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Sunak and stopping the boats – politicalbetting.com
Sunak and stopping the boats – politicalbetting.com
“Our priority is to stop the boats, which is why we have taken robust action to crack down on vile people smuggling gangs, deter migrants from making dangerous crossings and, alongside our French counterparts, intercept vessels.“This relentless action reduced crossings by 36% last year, despite numbers soaring by 80% in the Mediterranean, and more than 26,000 attempts were prevented.” UK Home Office, 8th March 2024.
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In that time-worn phrase: just about breaking even!
The controversial investment firm sees owning football clubs as a way to identify underpriced buyout targets in the sports tech sector
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/everton-bidder-777-partners-buy-football-software-tech-premier-league-ownership-investment-firm-unicorn-sportstech-b1145653.html
A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-2024-date-rishi-sunak-b2513281.html
Odds-against on Betfair and not front-page news for the Independent as the guessing games continue. As the paper notes, this date would wreck the party conference season.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13203093/Plot-crown-Penny-Mordaunt-PM-Tory-MPs-Right-held-secret-talks-moderates-replacing-Rishi-Sunak-Leader-House.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/15/penny-mordaunt-should-lead-general-election-not-rishi-sunak/ (£££)
Met Police’s 20 homicide squads will each lose three detective constables to save £4.2 million from budget despite London’s high murder rate
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/15/met-police-murder-detectives-neil-cochin-homicide-budget/ (£££)
Some of us believe it was Theresa May's police cuts, in the context of the two terrorist outrages during the election campaign, that lost the Conservatives their majority in 2017.
Can Susan Hall weaponise this against Sadiq Khan? Tricky given a Conservative government.
Thank you for it.
https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1768638285528650079
Get ready for the global premiere of #DoctorWho on @BBCiPlayer in the UK 11th May and @DisneyPlus 10th May where available.
Sorry, I don't understand how this is the "Same time. Everywhere." However you juggle time zones, doesn't this mean Disney+ subscribers get it before BBC viewers?
The race is between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles - Gething is seen as UK Labour's man and has Union support. Miles is more popular among members.
I expect Miles to win the membership vote and Gething to win the union vote, and edging it overall, but it will be a close race.
If Gething wins he will not be a popular leader and I expect Labour vote to slump.
https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/
We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.
This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.
Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
1: Our communications team recently shot a promotional video in our office - but only shot a head and shoulders still photo of the individual concerned - forgetting that they were supposed to get a full body shot. Rather than remobilise a photographer they simply used AI to generate the missing photo. I would never have known if I had not been told...
2: I needed a formal business photo for company website, but I only had passport photos and informal shots. So I used AI to generate a suitable photo for me. There were lots of unrecognisable shots (containing all of the matching details of my mouth, nose, eyes etc - but the overall effect was just wrong - like a dodgy waxwork model). But I eventually got a brilliant picture. Very professional. Looked exactly me.
Admittedly, Gething not only carries baggage but doesn’t speak Welsh, which will surely count against him.
But who are those votes likely to leak to? Plaid? Not really a serious organisation. Y Ceidwadwyr Cymreig? Still less so.
Oh, and parsimony. Look at the number of news stories illustrated with stock photos.
Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
Regarding borders: look.at the Danish cpr system. Personal identifiers that are required to access any services whatsoever. Denmark has open physical borders but the most brutal cpr regulation. And it works.
Migration is a problem here because no govt has the decency to be honest with the people as to what they are doing and why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEWGqDqgt6Q
Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.
(And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s
Just what the world needs.
Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
I would add that the one thing it misses is that there are a significant number of people who want to see the boats stopped because it is such a desperately unsafe way for those in need to get the the UK.
Going all the way back to Cameron in 2014/2015, if the rest of the EU had picked up on his ideas about transporting the vulnerable directly from the camps around Syria to member states rather than making them undertake hazardous and difficult journeys that favoured the fittest and those least in need of help, then we might have seen a very different reaction across Europe to the migrant crisis.
If Sunak really wanted to solve the migrant situation in the Channel then he could go a long way towards doing that by having safe, legal methods of asylum/immigration for the desperate people in France.
In fact, I know several other men this has happened to.
Blooming immigrants, coming over here, stealing our men...
He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.
*Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
One of Cameron's best policies - the contrast with Mutti was stark.
But for most people, there isn't one.
Did no one read that far ?
I honestly don't think Gadhafi could have kept control of the entire country even before the west got involved. The UN were heavily involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_civil_war_(2011)
I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.
I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
Since Brexit we have had the paradox of significantly increased immigration, and not just Ukranian refugees and fleeing Hong Kongers. There has been a significant increase in migration from the 3rd World, particularly the Subcontinent, Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, all authorised by our most anti-immigrant government in modern history.
How do we square this paradox. In large part it is because those "in control" of immigration want and need it to keep various parts of the economy going, from universities to Health and Social Care. It's a bit like the desire of voters to vote for both lower taxes and for increased spending on services.
So Leave voters are still the ones dissatisfied with migration despite being in control.
Probably untrue.
Umm, the story, not the submarine.
The government’s flagship Rwanda legislation could also finally pass, with the Home Office planning for the first flights to take off by mid May. This would be followed quickly by further flights with plans for a large foreign language social media campaign featuring these people who had been deported — and targeted at those still looking to come to the UK...
“Labour say they’re going to scrap the scheme — but if we can show that it’s working what are they going to say then? People on all sides are so convinced it’s not going to happen or that it’s not going to work that they are underestimating the political potential of it being successful.”
Classy.
Well, that's needlessly annoying. WPS Office has decided that it wants a sign-in barrier if I actually want to edit documents in any way.
However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
The Government, meanwhile, has seen what happens when the public believes a ruling party has no control in this area and calculates that if it can take back control of The Boats it will inspire the trust of the voters for it to take back control over other policy areas and, who knows, perhaps even parliament itself come the next General Election.
Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”
We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
Cameron
Steadied the ship. Worked well in a coalition.
May
Did a reasonable job with a party that was not behind her. Had some good instincts.
Brown
Spent years trying to defenestrate the party leader, then did not know what to do with the job when he got it. Let an awful economic inheritance from his time as chancellor. Could have been so much more than he ended up being.
Johnson
Got two big calls right, many others wrong. Was never suited to be PM, but he was faced with an unprecedented crisis that few PMs would have come well out of.
Sunak
Dealt a bad hand, which he has played terribly so far.
Truss
Doesn't really figure; a footnote. She may have surprised on the upside; her subsequent actions suggest otherwise.
Gething's competence is called into question that he thought an Environment Minister bankrolled by a waste management company looked anything other than corrupt, even if every penny received was legitimate.
One of the legit complaints about the pre-2016 situation was that the costs and benefits of immigration weren't fairly distributed. Brexit hasn't solved that and has probably made things worse.
Leaving foreign policy to one side, Cameron's shadow cabinet spent five years preparing for government, yet gave us a health policy (Lansley's reforms) that was disowned and reversed by Cameron, a social policy, Universal Credit, whose introduction was a shambles, and which was undermined by the Chancellor, an economic policy that killed the recovery inherited from Labour and destroyed any prospect of growth, and that left debt at record levels. Local government was starved of funds. Traditional Tory values were thrown to the wolves as police and defence were cut.
Cameron was also bad at retail politics, at which he was supposed to shine. His relentlessly negative campaign style converted healthy leads over Labour into a hung parliament, almost lost Scotland and did lose Europe. (And before anyone points to 2015, that Conservative victory was due to the SNP driving Labour out of Scotland, not Cameron.)
Worst of all is Cameron's gerrymandering, tampering with the electoral system for partisan advantage. Ironically, it would probably cause Brexit and the end of Cameron's ministry.
David Cameron was our worst prime minister since Lord North.
1) Lord Goderich
2) Education - academy chains, botched exam reforms and Amanda Spielman at OFSTED.
Edit - and you're wrong about 2015. The SNP performance was irrelevant to the result as the Tories gained no seats in Scotland even as they added 25 seats overall. It was the collapse of the Liberal Democrats handing many English seats to the Tories that won them that election.
The menu of options (more access for more alignment) broadly is what it is. Barnier's staircase and all that. The hope that there was some other deal under the counter, more of what we wanted for less of what we didn't want, has turned out to be a mirage. That was always pretty likely.
Britain is fairly average now for percentage of immigrants in the developed world, with about 14% of us born abroad. Canada, Australia, Switzerland are notably higher, as are Saudi and the UAE. We see this politically too, with migration being the hot topic in nearly all our countries. The exceptions are places like South Korea and Japan where the population pyramid is dangerously upside down.
In a globalised world people want to move around, seeking out economic and social opportunity. There are many on here who have benefited from living abroad including posters who still do, and many more have friends or family from abroad. My own ancestors migrated to Australia in the 19th Century and back to England in the 1930's for example.
Why should we deny such opportunity to others?
The failure of migration policy is not so much the numbers but rather the failure to plan for such arrivals, and not just the PB obsession with housing, but also with programmes of integration and cultural assimilation.
Cameron, on the other hand, had to work in a coalition; and he did that well.
I'll even give Cameron praise for one thing that will be controversial on here: the EU referendum. It was needed. It's a shame that remain lost, but some of the blame for that can be put on the head of Corbyn.
That said, the country was in a dire state economically after the financial crisis and massive recession and the Coalition did a pretty good job. The shortsightedness on nuclear was another downside.
We'll see how Labour does when their chief challenge isn't, as in 1997, how to spend all the lovely money.
And they'll possibly do the integration/assimilation thing better.
A quick google showed that govt advice continues to be to claim asylum in the first country people arrive in.
LAB: 44%
CON: 20%
REFORM: 14%
LIB: 9%
GREEN: 7%
SNP: 3%
PLAID: 1%
OTHER: 2%
via @YouGov, 12-13 Mar
https://twitter.com/PollingReportUK/status/1768649716818923985