Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
At least not until the NHS needs the money.
Investment under nationalised water was terrible, and so long as clean water keeps coming out of taps there will always be higher priorities for public money.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
Poverty in the UK - you blame it on people like me because we don't blame it on immigrants or immigration? Well that's an impasse then. Because, no, I don't see that as a major cause. Inequality is the major cause of poverty and reducing inequality is my guiding political principle, to the sadly diminishing extent I have one.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
You are aware that all attempts building reservoirs are being, essentially, blocked?
Or that every large infrastructure project by a water company goes through the usual decades long fight with the antis - see the Thames Water megasewer, for instance.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
Not doing anything to deal with issues has consequences.
In rural France, if you bring in cheap labour from outside to do work on a building, the building will burn down in the middle of the night.
You could argue that is labour market protection (I'm sure @Dura_Ace will approve) but is that how a country should be run?
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
The problem with nationalisation is that investment in water infrastructure is then competing directly with investment in the NHS, and we know who wins that battle.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
At least not until the NHS needs the money.
Investment under nationalised water was terrible, and so long as clean water keeps coming out of taps there will always be higher priorities for public money.
I don't think nationalisation is the solution. It has been EU policy for a long time to make it difficult for countries to add new water infrastructure (like reservoirs), preferring to foster a climate of alarmism about 'shortages', and UK agencies have applied the policy with grim enthusiasm. Nationalisation would be locking the fox into the henhouse.
Remember that it was nationalisation that allowed the Beeching cuts to take place. Had the lines still been private, our rail infrastructure would in my opinion be a great deal better today.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
If you are a middle class do-gooder, that by itself means you are unlikely to be facing the issues Pagan is talking about - you can outbid the immigrants (and there is a question what immigrants you are talking here) for rent / property, are probably in reasonably good help so don't need to see the doctor so much and, when it comes to schooling, probably ensure your offspring are within the catchment area of a school where a disproportionate percentage of the pupils also come from middle class backgrounds
ie you have no clue what is the impact on lower income families and, by the sound of it, you couldn't care less - unfortunately, the default position for much of the middle class left.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
Poverty in the UK - you blame it on people like me because we don't blame it on immigrants or immigration? Well that's an impasse then. Because, no, I don't see that as a major cause. Inequality is the major cause of poverty and reducing inequality is my guiding political principle, to the sadly diminishing extent I have one.
I blame it on people like me and you. For not getting the infrastructure expanded to match the population. If the population grows by 5%, you need 5% more house, 5% more schools etc etc
It is rather like the reason that virtualisation failed the first time round. Years back, big companies tried to move to the virtual machine setup - you login via a computer that is little more than a dumb terminal and get connected to a virtual machine. This only exists as software on a rack of computers.
The problem was that there was no hard definition of the number of users to the rack of machines. In theory, you could add just 1 more user and everything would get a bit slower for everyone.
Naturally, the idiot bean counters started adding more people, without the resources for the people running the racks at the back end.
The systems failed (people literally couldn't work) and many companies went back to actual computers on desks.
VMs are now back - this time, hard limits are being set for the amount of kit on the back end, and metrics for performance measured.
On Vietnamese spring rolls, when a Vietnamese couple intended on getting married, the bride would have to cook her spring rolls for the groom's mother.
Only if they passed muster would the match go ahead.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
Poverty in the UK - you blame it on people like me because we don't blame it on immigrants or immigration? Well that's an impasse then. Because, no, I don't see that as a major cause. Inequality is the major cause of poverty and reducing inequality is my guiding political principle, to the sadly diminishing extent I have one.
No I blame you because you people like you never stopped to question how your largesse would impact your own poor you were to busy feeling good about yourself for helping poor people in other countries. You didn't grow our pie you merely used the same pie for more people
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
It was a lot cheaper and a lot less sewerage was discharged i think?
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
Poverty in the UK - you blame it on people like me because we don't blame it on immigrants or immigration? Well that's an impasse then. Because, no, I don't see that as a major cause. Inequality is the major cause of poverty and reducing inequality is my guiding political principle, to the sadly diminishing extent I have one.
Supply and demand - it is simple economics
Restaurants have to pay more? Because they can't get the supply of cheap labour needed they used to get with immigration.
There is a reason why the Business sector is so pro-immigration - it helps their profit margins substantially.
Good to see the Left so concerned now with making sure the Bosses are ok.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
There are plenty of immigrants in middle clasa neighbourhoods. Particularly in and around London. The difference is that those immigrants tend to be educated, speak good English, generally integrated into the local community and crime among such groups is extremely low. In lower income neighbourhoods, you are much more likely to get immigrants that form separate communities, are difficult to communicate to, and the next generation of youth often have resentment of the country their parents came to.
The government should really create an integration index by local authority, showing rates of intermarriage, English ability and crime levels by migrants. Then hold local authorities responsible for addressing them.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
The problem with nationalisation is that investment in water infrastructure is then competing directly with investment in the NHS, and we know who wins that battle.
24 hours to save Thames Water doesn't have the same ring to it, does it.
I think "stop the boats" is a win for Conservative moderates
Surely the majority of recent Tory Home Secretaries would have preferred the much more popular
Sink the Boats
It says something when Grant Schapps is probably the pick of recent Home Secretaries
Was just checking and the only one I rate since the last Labour government was Amber Rudd. Those under Major, Blair and Brown were at least mostly competent and appeared to have interests other than stirring up hatred.
I watched a news program yesterday and they interviewed a few women from Dover saying they wanted the immigrants stopped. Finding a more mean faced collection of harridans would have stretched Central Casting. Are the English really like that or are they selected by subversive researchers who share Gary Lineker's views?
The BBC loves nothing more than heading out to somewhere populated by bitter pensioners and recording their views as being representative of the real man or woman in the street. At least Dover makes a change from Bury market or Stoke on Trent.
There's an annoying tendency of, for want of a better word, the metropolitan elite media, to overcompensate for accusations of being in a bubble by assuming the real country outside their immediate locale is represented by pensioners in Bury market or Dover. It's an odd variation on the no true Scotsman fallacy. If they accidentally find a liberal or remainer or someone under the age of 60 in these places they look a bit nonplussed and move on quickly.
Not least the time of day for vox pops are when pensioners are out running errands and the rest of us are at work.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
If you are a middle class do-gooder, that by itself means you are unlikely to be facing the issues Pagan is talking about - you can outbid the immigrants (and there is a question what immigrants you are talking here) for rent / property, are probably in reasonably good help so don't need to see the doctor so much and, when it comes to schooling, probably ensure your offspring are within the catchment area of a school where a disproportionate percentage of the pupils also come from middle class backgrounds
ie you have no clue what is the impact on lower income families and, by the sound of it, you couldn't care less - unfortunately, the default position for much of the middle class left.
At the educated employment level (think undergrad + masters, say), there is a world wide shortage both the high quality level (think top universities) and the middle quality level.
This is due to the fact that India and China (to name but two) are becoming service economies faster than they can expand higher education. So demand is raising faster than supply.
This means that the middle class experience of immigration is "thank God we have some people to join the team."
It also means that at no conceivable level of immigration is there much pressure downwards on wages or conditions in those groups.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
There are plenty of immigrants in middle clasa neighbourhoods. Particularly in and around London. The difference is that those immigrants tend to be educated, speak good English, generally integrated into the local community and crime among such groups is extremely low. In lower income neighbourhoods, you are much more likely to get immigrants that form separate communities, are difficult to communicate to, and the next generation of youth often have resentment of the country their parents came to.
The government should really create an integration index by local authority, showing rates of intermarriage, English ability and crime levels by migrants. Then hold local authorities responsible for addressing them.
Also, on the point of government services, when you bring in people that consume government services but pay little in tax, that is a net detriment to the exchequer. Of course the central government can afford fewer services. And it's even worse when some groups have unemployment rates above 30%.
Hard to pick potential VP out of that pile of shit. Can't be RDS, Sununu once said Trump was "fucking insane", Pence is the apostate of the MAGA jihad. Maybe Kristi Noem who is a theocratic fascist Selina Meyer and therefore probably exactly what DJT needs.
De Santis leads in the last Iowa caucuses poll last year and would be favourite to win the Florida primary. Haley would fancy her chances in the South Carolina primary, her home state. Others may emerge too, especially in Iowa
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
If you are a middle class do-gooder, that by itself means you are unlikely to be facing the issues Pagan is talking about - you can outbid the immigrants (and there is a question what immigrants you are talking here) for rent / property, are probably in reasonably good help so don't need to see the doctor so much and, when it comes to schooling, probably ensure your offspring are within the catchment area of a school where a disproportionate percentage of the pupils also come from middle class backgrounds
ie you have no clue what is the impact on lower income families and, by the sound of it, you couldn't care less - unfortunately, the default position for much of the middle class left.
I had to move to devon in a place which is middle class because my elderly father is not doing so well and I need to be near. The difference is night and day in terms of quality of life in terms of services. Are their immigrants here yes there are however they are middle class immigrants not the people who stock shelves etc and are poor themselves and not nearly in the same quantity. When the eastern european accession occured for example in the blair years the population of slough grew by 10% in a single year
I dislike this policy, which seems government by headline rather than law. I dislike Lineker's reaction, which is ludicrously over the top and demeans himself. And I dislike Jenrick's response, which is excessively harsh.
Will there be a fourth domino in this line of nincompoopery?
Susannah Reid humiliated Dame Suella Braverman on GMB. Send her to Rwanda with Lineker!
SKS Labour doesn't know whether to have a shit shave or a haircut this morning.
Any previous Labour leader would have called out "stop the boats" for what it is
SKS has no principles that cant be bought for a few votes does he.
Starmer and his Labour traitors will be next. Cruella has already painted them as the party of treasonous surrender monkeys. You are not reading the room that your new found friends occupy. Lineker has a point, xenophobia didn't start with gas chambers, it started with a divide and conquer programme by government.
I quoted Steve Kinnock last night, he was unequivocal. We need to stop the boats by allowing a safe and legal route for genuine asylum seekers and attack the criminal gangs. Sunak seems a decent guy. It looks to me like he is Braverman's hostage. Braverman was defending her policy on GMB on the back of hers and Patel's failure to get a grip as Home Secretaries. Her justification was government failure...er, her government failure. The current Conservative Party is owned by Johnson, Braverman, Anderson and Gullis and you are painting Starmer as the villain?
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
There are plenty of immigrants in middle clasa neighbourhoods. Particularly in and around London. The difference is that those immigrants tend to be educated, speak good English, generally integrated into the local community and crime among such groups is extremely low. In lower income neighbourhoods, you are much more likely to get immigrants that form separate communities, are difficult to communicate to, and the next generation of youth often have resentment of the country their parents came to.
The government should really create an integration index by local authority, showing rates of intermarriage, English ability and crime levels by migrants. Then hold local authorities responsible for addressing them.
Social class pretty much covers it. Middle class people integrate well wherever they go in the world.
Even so, I think that you underestimate the amount of integration of other communities, including those mostly working class.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
Considering our population is 10 million higher today, with accordingly more water pipes than there were in the past, you'd expect ceteris paribus for the leakage to have proportionately increased not decreased in the same time.
On a per capita basis, leakage has fallen even faster than the numbers you quote imply.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
The issue is that international law is set by a mini-industry of the same lawyers and bureaucrats, representing a tiny slither of society. There is very little democratic oversight of what changes are agreed, especially when negotiated years away from national elections. It's why elitists love government by international agreement so much, because they disdain the voters.
I think "stop the boats" is a win for Conservative moderates
Surely the majority of recent Tory Home Secretaries would have preferred the much more popular
Sink the Boats
It says something when Grant Schapps is probably the pick of recent Home Secretaries
Was just checking and the only one I rate since the last Labour government was Amber Rudd. Those under Major, Blair and Brown were at least mostly competent and appeared to have interests other than stirring up hatred.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
How do the raw shit being dumped in rivers, lakes and sea figures compare?
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
It was a lot cheaper and a lot less sewerage was discharged i think?
Sewage was an issue more back then, our waterways were filthy and our beaches fell well below standard
"Since 1995 some of the worst pollutants in our rivers have been cut dramatically: ammonia levels are down 70% and phosphates down 60%. Toxic metals like copper, lead, cadmium and mercury have also been reduced, the last two by 50% since 2008. Serious water pollution incidents have been cut by nearly two thirds, from 765 in 2002 to 266 in 2019.
Since the 1990s there has been a big increase in the numbers of small animals that live in rivers like snails, worms and insects – a key indicator of the overall improving health of our waters. Many of the artificial barriers to fish and other wildlife have been removed: in the last ten years the Environment Agency and its partners have removed over 130 weirs and improved fish passage at more than 420 other sites, allowing salmon, other fish and eels to migrate and breed"
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
How do the raw shit being dumped in rivers, lakes and sea figures compare?
Much, much, much less today than pre-privatisation.
Talking about immigrants again. I was raised in North Islington. My parents had always planned to move to Enfield or Barnet once I had finished school. It was 1960. They sold their house to a West Indian family who had arrived between 1948 and 1954. It was the first sale to a non - white family in the road. The reaction of neighbours was appalling. After 15 years of normal neighbourly greetings, conversations etc my parents were shunned, and due to this reaction my mother could not wait to leave. Interestingly the other teenagers in the area were okay with me, it was their parents. What is it in the human psyche that creates this, it still seems to be very much alive today.
Sorry off topic but just to respond to @hyufd after I left the thread last night:
You say Grammar schools give parents more choice. They don't. If your child fails the 11 plus they get less choice.
On the 'leftie' nonsense you haven't responded to the fact that I am not a 'leftie' and that successive Conservative governments have done nothing to remove comprehensives and that Tory controlled councils like Surrey implemented and supported them. When I identified David Johnston as a Tory MP who writes against Grammars you call him a leftie. I mean one of your own MPs. You also referred to him as a Heathite. Was Heath's government leftie then? What about Thatcher's government who didn't undo comprehensives? Or Surrey Country Council? All lefties?
Are everyone lefties other than yourself? This is very confusing if most Tories are lefties, especially as many of your own views are indistinguishable from far left authoritarianism.
If you are a working class parent though the evidence Bristol University foundation however was that your child would get better GCSE results than at the local comprehensive.
Heath's government did nothing to stop local authorities turning grammars into comprehensives which had begun when Wilson's government pushed to end selective education(the trend only slowed when Thatcher was PM and slightly reversed with more pupils attending grammars when Major was PM). Hence most of the few remaining areas with grammars are in Tory controlled councils.
You can't even ballot to open new grammars now, only ballot to close them. True parental choice would at least allow that
Not sure whose post you are referring to, but you haven't addressed the points I made, but that is normal for you as you never do.
Are all these Tories I refer to lefties eg Heath's govt, Surrey County Council? Did you really mean to call your own current MPs lefties who support Comprehensive schools? They were your actual words re David Johnson. You have declared every Tory on this site as not being a real Tory at some time or other. You are now doing the same to previous and current govts and Tory controlled councils. Who is left?
Oh I absolutely have.
Tories who want to abolish grammars like David Johnson are a tiny minority of the party and no more really than members of your party, the LDs, who backed Brexit. They are irrelevant, indeed Sunak and Truss both backed grammars in the leadership campaign last year.
I notice you also refuse to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, just to close them. Not much liberalism and parental choice there from you then!
Re your last paragraph I did no such thing. I have never commented on this point. You are putting words into my mouth. But on that same line how is there more parental choice for parents of children who fail the 11 plus. They have less choice. You are taking choice away from the majority of parents with the Grammars system as you have removed schools from them. You didn't deal with that point.
So lets get this clear then:
All Tory MPs who back Comprehensives are not true Tories. Have you let them know?
Surrey County Council and all Tory County Councils who implemented Comprehensives are not true Tories either
Heath's Government from what you say definitely wasn't Tory then.
Thatcher's govt who did nothing to reverse Comprehensives in her long time as PM couldn't have been Tory either then as she had plenty of time to do something about it
Nobody who posts to this site is a Tory. I note you excommunicated @MarqueeMark and @Sean_F recently.
You say Sunak and Truss back Grammars. How? They are just words. They (well we won't know re Truss) will do zippo to support Grammars. They say this just to keep the loons like you onside.
You can keep posting the link to the Bristol report, but it is has been conclusively accepted by all except a few Tory nutters and UKIP who live in the 1950s that Grammars are bad for the educating the nations children.
Your views on Royalty, Grammars, Church, the nation, etc put you with the group of 90 year old Tory Colonels. You have become an old man 50 years before your time.
30% of voters want more grammars (ie higher than the Conservative voteshare in most current polls except Deltapoll). A further 20% of voters want to retain existing grammars but not build anymore.
Only 26% of voters like you want to stop existing grammars selecting by ability and turn them into comprehensives
Not answering any of the points again, but quoting a 5 year old poll, which confirms that 46% were against new grammar schools and only 30% in favour and that is the best you can do.
FWIW, and again for those who care, The coalition talks in Estonia have excluded the Conservative Isamaa Party meaning that the new coalition will be Reform, Eesti 200 and the Social Democrats. Means a centre-left social policy, but a return to more classical Liberal economic policy. The enabling bill to recognize civil partnerships will now be passed, and there may be some changes to the rather restrictive citizenship laws. A simpler tax code will now return and there will be changes to the social tax regime.
Obviously support for Ukraine will continue and probably be expanded.
The more I look at the result the better I am pleased. The Trumpian attempt by EKRE to discredit e-voting has been greeted with general laughter, and this election might very well mark the high-water mark of EKRE rankings (they are now second, even though they lost votes, because the Centre Party vote fell so much). Isamaa are now in something of a crisis, but could spend their time in opposition constructively, and if they don´t then they will be replaced by the breakaway "Right wingers" at the next election.
It is a complete landslide for Kaja Kallas, and a poke in the eye for Putin.
I dislike this policy, which seems government by headline rather than law. I dislike Lineker's reaction, which is ludicrously over the top and demeans himself. And I dislike Jenrick's response, which is excessively harsh.
Will there be a fourth domino in this line of nincompoopery?
Susannah Reid humiliated Dame Suella Braverman on GMB. Send her to Rwanda with Lineker!
SKS Labour doesn't know whether to have a shit shave or a haircut this morning.
Any previous Labour leader would have called out "stop the boats" for what it is
SKS has no principles that cant be bought for a few votes does he.
Starmer and his Labour traitors will be next. Cruella has already painted them as the party of treasonous surrender monkeys. You are not reading the room that your new found friends occupy. Lineker has a point, xenophobia didn't start with gas chambers, it started with a divide and conquer programme by government.
I quoted Steve Kinnock last night, he was unequivocal. We need to stop the boats by allowing a safe and legal route for genuine asylum seekers and attack the criminal gangs. Sunak seems a decent guy. It looks to me like he is Braverman's hostage. Braverman was defending her policy on GMB on the back of hers and Patel's failure to get a grip as Home Secretaries. Her justification was government failure...er, her government failure. The current Conservative Party is owned by Johnson, Braverman, Anderson and Gullis and you are painting Starmer as the villain?
Well done to Stephen Kinnock
Not a snowballs chance in hell of it becoming Lab Policy under Groucho though
FWIW, and again for those who care, The coalition talks in Estonia have excluded the Conservative Isamaa Party meaning that the new coalition will be Reform, Eesti 200 and the Social Democrats. Means a centre-left social policy, but a return to more classical Liberal economic policy. The enabling bill to recognize civil partnerships will now be passed, and there may be some changes to the rather restrictive citizenship laws. A simpler tax code will now return and there will be changes to the social tax regime.
Obviously support for Ukraine will continue and probably be expanded.
The more I look at the result the better I am pleased. The Trumpian attempt by EKRE to discredit e-voting has been greeted with general laughter, and this election might very well mark the high-water mark of EKRE rankings (they are now second, even though they lost votes, because the Centre Party vote fell so much). Isamaa are now in something of a crisis, but could spend their time in opposition constructively, and if they don´t then they will be replaced by the breakaway "Right wingers" at the next election.
It is a complete landslide for Kaja Kallas, and a poke in the eye for Putin.
I think "stop the boats" is a win for Conservative moderates
Surely the majority of recent Tory Home Secretaries would have preferred the much more popular
Sink the Boats
It says something when Grant Schapps is probably the pick of recent Home Secretaries
Was just checking and the only one I rate since the last Labour government was Amber Rudd. Those under Major, Blair and Brown were at least mostly competent and appeared to have interests other than stirring up hatred.
Isn't that just a political preference? Can you name any strides against crime and for justice made by Rudd, Straw etc., or were they just your preferred flavour of incompetent?
FWIW, and again for those who care, The coalition talks in Estonia have excluded the Conservative Isamaa Party meaning that the new coalition will be Reform, Eesti 200 and the Social Democrats. Means a centre-left social policy, but a return to more classical Liberal economic policy. The enabling bill to recognize civil partnerships will now be passed, and there may be some changes to the rather restrictive citizenship laws. A simpler tax code will now return and there will be changes to the social tax regime.
Obviously support for Ukraine will continue and probably be expanded.
The more I look at the result the better I am pleased. The Trumpian attempt by EKRE to discredit e-voting has been greeted with general laughter, and this election might very well mark the high-water mark of EKRE rankings (they are now second, even though they lost votes, because the Centre Party vote fell so much). Isamaa are now in something of a crisis, but could spend their time in opposition constructively, and if they don´t then they will be replaced by the breakaway "Right wingers" at the next election.
It is a complete landslide for Kaja Kallas, and a poke in the eye for Putin.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
If you are a middle class do-gooder, that by itself means you are unlikely to be facing the issues Pagan is talking about - you can outbid the immigrants (and there is a question what immigrants you are talking here) for rent / property, are probably in reasonably good help so don't need to see the doctor so much and, when it comes to schooling, probably ensure your offspring are within the catchment area of a school where a disproportionate percentage of the pupils also come from middle class backgrounds
ie you have no clue what is the impact on lower income families and, by the sound of it, you couldn't care less - unfortunately, the default position for much of the middle class left.
At the educated employment level (think undergrad + masters, say), there is a world wide shortage both the high quality level (think top universities) and the middle quality level.
This is due to the fact that India and China (to name but two) are becoming service economies faster than they can expand higher education. So demand is raising faster than supply.
This means that the middle class experience of immigration is "thank God we have some people to join the team."
It also means that at no conceivable level of immigration is there much pressure downwards on wages or conditions in those groups.
Whilst in other groups, the legal minimum wage in seen as the maximum wage in many industries, and there was always someone else fresh off the boat plane who will take it if you don’t.
One thing that isn’t said enough, is that millions of people who were making minimum wage in 2019 are now making £13 or £14 an hour. They’re often young, and not people who respond to polling, but with some good marketing around election time could well end up as first-time Conservative voters, especially if Labour make noises about “rejoining the single market” and reintroducing FoM.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
There are plenty of immigrants in middle clasa neighbourhoods. Particularly in and around London. The difference is that those immigrants tend to be educated, speak good English, generally integrated into the local community and crime among such groups is extremely low. In lower income neighbourhoods, you are much more likely to get immigrants that form separate communities, are difficult to communicate to, and the next generation of youth often have resentment of the country their parents came to.
The government should really create an integration index by local authority, showing rates of intermarriage, English ability and crime levels by migrants. Then hold local authorities responsible for addressing them.
Social class pretty much covers it. Middle class people integrate well wherever they go in the world.
Even so, I think that you underestimate the amount of integration of other communities, including those mostly working class.
Even within the working class, it depends on the group. Poles have integrated very well to the working class and many are now entering the middle class. Jamaicans mixed well, inter-married but continue to have major issues with disaffected youth joining gangs. Working class Pakistanis (Mirpuris rather than Lahoris) largely avoid crime, but formed very separate communities and have poor employment performance, as many don't want their women working and will refuse many jobs for religious reasons. Somalis don't mix, have horrendous unemployment rates and also have the gang problem.
Of course these are all descriptions of groups as a whole. Individuals should be welcomed and judged as individuals. But politicians and journalists take this too far to the point where they won't focus on the very real problems and the variation between groups - and the reasons behind those variations - for fear of being called racist. But working class folks know them very well.
The choices for the UK government regarding the Dinghy People (barring some huge change in global geopolitical trends) can be boiled down to these three:
1. Violently push back the boats. Accept that many will drown. This will be morally unacceptable to 98% of the country
2. Immediately detain and deport all those who arrive. Disallow their rights. Off they go to Rwanda or whoever we can bribe - this will be palatable to much of the country but will be loathed by many liberals (and others). Also legally difficult
3. Basically accept there’s nothing we can do. Make some futile gestures like “helping French police”. Prohibit the use of the word “dinghy”. Accept that 100,000s will cross and this number will likely grow and grow. This will enrage much of the country and possibly lead to Britain’s first serious far right party
That’s it. That’s the choice. Not good
Even on that dodgy framing (3) is superior. Certainly better than the Cons trying to head off a far right party by becoming one.
But although I usually like defeatism - it's quite underrated as a mindset imo - it's overly defeatist to assume nothing effective can be done about this issue that doesn't involve the dehumanization of vulnerable people. I'm pretty suspicious of those who say this so readily. It can be hard to distinguish a muscular, clear-sighted rejection of liberal waffle from a genuine enthusiasm for far right 'solutions' to protect 'us' from 'them' - since in polite society the second tends to dress up as the first.
If you want to go with 3 at some point you will have vigilante groups patrolling beaches and meting out "justice" just like they have on the american border. If that is what you want then by all means go for 3
You can't have government policy dictated by the worst elements in society.
Ah you mean by worst the poor who find their share of the pie ever more diminished when they have to share it with ever more people? Does it ever seem strange to you that most of the bleeding hearts crying let them all in come from area's that aren't particulary impacted by ever more people whereas those living in poorer areas find their rent ever increasing for substandard accomodation and their services stretched to cope with ever more people?
Getting disadvantaged people to blame it on foreigners is a textbook technique of the far right. I'd rather it stayed in the textbooks.
You are rich and probably live in an area which doesn't house a lot of new immigrants. People like me that lived most of our lives in poor area's which do house a lot of poor immigrants however see the effect on our lives. I don't see it as immigrants to blame for it, I see it as people like you to blame for it. You want to feel good about your bleeding heart credentials and let everyone in but you don't have to live with it.
Two examples, when I first moved to slough in 87 you could get an appointment with a doctor in the next 3 days, when I left slough last year the time to the appointment was now 3 weeks. Other one is I have friends who started families and signed up on the council housing list...by the time there children became adults they were further down the list than when they first signed up.
I don't blame immigrants because I can understand why they come. I do blame people like you for not worrying about the poor people in your own country and making sure they aren't disadvantaged by it
I'm a middle class do gooder and there are plenty of immigrants in our neighbourhood. I'm more than happy for there to be more of them too. Blame the government for the deterioration in public services, it's their job to run them properly, they've run them into the ground as a deliberate act of policy. And plenty of our public services rely on immigrants to function.
If you are a middle class do-gooder, that by itself means you are unlikely to be facing the issues Pagan is talking about - you can outbid the immigrants (and there is a question what immigrants you are talking here) for rent / property, are probably in reasonably good help so don't need to see the doctor so much and, when it comes to schooling, probably ensure your offspring are within the catchment area of a school where a disproportionate percentage of the pupils also come from middle class backgrounds
ie you have no clue what is the impact on lower income families and, by the sound of it, you couldn't care less - unfortunately, the default position for much of the middle class left.
At the educated employment level (think undergrad + masters, say), there is a world wide shortage both the high quality level (think top universities) and the middle quality level.
This is due to the fact that India and China (to name but two) are becoming service economies faster than they can expand higher education. So demand is raising faster than supply.
This means that the middle class experience of immigration is "thank God we have some people to join the team."
It also means that at no conceivable level of immigration is there much pressure downwards on wages or conditions in those groups.
Whilst in other groups, the legal minimum wage in seen as the maximum wage in many industries, and there was always someone else fresh off the boat plane who will take it if you don’t.
One thing that isn’t said enough, is that millions of people who were making minimum wage in 2019 are now making £13 or £14 an hour. They’re often young, and not people who respond to polling, but with some good marketing around election time could well end up as first-time Conservative voters, especially if Labour make noises about “rejoining the single market” and reintroducing FoM.
The other issue with minimum wage is that if employers would naturally pay £7 but are forced to pay £14 (which I agree with), they will make up for the difference by having really crappy conditions and demands on their workers, knowing they will have enough workers who will tolerate it given the labour surplus. The government can't just fix wages by law. They also need to work on supply and demand to increase the natural wage at the bottom.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
A Global Parliament would eventually turn into the EU on steroids, full of elites who would legislate to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
SKS: Nobody on this side wants open borders. On that side they’ve lost control of the borders
What kind of racist drivel is that
SKS fans please explain
It really isn't. We don't want open borders, do you (except under FoM within the EU)? This government has lost control of the borders. Borders need to be controlled, but not by yesterday's xenophobic nonsense.
I dislike this policy, which seems government by headline rather than law. I dislike Lineker's reaction, which is ludicrously over the top and demeans himself. And I dislike Jenrick's response, which is excessively harsh.
Will there be a fourth domino in this line of nincompoopery?
Susannah Reid humiliated Dame Suella Braverman on GMB. Send her to Rwanda with Lineker!
SKS Labour doesn't know whether to have a shit shave or a haircut this morning.
Any previous Labour leader would have called out "stop the boats" for what it is
SKS has no principles that cant be bought for a few votes does he.
Starmer and his Labour traitors will be next. Cruella has already painted them as the party of treasonous surrender monkeys. You are not reading the room that your new found friends occupy. Lineker has a point, xenophobia didn't start with gas chambers, it started with a divide and conquer programme by government.
I quoted Steve Kinnock last night, he was unequivocal. We need to stop the boats by allowing a safe and legal route for genuine asylum seekers and attack the criminal gangs. Sunak seems a decent guy. It looks to me like he is Braverman's hostage. Braverman was defending her policy on GMB on the back of hers and Patel's failure to get a grip as Home Secretaries. Her justification was government failure...er, her government failure. The current Conservative Party is owned by Johnson, Braverman, Anderson and Gullis and you are painting Starmer as the villain?
Well done to Stephen Kinnock
Not a snowballs chance in hell of it becoming Lab Policy under Groucho though
Stop the boats by letting all the immigrants in. Worked so well for Merkel. It doesn't create more pull for them at all.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
A Global Parliament would eventually turn into the EU on steroids, full of elites who would legislate to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Klaus Schwab’s wet dream.
The bigger the demos the less democracy works in my view because the value of your vote gets so diluted its almost verging on homeopathic levels
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
It was a lot cheaper and a lot less sewerage was discharged i think?
Sewage was an issue more back then, our waterways were filthy and our beaches fell well below standard
"Since 1995 some of the worst pollutants in our rivers have been cut dramatically: ammonia levels are down 70% and phosphates down 60%. Toxic metals like copper, lead, cadmium and mercury have also been reduced, the last two by 50% since 2008. Serious water pollution incidents have been cut by nearly two thirds, from 765 in 2002 to 266 in 2019.
Since the 1990s there has been a big increase in the numbers of small animals that live in rivers like snails, worms and insects – a key indicator of the overall improving health of our waters. Many of the artificial barriers to fish and other wildlife have been removed: in the last ten years the Environment Agency and its partners have removed over 130 weirs and improved fish passage at more than 420 other sites, allowing salmon, other fish and eels to migrate and breed"
All since the 1989 privatisation
Indeed. The pipes discharging into the Thames, in London, are Victorian. And often that was canalisation/piping of existing flows.
The issue was simple. The Treasury viewed any investment in infrastructure as spending. Much easier to write yourself a waiver.
Post privatisation, forcing the water companies to higher standards was only limited, politically, by the resultant increase in bills and that was limited by the regulator.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
A Global Parliament would eventually turn into the EU on steroids, full of elites who would legislate to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Klaus Schwab’s wet dream.
At the moment by far the fastest growing population in the world is in Africa, followed by South Asia.
The biggest population decline by contrast is in Europe and the Far East. So actually an elected global parliament would end up being decided by swing voters in Nigeria and India most likely
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
People complaining about the "worst type of people deciding policy" are very reminiscent of the Ancien Regime nobles describing the filthy Third Estate.
Sorry off topic but just to respond to @hyufd after I left the thread last night:
You say Grammar schools give parents more choice. They don't. If your child fails the 11 plus they get less choice.
On the 'leftie' nonsense you haven't responded to the fact that I am not a 'leftie' and that successive Conservative governments have done nothing to remove comprehensives and that Tory controlled councils like Surrey implemented and supported them. When I identified David Johnston as a Tory MP who writes against Grammars you call him a leftie. I mean one of your own MPs. You also referred to him as a Heathite. Was Heath's government leftie then? What about Thatcher's government who didn't undo comprehensives? Or Surrey Country Council? All lefties?
Are everyone lefties other than yourself? This is very confusing if most Tories are lefties, especially as many of your own views are indistinguishable from far left authoritarianism.
If you are a working class parent though the evidence Bristol University foundation however was that your child would get better GCSE results than at the local comprehensive.
Heath's government did nothing to stop local authorities turning grammars into comprehensives which had begun when Wilson's government pushed to end selective education(the trend only slowed when Thatcher was PM and slightly reversed with more pupils attending grammars when Major was PM). Hence most of the few remaining areas with grammars are in Tory controlled councils.
You can't even ballot to open new grammars now, only ballot to close them. True parental choice would at least allow that
Not sure whose post you are referring to, but you haven't addressed the points I made, but that is normal for you as you never do.
Are all these Tories I refer to lefties eg Heath's govt, Surrey County Council? Did you really mean to call your own current MPs lefties who support Comprehensive schools? They were your actual words re David Johnson. You have declared every Tory on this site as not being a real Tory at some time or other. You are now doing the same to previous and current govts and Tory controlled councils. Who is left?
Oh I absolutely have.
Tories who want to abolish grammars like David Johnson are a tiny minority of the party and no more really than members of your party, the LDs, who backed Brexit. They are irrelevant, indeed Sunak and Truss both backed grammars in the leadership campaign last year.
I notice you also refuse to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, just to close them. Not much liberalism and parental choice there from you then!
Re your last paragraph I did no such thing. I have never commented on this point. You are putting words into my mouth. But on that same line how is there more parental choice for parents of children who fail the 11 plus. They have less choice. You are taking choice away from the majority of parents with the Grammars system as you have removed schools from them. You didn't deal with that point.
So lets get this clear then:
All Tory MPs who back Comprehensives are not true Tories. Have you let them know?
Surrey County Council and all Tory County Councils who implemented Comprehensives are not true Tories either
Heath's Government from what you say definitely wasn't Tory then.
Thatcher's govt who did nothing to reverse Comprehensives in her long time as PM couldn't have been Tory either then as she had plenty of time to do something about it
Nobody who posts to this site is a Tory. I note you excommunicated @MarqueeMark and @Sean_F recently.
You say Sunak and Truss back Grammars. How? They are just words. They (well we won't know re Truss) will do zippo to support Grammars. They say this just to keep the loons like you onside.
You can keep posting the link to the Bristol report, but it is has been conclusively accepted by all except a few Tory nutters and UKIP who live in the 1950s that Grammars are bad for the educating the nations children.
Your views on Royalty, Grammars, Church, the nation, etc put you with the group of 90 year old Tory Colonels. You have become an old man 50 years before your time.
30% of voters want more grammars (ie higher than the Conservative voteshare in most current polls except Deltapoll). A further 20% of voters want to retain existing grammars but not build anymore.
Only 26% of voters like you want to stop existing grammars selecting by ability and turn them into comprehensives
Not answering any of the points again, but quoting a 5 year old poll, which confirms that 46% were against new grammar schools and only 30% in favour and that is the best you can do.
So it confirms 30% want more grammar schools which is more than the 26% who like you want to abolish the existing grammar schools
Following YouGov publishing today its polling which took place last week (it takes them a week from the end of polling to publish the results!) I have calculated my weekly average of 6 polling companies.
There has been a noticable up tick in the conservative vote, mainly from the polls taken at the end of last week.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
A Global Parliament would eventually turn into the EU on steroids, full of elites who would legislate to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Klaus Schwab’s wet dream.
The bigger the demos the less democracy works in my view because the value of your vote gets so diluted its almost verging on homeopathic levels
It’s why you need the principle of subsidiarity. Devolving real decisions to the lowest most local level possible and reserving only the issues that really need decisions at a higher level. It’s why for all their faults the highly federalised models of the US and India work despite vast populations.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
You are aware that all attempts building reservoirs are being, essentially, blocked?
Or that every large infrastructure project by a water company goes through the usual decades long fight with the antis - see the Thames Water megasewer, for instance.
The Thames Water Tideway project is massive - and incidentally paid for by the taxpayer not Thames Water.
The initial public consultations started in March 2011, numerous options were considered and the scheme was finally approved by the Government in September 2014. Construction started in 2016. Hardly a "decades long fight with the antis".
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
When water was nationalised there was a lot more lost to leaks
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
It was a lot cheaper and a lot less sewerage was discharged i think?
Sewage was an issue more back then, our waterways were filthy and our beaches fell well below standard
"Since 1995 some of the worst pollutants in our rivers have been cut dramatically: ammonia levels are down 70% and phosphates down 60%. Toxic metals like copper, lead, cadmium and mercury have also been reduced, the last two by 50% since 2008. Serious water pollution incidents have been cut by nearly two thirds, from 765 in 2002 to 266 in 2019.
Since the 1990s there has been a big increase in the numbers of small animals that live in rivers like snails, worms and insects – a key indicator of the overall improving health of our waters. Many of the artificial barriers to fish and other wildlife have been removed: in the last ten years the Environment Agency and its partners have removed over 130 weirs and improved fish passage at more than 420 other sites, allowing salmon, other fish and eels to migrate and breed"
All since the 1989 privatisation
Indeed.
The issue was simple. The Treasury viewed any investment in infrastructure as spending. Much easier to write yourself a waiver.
Post privatisation, forcing the water companies to higher standards was only limited, politically, by the resultant increase in bills and that was limited by the regulator.
It is the problem with all nationalised industries. It is not so much nationalisation is bad in itself, more that there is only so much money to spend and other issues are seen as more important for the distribution of money.
British rail was atrocious give me our current system anyday British telecom was hugely bad, anyone remember the 3 month wait to get a phone line and we don't want that asdl stuff you can have ISDN or whatever it was called
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
And billions isn't a lie either as I think it was the IPCC that forecast about 2 billion displaced due to climate change by 2050
I think those mostly internally displaced within the country though, as indeed are most refugees. And most other refugees are in immediate neighbours of their homeland.
Those on the right should be more attentive to both climate change and to economic, social and political development of the world. Want people to stay in their country? Make it worth their while to do so.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
You are aware that all attempts building reservoirs are being, essentially, blocked?
Or that every large infrastructure project by a water company goes through the usual decades long fight with the antis - see the Thames Water megasewer, for instance.
The Thames Water Tideway project is massive - and incidentally paid for by the taxpayer not Thames Water.
The initial public consultations started in March 2011, numerous options were considered and the scheme was finally approved by the Government in September 2014. Construction started in 2016. Hardly a "decades long fight with the antis".
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
1.25% of the world's population?
It is the UN's estimate. Even if you think immigrants don't have a preference for the UK, the UK has 5% of the developed world's population. So the left's preferred "fair share" would be five million asylum seekers coming here. And that of course would be the low end, given chain migration.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
And billions isn't a lie either as I think it was the IPCC that forecast about 2 billion displaced due to climate change by 2050
I think those mostly internally displaced within the country though, as indeed are most refugees. And most other refugees are in immediate neighbours of their homeland.
Those on the right should be more attentive to both climate change and to economic, social and political development of the world. Want people to stay in their country? Make it worth their while to do so.
They are, hence the strong stance on Ukraine. But this is reminiscent of left wingers that say you can't address crime or educational underperformance until poverty is fixed.
I think "stop the boats" is a win for Conservative moderates
Surely the majority of recent Tory Home Secretaries would have preferred the much more popular
Sink the Boats
It says something when Grant Schapps is probably the pick of recent Home Secretaries
Was just checking and the only one I rate since the last Labour government was Amber Rudd. Those under Major, Blair and Brown were at least mostly competent and appeared to have interests other than stirring up hatred.
Isn't that just a political preference? Can you name any strides against crime and for justice made by Rudd, Straw etc., or were they just your preferred flavour of incompetent?
They didn't let the court or legal system collapse to the current extent (and that was evident even befroe covid and the ensuing backlog).
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
You are aware that all attempts building reservoirs are being, essentially, blocked?
Or that every large infrastructure project by a water company goes through the usual decades long fight with the antis - see the Thames Water megasewer, for instance.
The Thames Water Tideway project is massive - and incidentally paid for by the taxpayer not Thames Water.
The initial public consultations started in March 2011, numerous options were considered and the scheme was finally approved by the Government in September 2014. Construction started in 2016. Hardly a "decades long fight with the antis".
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
And it doesn't include people still at home in Eritrea or South Sudan who, if they saw that the UK has a lax policy, would start being interested in coming. Look at the effect in Iraq and Syria after Merkel announced her new policy.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Just waiting for some more comments re Jimmy Savile and beer and korma.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak and Braverman don’t believe a word of it either. They’re just electioneering. It’s almost all the Tory government do: government for them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
I don't think you can stop them but I am pretty sure you can mitigate their effects and reduce their numbers, but that requires serious thinking, compromises and a lot more spending. It seems that the vast majority of the traffickers are situated on this side of the Channel, for example. That indicates that enforcement authorities could be doing a lot more than they are to tackle them - are they failing through lack of resources, planning, coordination, etc? Is anyone in government asking? And, as we know, the time it takes to process asylum claims is ridiculous. Tat is down to the Home Office and the people who run it. Then there are the six years of distrust and antagonism that were caused by Brexit. That will not all be undone immediately - and if it is to be done meaningfully, it cannot be done while trying to appease the ERG. And so on. What won't work is saying this is not our problem, everyone else has to handle it and we will break international law to try to get our way.
Eliminate demand.
1) all employers liable for employing undocumented (they actually are, sort off, now) 2) fine of £100k per employee. Directors personal assets liable etc. 3) 50K goes to the undocumented employee who gives evidence against the employer. In the event of a successful conviction. 4) indefinite leave to remain also granted to the employee on conviction of the employer.
The Tory Party donors do not like this one.....I wonder why......
When employers have cooperated with the police/immigration to highlight undocumented workers, they have met with a wall of abuse from the Left.
The difference with my suggestion is paying for the information. Which will increase the reporting/prosecuting rate to 100%
Every ambulance chasing solicitor will be on this like a tramp on chips.
Average fine of £5k if caught will not change the economic incenvtives for those who are not motivated by morals or the law. Make it £100k per employee and the incentives change.
Let them work. We need them.
If they are working illegally - the government isn't seeing the income tax revenue
Make it legal. Make it easy to get an NI number. We are short of people of working age.
no we are short of people of working age with sufficient incentive to actually work.
Countries should be concentrating on policies focussed on coping with a declining population because immigration is nothing more than a ponzi scheme
I agree with that and I don't think the answer is encouraging people to have more babies but finding ways of coping with a population that gets older. I know it is an economic nightmare but it is better than climate change, scarcity of water and all the problems overpopulation brings.
In an ideal world I would like to see free movement, but until all countries become similarly equal economies that is also impossible.
If we as a country had infinite resources then I would be happy with open borders. We don't however and we already have a population of sufficient size to put pressure on water, housing and services. Two of those 3 we could do something about it is true by building more and taxing more. However we cannot make more rain fall and if anything predictions are we will get less rain over time.
Water scarcity is going to be the 21st century problem for a lot of countries
The UK has above average rainfall at nearly four foot a year.
The problem is the privatisation of water. The water companies have loaded up with debt, paid high dividends to their overseas shareholders and neglected investment in infrastructure eg reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and repairing leaking pipes. Thames Water loses 24% of its water though leaks.
The solution is nationalisation of water supply with investment in infrastructure within a national framework. Then we won't run short.
You are aware that all attempts building reservoirs are being, essentially, blocked?
Or that every large infrastructure project by a water company goes through the usual decades long fight with the antis - see the Thames Water megasewer, for instance.
The Thames Water Tideway project is massive - and incidentally paid for by the taxpayer not Thames Water.
The initial public consultations started in March 2011, numerous options were considered and the scheme was finally approved by the Government in September 2014. Construction started in 2016. Hardly a "decades long fight with the antis".
Did I say they would all come here? No I didn't but they will largely aim for developed countries as their nations become less habitable due to heat, water shortages, famine etc.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak and Braverman don’t believe a word of it either. They’re just electioneering. It’s almost all the Tory government do: government for them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Sunak appears to me to be rather uncomfortable. Cruella on the other hand is lapping up the attention.
An experimental “passion fruit margarita” served by agreeable annamites in a Mexican cartel themed bar in a French-Japanese town square next to a famous 16th century Chinese temple. I am now half drunk. Love this job
A police officer pushed his partner out of a moving car, repeatedly beat her around the head and face and called her “a stupid c***”, a hearing was told.
The officer punched her in the stomach, tried to throw her into a bath of bleach, pulled her across the floor by her hair and even threw semen at her in the shower. The officer faced allegations that he was violent, abusive and used coercive and controlling behaviour against ex-partners who were also police officers.
However the officer, who has since resigned from Sussex police, has been granted anonymity, in part to “protect his welfare”.
I blame it on people like me and you. For not getting the infrastructure expanded to match the population. If the population grows by 5%, you need 5% more house, 5% more schools etc etc
So many problems in the UK seem to come down to poor resource planning. It really is remarkable just how badly government is at it.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Do you think all 100 million will come to the UK as is the inference by rule breaking Rishi and the disgraced national security risk Braverman?
Comments
Is that what you mean?
Investment under nationalised water was terrible, and so long as clean water keeps coming out of taps there will always be higher priorities for public money.
But it is a great place for a few days. Food rocks, as well
Hanoi is my favourite Vietnamese city. But I have heard good things of the little known bits of the delta. Apparently it gets really wild down there
Or that every large infrastructure project by a water company goes through the usual decades long fight with the antis - see the Thames Water megasewer, for instance.
People have totally lost their shit over this after years of indoctrination by RW Press
NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL
2024 #GOP primary
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7%
@Mike_Pence
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2%
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Remember that it was nationalisation that allowed the Beeching cuts to take place. Had the lines still been private, our rail infrastructure would in my opinion be a great deal better today.
leakage dropped from 4,980ml/d to 3,306ml/d in 2000, it reduced only to 3,183ml/d last year.
Yes more needs to be done but please don't try and claim it was better back then
ie you have no clue what is the impact on lower income families and, by the sound of it, you couldn't care less - unfortunately, the default position for much of the middle class left.
It is rather like the reason that virtualisation failed the first time round. Years back, big companies tried to move to the virtual machine setup - you login via a computer that is little more than a dumb terminal and get connected to a virtual machine. This only exists as software on a rack of computers.
The problem was that there was no hard definition of the number of users to the rack of machines. In theory, you could add just 1 more user and everything would get a bit slower for everyone.
Naturally, the idiot bean counters started adding more people, without the resources for the people running the racks at the back end.
The systems failed (people literally couldn't work) and many companies went back to actual computers on desks.
VMs are now back - this time, hard limits are being set for the amount of kit on the back end, and metrics for performance measured.
Only if they passed muster would the match go ahead.
Restaurants have to pay more? Because they can't get the supply of cheap labour needed they used to get with immigration.
There is a reason why the Business sector is so pro-immigration - it helps their profit margins substantially.
Good to see the Left so concerned now with making sure the Bosses are ok.
The government should really create an integration index by local authority, showing rates of intermarriage, English ability and crime levels by migrants. Then hold local authorities responsible for addressing them.
Was just checking and the only one I rate since the last Labour government was Amber Rudd. Those under Major, Blair and Brown were at least mostly competent and appeared to have interests other than stirring up hatred.
This is due to the fact that India and China (to name but two) are becoming service economies faster than they can expand higher education. So demand is raising faster than supply.
This means that the middle class experience of immigration is "thank God we have some people to join the team."
It also means that at no conceivable level of immigration is there much pressure downwards on wages or conditions in those groups.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/22/iowa-republicans-dump-trump-for-desantis-in-caucus-survey/
I quoted Steve Kinnock last night, he was unequivocal. We need to stop the boats by allowing a safe and legal route for genuine asylum seekers and attack the criminal gangs. Sunak seems a decent guy. It looks to me like he is Braverman's hostage. Braverman was defending her policy on GMB on the back of hers and Patel's failure to get a grip as Home Secretaries. Her justification was government failure...er, her government failure. The current Conservative Party is owned by Johnson, Braverman, Anderson and Gullis and you are painting Starmer as the villain?
Even so, I think that you underestimate the amount of integration of other communities, including those mostly working class.
The man has zero principles
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox
On a per capita basis, leakage has fallen even faster than the numbers you quote imply.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2020/10/02/the-state-of-our-waters-the-facts/
"Since 1995 some of the worst pollutants in our rivers have been cut dramatically: ammonia levels are down 70% and phosphates down 60%. Toxic metals like copper, lead, cadmium and mercury have also been reduced, the last two by 50% since 2008. Serious water pollution incidents have been cut by nearly two thirds, from 765 in 2002 to 266 in 2019.
Since the 1990s there has been a big increase in the numbers of small animals that live in rivers like snails, worms and insects – a key indicator of the overall improving health of our waters. Many of the artificial barriers to fish and other wildlife have been removed: in the last ten years the Environment Agency and its partners have removed over 130 weirs and improved fish passage at more than 420 other sites, allowing salmon, other fish and eels to migrate and breed"
All since the 1989 privatisation
between 1948 and 1954. It was the first sale to a non - white family in the road. The reaction of neighbours was appalling. After 15 years of normal neighbourly greetings, conversations etc my parents were shunned, and due to this reaction my mother could not wait to leave. Interestingly the other teenagers in the area were okay with me, it was their parents. What is it in the human psyche that creates this, it still seems to be very much alive today.
Not a snowballs chance in hell of it becoming Lab Policy under Groucho though
Though even then...
One thing that isn’t said enough, is that millions of people who were making minimum wage in 2019 are now making £13 or £14 an hour. They’re often young, and not people who respond to polling, but with some good marketing around election time could well end up as first-time Conservative voters, especially if Labour make noises about “rejoining the single market” and reintroducing FoM.
Of course these are all descriptions of groups as a whole. Individuals should be welcomed and judged as individuals. But politicians and journalists take this too far to the point where they won't focus on the very real problems and the variation between groups - and the reasons behind those variations - for fear of being called racist. But working class folks know them very well.
What kind of racist drivel is that
SKS fans please explain
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
It’s a very decent agreement and sensible. Though they are now talking blockchain and you don’t get on to that if things are completely frictionless.
Klaus Schwab’s wet dream.
Anyone thinking Sunak is significantly different to Johnson when it comes to gimmickry and deliberate mendacity is in for a disappointment.
The issue was simple. The Treasury viewed any investment in infrastructure as spending. Much easier to write yourself a waiver.
Post privatisation, forcing the water companies to higher standards was only limited, politically, by the resultant increase in bills and that was limited by the regulator.
The biggest population decline by contrast is in Europe and the Far East. So actually an elected global parliament would end up being decided by swing voters in Nigeria and India most likely
LAB: 47% (+1)
CON: 31% (-)
LDEM: 8% (-)
GRN: 5% (+1)
REF: 4% (-1)
via
@DeltapollUK
, 02 - 06 Mar
There has been a noticable up tick in the conservative vote, mainly from the polls taken at the end of last week.
The initial public consultations started in March 2011, numerous options were considered and the scheme was finally approved by the Government in September 2014. Construction started in 2016. Hardly a "decades long fight with the antis".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tideway_Scheme
British rail was atrocious give me our current system anyday
British telecom was hugely bad, anyone remember the 3 month wait to get a phone line and we don't want that asdl stuff you can have ISDN or whatever it was called
Those on the right should be more attentive to both climate change and to economic, social and political development of the world. Want people to stay in their country? Make it worth their while to do so.
them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Dame Judith, you chose your career wisely
The officer punched her in the stomach, tried to throw her into a bath of bleach, pulled her across the floor by her hair and even threw semen at her in the shower. The officer faced allegations that he was violent, abusive and used coercive and controlling behaviour against ex-partners who were also police officers.
However the officer, who has since resigned from Sussex police, has been granted anonymity, in part to “protect his welfare”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-officer-pushed-his-wife-out-of-a-moving-car-f5tnmrtds