To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Last month.
In March, at least 10 Nepali guards who protected the British embassy staff in Kabul and were still living in the UK were arrested in a raid at their west London hotel and detained by the Home Office.
Conservatives have been pushing this for the last 13 years.
'10s of thousands' 'Go Home' 'Australian style....' 'Stop the boats'
The party you supported has pushed such irrational immigration policy. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak have all played their part. All happy to pander to the Mail, all happy to take the votes.
How can a Conservative party member be so outraged at the culmination of their party's rhetoric‽
Conservatives have been pushing this for the last 13 years.
'10s of thousands' 'Go Home' 'Australian style....' 'Stop the boats'
The party you supported has pushed such irrational immigration policy. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak have all played their part. All happy to pander to the Mail, all happy to take the votes.
How can a Conservative party member be so outraged at the culmination of their party's rhetoric‽
Good point - time for any decent Conservative Party members to resign their membership.
Conservatives have been pushing this for the last 13 years.
'10s of thousands' 'Go Home' 'Australian style....' 'Stop the boats'
The party you supported has pushed such irrational immigration policy. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak have all played their part. All happy to pander to the Mail, all happy to take the votes.
How can a Conservative party member be so outraged at the culmination of their party's rhetoric‽
Good point - time for any decent Conservative Party members to resign their membership.
It always falls apart when individual cases are looked at. The fact remains that we cannot remain an open door. There has to be a set of regulations that works.....
Conservatives have been pushing this for the last 13 years.
'10s of thousands' 'Go Home' 'Australian style....' 'Stop the boats'
The party you supported has pushed such irrational immigration policy. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak have all played their part. All happy to pander to the Mail, all happy to take the votes.
How can a Conservative party member be so outraged at the culmination of their party's rhetoric‽
Good point - time for any decent Conservative Party members to resign their membership.
It always falls apart when individual cases are looked at. The fact remains that we cannot remain an open door. There has to be a set of regulations that works.....
For the entire lifespan of everyone on PB, there has been a set of regulations and we have never had an open door. No significant political party is proposing an open door. Talking of an open door is just a straw man distraction.
Yes, we need a set of regulations that works. Do you think this report is indicative of something that works? The Tories set the rules. If they're not working, who's to blame?
Conservatives have been pushing this for the last 13 years.
'10s of thousands' 'Go Home' 'Australian style....' 'Stop the boats'
The party you supported has pushed such irrational immigration policy. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak have all played their part. All happy to pander to the Mail, all happy to take the votes.
How can a Conservative party member be so outraged at the culmination of their party's rhetoric‽
Good point - time for any decent Conservative Party members to resign their membership.
It always falls apart when individual cases are looked at. The fact remains that we cannot remain an open door. There has to be a set of regulations that works.....
We are not, and never have been, an 'open door'. Nobody advocates we should be.
The fact that you would use such a term displays a deep misunderstanding of the reality.
No one is denying that 'There has to be a set of regulations that works...' but we patently don't have that after 13 years of Conservative government.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Last month.
In March, at least 10 Nepali guards who protected the British embassy staff in Kabul and were still living in the UK were arrested in a raid at their west London hotel and detained by the Home Office.
There are stages between open door policies and bricking up the doorway. We are in one of those stages, arguing about whether to put in a screen or a gate, or put an armed guard out in front, but our political discourse seems to typify the debate as though it were open door or bricked up.
There is a narrative that, if we had full & complete control over arrivals, we could be more compassionate to genuine cases whilst staying within reasonable numerical limits.
But what if complete control is impossible?
I notice that Starmer has been chiding Sunak for not stopping the boats, and for immigration increasing generally in recent weeks.
Given the actors involved I assumed it must be better than it sounds, but even though I go to the cinema dozens of times a year, I just couldn't bring myself to go to a film about sports advertising (no doubt it is more than that, but I blame the marketing for not selling it).
Doesn't sound like many. Low turnout locals is a good time to roll something out. The good news for the government is that it can point to massive Tory losses as proof they are not benefiting from it.
About 4% of the estimated two million people who do not have valid ID have signed up for a government scheme to allow them to vote.
May's local elections will be the first time all voters in England must show photo ID.
Some 85,000 people have applied online for a free Voter Authority Certificate ahead of the deadline for May's poll.
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Taking a large bung to chuck his brother under the bus, is how the layman might.
Or the other way round.
Frankly if half of what Harry says about William is true then I don't know how they were ever close, he makes William sound like an unstable, violent arsehole. Yes, when growing up, but as adults?
Doesn't sound like many. Low turnout locals is a good time to roll something out. The good news for the government is that it can point to massive Tory losses as proof they are not benefiting from it.
About 4% of the estimated two million people who do not have valid ID have signed up for a government scheme to allow them to vote.
May's local elections will be the first time all voters in England must show photo ID.
Some 85,000 people have applied online for a free Voter Authority Certificate ahead of the deadline for May's poll.
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
See my context post.
Unindicted co-conspirators is how I would describe the Royals now.
It's not a criminal offence to take a large payment from the potential defendant on the end of a possible lawsuit brought by your brother, while frustrating that lawsuit as a condition of doing so.
It is, however, a pretty shitty thing to do. And might give rise to a separate civil claim between the brothers ? Or might crown immunity be invoked ?
Doesn't sound like many. Low turnout locals is a good time to roll something out. The good news for the government is that it can point to massive Tory losses as proof they are not benefiting from it.
About 4% of the estimated two million people who do not have valid ID have signed up for a government scheme to allow them to vote.
May's local elections will be the first time all voters in England must show photo ID.
Some 85,000 people have applied online for a free Voter Authority Certificate ahead of the deadline for May's poll.
Does also mean that there are a lot of voters who still won't be set up for the Big One. (OK, many of them will be long-term non-voters, but this could go really badly.)
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Taking a large bung to chuck his brother under the bus, is how the layman might.
Or the other way round.
Frankly if half of what Harry says about William is true then I don't know how they were ever close, he makes William sound like an unstable, violent arsehole. Yes, when growing up, but as adults?
Tbf royalty is not a stranger to unstable, violent arseholes.
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Taking a large bung to chuck his brother under the bus, is how the layman might.
Or the other way round.
Frankly if half of what Harry says about William is true then I don't know how they were ever close, he makes William sound like an unstable, violent arsehole. Yes, when growing up, but as adults?
Tbf royalty is not a stranger to unstable, violent arseholes.
Well sure, but Will is so bland I didn't think he had it in him.
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Taking a large bung to chuck his brother under the bus, is how the layman might.
Or the other way round.
Frankly if half of what Harry says about William is true then I don't know how they were ever close, he makes William sound like an unstable, violent arsehole. Yes, when growing up, but as adults?
I have no idea whether the substance of the account is true, but it's a pretty damning allegation.
There is a political temptation: if you can't work out how to do anything useful, at least be cruel because then you look "strong".
Somehow, some voters believe that cruelty can make them safer. It never does. because if, as both parties have over the years, you build up an organisation with power over the public - like the home office - filled with people who are willing to convince themselves that things like this are okay, then in the end no-one is actually safe.From them.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
This was the place. Hopefully they have a new chef now:
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Sunak is pretty hardcore on immigration issues, it seems unlikely he would or does disapprove.
If Rishi wasn't hardcore on immigration (whether by conviction or as an electoral calculation), he presumably wouldn't have made the choices he has (making boat stopping a Top Five Issue, ploughing on with Rwanda etc). And the bottom line is that he is the Prime Minister, he could change tack tomorrow if he wanted to spend enough political capital on it. Or let the policy die in the long grass.
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
Quite right. You wouldn't ever catch the Tories trying to exploit people's fears, would you? Definitely not.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
Quite right. You wouldn't ever catch the Tories trying to exploit people's fears, would you? Definitely not.
They have a different propensity to claim the moral high ground.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Sunak is pretty hardcore on immigration issues, it seems unlikely he would or does disapprove.
If Rishi wasn't hardcore on immigration (whether by conviction or as an electoral calculation), he presumably wouldn't have made the choices he has (making boat stopping a Top Five Issue, ploughing on with Rwanda etc). And the bottom line is that he is the Prime Minister, he could change tack tomorrow if he wanted to spend enough political capital on it. Or let the policy die in the long grass.
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
And most obviously - if Sunak wasn't hardcore on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of immigration policy, would he?
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
Quite right. You wouldn't ever catch the Tories trying to exploit people's fears, would you? Definitely not.
They have a different propensity to claim the moral high ground.
Starmer is the new Britain Trump.
I seem to recall you were PB's Top Trump Cheerleader not that long ago. So high praise indeed.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
It might - I'd need to see the details of why it is hard and needs to be made more specific, since it is very easy to claim the law is the problem when a new offence won't always help.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
Quite right. You wouldn't ever catch the Tories trying to exploit people's fears, would you? Definitely not.
It's depressing that both parties use the same tactic of promising to pass legislation to create new criminal offences for acts that are already illegal as a way of appearing to do something without actually doing something.
I can understand, and I will share the relief, that people on the Left will feel relieved to see the Tories shoved out of government, but Casino really has little to fear from a Labour government. There will be little of any substance that will be different. We'll have some left-wing performative bollocks to keep the backbenchers happy, instead of the right-wing performative bollocks we get now, but it's not actually going to change anything.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Sunak is pretty hardcore on immigration issues, it seems unlikely he would or does disapprove.
If Rishi wasn't hardcore on immigration (whether by conviction or as an electoral calculation), he presumably wouldn't have made the choices he has (making boat stopping a Top Five Issue, ploughing on with Rwanda etc). And the bottom line is that he is the Prime Minister, he could change tack tomorrow if he wanted to spend enough political capital on it. Or let the policy die in the long grass.
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
And most obviously - if Sunak wasn't hardcore on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of immigration policy, would he?
A cynic would point out that, if Sunak wanted effective action on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of the relevant department.
(It would require incredible cynicism to do that as a PM, though... put a complete numpty in charge of a policy with the deliberate aim of discrediting the policy and the numpty. Without precedent outside Michael Dobbs novels, surely?)
Off topic, except in a very large sense: Voted today, in a very special election. Proposition 1would increase property taxes to fund five "crisis centers" around King County (Seattle and most suburbs). And that was the only thing on the ballot.
We do need to do something about the increasing drug use and -- often connected -- increasing mental illness in the area. (But the famous quip about doing something in "Yes, Minister" may apply.)
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
Nshima AKA mealy-meal is the staple, a rather solid maize porridge. It is OK, if a bit bland but works with a vegetable stew. Otherwise it is the usual international stuff.
I have travelled a bit in Africa, and South Africa apart, there isn't much middle market between back packer lodges and camping and the higher end tourist stuff. I self organised my honeymoon in Kenya for 3 weeks flight only 30 years ago. Be careful in the cities at night, but otherwise pretty safe.
We did this route camping in an old army truck, but that company seems to have moved upmarket. This seems a good tour at the price:
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
"Section 61 makes it an offence for a person (A) intentionally to administer a substance or to cause any substance to be taken by another person (B) where A knows that B does not consent to taking that substance and where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
So it would seem not to be an offence under that statute to spike someone if your intent was just to do so for the lolz, or to take a video to upload to tiktok, etc.
To be honest I would have thought that it was something that would come under common law assault, or similar offence, but maybe I am wrong.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
Nshima AKA mealy-meal is the staple, a rather solid maize porridge. It is OK, if a bit bland but works with a vegetable stew. Otherwise it is the usual international stuff.
I have travelled a bit in Africa, and South Africa apart, there isn't much middle market between back packer lodges and camping and the higher end tourist stuff. I self organised my honeymoon in Kenya for 3 weeks flight only 30 years ago. Be careful in the cities at night, but otherwise pretty safe.
We did this route camping in an old army truck, but that company seems to shave moved upmarket. This seems a good tour at the price:
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
"Section 61 makes it an offence for a person (A) intentionally to administer a substance or to cause any substance to be taken by another person (B) where A knows that B does not consent to taking that substance and where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
So it would seem not to be an offence under that statute to spike someone if your intent was just to do so for the lolz, or to take a video to upload to tiktok, etc.
To be honest I would have thought that it was something that would come under common law assault, or similar offence, but maybe I am wrong.
I think there are other offences that could apply too. There are no doubt ways it could be redrafted but it doesn't look like there is any obvious grey area that people are exploiting to get away with it.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
If you head in a bus or car to one of the tourist towns near the parks there are 2 or 3 day safaris available to book there and then, for similar cost to staying in an Airbnb back home. Plenty of stuff researchable or bookable online too.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Sunak is pretty hardcore on immigration issues, it seems unlikely he would or does disapprove.
If Rishi wasn't hardcore on immigration (whether by conviction or as an electoral calculation), he presumably wouldn't have made the choices he has (making boat stopping a Top Five Issue, ploughing on with Rwanda etc). And the bottom line is that he is the Prime Minister, he could change tack tomorrow if he wanted to spend enough political capital on it. Or let the policy die in the long grass.
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
And most obviously - if Sunak wasn't hardcore on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of immigration policy, would he?
A cynic would point out that, if Sunak wanted effective action on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of the relevant department.
(It would require incredible cynicism to do that as a PM, though... put a complete numpty in charge of a policy with the deliberate aim of discrediting the policy and the numpty. Without precedent outside Michael Dobbs novels, surely?)
It would require someone prepared to harm the country and the people they aspired to lead in order to secure the ascendancy of a particular political faction; that's not cynicism, it's unfitness to govern.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
That's not what spiking is. It's spiking drinks.
It's both, but the big scare campaign recently involved needle spiking.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
"Section 61 makes it an offence for a person (A) intentionally to administer a substance or to cause any substance to be taken by another person (B) where A knows that B does not consent to taking that substance and where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
So it would seem not to be an offence under that statute to spike someone if your intent was just to do so for the lolz, or to take a video to upload to tiktok, etc.
To be honest I would have thought that it was something that would come under common law assault, or similar offence, but maybe I am wrong.
I think there are other offences that could apply too. There are no doubt ways it could be redrafted but it doesn't look like there is any obvious grey area that people are exploiting to get away with it.
I would agree that my impression is that offenders are not being prosecuted because of difficulties in gathering evidence, and identifying offenders, rather than because of a gap in the law.
UK secretly deported 100 Nepali guards who protected staff in Kabul
Exclusive: People who risked their lives and were evacuated to Britain were forcibly removed to Nepal days later
More than 100 Nepali guards who risked their lives to protect British embassy staff in Afghanistan before the Taliban seized back control were secretly returned to Nepal against their wishes shortly after being airlifted to safety in the UK, the Guardian can reveal.
Hundreds of Nepali nationals and a smaller number of Indian nationals who protected key institutions in Kabul were brought to the UK on an RAF flight during the chaotic evacuation of the Afghan capital by western countries in August 2021, as victorious Taliban forces closed in.
It has now emerged that days after they arrived in the UK, more than 100 of these evacuees were forcibly removed to their home countries even though many had been issued with six-month visas on arrival.
The Guardian has interviewed some of the deported guards, who believed their lives were in danger in Nepal. Some were forcibly removed from hotel rooms in the UK in areas including Northampton, Reading, Oxford and Swindon before completing what at the time was a mandatory 10-day period of Covid-19 pandemic hotel quarantine for new arrivals in the UK.
Nepal was designated as a red-list country, with UK government instructions that people should not travel there, when the former guards were flown back in 2021.
Some have managed to find their way back to the UK since 2021 and have claimed asylum.
In March, at least 10 Nepali guards who protected the British embassy staff in Kabul and were still living in the UK were arrested in a raid at their west London hotel and detained by the Home Office.
Awful indeed, but hardly surprising with this government.
Is there a more right-on, left-wing, Tory than TSE?
I don't think you have to be right on or left wing to find many actions of the current administration to be utterly contemptible. What is so infuriating is that it is so utterly unnecessary. Not even the most rabid anti-immigration right winger would be complaining about a hundred Nepalese who protected the lives of our diplomats in Afghanistan staying in the country. It saves bugger all in terms of money and is simply an act of ignorant spite.
I cannot remember an administration in post war Britain which so comprehensively failed on morality, honesty, competence and basic common decency as Johnson's did.
There are stages between open door policies and bricking up the doorway. We are in one of those stages, arguing about whether to put in a screen or a gate, or put an armed guard out in front, but our political discourse seems to typify the debate as though it were open door or bricked up.
The problem is that whether it is a screen, a gate or an armed guard, the government won't pay for it. Just fund the courts!
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
That's not what spiking is. It's spiking drinks.
No. It also includes actually sticking needles into people. There was a spate of it last summer in Nottingham. Basically women are sensibly getting wise to the spiked drinks and taking precautions. So the predators have moved on to other methods. The police cover it all under the catchall of spiking.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Sunak is pretty hardcore on immigration issues, it seems unlikely he would or does disapprove.
If Rishi wasn't hardcore on immigration (whether by conviction or as an electoral calculation), he presumably wouldn't have made the choices he has (making boat stopping a Top Five Issue, ploughing on with Rwanda etc). And the bottom line is that he is the Prime Minister, he could change tack tomorrow if he wanted to spend enough political capital on it. Or let the policy die in the long grass.
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
And most obviously - if Sunak wasn't hardcore on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of immigration policy, would he?
IIRC, Braverman was one of the first senior Tories to switch their support to Sunak from Truss, so he owes her.
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
"Section 61 makes it an offence for a person (A) intentionally to administer a substance or to cause any substance to be taken by another person (B) where A knows that B does not consent to taking that substance and where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
So it would seem not to be an offence under that statute to spike someone if your intent was just to do so for the lolz, or to take a video to upload to tiktok, etc.
To be honest I would have thought that it was something that would come under common law assault, or similar offence, but maybe I am wrong.
I think there are other offences that could apply too. There are no doubt ways it could be redrafted but it doesn't look like there is any obvious grey area that people are exploiting to get away with it.
I would agree that my impression is that offenders are not being prosecuted because of difficulties in gathering evidence, and identifying offenders, rather than because of a gap in the law.
That may be true, but various other people have asked for a specific offence to be introduced. Maybe it's not needed, but it's not immediately obvious why it's an insult to people's intelligence.
Eg "Last year, the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs recommended that the crime be made an offence in its own right."
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
Nshima AKA mealy-meal is the staple, a rather solid maize porridge. It is OK, if a bit bland but works with a vegetable stew. Otherwise it is the usual international stuff.
I have travelled a bit in Africa, and South Africa apart, there isn't much middle market between back packer lodges and camping and the higher end tourist stuff. I self organised my honeymoon in Kenya for 3 weeks flight only 30 years ago. Be careful in the cities at night, but otherwise pretty safe.
We did this route camping in an old army truck, but that company seems to shave moved upmarket. This seems a good tour at the price:
Fly to Addis Ababa, get a local tour operator to take you to the Danakil Depression, and Erta Ale volcano. Will cost you the same as a holiday in Ibiza
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
That's not what spiking is. It's spiking drinks.
No. It also includes actually sticking needles into people. There was a spate of it last summer in Nottingham. Basically women are sensibly getting wise to the spiked drinks and taking precautions. So the predators have moved on to other methods. The police cover it all under the catchall of spiking.
I think it gets conflated with a common moral panic of the 1990s:
"In the Nineties, during the Aids crisis, tales circulated in chain-letter emails — because Facebook hadn’t been invented — about people being deliberately jabbed with HIV-infected needles. The content varied, but they almost all shared a structure: a person feels a mysterious jab in a public place; they realise they have been attacked with an HIV-infected needle, perhaps via a note saying “Welcome to the world of Aids!”; and then the victim would later test positive for HIV."
The needle spiking 'epidemic' was most likely a post-covid social panic rather than a real phenomenon. If you think about the mechanics of it, it's a highly implausble crime.
Social panics occur against a background of anxiety. After two years of pandemic restrictions, British nightclubs had only just returned to normal in the summer of 2021. Young people had endured isolation, disruption to their education, friendships, and love lives. They had been bombarded with frightening news reports about Covid, and as clubs reopened, there was still a fear of the virus and guilt associated with the possibility that they may catch it and pass it on to a vulnerable loved one. The needle, an object of fear for many people, may represent anxiety about vaccinations and fear of contamination.
As we have seen with the Havana Syndrome panic, anxiety and stress can result in genuine physical symptoms, and this may be part of what’s happening in needle spiking episodes. What they are experiencing is a normal human reaction to stress, possibly exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol. The mythical evil needle spiker preying on vulnerable women joins a long list of phantom attackers that led to social panics: Spring Heeled Jack (1837-38), the London Monster of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Halifax Slasher (1938), the ‘Mad Gasser’ of Mattoon (1944), and the Delhi Monkey Man scare of 2001 (Evans and Bartholomew, 2009).
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
It’s already illegal to go around sticking needles in people, and the stories about it being a widespread threat have been debunked as false. They are just trying to exploit people’s fears.
Quite right. You wouldn't ever catch the Tories trying to exploit people's fears, would you? Definitely not.
They have a different propensity to claim the moral high ground.
Starmer is the new Britain Trump.
I seem to recall you were PB's Top Trump Cheerleader not that long ago. So high praise indeed.
Yes it was another one of his weird ‘phases’ slotted in between hardcore eurofederalism and rampant neobrexiteering.
Much of the conversation about the coming Ukrainian offensive seems to be suggesting that the most likely outcome is tactical gains. I don't know how optimistic or pessimistic that is but I'm a bit puzzled. A lot of kit has been sent particularly ground vehicles. But not modern fighter jets and long range artillery. Advancing over the ground will be difficult because of the amount of mining that has been done. Why are we making it so difficult for them? Fear of 'escalation'? Or because we don't really want them to succeed? On the first point, military sites in Crimea have already been targeted so it is hardly a taboo. And we need to understand the logic of this 'escalation' policy. The escalatory weapons are presumably the ones the Russians fear. Weapons that are likely to lead to their defeat. So we won't give them those but we'll do enough so they can give the Russians a bloody nose.
Something else doesn't seem quite right either. Europe has gone from importing 50% of its gas from Russia to 5%. Why is no-one talking about this? Whatever you think of Scholz they've accomplished a lot on that side. And yet no-one seems to want to talk about it. How Russia is losing the energy war. Is this so people and industry don't get complacent and stop minding their usage. It's weird. We should be hammering just what a mess Russia is in economically. The IMF forecasts are absurd and based on virtually no data. How can a country that has lost 2% of its workforce, a thousand major companies and isn't making money on its main export earners oil and gas be keeping its head above water?
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Taking a large bung to chuck his brother under the bus, is how the layman might.
Or the other way round.
Frankly if half of what Harry says about William is true then I don't know how they were ever close, he makes William sound like an unstable, violent arsehole. Yes, when growing up, but as adults?
Your comment fails because of the initial assumption. Nothing The Spare says can be taken as resembling truth. His aim is to sell himself and his wife to support their lifestyle and if making stuff up is the way to do it then he seems to have no issue with that.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
Nshima AKA mealy-meal is the staple, a rather solid maize porridge. It is OK, if a bit bland but works with a vegetable stew. Otherwise it is the usual international stuff.
I have travelled a bit in Africa, and South Africa apart, there isn't much middle market between back packer lodges and camping and the higher end tourist stuff. I self organised my honeymoon in Kenya for 3 weeks flight only 30 years ago. Be careful in the cities at night, but otherwise pretty safe.
We did this route camping in an old army truck, but that company seems to shave moved upmarket. This seems a good tour at the price:
Fly to Addis Ababa, get a local tour operator to take you to the Danakil Depression, and Erta Ale volcano. Will cost you the same as a holiday in Ibiza
Seriously - @carnforth - go to Ethiopia. I see you can get a return flight for £600
Once you are there it is a stupefying country. The Danakil and Erta Ale are in the world’s top 10 destinations for OMFG
But there is so much more. It’s enormous, amazing, ancient. And it can be done so much cheaper than you think. The key is to use good local tour ops. Check their ratings online
You'll have to explain that one to me. It seems like a reasonable ambition.
I'm going to guess it's already a crime, so it's another example of the political tendency to promise new laws when they are not needed.
It’s probably a crime that is currently hard to prosecute and too complex for the police to understand - making it explicit can make such things a lot easier all round.
"Section 61 makes it an offence for a person (A) intentionally to administer a substance or to cause any substance to be taken by another person (B) where A knows that B does not consent to taking that substance and where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
So it would seem not to be an offence under that statute to spike someone if your intent was just to do so for the lolz, or to take a video to upload to tiktok, etc.
To be honest I would have thought that it was something that would come under common law assault, or similar offence, but maybe I am wrong.
I think there are other offences that could apply too. There are no doubt ways it could be redrafted but it doesn't look like there is any obvious grey area that people are exploiting to get away with it.
I would agree that my impression is that offenders are not being prosecuted because of difficulties in gathering evidence, and identifying offenders, rather than because of a gap in the law.
That may be true, but various other people have asked for a specific offence to be introduced. Maybe it's not needed, but it's not immediately obvious why it's an insult to people's intelligence.
Eg "Last year, the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs recommended that the crime be made an offence in its own right."
He [Sir Keir] said: "It is always difficult to come forward to explain an awful experience to people you don't know. We need to make that easier for people. We will make it easier to prosecute it.
"But I also want to draw attention to it. I want people to be talking about it and knowing about this because for every young woman who goes out this will strike real fear into them."
He went on: "My daughter's 12… but I'm already worrying about just in a few years, I can imagine myself pacing the living room every time she's out, worried. There will be many parents in that situation."
Take the first thing that Keir mentions - it's a massive problem for people to have the confidence to come forward with offences like this to the police, because the track record of the police in dealing with victims of these sorts of crimes (when they're not the perpetrators themselves) has been lamentably poor. I really don't see how a new criminal offence addresses that problem. It looks like displacement activity.
The actual work that would be required to drive up prosecution rates in terms of a culture change in the police, in the CPS, and in the courts, in terms of evidence-gathering, etc - it's all a lot more difficult than passing a new law.
I feel like this is a process that the country has been through several times already, where the government promises to crack down on crime x by passing law y, and several years later, when the situation has deteriorated because the effort wasn't being put into the fundamentals, we're then promised law z to turn things around instead. See also organisational restructuring in the NHS, or schools.
To be fair, they were shipped out while Johnson was boss.
Sunak is pretty hardcore on immigration issues, it seems unlikely he would or does disapprove.
If Rishi wasn't hardcore on immigration (whether by conviction or as an electoral calculation), he presumably wouldn't have made the choices he has (making boat stopping a Top Five Issue, ploughing on with Rwanda etc). And the bottom line is that he is the Prime Minister, he could change tack tomorrow if he wanted to spend enough political capital on it. Or let the policy die in the long grass.
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
And most obviously - if Sunak wasn't hardcore on immigration, he wouldn't put Braverman in charge of immigration policy, would he?
The Independent newspaper has a crusade at the moment on exactly the same unBritish injustice TSE has flagged up in the header.
A lot of PBers still call Sunak’s Asylum policy one of his huge wins this spring. To me it’s so patently obvious the mess Sunak has made of asylum policy this year is going to become the number 1 disastrous policy mistake of his short Premiership. My logic goes like this.
What really is the problem - arrivals or inability to process them, and the backlog. You could say “both” - but is it clear the government are focussing on both, making progress on either?
Here’s my claim - the new rhetoric, policy and promise to voters of all boat crossings now considered illegal immigration is incompatible with granting the right to stay here. They have changed the clear distinction all other Tory governments maintained - this is immigration, and this over here is asylum. through the rhetoric and policy they have completely muddled it, certainly in the minds of voters they are trying to win over with it.
changing the rhetoric so clearly to every crossing being illegal means they CANNOT process them. The government cannot now make progress on the speed of processing or the backlog from the boats. Sunak’s government has signed a pact with voters that every boat crossing is illegal immigration, and will be treated as such, and this pact and this promise cannot now survive contact with granting thousands of these claims the right to remain in UK.
Far from being a win, Sunak has been a fool to be a fellow traveler with Braverman and her extremist friends on the back benches with this policy. He just cannot keep the promises he has made to the voters on this. As soon as processing starts granting the right to remain in UK, the voters betrayal anger is going to be far more vicious than even anything Heathener can think up.
Should count themselves lucky they weren't sent to Rwanda.
No one's going to Rwanda. I'm not convinced it's even a real place.
Send 'em to Eswatini instead. Definitely not real.
I have been there! A lovely little country, though did have the worst pizza and pasta in my life. Beautiful view though.
Pineapples?
No pineapple. I think it was an attempt at a margarita by someone who had never made bread before, couldn't make a sauce and used half a pound of white rubber for cheese. The speed of service suggested they had to grow the wheat before cooking. The pasta was even worse.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
What's the local food? The only places I've been in Africa have been in North Africa, which I suspect is quite different
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
Nshima AKA mealy-meal is the staple, a rather solid maize porridge. It is OK, if a bit bland but works with a vegetable stew. Otherwise it is the usual international stuff.
I have travelled a bit in Africa, and South Africa apart, there isn't much middle market between back packer lodges and camping and the higher end tourist stuff. I self organised my honeymoon in Kenya for 3 weeks flight only 30 years ago. Be careful in the cities at night, but otherwise pretty safe.
We did this route camping in an old army truck, but that company seems to shave moved upmarket. This seems a good tour at the price:
Fly to Addis Ababa, get a local tour operator to take you to the Danakil Depression, and Erta Ale volcano. Will cost you the same as a holiday in Ibiza
Lovely photos. I shall do some research...
You might see a “saltstorm” - a sandstorm of salt. We did
The climb up the volcano can only be done at night. Too hot and dangerous otherwise. But you are rewarded
On thread - I have to say the story makes me wince. So does the idea of sending people to Rwanda. So does much of the behaviour of Braverman. Or disregarding long held conventions on individual rights. However we are ultimately going to need an immigration policy that satisfies most of the population. The alternative is permanent political discord.
Now you could try and shift public opinion as Thatcher did with TINA. Are you prepared to do that?
Huge, yes, but in what particular way were you thinking? What's the main angle to be taken?
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Taking a large bung to chuck his brother under the bus, is how the layman might.
Or the other way round.
Frankly if half of what Harry says about William is true then I don't know how they were ever close, he makes William sound like an unstable, violent arsehole. Yes, when growing up, but as adults?
Your comment fails because of the initial assumption. Nothing The Spare says can be taken as resembling truth. His aim is to sell himself and his wife to support their lifestyle and if making stuff up is the way to do it then he seems to have no issue with that.
I don't assume any of it is necessarily true. But like assessing a motion to dismiss if I take it as read it is true then I don't understand why he'd be upset at being ostracised, as he sees it. It seems like it would be a relief.
Much of the conversation about the coming Ukrainian offensive seems to be suggesting that the most likely outcome is tactical gains. I don't know how optimistic or pessimistic that is but I'm a bit puzzled. A lot of kit has been sent particularly ground vehicles. But not modern fighter jets and long range artillery. Advancing over the ground will be difficult because of the amount of mining that has been done. Why are we making it so difficult for them? Fear of 'escalation'? Or because we don't really want them to succeed? On the first point, military sites in Crimea have already been targeted so it is hardly a taboo. And we need to understand the logic of this 'escalation' policy. The escalatory weapons are presumably the ones the Russians fear. Weapons that are likely to lead to their defeat. So we won't give them those but we'll do enough so they can give the Russians a bloody nose.
Something else doesn't seem quite right either. Europe has gone from importing 50% of its gas from Russia to 5%. Why is no-one talking about this? Whatever you think of Scholz they've accomplished a lot on that side. And yet no-one seems to want to talk about it. How Russia is losing the energy war. Is this so people and industry don't get complacent and stop minding their usage. It's weird. We should be hammering just what a mess Russia is in economically. The IMF forecasts are absurd and based on virtually no data. How can a country that has lost 2% of its workforce, a thousand major companies and isn't making money on its main export earners oil and gas be keeping its head above water?
Some may be true, some may be deliberate fog of war to lull the enemy into complacency.
Ukranian generals seem to know what they are doing. In the last 12 months they have liberated a lot of their country.
Comments
He was a long-time Gurkha.
In March, at least 10 Nepali guards who protected the British embassy staff in Kabul and were still living in the UK were arrested in a raid at their west London hotel and detained by the Home Office.
'10s of thousands'
'Go Home'
'Australian style....'
'Stop the boats'
The party you supported has pushed such irrational immigration policy. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak have all played their part. All happy to pander to the Mail, all happy to take the votes.
How can a Conservative party member be so outraged at the culmination of their party's rhetoric‽
The fact remains that we cannot remain an open door. There has to be a set of regulations that works.....
Yes, we need a set of regulations that works. Do you think this report is indicative of something that works? The Tories set the rules. If they're not working, who's to blame?
The fact that you would use such a term displays a deep misunderstanding of the reality.
No one is denying that 'There has to be a set of regulations that works...' but we patently don't have that after 13 years of Conservative government.
Accepting a secret payment to cover up illegal activities is presumably not how lawyers would describe it?
Unindicted co-conspirators is how I would describe the Royals now.
But what if complete control is impossible?
I notice that Starmer has been chiding Sunak for not stopping the boats, and for immigration increasing generally in recent weeks.
Or the other way round.
About 4% of the estimated two million people who do not have valid ID have signed up for a government scheme to allow them to vote.
May's local elections will be the first time all voters in England must show photo ID.
Some 85,000 people have applied online for a free Voter Authority Certificate ahead of the deadline for May's poll.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65389832
The LDs are neutral on it so long as you don't build anything anywhere near it.
It is, however, a pretty shitty thing to do. And might give rise to a separate civil claim between the brothers ?
Or might crown immunity be invoked ?
They should be charged with insulting the public’s intelligence.
https://twitter.com/uklabour/status/1650831421534027778
Somehow, some voters believe that cruelty can make them safer. It never does. because if, as both parties have over the years, you build up an organisation with power over the public - like the home office - filled with people who are willing to convince themselves that things like this are okay, then in the end no-one is actually safe.From them.
Beautiful view though, which was just as well as we were there a long time. The next day we ate somewhere else and the food was fine, so specific to that particular hotel, I think.
https://phophonyanelodge.squarespace.com/
Whether it can be made to work is another matter. My hunch is that the most voters will like this approach in the same way they like sausages; a lot, but only as long as they don't have to see the process to get there. Once small boat migrants turn into people with faces, names and stories, I forsee problems for the Home Secretary. (The Mail, in particular, I can imagine doing a THIS CRUELTY ISN'T WHAT WE CALLED FOR headline. Free onion with every paper.)
(By the way, does anyone know of a guide to seeing some of sub-saharan Africa on the cheap? I'm not likely ever to have the funds for Safaris or tours. But return flights to Nairobi I could manage...)
Starmer is the new Britain Trump.
The US state of North Dakota has enacted a near-total ban on abortions, making it a felony for doctors to administer them in most cases.
The law, signed by Governor Doug Burgum on Monday, creates exceptions if the mother's life is threatened.
But rape and incest victims are only eligible for an abortion during the first six-weeks of pregnancy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65389843
Trump questions why he should participate in GOP primary debates
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3970702-trump-questions-why-he-should-participate-in-gop-primary-debates/
I can understand, and I will share the relief, that people on the Left will feel relieved to see the Tories shoved out of government, but Casino really has little to fear from a Labour government. There will be little of any substance that will be different. We'll have some left-wing performative bollocks to keep the backbenchers happy, instead of the right-wing performative bollocks we get now, but it's not actually going to change anything.
(It would require incredible cynicism to do that as a PM, though... put a complete numpty in charge of a policy with the deliberate aim of discrediting the policy and the numpty. Without precedent outside Michael Dobbs novels, surely?)
We do need to do something about the increasing drug use and -- often connected -- increasing mental illness in the area. (But the famous quip about doing something in "Yes, Minister" may apply.)
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/notes/division/5/1/48
I have travelled a bit in Africa, and South Africa apart, there isn't much middle market between back packer lodges and camping and the higher end tourist stuff. I self organised my honeymoon in Kenya for 3 weeks flight only 30 years ago. Be careful in the cities at night, but otherwise pretty safe.
We did this route camping in an old army truck, but that company seems to have moved upmarket. This seems a good tour at the price:
https://www.gadventures.com/trips/kenya-camping-safari/4005/itinerary/
"Section 61 makes it an offence for a person (A) intentionally to administer a substance or to cause any substance to be taken by another person (B) where A knows that B does not consent to taking that substance and where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
So it would seem not to be an offence under that statute to spike someone if your intent was just to do so for the lolz, or to take a video to upload to tiktok, etc.
To be honest I would have thought that it was something that would come under common law assault, or similar offence, but maybe I am wrong.
"where A intends to stupefy or overpower B so that any person can engage in sexual activity involving B."
https://news.sky.com/story/almost-5-000-reports-of-needle-and-drink-spiking-made-to-uk-police-in-a-year-12776062
I cannot remember an administration in post war Britain which so comprehensively failed on morality, honesty, competence and basic common decency as Johnson's did.
Just fund the courts!
Eg
"Last year, the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs recommended that the crime be made an offence in its own right."
https://news.sky.com/story/spiking-would-be-made-specific-criminal-offence-under-labour-sir-keir-starmer-announces-12865885
"In the Nineties, during the Aids crisis, tales circulated in chain-letter emails — because Facebook hadn’t been invented — about people being deliberately jabbed with HIV-infected needles. The content varied, but they almost all shared a structure: a person feels a mysterious jab in a public place; they realise they have been attacked with an HIV-infected needle, perhaps via a note saying “Welcome to the world of Aids!”; and then the victim would later test positive for HIV."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/its-catching/202202/the-british-needle-spiking-panic
Social panics occur against a background of anxiety. After two years of pandemic restrictions, British nightclubs had only just returned to normal in the summer of 2021. Young people had endured isolation, disruption to their education, friendships, and love lives. They had been bombarded with frightening news reports about Covid, and as clubs reopened, there was still a fear of the virus and guilt associated with the possibility that they may catch it and pass it on to a vulnerable loved one. The needle, an object of fear for many people, may represent anxiety about vaccinations and fear of contamination.
As we have seen with the Havana Syndrome panic, anxiety and stress can result in genuine physical symptoms, and this may be part of what’s happening in needle spiking episodes. What they are experiencing is a normal human reaction to stress, possibly exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol. The mythical evil needle spiker preying on vulnerable women joins a long list of phantom attackers that led to social panics: Spring Heeled Jack (1837-38), the London Monster of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Halifax Slasher (1938), the ‘Mad Gasser’ of Mattoon (1944), and the Delhi Monkey Man scare of 2001 (Evans and Bartholomew, 2009).
Yes it was another one of his weird ‘phases’ slotted in between hardcore eurofederalism and rampant neobrexiteering.
It’s a long-running spoof account.
Much of the conversation about the coming Ukrainian offensive seems to be suggesting that the most likely outcome is tactical gains. I don't know how optimistic or pessimistic that is but I'm a bit puzzled. A lot of kit has been sent particularly ground vehicles. But not modern fighter jets and long range artillery. Advancing over the ground will be difficult because of the amount of mining that has been done. Why are we making it so difficult for them? Fear of 'escalation'? Or because we don't really want them to succeed? On the first point, military sites in Crimea have already been targeted so it is hardly a taboo. And we need to understand the logic of this 'escalation' policy. The escalatory weapons are presumably the ones the Russians fear. Weapons that are likely to lead to their defeat. So we won't give them those but we'll do enough so they can give the Russians a bloody nose.
Something else doesn't seem quite right either. Europe has gone from importing 50% of its gas from Russia to 5%. Why is no-one talking about this? Whatever you think of Scholz they've accomplished a lot on that side. And yet no-one seems to want to talk about it. How Russia is losing the energy war. Is this so people and industry don't get complacent and stop minding their usage. It's weird. We should be hammering just what a mess Russia is in economically. The IMF forecasts are absurd and based on virtually no data. How can a country that has lost 2% of its workforce, a thousand major companies and isn't making money on its main export earners oil and gas be keeping its head above water?
Once you are there it is a stupefying country. The Danakil and Erta Ale are in the world’s top 10 destinations for OMFG
But there is so much more. It’s enormous, amazing, ancient. And it can be done so much cheaper than you think. The key is to use good local tour ops. Check their ratings online
He [Sir Keir] said: "It is always difficult to come forward to explain an awful experience to people you don't know. We need to make that easier for people. We will make it easier to prosecute it.
"But I also want to draw attention to it. I want people to be talking about it and knowing about this because for every young woman who goes out this will strike real fear into them."
He went on: "My daughter's 12… but I'm already worrying about just in a few years, I can imagine myself pacing the living room every time she's out, worried. There will be many parents in that situation."
Take the first thing that Keir mentions - it's a massive problem for people to have the confidence to come forward with offences like this to the police, because the track record of the police in dealing with victims of these sorts of crimes (when they're not the perpetrators themselves) has been lamentably poor. I really don't see how a new criminal offence addresses that problem. It looks like displacement activity.
The actual work that would be required to drive up prosecution rates in terms of a culture change in the police, in the CPS, and in the courts, in terms of evidence-gathering, etc - it's all a lot more difficult than passing a new law.
I feel like this is a process that the country has been through several times already, where the government promises to crack down on crime x by passing law y, and several years later, when the situation has deteriorated because the effort wasn't being put into the fundamentals, we're then promised law z to turn things around instead. See also organisational restructuring in the NHS, or schools.
A lot of PBers still call Sunak’s Asylum policy one of his huge wins this spring. To me it’s so patently obvious the mess Sunak has made of asylum policy this year is going to become the number 1 disastrous policy mistake of his short Premiership. My logic goes like this.
What really is the problem - arrivals or inability to process them, and the backlog. You could say “both” - but is it clear the government are focussing on both, making progress on either?
Here’s my claim - the new rhetoric, policy and promise to voters of all boat crossings now considered illegal immigration is incompatible with granting the right to stay here. They have changed the clear distinction all other Tory governments maintained - this is immigration, and this over here is asylum. through the rhetoric and policy they have completely muddled it, certainly in the minds of voters they are trying to win over with it.
changing the rhetoric so clearly to every crossing being illegal means they CANNOT process them. The government cannot now make progress on the speed of processing or the backlog from the boats. Sunak’s government has signed a pact with voters that every boat crossing is illegal immigration, and will be treated as such, and this pact and this promise cannot now survive contact with granting thousands of these claims the right to remain in UK.
Far from being a win, Sunak has been a fool to be a fellow traveler with Braverman and her extremist friends on the back benches with this policy. He just cannot keep the promises he has made to the voters on this. As soon as processing starts granting the right to remain in UK, the voters betrayal anger is going to be far more vicious than even anything Heathener can think up.
The climb up the volcano can only be done at night. Too hot and dangerous otherwise. But you are rewarded
If you can get through Ep1 (brutal, excruciating, harrowing), it looks like it might start to pay off.
Now you could try and shift public opinion as Thatcher did with TINA. Are you prepared to do that?
Ukranian generals seem to know what they are doing. In the last 12 months they have liberated a lot of their country.