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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
For christ sake I didn't opine on homosexuality ...
You were presented with the example of a local council wanting to "ban homosexuality" in accordance with local demand, and you said it shouldn't be prevented unless he wanted "a lot of people picking up a gun", and you said that if it were presented it would "end in blood".
Look at yourself.
No I picked up on one piece of his text....somethings shouldn't be left to voters, it may be a huge surprise to someone who obviously fails at critical thinking but people replying to a post here often are replying to one part of a post and ignoring the bollocks made up example that game out of some addled drug dream.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
I'm not sure I follow what Article 79 has to do with international standards.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
You are not explaining why you think a world governement would be more liberal in protecting human rights than most western nations. Clue it probably wouldnt. Given china, india , africa and the middle east would make up 50% of the electorate more or less then I suspect you would be horrified at the outcome
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Indeed given the number of muslims, evangelical christians and catholics in the world probably add up to a good proportion of voters a world government is far more likely to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, contraception etc than to be a secular liberal type of world.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
And in Sweden they have a crime of "sex by surprise"; they presumably think similarly about us.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
I've explained it repeatedly. 😕
The higher the authority the more dangerous it is. The more out of touch, the more remote, the more inflexible. If we had a solitary global government with solitary global rights we'd probably still have abortion illegal as its murder, homosexuality outlawed etc - why would you welcome that?
You seem to think global = good but there's no evidence for that and actually global changes in liberalism seriously lag forerunning nation states becoming more liberal. The UK to this day is more liberal than most of the world, so if you want a global standard you either want our standards to worsen to the lowest common denominator, or you want to be an imperialist and compel other nations to our standards against their wishes.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
Because the very concept of "basic human rights" is malleable?
As the tweet says the current Conservative Party has adopted every policy of the erstwhile National Front except one. The NF were opposed to corruption while the Tories embrace it with enthusiasm. Braverman even echoes the same narrative on Nazis and betrayal.
When has this Conservative government ever pursued repatriation of legal immigrants as the NF advocated?
I haven't noticed this government advocating bringing back capital punishment either
See my last post.
The vast majority of asylum seekers are found to be legitimate and therefore granted asylum. These people are or would be legal immigrants. The government wants to "send them back".
However is that not down to fact that they have been waiting for years and by time they get round to it they have been here to long to be able to chuck them out or even have a clue why they came in first place. Incompetence more like.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Indeed given the number of muslims, evangelical christians and catholics in the world probably add up to a good proportion of voters a world government is far more likely to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, contraception etc than to be a secular liberal type of world.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
And in Sweden they have a crime of "sex by surprise"; they presumably think similarly about us.
Isn't sex by surprise sort of the definition of rape?
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Indeed given the number of muslims, evangelical christians and catholics in the world probably add up to a good proportion of voters a world government is far more likely to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, contraception etc than to be a secular liberal type of world.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
And in Sweden they have a crime of "sex by surprise"; they presumably think similarly about us.
Isn't sex by surprise sort of the definition of rape?
This is distinct from rape, and was what Assange was accused of.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
For christ sake I didn't opine on homosexuality ...
You were presented with the example of a local council wanting to "ban homosexuality" in accordance with local demand, and you said it shouldn't be prevented unless he wanted "a lot of people picking up a gun", and you said that if it were presented it would "end in blood".
Look at yourself.
No I picked up on one piece of his text....somethings shouldn't be left to voters, it may be a huge surprise to someone who obviously fails at critical thinking but people replying to a post here often are replying to one part of a post and ignoring the bollocks made up example that game out of some addled drug dream.
You're trying to say that your reply was meant to except the one concrete example that was mentioned in the post you were reply to? And oh - horrors! - it would never have occurred to you in a million years to defend a local council "banning homosexuality"? Sorry, but it's too ludicrous to waste any more time on.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
For christ sake I didn't opine on homosexuality ...
You were presented with the example of a local council wanting to "ban homosexuality" in accordance with local demand, and you said it shouldn't be prevented unless he wanted "a lot of people picking up a gun", and you said that if it were presented it would "end in blood".
Look at yourself.
No I picked up on one piece of his text....somethings shouldn't be left to voters, it may be a huge surprise to someone who obviously fails at critical thinking but people replying to a post here often are replying to one part of a post and ignoring the bollocks made up example that game out of some addled drug dream.
You're trying to say that your reply was meant to except the one concrete example that was mentioned in the post you were reply to? And oh - horrors! - it would never have occurred to you in a million years to defend a local council "banning homosexuality"? Sorry, but it's too ludicrous to waste any more time on.
Wasted enough time on you now so go fester in your pit thinking you have won. Most here know exactly what I was saying and my patience with your lack of comprehension is at an end
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
I'm not sure I follow what Article 79 has to do with international standards.
The conversation generally has been about international standards, so I made that comment there rather than creating a double post.
I am not an expert on the German constitution but I see nothing good about Article 79 of the German constitution, it locks into the future as unamendable standards of the past, although having read up on it further Article 146 provides a way out of the eternity clause so not all is lost there. Now you may think those past standards are good - great if so - but what if in the future they're utterly repellent?
The US Second Amendment was made with the best of intentions. After Columbine etc we have decades of reasons why that law should be changed, but its not being because the Constitution locks it in stone effectively even if Congress passes a law. That's not good.
Parliamentary sovereignty means the protection we need is for our people to be decent to each other, and that is the best protection we can have. Relying upon institutions does nothing when those institutions will be easily corrupted if the people aren't decent and take things for granted.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Indeed given the number of muslims, evangelical christians and catholics in the world probably add up to a good proportion of voters a world government is far more likely to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, contraception etc than to be a secular liberal type of world.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
And in Sweden they have a crime of "sex by surprise"; they presumably think similarly about us.
Isn't sex by surprise sort of the definition of rape?
This is distinct from rape, and was what Assange was accused of.
Ah you mean the morning after bit. It is an interesting one certainly
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
The trouble with that is eventually the voters will force a way for them to have their say.
The trouble with the opposite sentiment is potentially greater.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
The trouble with that is eventually the voters will force a way for them to have their say.
The trouble with the opposite sentiment is potentially greater.
Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
The trouble with that is eventually the voters will force a way for them to have their say.
The trouble with the opposite sentiment is potentially greater.
So what happens when this supranational body decides on "human right" you find unconscionable? For example if they decide marital sex is a human right therefore it can't be rape?
AP (via Seattle Times) - Elon Musk apologizes after mocking laid-off Twitter employee
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you’re not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably. And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.
He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire’s attention and get an answer to his Schrödinger’s job situation.
“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” he wrote on Monday.
Eventually, he got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, question his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy” and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.” While the exchange was going on, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.
Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk’s tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal.”
“You had every right to lay me off. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted to Musk. . . .
SSI - Perhaps Muskmelon should spend more time (or perhaps even less?) dealing with the clusterfeck that is Tesla? As per this NYT op-ed by "Car and Driver' columnist Ezra Dyer:
NYT ($) - A 120-Year Old Company [Ford] Is Leaving Tesla in the Dust
Yes, it's beautiful. I've got sick of the cold weather here so we've booked two weeks in Italy, fucking snow in March. Hate it.
Sun splitting the sky yet again in south west Scotland.
I rather like winter. Also spring and autumn
Thing is, winter needs to be cold dry and properly snowy. Spring needs to be sunny, sweet and flowery. Autumn needs to be deliciously mournful with occasional downpours
The other EIGHT months of the year must be real Mediterranean summer: ie warm enough to go out at night in shirtsleeves and be totally comfortable
I don’t think anywhere on earth matches this, seasonally. Certainly not Britain. Travel it is, then
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Not PURELY to voters. Eg it should be much much harder to pass laws violating basic human rights than to cut taxes. And then the question is: so at what level should human rights be legally protected? Local? National? International?
I'm saying the level should be as high as possible. Why assert as some belief set in stone that it should go no higher than the nation state as if the nation state is something sacred? That makes little sense to me.
National.
If it is national then if it is violated in one nation you can seek refuge in another nation. If it is international then if it is violated internationally, where do you seek refuge?
If an international court and international government ruled that homosexuals internationally must be stoned to death, then where do you seek refuge? Where do you go? What do you do?
You may think that's unlikely, but its no more unlikely than that Parliament would do so.
Might you consider informing Suella & Co of this?
On which topic, I well recall your fury about Mrs May's Go Home vans - actually made you burn your Tory member card, didn't it - so you must be spitting bricks (!) about all this nasty stuff coming from them now.
I would start by estimating how many asylum seekers we can properly support each year (with housing, schools, language support, emotional support, etc).
That comes down to a budgetary constraint, how much money do we want to spend ?
Without knowing those numbers, any discussion of a sensible policy or numbers is not even possible.
I'd say the present asylum policy is broken, and has been broken for many years. It seems to have been devised to enrich criminals and people smugglers.
I do like Canada's policy of privately-sponsored refugees (PSRs). Here, family members or concerned individuals or community groups can sponsor individual refugees. The sponsors provide financial and emotional support for the sponsored refugee and his/her family. PSRs also receive resettlement support from the Canadian Govt.
President Joe Biden will unveil the first phase of an ambitious three-nation nuclear submarine deal next to the leaders of the United Kingdom and Australia on Monday in San Diego, according to six people familiar with the plans.
The announcement is the culmination of 18 months of negotiations as the three countries figure out how to provide Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Restrictions on technology transfers and classified nuclear processes have complicated plans ever since the deal — known as AUKUS — was struck in September 2021. Last week, State Department and Pentagon officials briefed House Foreign Affairs Committee members about some of the issues.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
For christ sake I didn't opine on homosexuality ...
You were presented with the example of a local council wanting to "ban homosexuality" in accordance with local demand, and you said it shouldn't be prevented unless he wanted "a lot of people picking up a gun", and you said that if it were presented it would "end in blood".
Look at yourself.
No I picked up on one piece of his text....somethings shouldn't be left to voters, it may be a huge surprise to someone who obviously fails at critical thinking but people replying to a post here often are replying to one part of a post and ignoring the bollocks made up example that game out of some addled drug dream.
You're trying to say that your reply was meant to except the one concrete example that was mentioned in the post you were reply to? And oh - horrors! - it would never have occurred to you in a million years to defend a local council "banning homosexuality"? Sorry, but it's too ludicrous to waste any more time on.
Wasted enough time on you now so go fester in your pit thinking you have won. Most here know exactly what I was saying and my patience with your lack of comprehension is at an end
We agree about one thing at least - "Most here know exactly what I was saying".
Yes, it's beautiful. I've got sick of the cold weather here so we've booked two weeks in Italy, fucking snow in March. Hate it.
Sun splitting the sky yet again in south west Scotland.
I rather like winter. Also spring and autumn
Thing is, winter needs to be cold dry and properly snowy. Spring needs to be sunny, sweet and flowery. Autumn needs to be deliciously mournful with occasional downpours
The other EIGHT months of the year must be real Mediterranean summer: ie warm enough to go out at night in shirtsleeves and be totally comfortable
I don’t think anywhere on earth matches this, seasonally. Certainly not Britain. Travel it is, then
Yes winters here now are not anything like when I was a boy, we had hard frost and lots of snow. Apart from a flurry it is years since we had snow here at coast. Autumn and winter just merged though been less rain this year which is positive.
Can I come late to this? I'm very sorry for, and have great sympathy for the Afghans and the Iraqis who are trying to come here. We promised to look after the Afghans who are working for us and it's unquestionable that we abandoned many of them.
However I have less sympathy with, and indeed suspicion of, Albanians who are trying to come here. That Albania is a country where the rule of law is about as well observed as it was in the old West doesn't necessarily mean that they should come to UK.
I have though contempt for people whose parents came to this country from abroad and now seek to prevent others from doing so, and in the course of that action demean those who are doing what their parents did.
Yes, it's beautiful. I've got sick of the cold weather here so we've booked two weeks in Italy, fucking snow in March. Hate it.
Sun splitting the sky yet again in south west Scotland.
I rather like winter. Also spring and autumn
Thing is, winter needs to be cold dry and properly snowy. Spring needs to be sunny, sweet and flowery. Autumn needs to be deliciously mournful with occasional downpours
The other EIGHT months of the year must be real Mediterranean summer: ie warm enough to go out at night in shirtsleeves and be totally comfortable
I don’t think anywhere on earth matches this, seasonally. Certainly not Britain. Travel it is, then
Yes winters here now are not anything like when I was a boy, we had hard frost and lots of snow. Apart from a flurry it is years since we had snow here at coast. Autumn and winter just merged though been less rain this year which is positive.
I can agree very much with that Malc having spent my schooldays in Berwick in the 1950s
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Hope you are not including Scotland in the 'shithole' category Malc
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Probably they all have an overly rosy picture of Britain from reading our erudite discussions on PB
AP (via Seattle Times) - Elon Musk apologizes after mocking laid-off Twitter employee
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you’re not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably. And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.
He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire’s attention and get an answer to his Schrödinger’s job situation.
“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” he wrote on Monday.
Eventually, he got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, question his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy” and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.” While the exchange was going on, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.
Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk’s tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal.”
“You had every right to lay me off. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted to Musk. . . .
SSI - Perhaps Muskmelon should spend more time (or perhaps even less?) dealing with the clusterfeck that is Tesla? As per this NYT op-ed by "Car and Driver' columnist Ezra Dyer:
NYT ($) - A 120-Year Old Company [Ford] Is Leaving Tesla in the Dust
Musk’s about face probably has an awful lot to do with the fact that the individual in question was the owned of a reasonably large company that was bought out by Twitter & he chose to take the buyout in the form of cash paid out as a salary. A generous thing to do as it probably maximised the tax take for his country of Iceland.
I would imagine that the employee’s contract specified a full payout of the remaining $ owed to him if he was let go by Twitter for any reason & as a result he was apparently on a list of VPs that were deemed too expensive to fire. Musk of course just stomped in shooting from the hip being his own needlessly cruel & heartless self & exposed his company to the risk of a) an instant multi-million $ contracted liability and b) a breach of privacy lawsuit for revealing someone’s extremely private personal medical information. Looks like his lawyers convinced him to write a grovelling public apology as soon as they got hold of him - apologising for anything really isn’t Musk’s style usually.
Can I come late to this? I'm very sorry for, and have great sympathy for the Afghans and the Iraqis who are trying to come here. We promised to look after the Afghans who are working for us and it's unquestionable that we abandoned many of them.
However I have less sympathy with, and indeed suspicion of, Albanians who are trying to come here. That Albania is a country where the rule of law is about as well observed as it was in the old West doesn't necessarily mean that they should come to UK.
I have though contempt for people whose parents came to this country from abroad and now seek to prevent others from doing so, and in the course of that action demean those who are doing what their parents did.
Earlier, Dr. Foxy said that conservatives should reduce the numbers of refugees by helping improve conditions in poor nations. Agreed. (Though I will add that, for some poor nations, it is difficult to think of practical ways to help them, that are politically possible. If you need an example, consider Haiti.)
AP (via Seattle Times) - Elon Musk apologizes after mocking laid-off Twitter employee
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you’re not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably. And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.
He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire’s attention and get an answer to his Schrödinger’s job situation.
“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” he wrote on Monday.
Eventually, he got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, question his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy” and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.” While the exchange was going on, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.
Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk’s tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal.”
“You had every right to lay me off. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted to Musk. . . .
SSI - Perhaps Muskmelon should spend more time (or perhaps even less?) dealing with the clusterfeck that is Tesla? As per this NYT op-ed by "Car and Driver' columnist Ezra Dyer:
NYT ($) - A 120-Year Old Company [Ford] Is Leaving Tesla in the Dust
Musk’s about face probably has an awful lot to do with the fact that the individual in question was the owned of a reasonably large company that was bought out by Twitter & he chose to take the buyout in the form of cash paid out as a salary. A generous thing to do as it probably maximised the tax take for his country of Iceland.
I would imagine that the employee’s contract specified a full payout of the remaining $ owed to him if he was let go by Twitter for any reason & as a result he was apparently on a list of VPs that were deemed too expensive to fire. Musk of course just stomped in shooting from the hip being his own needlessly cruel & heartless self & exposed his company to the risk of a) an instant multi-million $ contracted liability and b) a breach of privacy lawsuit for revealing someone’s extremely private personal medical information. Looks like his lawyers convinced him to write a grovelling public apology as soon as they got hold of him - apologising for anything really isn’t Musk’s style usually.
Well, to be fair, often when Musk apologises, he unapologises a few days later and doubles down on what he said originally. So this may play out further yet.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Hope you are not including Scotland in the 'shithole' category Malc
NO given they are all in England I was assuming it was clear, though they are taking us with them ( minus the immigration ) and the current lot in Scotland are doing little about it.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats. It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Are the people arrivng on boats intending to claim asylum - or is that their Plan B if they get caught, rather than arrivng on the beach and disappearing into the black economy?
That is Plan B: they'd much rather disappear into the illegal economy.
But remember those Albanians, it's trivial for them to get into the country. They were staffing those car washes five years ago, before there were any significant number of boat arrivals.
A UK tourist visa costs virtually nothing. You get a Megabus and you tell the nice immigration officer that you're coming to the UK for your cousin's wedding, and no way are you planning on working.
Just to say, there's a similar issue in the US. Everyone talks about a border wall - and yet most illegal immigrants simply came on a tourist visa and never left.
A visa overstayer got a visa. Which means their, say, Mexican criminal record has been checked and is clear. Those who cross illegally come with no such guarantee.
So when it comes to criminal behaviour from illegal immigrants, the raw numbers don't tell the whole story.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Indeed given the number of muslims, evangelical christians and catholics in the world probably add up to a good proportion of voters a world government is far more likely to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, contraception etc than to be a secular liberal type of world.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
And in Sweden they have a crime of "sex by surprise";
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Hope you are not including Scotland in the 'shithole' category Malc
Under Blair, there was a suggestion of housing asylum seekers in places that aren’t the most expensive in the country - eg central London.
A suggestion that asylum seekers could be housed in Glasgow was met with lawsuits, claiming that this would be against the human rights of the refugees in question.
I've just boarded my flight to LA, and Dominic Cummings is seated about three seats away from me.
He's going to be stuck with me in close proximity for the next 11 hours, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, now is the time.
He was just offered champagne, and said - in a rather haughty tone - that he just wants water. I notice a distinct lack of please and thank you.
What you need is a small plastic ziplock bag of icing sugar to slip in his pocket then alert the border police when he gets off the plane that you saw it. Won't get him in trouble but I suspect he will get rubber gloved
We’ve done flag: UK We’ve done anthem: Russia (Wales and France close behind) We’ve done capital: a London/Paris tie We’ve done loads
But best national dish?
I’m going for Vietnamese pho. Almost always delicious. Never had a bad one. Healthy and involving
I guess Italy has pizza which can be really good but it’s never great. Fish and chips are a bit meh, ok
Paella? Hamburger? Bratwurst? Pad Thai?
Nothing quite matches pho. But I am happy to be corrected
I've had quite a few insipid bowls of Pho - but when it's even mildly well made it is indeed a great dish. I might shout out Bibimbap for South Korea, Ceviche in Peru and possibly just Paella for Spain (which can be very variable - but like Pho, even semi-competently made it's delicious).
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Hope you are not including Scotland in the 'shithole' category Malc
Under Blair, there was a suggestion of housing asylum seekers in places that aren’t the most expensive in the country - eg central London.
A suggestion that asylum seekers could be housed in Glasgow was met with lawsuits, claiming that this would be against the human rights of the refugees in question.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Hope you are not including Scotland in the 'shithole' category Malc
Under Blair, there was a suggestion of housing asylum seekers in places that aren’t the most expensive in the country - eg central London.
A suggestion that asylum seekers could be housed in Glasgow was met with lawsuits, claiming that this would be against the human rights of the refugees in question.
Oh how we laughed
I laughed at the ridiculousness of the human rights lawyers involved. They seemed to believe that there was a Right To Live In London or something.
I've just boarded my flight to LA, and Dominic Cummings is seated about three seats away from me.
He's going to be stuck with me in close proximity for the next 11 hours, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, now is the time.
If you feel like a little light trolling you could ask him what motivated him to edit his blog to make it look like he’d predicted Coronavirus risks retrospectively: https://fullfact.org/health/cummings-blog-coronavirus/
Funny (haha, not peculiar) that the First Division Association is objecting to an email signed by the Home Secretary, "accus[ing] civil servants of being part of a left-wing "activist blob" with the Labour Party".
Apparently the defence from Number 10 is that she didn't "sign it off".
We seem to be getting pretty Orwellian if you can sign something but not "sign if off".
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I am much a lefty lawyer as Margaret Thatcher.
In Suella Braverman's Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher would be seen as a hand-wringing lefty lawyer too.
Recently I was called a banker (sic).
That really hurt more than being called the p word.
Just because I've worked in banking and financial services for nearly 12 years doesn't make me a banker.
I am relieved that you are cool with being referred to as a "lefty". I suppose everything is relative, and compared to Johnsonian Conservatism, "lefty" is a broad church term.
On PB I have been called both far right and a lefty.
Amusingly my political views haven't shifted.
Since almost everything you say on here is for effect I don't take any of it too seriously.
I've just boarded my flight to LA, and Dominic Cummings is seated about three seats away from me.
He's going to be stuck with me in close proximity for the next 11 hours, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, now is the time.
He was just offered champagne, and said - in a rather haughty tone - that he just wants water. I notice a distinct lack of please and thank you.
What you need is a small plastic ziplock bag of icing sugar to slip in his pocket then alert the border police when he gets off the plane that you saw it. Won't get him in trouble but I suspect he will get rubber gloved
I've just boarded my flight to LA, and Dominic Cummings is seated about three seats away from me.
He's going to be stuck with me in close proximity for the next 11 hours, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, now is the time.
He was just offered champagne, and said - in a rather haughty tone - that he just wants water. I notice a distinct lack of please and thank you.
What you need is a small plastic ziplock bag of icing sugar to slip in his pocket then alert the border police when he gets off the plane that you saw it. Won't get him in trouble but I suspect he will get rubber gloved
We’ve done flag: UK We’ve done anthem: Russia (Wales and France close behind) We’ve done capital: a London/Paris tie We’ve done loads
But best national dish?
I’m going for Vietnamese pho. Almost always delicious. Never had a bad one. Healthy and involving
I guess Italy has pizza which can be really good but it’s never great. Fish and chips are a bit meh, ok
Paella? Hamburger? Bratwurst? Pad Thai?
Nothing quite matches pho. But I am happy to be corrected
I've had quite a few insipid bowls of Pho - but when it's even mildly well made it is indeed a great dish. I might shout out Bibimbap for South Korea, Ceviche in Peru and possibly just Paella for Spain (which can be very variable - but like Pho, even semi-competently made it's delicious).
Ceviche is a demanding dish, however. You need the freshest possible fish and a great lime/chilli/cocomilk adornment
I've just boarded my flight to LA, and Dominic Cummings is seated about three seats away from me.
He's going to be stuck with me in close proximity for the next 11 hours, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, now is the time.
He was just offered champagne, and said - in a rather haughty tone - that he just wants water. I notice a distinct lack of please and thank you.
What you need is a small plastic ziplock bag of icing sugar to slip in his pocket then alert the border police when he gets off the plane that you saw it. Won't get him in trouble but I suspect he will get rubber gloved
Alternative take on the Mile High Club...
Have you heard of the half mile high club?
It's like the mile high club, but with half the number of 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.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
You are not explaining why you think a world governement would be more liberal in protecting human rights than most western nations. Clue it probably wouldnt. Given china, india , africa and the middle east would make up 50% of the electorate more or less then I suspect you would be horrified at the outcome
That's right what you say. But we're at cross purposes. I'm talking about a long term aspiration. Why assume there can never be a better and higher level for human rights to be protected than the nation state? To believe there should be doesn't mean 'global government' tomorrow or for everything. It can be a gradual process (limited to human rights) but in the right direction. Eg enforceable agreements amongst certain countries, beef up bodies like the UN, the ECHR, etc. Whatever. Point is, why the fetishizing of the nation state as where all this starts and ends? I find it odd.
Thank you Andy for picking out that particular pro- Government nugget, you are a patriot.
You'd expect government figures to be unpopular after 13 years in office, but not necessarily the leader of the opposition. Blair was about +30% at this stage IIRC.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
What surprises me is they are stupid enough to want to come to this shithole rather than France , Germany , Italy , etc
Hope you are not including Scotland in the 'shithole' category Malc
Under Blair, there was a suggestion of housing asylum seekers in places that aren’t the most expensive in the country - eg central London.
A suggestion that asylum seekers could be housed in Glasgow was met with lawsuits, claiming that this would be against the human rights of the refugees in question.
Oh how we laughed
I laughed at the ridiculousness of the human rights lawyers involved. They seemed to believe that there was a Right To Live In London or something.
Mind you, if they suggest Slough…
They should have a levy on Londoners to pay for them all to live there.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
You are not explaining why you think a world governement would be more liberal in protecting human rights than most western nations. Clue it probably wouldnt. Given china, india , africa and the middle east would make up 50% of the electorate more or less then I suspect you would be horrified at the outcome
That's right what you say. But we're at cross purposes. I'm talking about a long term aspiration. Why assume there can never be a better and higher level for human rights to be protected than the nation state? To believe there should be doesn't mean 'global government' tomorrow or for everything. It can be a gradual process but in the right direction. Eg enforceable agreements amongst certain countries, beef up bodies like the UN, the ECHR, etc. Whatever. Point is, why the fetishizing of the nation state as where all this starts and ends? I find it odd.
You still haven't said who gets to decide whats a human right, or what redress you would have if they laid out a human right you don't agree with.
Here is a concrete example....the finnish, danes and romanians are all fairly liberal people. Would you trust them to decide on human rights the rest of the world should accept?
Good for Gary Lineker. Perhaps he'll encourage others in the public eye to speak up. No apologies and why should he? Braverman humiliates all of us.
What a gift it is for the likes of Vladimir Putin that a prime ministerial spokesman finds it "disappointing" that anyone employed by the BBC should criticise government policy.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
I've explained it repeatedly. 😕
The higher the authority the more dangerous it is. The more out of touch, the more remote, the more inflexible. If we had a solitary global government with solitary global rights we'd probably still have abortion illegal as its murder, homosexuality outlawed etc - why would you welcome that?
You seem to think global = good but there's no evidence for that and actually global changes in liberalism seriously lag forerunning nation states becoming more liberal. The UK to this day is more liberal than most of the world, so if you want a global standard you either want our standards to worsen to the lowest common denominator, or you want to be an imperialist and compel other nations to our standards against their wishes.
If higher necessarily means more dangerous re protecting human rights why don't you argue for this power to reside at (say) local government level?
Why would anyone turn down champagne in biz/first? If not teetotal?
It’s part of the fun. He’s either overly pious/a prick, or both
It would be excusable on a short haul biz flight but London-LA? Hmmmmm
I'm not a fan of drinking on planes, given you're already liable to getting dehydrated you'll usually feel a lot fresher on arrival avoiding booze on the flight. I don't really drink outside of social occasions though. I did once spend an entire overnight flight from the Caribbean drinking beer but that's because I was flying back with mates, and I was in my twenties.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
Because the very concept of "basic human rights" is malleable?
Why would anyone turn down champagne in biz/first? If not teetotal?
It’s part of the fun. He’s either overly pious/a prick, or both
It would be excusable on a short haul biz flight but London-LA? Hmmmmm
I'm not a fan of drinking on planes, given you're already liable to getting dehydrated you'll usually feel a lot fresher on arrival avoiding booze on the flight. I don't really drink outside of social occasions though. I did once spend an entire overnight flight from the Caribbean drinking beer but that's because I was flying back with mates, and I was in my twenties.
Given the uncertain quality of the wine outside the front end, I usually ask for a plastic glass with lots of ice to take my wine in. Which helps compensate for dehydration.
But it would be silly to do that with champers (though I might have just the one glass and plenty of mineral water).
Why would anyone turn down champagne in biz/first? If not teetotal?
It’s part of the fun. He’s either overly pious/a prick, or both
It would be excusable on a short haul biz flight but London-LA? Hmmmmm
I'm not a fan of drinking on planes, given you're already liable to getting dehydrated you'll usually feel a lot fresher on arrival avoiding booze on the flight. I don't really drink outside of social occasions though. I did once spend an entire overnight flight from the Caribbean drinking beer but that's because I was flying back with mates, and I was in my twenties.
I can't help thinking, given other recent discussions, that you and Leon are not very compatible
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
You are not explaining why you think a world governement would be more liberal in protecting human rights than most western nations. Clue it probably wouldnt. Given china, india , africa and the middle east would make up 50% of the electorate more or less then I suspect you would be horrified at the outcome
That's right what you say. But we're at cross purposes. I'm talking about a long term aspiration. Why assume there can never be a better and higher level for human rights to be protected than the nation state? To believe there should be doesn't mean 'global government' tomorrow or for everything. It can be a gradual process (limited to human rights) but in the right direction. Eg enforceable agreements amongst certain countries, beef up bodies like the UN, the ECHR, etc. Whatever. Point is, why the fetishizing of the nation state as where all this starts and ends? I find it odd.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
I've explained it repeatedly. 😕
The higher the authority the more dangerous it is. The more out of touch, the more remote, the more inflexible. If we had a solitary global government with solitary global rights we'd probably still have abortion illegal as its murder, homosexuality outlawed etc - why would you welcome that?
You seem to think global = good but there's no evidence for that and actually global changes in liberalism seriously lag forerunning nation states becoming more liberal. The UK to this day is more liberal than most of the world, so if you want a global standard you either want our standards to worsen to the lowest common denominator, or you want to be an imperialist and compel other nations to our standards against their wishes.
If higher necessarily means more dangerous re protecting human rights why don't you argue for this power to reside at (say) local government level?
The point is we get to vote in or out the people who makes the rules, we wouldn't get that with a supranational body and would just have to take their pronouncements. The fault in your thinking is believing that any supranational body would agree with all your views when it almost certainly wouldn't. Somethings would not be legal that you think ought to be and other things you think shouldn't be legal would be. Which was why I asked you if you would trust finns, danes and romanians to be on this supranational body....a question you didn't answer
Why would anyone turn down champagne in biz/first? If not teetotal?
It’s part of the fun. He’s either overly pious/a prick, or both
It would be excusable on a short haul biz flight but London-LA? Hmmmmm
I'm not a fan of drinking on planes, given you're already liable to getting dehydrated you'll usually feel a lot fresher on arrival avoiding booze on the flight. I don't really drink outside of social occasions though. I did once spend an entire overnight flight from the Caribbean drinking beer but that's because I was flying back with mates, and I was in my twenties.
I can't help thinking, given other recent discussions, that you and Leon are not very compatible
Yeah it's weird how he is wrong about absolutely everything.
Specifically, according to information from ARD-Hauptstadtstudio,Kontraste, SWR and ZEIT, the investigators have succeeded in identifying the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation. It is said to be a yacht that was rented by a company based in Poland, which apparently belongs to two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea is said to have been carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman. According to this, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor
:
The yacht was subsequently returned to the owner in uncleaned condition. According to the research, the investigators were able to detect traces of explosives on the table in the cabin.
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
You are not explaining why you think a world governement would be more liberal in protecting human rights than most western nations. Clue it probably wouldnt. Given china, india , africa and the middle east would make up 50% of the electorate more or less then I suspect you would be horrified at the outcome
That's right what you say. But we're at cross purposes. I'm talking about a long term aspiration. Why assume there can never be a better and higher level for human rights to be protected than the nation state? To believe there should be doesn't mean 'global government' tomorrow or for everything. It can be a gradual process but in the right direction. Eg enforceable agreements amongst certain countries, beef up bodies like the UN, the ECHR, etc. Whatever. Point is, why the fetishizing of the nation state as where all this starts and ends? I find it odd.
You still haven't said who gets to decide whats a human right, or what redress you would have if they laid out a human right you don't agree with.
Here is a concrete example....the finnish, danes and romanians are all fairly liberal people. Would you trust them to decide on human rights the rest of the world should accept?
No, I haven't explained in any detail how my long term aspiration of having basic human rights enshrined at a level higher than the nation state would work in practice. Guilty as charged. If I could do that I shouldn't be wasting my time on here.
But - again - cross purposes. What I'm finding odd is not people saying to me "Yeah sounds good but it's pie in the sky, no point banging on about it" but them saying "No, that'd be awful, because the NATION STATE is the be all and end all of progress and democracy."
Why would anyone turn down champagne in biz/first? If not teetotal?
It’s part of the fun. He’s either overly pious/a prick, or both
It would be excusable on a short haul biz flight but London-LA? Hmmmmm
I'm not a fan of drinking on planes, given you're already liable to getting dehydrated you'll usually feel a lot fresher on arrival avoiding booze on the flight. I don't really drink outside of social occasions though. I did once spend an entire overnight flight from the Caribbean drinking beer but that's because I was flying back with mates, and I was in my twenties.
Wasted enough time on you now so go fester in your pit thinking you have won. Most here know exactly what I was saying and my patience with your lack of comprehension is at an end
@pagan2 do you mind me asking you about your politics? Not everyone wants to answer this, and I respect that, but I’m intrigued. I would say I’m left wing and would characterise your views as right wing (I hope that’s fair) but I nevertheless often find myself agreeing with much of your diagnosis of the political problems we face in uk (I suspect we’d come up with different solutions though). Even when I disagree I find you quite thoughtful about stuff.
I *think* I remember you saying you don’t (always) vote. Is that right? Does your politics ‘fit’ with any particular party or movement?
Wasted enough time on you now so go fester in your pit thinking you have won. Most here know exactly what I was saying and my patience with your lack of comprehension is at an end
@pagan2 do you mind me asking you about your politics? Not everyone wants to answer this, and I respect that, but I’m intrigued. I would say I’m left wing and would characterise your views as right wing (I hope that’s fair) but I nevertheless often find myself agreeing with much of your diagnosis of the political problems we face in uk (I suspect we’d come up with different solutions though). Even when I disagree I find you quite thoughtful about stuff.
I *think* I remember you saying you don’t (always) vote. Is that right? Does your politics ‘fit’ with any particular party or movement?
@maxh Not at all . Yes I am right wing by any stretch of the imagination but not a tory though have voted for them in the past. I stopped voting after 2010 as where I was living I only had the choice of LD, Lab or Tory and frankly they are all to closely clustered in their solutions and those are solutions I don't see working.
However being right wing should not be assumed to mean I don't care. I am often on here arguing the poor are getting a raw deal from the policies of the last 3 decades.
I believe in universal healthcare free at point of use, I disagree the NHS is the best way of delivering it
I believe in a safety net when people fall on hard times but not a lifetime unless you are so disabled you can't make a living, however I couple that with wanting people to make an effort while in the safety net to better themselves and would like to see proper training courses funded by the state to get these folks back into work and improving their conditions...I don't mean CV writing courses, I mean fork lift driving, plumbing, budgetting skills etc....real skills which people can use
I believe in universal education but disagree with what is taught because a lot of what is taught most will never use. I would tailor education more to the pupil so those of an academic bent can follow their star and those of a more practical bent can learn things they can use in later life such as electrician skills. Incidentally I think it would improve behaviour as most kids aren't bad but get bored when they can't see the relevance of what they are taught. Tailoring education to individuals proclivities would I think lead to less pupils being bored.
I don't give a damn about your ethnicity, creed, colour or sexuality. I do care that our governement puts every british citizen first and then if we have spare we can help others around the world.
Wasted enough time on you now so go fester in your pit thinking you have won. Most here know exactly what I was saying and my patience with your lack of comprehension is at an end
@pagan2 do you mind me asking you about your politics? Not everyone wants to answer this, and I respect that, but I’m intrigued. I would say I’m left wing and would characterise your views as right wing (I hope that’s fair) but I nevertheless often find myself agreeing with much of your diagnosis of the political problems we face in uk (I suspect we’d come up with different solutions though). Even when I disagree I find you quite thoughtful about stuff.
I *think* I remember you saying you don’t (always) vote. Is that right? Does your politics ‘fit’ with any particular party or movement?
@maxh Not at all . Yes I am right wing by any stretch of the imagination but not a tory though have voted for them in the past. I stopped voting after 2010 as where I was living I only had the choice of LD, Lab or Tory and frankly they are all to closely clustered in their solutions and those are solutions I don't see working.
However being right wing should not be assumed to mean I don't care. I am often on here arguing the poor are getting a raw deal from the policies of the last 3 decades.
I believe in universal healthcare free at point of use, I disagree the NHS is the best way of delivering it
I believe in a safety net when people fall on hard times but not a lifetime unless you are so disabled you can't make a living, however I couple that with wanting people to make an effort while in the safety net to better themselves and would like to see proper training courses funded by the state to get these folks back into work and improving their conditions...I don't mean CV writing courses, I mean fork lift driving, plumbing, budgetting skills etc....real skills which people can use
I believe in universal education but disagree with what is taught because a lot of what is taught most will never use. I would tailor education more to the pupil so those of an academic bent can follow their star and those of a more practical bent can learn things they can use in later life such as electrician skills. Incidentally I think it would improve behaviour as most kids aren't bad but get bored when they can't see the relevance of what they are taught. Tailoring education to individuals proclivities would I think lead to less pupils being bored.
I don't give a damn about your ethnicity, creed, colour or sexuality. I do care that our governement puts every british citizen first and then if we have spare we can help others around the world.
Hope that gives you a rough idea
Thanks! And for the DMs which I'll respond to. On your point about still caring I can definitely respect that! In fact increasingly I feel the most important dividing line in politics is between those who approach the problems we face wiith integrity and care (whether left or right) and those who are fundamentally unserious or disingenuous (I'd include both Boris Johnson and those who wanted to completely ignore the democratic mandate of the Brexit referendum, for example).
Wasted enough time on you now so go fester in your pit thinking you have won. Most here know exactly what I was saying and my patience with your lack of comprehension is at an end
@pagan2 do you mind me asking you about your politics? Not everyone wants to answer this, and I respect that, but I’m intrigued. I would say I’m left wing and would characterise your views as right wing (I hope that’s fair) but I nevertheless often find myself agreeing with much of your diagnosis of the political problems we face in uk (I suspect we’d come up with different solutions though). Even when I disagree I find you quite thoughtful about stuff.
I *think* I remember you saying you don’t (always) vote. Is that right? Does your politics ‘fit’ with any particular party or movement?
@maxh Not at all . Yes I am right wing by any stretch of the imagination but not a tory though have voted for them in the past. I stopped voting after 2010 as where I was living I only had the choice of LD, Lab or Tory and frankly they are all to closely clustered in their solutions and those are solutions I don't see working.
However being right wing should not be assumed to mean I don't care. I am often on here arguing the poor are getting a raw deal from the policies of the last 3 decades.
I believe in universal healthcare free at point of use, I disagree the NHS is the best way of delivering it
I believe in a safety net when people fall on hard times but not a lifetime unless you are so disabled you can't make a living, however I couple that with wanting people to make an effort while in the safety net to better themselves and would like to see proper training courses funded by the state to get these folks back into work and improving their conditions...I don't mean CV writing courses, I mean fork lift driving, plumbing, budgetting skills etc....real skills which people can use
I believe in universal education but disagree with what is taught because a lot of what is taught most will never use. I would tailor education more to the pupil so those of an academic bent can follow their star and those of a more practical bent can learn things they can use in later life such as electrician skills. Incidentally I think it would improve behaviour as most kids aren't bad but get bored when they can't see the relevance of what they are taught. Tailoring education to individuals proclivities would I think lead to less pupils being bored.
I don't give a damn about your ethnicity, creed, colour or sexuality. I do care that our governement puts every british citizen first and then if we have spare we can help others around the world.
Hope that gives you a rough idea
Thanks! And for the DMs which I'll respond to. On your point about still caring I can definitely respect that! In fact increasingly I feel the most important dividing line in politics is between those who approach the problems we face wiith integrity and care (whether left or right) and those who are fundamentally unserious or disingenuous (I'd include both Boris Johnson and those who wanted to completely ignore the democratic mandate of the Brexit referendum, for example).
@maxh I think often the difference between left and right at least for me lies in the old proverb "Give a man a fish and he will be fed for a day, teach a man to fish and he will always have fish"....too many on the left want to give a man a fish and not follow through with the teach a man to fish part
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?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
You're still not explaining why (as a long term aspiration) we wouldn't want basic human rights to be protected at a level higher than the nation state.
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
You are not explaining why you think a world governement would be more liberal in protecting human rights than most western nations. Clue it probably wouldnt. Given china, india , africa and the middle east would make up 50% of the electorate more or less then I suspect you would be horrified at the outcome
That's right what you say. But we're at cross purposes. I'm talking about a long term aspiration. Why assume there can never be a better and higher level for human rights to be protected than the nation state? To believe there should be doesn't mean 'global government' tomorrow or for everything. It can be a gradual process but in the right direction. Eg enforceable agreements amongst certain countries, beef up bodies like the UN, the ECHR, etc. Whatever. Point is, why the fetishizing of the nation state as where all this starts and ends? I find it odd.
You still haven't said who gets to decide whats a human right, or what redress you would have if they laid out a human right you don't agree with.
Here is a concrete example....the finnish, danes and romanians are all fairly liberal people. Would you trust them to decide on human rights the rest of the world should accept?
No, I haven't explained in any detail how my long term aspiration of having basic human rights enshrined at a level higher than the nation state would work in practice. Guilty as charged. If I could do that I shouldn't be wasting my time on here.
But - again - cross purposes. What I'm finding odd is not people saying to me "Yeah sounds good but it's pie in the sky, no point banging on about it" but them saying "No, that'd be awful, because the NATION STATE is the be all and end all of progress and democracy."
In general I am suspicious of this argument.
It seems to suggest that you're not confident in the ability of the rights to stand on their merits, or not sufficiently confident that you could win the arguments regarding them in one of the most free and democratically open democracies on the planet.
Comments
You seem to revere it - the nation state - and I find this odd.
The higher the authority the more dangerous it is. The more out of touch, the more remote, the more inflexible. If we had a solitary global government with solitary global rights we'd probably still have abortion illegal as its murder, homosexuality outlawed etc - why would you welcome that?
You seem to think global = good but there's no evidence for that and actually global changes in liberalism seriously lag forerunning nation states becoming more liberal. The UK to this day is more liberal than most of the world, so if you want a global standard you either want our standards to worsen to the lowest common denominator, or you want to be an imperialist and compel other nations to our standards against their wishes.
One for the military experts - what is the best defence against such elite forces?
I am not an expert on the German constitution but I see nothing good about Article 79 of the German constitution, it locks into the future as unamendable standards of the past, although having read up on it further Article 146 provides a way out of the eternity clause so not all is lost there. Now you may think those past standards are good - great if so - but what if in the future they're utterly repellent?
The US Second Amendment was made with the best of intentions. After Columbine etc we have decades of reasons why that law should be changed, but its not being because the Constitution locks it in stone effectively even if Congress passes a law. That's not good.
Parliamentary sovereignty means the protection we need is for our people to be decent to each other, and that is the best protection we can have. Relying upon institutions does nothing when those institutions will be easily corrupted if the people aren't decent and take things for granted.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Elon Musk apologizes after mocking laid-off Twitter employee
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you’re not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably. And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.
He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire’s attention and get an answer to his Schrödinger’s job situation.
“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” he wrote on Monday.
Eventually, he got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, question his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy” and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.” While the exchange was going on, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.
Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk’s tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal.”
“You had every right to lay me off. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted to Musk. . . .
SSI - Perhaps Muskmelon should spend more time (or perhaps even less?) dealing with the clusterfeck that is Tesla? As per this NYT op-ed by "Car and Driver' columnist Ezra Dyer:
NYT ($) - A 120-Year Old Company [Ford] Is Leaving Tesla in the Dust
Thing is, winter needs to be cold dry and properly snowy. Spring needs to be sunny, sweet and flowery. Autumn needs to be deliciously mournful with occasional downpours
The other EIGHT months of the year must be real Mediterranean summer: ie warm enough to go out at night in shirtsleeves and be totally comfortable
I don’t think anywhere on earth matches this, seasonally. Certainly not Britain. Travel it is, then
On which topic, I well recall your fury about Mrs May's Go Home vans - actually made you burn your Tory member card, didn't it - so you must be spitting bricks (!) about all this nasty stuff coming from them now.
I would start by estimating how many asylum seekers we can properly support each year (with housing, schools, language support, emotional support, etc).
That comes down to a budgetary constraint, how much money do we want to spend ?
Without knowing those numbers, any discussion of a sensible policy or numbers is not even possible.
I'd say the present asylum policy is broken, and has been broken for many years. It seems to have been devised to enrich criminals and people smugglers.
I do like Canada's policy of privately-sponsored refugees (PSRs). Here, family members or concerned individuals or community groups can sponsor individual refugees. The sponsors provide financial and emotional support for the sponsored refugee and his/her family. PSRs also receive resettlement support from the Canadian Govt.
The announcement is the culmination of 18 months of negotiations as the three countries figure out how to provide Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Restrictions on technology transfers and classified nuclear processes have complicated plans ever since the deal — known as AUKUS — was struck in September 2021. Last week, State Department and Pentagon officials briefed House Foreign Affairs Committee members about some of the issues.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/08/biden-nuke-submarines-uk-australia-00086051
Autumn and winter just merged though been less rain this year which is positive.
However I have less sympathy with, and indeed suspicion of, Albanians who are trying to come here.
That Albania is a country where the rule of law is about as well observed as it was in the old West doesn't necessarily mean that they should come to UK.
I have though contempt for people whose parents came to this country from abroad and now seek to prevent others from doing so, and in the course of that action demean those who are doing what their parents did.
The pivotal ingredient is the broth? After that it’s easy
Lots of countries seem to lack a national dish entirely. Ireland, Australia, Slovakia, Uruguay, New Zealand, most of Arabia etc
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/07/ai-is-not-nearly-as-sophisticated-as-you-think-it-is/
I would imagine that the employee’s contract specified a full payout of the remaining $ owed to him if he was let go by Twitter for any reason & as a result he was apparently on a list of VPs that were deemed too expensive to fire. Musk of course just stomped in shooting from the hip being his own needlessly cruel & heartless self & exposed his company to the risk of a) an instant multi-million $ contracted liability and b) a breach of privacy lawsuit for revealing someone’s extremely private personal medical information. Looks like his lawyers convinced him to write a grovelling public apology as soon as they got hold of him - apologising for anything really isn’t Musk’s style usually.
I've just boarded my flight to LA, and Dominic Cummings is seated about three seats away from me.
He's going to be stuck with me in close proximity for the next 11 hours, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, now is the time.
https://twitter.com/MattCartoonist/status/1633158968913850369
But there are things that can be done, and I am proud that the United States has done this:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ericsson-agrees-pay-over-1-billion-resolve-fcpa-case
https://www.wionews.com/world/bribery-case-ericsson-to-pay-206-million-for-breaching-us-prosecutor-deal-569860
(I hope Sweden has done something, too.)
So when it comes to criminal behaviour from illegal immigrants, the raw numbers don't tell the whole story.
A suggestion that asylum seekers could be housed in Glasgow was met with lawsuits, claiming that this would be against the human rights of the refugees in question.
Mind you, if they suggest Slough…
Apparently the defence from Number 10 is that she didn't "sign it off".
We seem to be getting pretty Orwellian if you can sign something but not "sign if off".
It's like the mile high club, but with half the number of people.
DC “ yes I am, who are you?”
RCS “I am RCS and involved in a politics blog but I would love to pick your brain about your work and writings if ok?”
DC’s chest swells with importance “go ahead”
RCS “why you write your poems all in lower case?”
Here is a concrete example....the finnish, danes and romanians are all fairly liberal people. Would you trust them to decide on human rights the rest of the world should accept?
It’s part of the fun. He’s either overly pious/a prick, or both
It would be excusable on a short haul biz flight but London-LA? Hmmmmm
Robin Day must be turning in his grave,
Fox News Edits Out Trump Saying He Might’ve Let Russia ‘Take Over’ Parts of Ukraine 'at worst'
While Trump told Hannity on the radio he could’ve prevented war by negotiating a deal with Russia, that portion was curiously edited out when aired on Fox News.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-edits-out-donald-trump-saying-he-mightve-let-russia-take-over-parts-of-ukraine
But it would be silly to do that with champers (though I might have just the one glass and plenty of mineral water).
(Not about pho or Dominic Cummings)
https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/nordstream-2-ukraine-anschlag
Specifically, according to information from ARD-Hauptstadtstudio,Kontraste, SWR and ZEIT, the investigators have succeeded in identifying the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation. It is said to be a yacht that was rented by a company based in Poland, which apparently belongs to two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea is said to have been carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman. According to this, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor
:
The yacht was subsequently returned to the owner in uncleaned condition. According to the research, the investigators were able to detect traces of explosives on the table in the cabin.
But - again - cross purposes. What I'm finding odd is not people saying to me "Yeah sounds good but it's pie in the sky, no point banging on about it" but them saying "No, that'd be awful, because the NATION STATE is the be all and end all of progress and democracy."
I *think* I remember you saying you don’t (always) vote. Is that right? Does your politics ‘fit’ with any particular party or movement?
However being right wing should not be assumed to mean I don't care. I am often on here arguing the poor are getting a raw deal from the policies of the last 3 decades.
I believe in universal healthcare free at point of use, I disagree the NHS is the best way of delivering it
I believe in a safety net when people fall on hard times but not a lifetime unless you are so disabled you can't make a living, however I couple that with wanting people to make an effort while in the safety net to better themselves and would like to see proper training courses funded by the state to get these folks back into work and improving their conditions...I don't mean CV writing courses, I mean fork lift driving, plumbing, budgetting skills etc....real skills which people can use
I believe in universal education but disagree with what is taught because a lot of what is taught most will never use. I would tailor education more to the pupil so those of an academic bent can follow their star and those of a more practical bent can learn things they can use in later life such as electrician skills. Incidentally I think it would improve behaviour as most kids aren't bad but get bored when they can't see the relevance of what they are taught. Tailoring education to individuals proclivities would I think lead to less pupils being bored.
I don't give a damn about your ethnicity, creed, colour or sexuality. I do care that our governement puts every british citizen first and then if we have spare we can help others around the world.
Hope that gives you a rough idea
It seems to suggest that you're not confident in the ability of the rights to stand on their merits, or not sufficiently confident that you could win the arguments regarding them in one of the most free and democratically open democracies on the planet.