never going to materialise. Evidently at least some think it will happen.
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
And the French say 'people are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from Italy'. And so on. France takes a lot more refugees/asylum seekers than we do.
Which is why it would make sense to have an international agreement on sharing the burden/benefit. I consider myself very liberally minded on most matters, but logic tells me that if someone is fleeing persecution they should claim asylum in the first safe country they land in. Moving on from there they become economic migrants.
If one were fleeing a gang of thugs one wouldn't pass several places of sanctuary in the desire to get to the one that had the most desirable armchair.
The Princess of Wales is now the most popular senior royal after the Queen's death according to a new RedfieldWilton poll.
The Princess is on +52%, the Prince on +49%, the King on +27%, the Queen Consort on +1%, the Duke of Sussex on -22%, the Duchess of Sussex on -33% and the Duke of York on -53%
' LEADING cultural and educational institutions - including Scotland's ancient universities - have been invited by the King to swear loyalty to him.
King Charles will received the so-called "privileged bodies” – a group of 27 organisations and corporations – which will present loyal addresses to the sovereign in person in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace on Thursday.
Buckingham Palace said the privileged bodies are “culturally significant organisations and institutions that reflect the United Kingdom’s diverse society”.
Drawn from the education, science, arts and religious sectors, those invited include the General Synod of the Church of England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as of Edinburgh, London, St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen, the Bank of England, City of London Corporation, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Military Knights of Windsor and the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
The loyal addresses – in the form of a speech – serve to “emphasise and reaffirm their loyalty to the monarch”, the Palace said.'
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
Potentially if the ECHR is itself incompatible with the Refugee Convention?
You mean if the provisions of the ECHR were not considered to be part of international law?
That does seem to be implied logically by what she is saying, but can she really be saying that?
I'm thinking that it's a possible argument that the proposed Bill is compatible with the Refugee Convention and hence with "international law".
This is probably a dubious argument, but it's the best I've come up with (not that I would pretend to be an expert).
Well globally most people in civilised, western countries are not subject to the ECHR. EG Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand, Japan etc none of them have the ECHR apply and all of them are subject to international laws and agreements.
Meanwhile the ECHR is so robust it had Russia as a member at rhe start of 2022. Good job there, great job ensuring a free press, free speech and free elections and avoiding a fascist regime coming to power and everything else the convention was supposed to deal with.
The ECHR is a failure and we could withdraw from it and still be an upstanding civilised nation subject to international law.
However it is my understanding that unless and until we do, it is part of OUR international law even if its not a part of other nations international law.
Some of the illegal immigrants to the US also borrow money to pay smugglers -- and the smugglers are not always gentle in seeking repayments.
In at least a few cases, smugglers have held illegals in "safe houses" in the US, while demanding more money from their relatives, before the illegals are released.
One paragraph in and the journalist is already lying. People are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from France.
And the French say 'people are not fleeing persecution when they are coming from Italy'. And so on. France takes a lot more refugees/asylum seekers than we do.
Which is why it would make sense to have an international agreement on sharing the burden/benefit. I consider myself very liberally minded on most matters, but logic tells me that if someone is fleeing persecution they should claim asylum in the first safe country they land in. Moving on from there they become economic migrants.
If one were fleeing a gang of thugs one wouldn't pass several places of sanctuary in the desire to get to the one that had the most desirable armchair.
Right, and that has to be the end-point, doesn't it, although one that's going to be difficult to reach with all the vested interests and voters' opinions getting in the way?
Asylum must be claimed in the first safe country as a sign that the claim is legitimate, but all safe countries agree that would place an unfair burden on those that happen to be nearest to the countries that refugees are fleeing. There could even be a way in the sharing system for refugees who do have links to a particular country to request to be transferred there.
The Princess of Wales is now the most popular senior royal after the Queen's death according to a new RedfieldWilton poll.
The Princess is on +52%, the Prince on +49%, the King on +27%, the Queen Consort on +1%, the Duke of Sussex on -22%, the Duchess of Sussex on -33% and the Duke of York on -53%
' LEADING cultural and educational institutions - including Scotland's ancient universities - have been invited by the King to swear loyalty to him.
King Charles will received the so-called "privileged bodies” – a group of 27 organisations and corporations – which will present loyal addresses to the sovereign in person in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace on Thursday.
Buckingham Palace said the privileged bodies are “culturally significant organisations and institutions that reflect the United Kingdom’s diverse society”.
Drawn from the education, science, arts and religious sectors, those invited include the General Synod of the Church of England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as of Edinburgh, London, St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen, the Bank of England, City of London Corporation, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Military Knights of Windsor and the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
The loyal addresses – in the form of a speech – serve to “emphasise and reaffirm their loyalty to the monarch”, the Palace said.'
Funnily enough I don't find that too objectionable. It is a tradition that goes back centuries I suspect, including when the Stewarts ruled over us. What I object to is smarmy obsequiousness; the celebrity culture of the Daily Express applied to the monarchy. Euch.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
To be honest I just wonder whether people like Suella Braverman (and for that matter Rishi Sunak) have thought things through completely, if they have decided it's a good strategy for them to appeal to the anti-immigrant vote.
What is incorrect about what she is saying?
I'm not sure I can make it any simpler.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
Potentially if the ECHR is itself incompatible with the Refugee Convention?
You mean if the provisions of the ECHR were not considered to be part of international law?
That does seem to be implied logically by what she is saying, but can she really be saying that?
I'm thinking that it's a possible argument that the proposed Bill is compatible with the Refugee Convention and hence with "international law".
This is probably a dubious argument, but it's the best I've come up with (not that I would pretend to be an expert).
Well globally most people in civilised, western countries are not subject to the ECHR. EG Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand, Japan etc none of them have the ECHR apply and all of them are subject to international laws and agreements.
Meanwhile the ECHR is so robust it had Russia as a member at rhe start of 2022. Good job there, great job ensuring a free press, free speech and free elections and avoiding a fascist regime coming to power and everything else the convention was supposed to deal with.
The ECHR is a failure and we could withdraw from it and still be an upstanding civilised nation subject to international law.
However it is my understanding that unless and until we do, it is part of OUR international law even if its not a part of other nations international law.
"Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand, Japan etc none of them have the ECHR apply"
Er, there's a rather different and more basic reason for that. They are not in Europe. The UK is.
Comments
Completely ignored evidence from Bristol University that working class pupils get better GCSE results at grammar schools than pupils of similar ability do in comprehensive
schools
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/working-class-pupils-do-better-at-grammars-phzzhwtj6vp
https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633082707835080705
His other claim to minor fame was being a contemporary of Matt Hancock (sports desk) and Gina Coladangelo (news) at Oxygen FM in the 90s.
Perhaps to try and give meaning to things which are utterly meaningless. You quote Martin Amis, I'll quote Marcus from Bad Santa:
"Your soul is dog sh*t. Every single thing about you is ugly."
Can any PB legal eagles suggest a way in which this is anything other than gibberish?
Don't know why you're surprised; that is Musk. Never not been a shithead.
We know you have a weak argument when you point to one poll from one pollster. Labour are not 26 points ahead on average of pollsters right now. It’s hard to say exactly what, probably lower end of 15-19%. If that true lead narrows over the next 19 months to just single digits, and Tory’s lift to 33 or 34%, not only no Labour majority, but we could have a well hung parliament where Starmer is only PM with a very shaky ultra rainbow coalition.
The grey man with the rainbow coalition the History books would call his tumultuous three years as PM.
Trump won the CPAC straw poll. Is that good news for him? Probably not, says Henry Olsen: "In fact, however, this seemingly good news is a historic harbinger of defeat. The CPAC straw poll has been conducted regularly for decades. The winner of the poll conducted in the year just before a presidential election in which there is no Republican incumbent has always gone on to lose the primary contest."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/07/trump-cpac-poll-harbinger-defeat/
Olsen concludes with this: "Writing Trump’s political obituary is a fool’s errand. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t seeing him decay before our eyes. CPAC 2023 might in hindsight be Trump’s high-water mark rather than his launchpad."
Some, including me, will be immediately reminded of the famous xkcd cartoon:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1122:_Electoral_Precedent
But I think there are reasons that these precedents might, in fact, tell us something about Trump's chances. First, what appeals to extremists in America might not appeal to broader groups. Second, attendance at CPAC was way down this year, so it is likely that the attendees were even less representative than in the past.
Interesting piece from the Guardian
Look forward to @StuartDickson response
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/07/sweden-worst-performing-eu-economy-bad-housing-policy?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Having sat through 1 hour and 45 minutes of @SuellaBraverman statement on her new #IllegalMigrationBill we still don’t get to see the actual text of the Bill until later this afternoon. And apparently no impact assessment is available with the Bill today.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaJohnsonMP/status/1633119075185446915
after 1966 and 1945 and 1906 and 1832 etc. Yet they all eventually came back.
The only exception being the Liberals after their trouncing in 1918 which led to their replacement by the Labour Party as the main alternative to the Conservatives
Is there some way in which it can be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but still compatible with "international law"?
What's the U-Haul joke? I'm guessing it's nothing to do with "U-Haul if you want to, the lady's not for hauling".
Given it's Braverman, the statement has no substantive meaning. Let's wait for analysis of the actual legislation.
Let us also not forget Stanley's son won a bigger majority in 2019 for the Conservatives than Cameron did in 2015 either
https://twitter.com/OxfordClarion/status/1633093065589096450
Where I live, there were two primary schools in a catchment areas. State schools. one was terrible, one was darn near private levels of success.
The successful one was very middle class. The people from the council houses, some of whose gardens backed onto the school ground of the top notch school, sent their children (nearly always) to the poorly performing one.
A couple of them broke the mold. I was interested to talk with one lady, who was a bit nervous of us weird posh people. Apparently, all her neighbours and friends were a bit alarmed at her sending her child to the "posh" school. Homework, uniform policy, strict rules about term time holidays... and "not for the likes of us" all got a mention apparently.
I hope Sunak and Macron, who have a much improved relationship, are able to work together to address the issue
Now he's either about to become one of those layabouts who should be going back to work or he needs at the age of 57 to find a new career.
If you are a celebrity/rich type, you don't go to Danny The Drug Dealer. You go to a very, very expensive trick cyclist who will prescribe for you. All absolutely legal and tip top. Better yet, the private doc will find you an NHS doc to rewrite the prescription, as a patient. So it is even cheaper. Probably if you get a pre pay card, yet cheaper.
So we have drugs on the NHS. Big reductions in celebrity drug deaths....
I realise that this would be a monumental turnaround and that makes everyone cautious, but...
He will also hope for a place in the Lords before Sir Keir gets round to abolishing it and replacing it with an elected Senate
Don't let Xi give you Covid.
I thought two things:
1. That's a pretty neat way of encouraging vaccination.
And
2. @Leon would be proud.
"Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: (...) We must stop the boats. (...) It is completely unfair that people who travel through a string of safe countries then come to the UK illegally and abuse our asylum laws to avoid removal."
Human rights law is for wimps, libtards, whiners, and the "elite", right? It's for trade unionists, lefty lawyers, cultural Marxists, and Remoaners. We know their type. Give 'em a chance and they always go on about human rights. They want those boats to keep coming here. Well enough is enough. From NOW.
Such obscene talk is popular.
This government sure knows what it's doing. There's no way Reform UK will damage the Tories now.
Cue a Tory poll lead by 1 September?
I remain of the view that faced with a choice between hammering the immigrants who come here on all those boats and doing something about the "cost of living crisis", the British people will choose hammering the immigrants any day of the week.
L 12/197 = 6.1%
I think at the moment we can safely call this one "statistically insignificant".
The Princess is on +52%, the Prince on +49%, the King on +27%, the Queen Consort on +1%, the Duke of Sussex on -22%, the Duchess of Sussex on -33% and the Duke of York on -53%
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1633105355797323777?t=L0OklURtvkVfr85_tnB2dg&s=19
That's not on the opposition.
You do realise that they serve avocado on toast and vegan scones? Didn't think that was your kind of scene.
I've pretty much given up on following Commons statements beyond the leaders' speeches because almost invariably 20 oppposition MPs all ask substantively the same question so that they each have a soundbite of them asking the question for their Twitter followers.
I'd had a slight fear that Starmer/Cooper would be fearful of opposing such a harsh policy on asylum seekers - fearful of the court of public opinion. I'm delighted they haven't gone down that route.
What I'm asking is whether it can be more likely than not incompatible with the ECHR, and yet for her to be confident it is compatible with international law.
I did make an effort to explain that offers of boxes of clothes, books etc weren't patronising. It was just the parent swap meet thing they do between years. For those without kids - they grow so fast that clothes have little time to be worn before going out of size. Second hand they are not worth much, so plastic crates of them get given to the previous year.
Probably the locals are huntings them for cannibal feasts or something.
It’s an opinion piece from a guy who has been on the news campaigning against this law change and he is from the Refugee Council.
1) Conscription of all the small boat types into the Royal Navy
2) Take back the Pale of Calais.
3) Send them to Northern Ireland to civilise the locals.
4) ?
That does seem to be implied logically by what she is saying, but can she really be saying that?
It's entirely plausible that someone who is in their 60s (and would be late 60s by the following election, in around 2028) is simply retiring. Someone standing down aged 40 or so isn't - they are giving up for other reasons.
There are a fair number of older Labour MPs because those who survived the 2019 meltdown tended on average to be longstanding MPs in safer seats who'd survived 2010 and 2015, which were also poor elections for Labour.
France takes a lot more refugees/asylum seekers than we do.
This is probably a dubious argument, but it's the best I've come up with (not that I would pretend to be an expert).
Another is debt slavery to the criminal gangs involved. Which is then being used as a reason to claim persecution.....
And we can't turn back the clock and deport ten million people. Even if net migration dropped to zero today, which it won't, we'd still be short on housing supply.
Free movement without free construction was a terrible mistake. Nothing wrong with free movement, but it needs to be accompanied by free construction too.
The prevalence of the debt slavery claim is a more recent one, that seems to be tied to particularly Albanian claims for asylum, because Albanians won't be granted asylum without extra circumstances around their situation.
Q1: "the right honourable lady bemoans the 'massive backlog of claims we inherited' but has she forgotten which party has been in charge of the home office for the last 13 years. Why have they failed to address these issues in all that time?"
A: "we are focused on doing something about the asylum system including cracking those criminal gangs who prey on vulnerable people, not like the naive Labour party who are more interested in hand wringing and banging on about human rights than actually doing anything about the problem"
Q2 "I refer to the right honourable lady's last answer, which did not answer my RH friend's question. Is the reason she cannot answer the question because in the last 13 years successive conservative governments have slashed the border force budget by £x, closed down our asylum reception centres in x and y, ceased cooperation with the French police on the grounds of cost and is now resorting to the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of scuttling around hiring taxis to deliver refugee families to expensive hotels because there's no resources left in the system?"
But it's never that because Q2 will be something about how inhumane the policy is or a fawning paeon of praise to the home secretary from her own benches or a lament about how if only Scotland were independent then those much more broad minded non-racist true Scots could have their own humane asylum system and send all the English back.
Cold weather often becalms wind power which I believe is an issue at present
If one were fleeing a gang of thugs one wouldn't pass several places of sanctuary in the desire to get to the one that had the most desirable armchair.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23367199.king-invites-privileged-bodies-swear-loyalty-crown/
' LEADING cultural and educational institutions - including Scotland's ancient universities - have been invited by the King to swear loyalty to him.
King Charles will received the so-called "privileged bodies” – a group of 27 organisations and corporations – which will present loyal addresses to the sovereign in person in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace on Thursday.
Buckingham Palace said the privileged bodies are “culturally significant organisations and institutions that reflect the United Kingdom’s diverse society”.
Drawn from the education, science, arts and religious sectors, those invited include the General Synod of the Church of England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as of Edinburgh, London, St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen, the Bank of England, City of London Corporation, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Military Knights of Windsor and the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
The loyal addresses – in the form of a speech – serve to “emphasise and reaffirm their loyalty to the monarch”, the Palace said.'
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0262/220262.pdf
Meanwhile the ECHR is so robust it had Russia as a member at rhe start of 2022. Good job there, great job ensuring a free press, free speech and free elections and avoiding a fascist regime coming to power and everything else the convention was supposed to deal with.
The ECHR is a failure and we could withdraw from it and still be an upstanding civilised nation subject to international law.
However it is my understanding that unless and until we do, it is part of OUR international law even if its not a part of other nations international law.
In at least a few cases, smugglers have held illegals in "safe houses" in the US, while demanding more money from their relatives, before the illegals are released.
Asylum must be claimed in the first safe country as a sign that the claim is legitimate, but all safe countries agree that would place an unfair burden on those that happen to be nearest to the countries that refugees are fleeing. There could even be a way in the sharing system for refugees who do have links to a particular country to request to be transferred there.
Er, there's a rather different and more basic reason for that. They are not in Europe. The UK is.