Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
This is why the right are trying to move the argument from numbers arriving to those already here. Specifically those not deemed to belong. This is a two tier policy they can get fully behind.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
They wanted an 82% fall from the current levels, not the boriswave levels. They see through your 'peak'.
What baseline would you like? If we go back two decades, net immigration was about 550k p.a. It was stable at that level for several years and voters at the time weren’t voting much for parties promising lower figures. Net immigration is down 69% from that. Not quite as impressive as 82%, but still very impressive. A 69% change on most government indices would be fantastic.
Mortimer said the public have voted for lower immigration. They have undoubtedly been given lower immigration. OK, maybe they want even lower immigration, but we’re still going in the right direction for them. You can fiddle around with the baseline, but however you look at it, the number is going down.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Yes you are. You are suggesting that foreign nationals who commit crimes are being held in prison on their way to being deported. That means that the figure of those being held right now equals the total convicted minus the total already deported. I am merely asking, given the very high figure, what the percentage of those given custodial sentences is represented by foreign nationals if you add the prodigious numbers you claim have been deported back in.
I have no idea of the numbers here but what you are saying makes no sense. Why would you add them back in if the sentence has been completed? Are you also going to add back in all the domestic prisoners who have also completed their sentences and been released. What is the difference?
Virtually none. The figures for annual convictions of foreign nationals are very close indeed to the proportion of the prison population. As you would expect.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
It's because the borrowing figures in the OBR models didn't stack up without it.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
Its down 82% from peak to trough, however it is at a comparable level to many years in the past and higher than it was in 2008 for instance.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Burnham is expected to give a speech setting out his vision in London next week
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
They wanted an 82% fall from the current levels, not the boriswave levels. They see through your 'peak'.
What baseline would you like? If we go back two decades, net immigration was about 550k p.a. It was stable at that level for several years and voters at the time weren’t voting much for parties promising lower figures. Net immigration is down 69% from that. Not quite as impressive as 82%, but still very impressive. A 69% change on most government indices would be fantastic.
Mortimer said the public have voted for lower immigration. They have undoubtedly been given lower immigration. OK, maybe they want even lower immigration, but we’re still going in the right direction for them. You can fiddle around with the baseline, but however you look at it, the number is going down.
People don't vote on percentages. They vote on what they perceive.
Increasingly, it is obvious that year on year there are more and more people moving to Britain. The voter is more sensible than the politico without nous, who quotes back statistics.
"The far-Right plot that never was: Twelve were arrested after 'threat' against 15,000-strong Islamic festival. Days later, all terror charges were dropped. Now, Sue Reid explores what happened... and link to Ann Widdecombe's murder"
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
Its down 82% from peak to trough, however it is at a comparable level to many years in the past and higher than it was in 2008 for instance.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
I think you have your figures wrong. The latest net immigration figures are lower than they were in 2008. You have to go back further than that.
The UK public were voting for New Labour and a looser immigration policy for many years. Mortimer was talking about what the people voted for. I don’t think the majority were voting for lower immigration before 2010.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
They wanted an 82% fall from the current levels, not the boriswave levels. They see through your 'peak'.
What baseline would you like? If we go back two decades, net immigration was about 550k p.a. It was stable at that level for several years and voters at the time weren’t voting much for parties promising lower figures. Net immigration is down 69% from that. Not quite as impressive as 82%, but still very impressive. A 69% change on most government indices would be fantastic.
Mortimer said the public have voted for lower immigration. They have undoubtedly been given lower immigration. OK, maybe they want even lower immigration, but we’re still going in the right direction for them. You can fiddle around with the baseline, but however you look at it, the number is going down.
People don't vote on percentages. They vote on what they perceive.
Increasingly, it is obvious that year on year there are more and more people moving to Britain. The voter is more sensible than the politico without nous, who quotes back statistics.
You wrote, “The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades”. If you meant that the public have consistently voted for fewer immigrants, then have a go at yourself for not saying that. Don’t have a go at me for presuming you meant what you wrote.
One assumes Ed has been placed there to appease the left. He probably wasn't Burnham's top choice for the job.
He's been appointed foreign secretary so he's got no say over domestic policy. It's also akin to N Ireland at the moment with Trump in the White House, trying to play nice while being belittled and mocked.
Do we have any suggestions for the pet moronic tax policies that the Treasury will get Healey to implement? I'm thinking pasty and caravan tax level, stuff that costs more than it could ever raise.
VED on ebikes or income tax on feed-in-tariff credits.
It’ll be a push on “fairness” based on harmonising things like income tax and CGT. He’ll balance it out with things like a basic rate cut.
Merge NIC and Income Tax and a basic rate cut would absolutely be affordable.
I'll call it for:
1 - The zero tax income band being synchronised with basic pension. 2 - The 100k cliff edge being sorted (this may be me hopecasting). 3 - Something modest being done on triple lock. 4 - Some tweaks around savings or income for wealthy people. 5 - Something on Council Tax. I'm speculating to myself about a rapid full revaluation, followed by a Proportional Property Tax to build on it by 2030.
Success for me will be 2/5 correct. Very success will be 3/5 right.
1) would be a very stupid idea - a quad lock would create big problems down the line (the tax allowance is probably too high and there are better ways to get money to people who are working) 2) just up the rate to 4x% for everything £100k +. 3) as I said shift it to looking back over 3 years and the problem with inflation 1 year and lagging wages the next disappears 4) going to happen 5) long term it needs to be fix but you aren't getting a ful revaluation in a hurry - the appeals would be a nightmare.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Unfortunately, the terms of debate have changed. Zero immigration won't satisfy the ideologues of Reform and, to an even greater extent, Restore. They are now demanding a reversal - that 'unsuitable' immigrants who are already here should be deported. It makes the whole immigration conversation even more toxic.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Yes you are. You are suggesting that foreign nationals who commit crimes are being held in prison on their way to being deported. That means that the figure of those being held right now equals the total convicted minus the total already deported. I am merely asking, given the very high figure, what the percentage of those given custodial sentences is represented by foreign nationals if you add the prodigious numbers you claim have been deported back in.
Sorry, I am not following your logic here. I’ve said nothing about the total population of those given custodial sentences: I don’t have those numbers to hand. Your sums don’t work anyway without some sort of date constraints.
@AnneJGP suggested that, “We can't deport violent foreign criminals”. I say we are deporting thousands of foreign criminals (violent and non-violent): about 6,000 per year on the most recent figure. This number is going up. We clearly can deport violent foreign criminals. I’m not making any broader claims about the system, nor saying that the problem is solved.
You described foreign criminals not deported as 'occasional exceptions'. This was clearly utter piffle.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Is it me or does the name Bryson DeChambeau sound like a fictional villain?
The type who would cheat at cards and golf.
Trampling that long grass down behind his ball - he's been playing too much with his mate Donald.
It took a lack of self awareness verging on the comatose to think that trying to get the world’s most famous living golf cheat involved in The Open imbroglio was the right way to go.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
If it removes the need to sell your home to pay for residential social care costs and instead just replaces it with a 10% levy on estates that would benefit most estates. Ironically especially in London and the South. Though just the nursing care isn’t enough
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
They have not.
This is simply a slight of hand of yours to try to maximise the rate of immigration to what you feel might be politically sustainable.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
If it removes the need to sell your home to pay for social care costs and instead just replaces it with a 10% levy on estates that would benefit most estates. Ironically especially in London and the South
Read what I wrote again. Look at the costs which aren't covered.
This is a hidden death tax with no tangible benefit. The Tories can have that one for free.
Caught the start of Newsnight ,and Nick sodding Clegg is lecturing others about sanctimony.
He's been popping up a bit recently.
Tell me he's not planning a return to frontline politics some way or other?
His coalition was one if the best periods of government in recent decades. Maybe I am in a minority of one, but I think he put the country ahead of his party and himself and should be given credit for that. I would give him a knighthood.
It's a view. It's also a view that his refusing to discuss our membership of the EU during the Coalition resulted in Brexit.
If Clegg and Cameron had gone into the rose garden early in the Colition and called a Referendum - recommendeding staying in - it would have been won c.60:40.
Thank you, Nick Clegg.
Alexa, explain "gaslighting" to me.
To be fair, Clegg had called for an In/Out referendum on the EU. It was his 'reasoning' for abstaining on the Lisbon referendum when his party's manifesto had committed them to supporting one.
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine a world where we'd had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We could have arrived at a world where there was a happy consensus on Europe - this far but no further. The great missed opportunity of British politics. All because the Lib Dems could not let a manifesto promise or a vague commitment to democracy outweigh their knee-jerk desire for all things Europe.
I don't disagree, in principle, but the Lisbon treaty was already ratified by 2010. How would that have worked ?
When Brown was PM, their was a vote on parliament: the government position was that Lisbon should br ratified, the Tory amendment was, I think, that there should be a referendum. There were enough Labour Eurosceptics that Lib Dems going with their stated policy position of 'there should be a referendum' would have resulted in a referendum. Knowing this, Ed Davey led a contrived walkout of Lib Dem MPs, nominally in protest that actually there should be a referendum on British EU membership per se (yes, really). It didn't need the coalition to be in power - it was one of the rare occasions where oppositiom could have forced a position.
Davey wasn't LibDem Leader then; he was quite a way away from it as I recall (Kennedy, Clegg, Farron, Swinson wee in front of him IIRC. ) Would he really have had that amount of power back then?
Yes, it was his brief and he led the walkout. I'm surprised this isn't better recalled.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
Its down 82% from peak to trough, however it is at a comparable level to many years in the past and higher than it was in 2008 for instance.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
I think you have your figures wrong. The latest net immigration figures are lower than they were in 2008. You have to go back further than that.
The UK public were voting for New Labour and a looser immigration policy for many years. Mortimer was talking about what the people voted for. I don’t think the majority were voting for lower immigration before 2010.
Not sure what data you have but the data I looked at was 171,000 year to Dec 2025, the most recent data. 161,000 in 2008 is lower than that.
However if you want to discuss what people voted for then Boris gave no such pledge but Cameron and May both said "tens of thousands". Tens of thousands is the range 10,000 < x < 100,000
171,000 is not in that range. In fact it is 17x the lower bound of that range, more than 3.4x the middle of the range and 71% higher than the upper bound.
So your smug "people have been given what they asked for" does not match reality.
OT - I wouldn't ignore polls. I just wouldn't think they predict anything.
I think the last 20 years have left people pretty cynical about these things. Just being 'a new face' doesn't hack it - you have to produce the goods nowadays. The main basic advantage Burnham has over Starmer is the fact (currently) he is far more likely to get tactical support from Greens, Liberals and Conservatives (yes Conservatives!) against Farage and of the first two and RefUKers (yes RefUKers!) against Badenoch.
"The far-Right plot that never was: Twelve were arrested after 'threat' against 15,000-strong Islamic festival. Days later, all terror charges were dropped. Now, Sue Reid explores what happened... and link to Ann Widdecombe's murder"
That is a group calling itself "British Security Project", flying drones filming an Islamic festival, a newish right-wing extremist group.
One of the 12 people arrested after the drone-flying exercise was sentenced to 6 months in prison, suspended for 2 years, for having weapons (stun gun whatever that is, extendable baton) in his van, and another baton at his home, after a guilty plea.
I have no problem whatsoever with this police action to protect law abiding citizens from this threat, regardless of my skepticism for the Muslim group running the festival (the Keswick Conference is probably a decent comparison).
I'd say the the Mail in this piece is attempting to minimise what happened: Hurrah for the Blackshirts.
A stun gun would be some kind of taser like device. Probably the kind that is directly pushed into the target, rather than firing darts on wires.
Caught the start of Newsnight ,and Nick sodding Clegg is lecturing others about sanctimony.
He's been popping up a bit recently.
Tell me he's not planning a return to frontline politics some way or other?
His coalition was one if the best periods of government in recent decades. Maybe I am in a minority of one, but I think he put the country ahead of his party and himself and should be given credit for that. I would give him a knighthood.
It's a view. It's also a view that his refusing to discuss our membership of the EU during the Coalition resulted in Brexit.
If Clegg and Cameron had gone into the rose garden early in the Colition and called a Referendum - recommendeding staying in - it would have been won c.60:40.
Thank you, Nick Clegg.
Alexa, explain "gaslighting" to me.
To be fair, Clegg had called for an In/Out referendum on the EU. It was his 'reasoning' for abstaining on the Lisbon referendum when his party's manifesto had committed them to supporting one.
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine a world where we'd had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We could have arrived at a world where there was a happy consensus on Europe - this far but no further. The great missed opportunity of British politics. All because the Lib Dems could not let a manifesto promise or a vague commitment to democracy outweigh their knee-jerk desire for all things Europe.
I don't disagree, in principle, but the Lisbon treaty was already ratified by 2010. How would that have worked ?
When Brown was PM, their was a vote on parliament: the government position was that Lisbon should br ratified, the Tory amendment was, I think, that there should be a referendum. There were enough Labour Eurosceptics that Lib Dems going with their stated policy position of 'there should be a referendum' would have resulted in a referendum. Knowing this, Ed Davey led a contrived walkout of Lib Dem MPs, nominally in protest that actually there should be a referendum on British EU membership per se (yes, really). It didn't need the coalition to be in power - it was one of the rare occasions where oppositiom could have forced a position.
Davey wasn't LibDem Leader then; he was quite a way away from it as I recall (Kennedy, Clegg, Farron, Swinson wee in front of him IIRC. ) Would he really have had that amount of power back then?
Yes, it was his brief and he led the walkout. I'm surprised this isn't better recalled.
A quick exchange with Chatgpt on the subject:
Hi Chatgpt - around the time of the Lisbon treaty, when it was being debated in the UK parliament, I seem to remember Ed Davey leading a walkout of Lib Dem MPs. Is there a clip of this anywhere online?
Yes — I think you're remembering the incident on 26 February 2008, during the Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty Bill.
What happened was:
The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment calling for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU, rather than just on the Lisbon Treaty itself.
The Speaker decided not to select that amendment for debate.
Ed Davey, then the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, repeatedly challenged the ruling on points of order, calling it "an outrage".
Deputy Speaker Sir Michael Lord eventually named and ejected Davey from the Chamber.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem MPs then walked out in protest.
As for video: there almost certainly was a live BBC Parliament feed, but it's surprisingly difficult to find online today.
The best leads are:
The official Hansard transcript of the exchange, which confirms the sequence of events and Davey's expulsion.
Contemporary news reports from The Guardian and Politics.co.uk, both of which describe the walkout.
A Lib Dem Voice post from the day reporting that Davey had been thrown out and that the parliamentary party had walked out.
Is there actually a clip? I couldn't find an easily accessible YouTube or Parliament-hosted video of the incident itself.
If it still exists publicly, it's most likely to be:
in the BBC Parliament archive (though much of the 2008 output isn't indexed online),
in a news package from BBC News or Sky News from 26 February 2008,
or in an archived TV recording uploaded years ago under a less obvious title.
The search results today don't surface a working video of the actual ejection or walkout.
If you're interested, I can also help dig into TV archive sources (including the BBC Genome and Internet Archive) to see whether a surviving recording of that specific Commons exchange is available somewhere obscure.
OT - I wouldn't ignore polls. I just wouldn't think they predict anything.
I think the last 20 years have left people pretty cynical about these things. Just being 'a new face' doesn't hack it - you have to produce the goods nowadays. The main basic advantage Burnham has over Starmer is the fact (currently) he is far more likely to get tactical support from Greens, Liberals and Conservatives (yes Conservatives!) against Farage and of the first two and RefUKers (yes RefUKers!) against Badenoch.
LDs and Greens maybe but most Reformers would vote for Kemi over Burnham and most Conservative voters will still vote Tory even if the Conservative candidate is unlikely to win
"The far-Right plot that never was: Twelve were arrested after 'threat' against 15,000-strong Islamic festival. Days later, all terror charges were dropped. Now, Sue Reid explores what happened... and link to Ann Widdecombe's murder"
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Unfortunately, the terms of debate have changed. Zero immigration won't satisfy the ideologues of Reform and, to an even greater extent, Restore. They are now demanding a reversal - that 'unsuitable' immigrants who are already here should be deported. It makes the whole immigration conversation even more toxic.
Indeed! But I don't doubt that they are sincere in wanting that.
"The far-Right plot that never was: Twelve were arrested after 'threat' against 15,000-strong Islamic festival. Days later, all terror charges were dropped. Now, Sue Reid explores what happened... and link to Ann Widdecombe's murder"
That is a group calling itself "British Security Project", flying drones filming an Islamic festival, a newish right-wing extremist group.
One of the 12 people arrested after the drone-flying exercise was sentenced to 6 months in prison, suspended for 2 years, for having weapons (stun gun whatever that is, extendable baton) in his van, and another baton at his home, after a guilty plea.
I have no problem whatsoever with this police action to protect law abiding citizens from this threat, regardless of my skepticism for the Muslim group running the festival (the Keswick Conference is probably a decent comparison).
I'd say the the Mail in this piece is attempting to minimise what happened: Hurrah for the Blackshirts.
A stun gun would be some kind of taser like device. Probably the kind that is directly pushed into the target, rather than firing darts on wires.
They are illegal in the UK.
As are extendible batons, even inside your own home.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
If it removes the need to sell your home to pay for social care costs and instead just replaces it with a 10% levy on estates that would benefit most estates. Ironically especially in London and the South
Read what I wrote again. Look at the costs which aren't covered.
This is a hidden death tax with no tangible benefit. The Tories can have that one for free.
As I added, covering nursing care costs alone would not be enough for most voters to feel a 10% social care levy on estates was worth it. It would need residential accommodation costs too
Is it me or does the name Bryson DeChambeau sound like a fictional villain?
The type who would cheat at cards and golf.
Trampling that long grass down behind his ball - he's been playing too much with his mate Donald.
It took a lack of self awareness verging on the comatose to think that trying to get the world’s most famous living golf cheat involved in The Open imbroglio was the right way to go.
Shocking attitude. The galleries went very easy on him, I thought. Thank god he faded on Sunday.
Great renewal this year. I really enjoyed the winner and how he did it. Never seen a pro play so quickly.
It's good for the romance of the Open to occasionally have a long shot winner for whom the stars just that one time align.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
They have not.
This is simply a slight of hand of yours to try to maximise the rate of immigration to what you feel might be politically sustainable.
Is immigration lower?
Total net migration was 171,000 in 2025. That is lower than every year since 2001, a quarter of a century ago, except for, I think, 2012 (it's complicated because they were changing how the figure was calculated, so it depends which figure you use, but it was ballpark the same) and when we were largely in COVID-19 lockdown (2020/1).
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
Which was my point - the only thing we should be doing with foreign criminals is getting them permanently out of the country as quickly as possible and the making sure they can't return.
Oh and that should apply to those with family ties, yes we would be punishing the family but the fact you commit crimes and your family have to leave to continue living with you is hopefully a deterrent to stop others committing crimes in the future.
"The far-Right plot that never was: Twelve were arrested after 'threat' against 15,000-strong Islamic festival. Days later, all terror charges were dropped. Now, Sue Reid explores what happened... and link to Ann Widdecombe's murder"
That is a group calling itself "British Security Project", flying drones filming an Islamic festival, a newish right-wing extremist group.
One of the 12 people arrested after the drone-flying exercise was sentenced to 6 months in prison, suspended for 2 years, for having weapons (stun gun whatever that is, extendable baton) in his van, and another baton at his home, after a guilty plea.
I have no problem whatsoever with this police action to protect law abiding citizens from this threat, regardless of my skepticism for the Muslim group running the festival (the Keswick Conference is probably a decent comparison).
I'd say the the Mail in this piece is attempting to minimise what happened: Hurrah for the Blackshirts.
A stun gun would be some kind of taser like device. Probably the kind that is directly pushed into the target, rather than firing darts on wires.
They are illegal in the UK.
If they are designed to look like something else, and most of them look like torches and have a light on them, then they become a disguised stun gun, possession of which carries a minimum sentence of 5 years because they are classed as a firearm. It is a ridiculously disproportionate sentence for something most of the accused have bought on holiday (where they were legal) without any understanding of the consequences. Don't be stupid enough to possess one under any circumstances.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
If it removes the need to sell your home to pay for social care costs and instead just replaces it with a 10% levy on estates that would benefit most estates. Ironically especially in London and the South
Read what I wrote again. Look at the costs which aren't covered.
This is a hidden death tax with no tangible benefit. The Tories can have that one for free.
Death tax - that is original.
Haven't heard that since the last time a levy on estates to fund social care was mooted.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
Which was my point - the only thing we should be doing with foreign criminals is getting them permanently out of the country as quickly as possible and the making sure they can't return.
Oh and that should apply to those with family ties, yes we would be punishing the family but the fact you commit crimes and your family have to leave to continue living with you is hopefully a deterrent to stop others committing crimes in the future.
I wasn't arguing with you, I believe I was reinforcing your point.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
If it removes the need to sell your home to pay for social care costs and instead just replaces it with a 10% levy on estates that would benefit most estates. Ironically especially in London and the South
Read what I wrote again. Look at the costs which aren't covered.
This is a hidden death tax with no tangible benefit. The Tories can have that one for free.
As I added, covering nursing care costs alone would not be enough for most voters to feel a 10% social care levy on estates was worth it. It would need residential accommodation costs too
This all feels like something straightforward to dodge in the same way IHT is. Mandatory private insurance seems like obvious solution here, with the provision of the State Pension conditional on it.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
Its down 82% from peak to trough, however it is at a comparable level to many years in the past and higher than it was in 2008 for instance.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
I think you have your figures wrong. The latest net immigration figures are lower than they were in 2008. You have to go back further than that.
The UK public were voting for New Labour and a looser immigration policy for many years. Mortimer was talking about what the people voted for. I don’t think the majority were voting for lower immigration before 2010.
Not sure what data you have but the data I looked at was 171,000 year to Dec 2025, the most recent data. 161,000 in 2008 is lower than that.
However if you want to discuss what people voted for then Boris gave no such pledge but Cameron and May both said "tens of thousands". Tens of thousands is the range 10,000 < x < 100,000
171,000 is not in that range. In fact it is 17x the lower bound of that range, more than 3.4x the middle of the range and 71% higher than the upper bound.
So your smug "people have been given what they asked for" does not match reality.
Mortimer said, "The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades." I pointed out that the public have been given lower immigration. If Mortimer had said, "The public have consistently voted for immigration in the tens of thousands," I would not have replied or replied differently. I was just responding to the words that were written.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Unfortunately, the terms of debate have changed. Zero immigration won't satisfy the ideologues of Reform and, to an even greater extent, Restore. They are now demanding a reversal - that 'unsuitable' immigrants who are already here should be deported. It makes the whole immigration conversation even more toxic.
Hmmm. Correct me if I am wrong.
"Asylum and Immigration" as the "most important issue" has been ticking down for nearly the last year. AFAICS for Yougov it is down from 59% to 46% over the last 9-10 months.
That suggests to me that we may be headed for a wider range of "most important issues" debate before long, if the trends persist.
It is surely not about satisfying the ideologues of Reform and Restore; they will persist - just as we can trace some of the current noisier voices back to the BNP or even the NF or the British Movement.
The name of the game for detoxifying this debate is first to make it smaller, and to marginalise it by making it less important in practice.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
They've served x time in prison and will never return to the UK - I suspect most victims would appreciate that latter bit as much as the first bit (and probably more)..
One assumes Ed has been placed there to appease the left. He probably wasn't Burnham's top choice for the job.
He's been appointed foreign secretary so he's got no say over domestic policy. It's also akin to N Ireland at the moment with Trump in the White House, trying to play nice while being belittled and mocked.
Do we have any suggestions for the pet moronic tax policies that the Treasury will get Healey to implement? I'm thinking pasty and caravan tax level, stuff that costs more than it could ever raise.
VED on ebikes or income tax on feed-in-tariff credits.
It’ll be a push on “fairness” based on harmonising things like income tax and CGT. He’ll balance it out with things like a basic rate cut.
Merge NIC and Income Tax and a basic rate cut would absolutely be affordable.
I'll call it for:
1 - The zero tax income band being synchronised with basic pension. 2 - The 100k cliff edge being sorted (this may be me hopecasting). 3 - Something modest being done on triple lock. 4 - Some tweaks around savings or income for wealthy people. 5 - Something on Council Tax. I'm speculating to myself about a rapid full revaluation, followed by a Proportional Property Tax to build on it by 2030.
Success for me will be 2/5 correct. Very success will be 3/5 right.
1) would be a very stupid idea - a quad lock would create big problems down the line (the tax allowance is probably too high and there are better ways to get money to people who are working) 2) just up the rate to 4x% for everything £100k +. 3) as I said shift it to looking back over 3 years and the problem with inflation 1 year and lagging wages the next disappears 4) going to happen 5) long term it needs to be fix but you aren't getting a ful revaluation in a hurry - the appeals would be a nightmare.
On the first point, the reason for synchronising the state pension with the income tax personal allowance is that if you don't then millions of pensioners will have to pay tax on it for the first time, from which one of two things follows. Either DWP will need to pay pensions on a PAYE-like basis, or HMRC will have to process millions more self-assessments, often from financially unsophisticated people who can barely operate a toaster let alone a website. Obviously the government can do either but it will take some work; it can't be introduced overnight. The first will also mean the pension headline amount is the after-tax figure.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
Justice is served by the criminals being deported, never to return. If I had been the victim of violent crime, I would far rather the perptrator be deported back to where they came from than serve a British sentence in a British gaol. I think there are few who would differ.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
I suspect that part of the answer is that "net immigration less than 100k" wasn't quite what the public wanted. It was probably public-will adjacent, but also not exactly the issue.
If you actually want to solve problems, it's vital to probe for long enough to identify what the problem actually is. In this case, I don't know if it's about access to public services, or neighbourhoods changing.
The public want many things, often contradictory things. I was simply starting with Mortimer’s comment: the public wanted lower immigration. Well, they’ve got much lower immigration, so Mortimer should be celebrating, I presume?
Is that really want the public wanted? Sure, that’s a harder question. Many of the areas that were most Brexity, that vote Reform and are most concerned about immigration have very low immigration locally, so I don’t think it’s really about neighbourhoods changing or access to public services.
You have real trouble in accepting that people are sincere in wanting low immigration.
I do not doubt their sincerity at all. Many people clearly sincerely want lower and/or low immigration. Those who want lower immigration have been given it.
Unfortunately, the terms of debate have changed. Zero immigration won't satisfy the ideologues of Reform and, to an even greater extent, Restore. They are now demanding a reversal - that 'unsuitable' immigrants who are already here should be deported. It makes the whole immigration conversation even more toxic.
Indeed! But I don't doubt that they are sincere in wanting that.
People's sincere view that there are too many immigrants in the country is not particularly correlated to how many immigrants live in their area. That's either heartening or disheartening depending how you look at it.
..That said Andy Burnham currently has much better political antennae and communication skills than Gordon Brown.
I know but then again 29% at the next general election could lead to a Labour landslide.
If Badenoch went full frontal One Nation Tory, dispensed with all the Reform racism- based rubbish, disposed of all the old- guard scumbags like Michael Green and called the party the New Conservatives she would be on 45%.
No she wouldn’t as half of those type of voters now vote LD. The Conservatives need to be neither LD2 nor Reform2
Become One Nation Tories and all your LDs come back home.
The Tories are already dabbling in Reform 2 narratives.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
Its down 82% from peak to trough, however it is at a comparable level to many years in the past and higher than it was in 2008 for instance.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
I think you have your figures wrong. The latest net immigration figures are lower than they were in 2008. You have to go back further than that.
The UK public were voting for New Labour and a looser immigration policy for many years. Mortimer was talking about what the people voted for. I don’t think the majority were voting for lower immigration before 2010.
Not sure what data you have but the data I looked at was 171,000 year to Dec 2025, the most recent data. 161,000 in 2008 is lower than that.
However if you want to discuss what people voted for then Boris gave no such pledge but Cameron and May both said "tens of thousands". Tens of thousands is the range 10,000 < x < 100,000
171,000 is not in that range. In fact it is 17x the lower bound of that range, more than 3.4x the middle of the range and 71% higher than the upper bound.
So your smug "people have been given what they asked for" does not match reality.
Mortimer said, "The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades." I pointed out that the public have been given lower immigration. If Mortimer had said, "The public have consistently voted for immigration in the tens of thousands," I would not have replied or replied differently. I was just responding to the words that were written.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
So you accept that it has not been lowered to what people voted for (which under Cameron and May at least was an explicit, defined interval) but you still insist it has been accomplished anyway and wonder why those who voted that way aren't satisfied?
I suspect voters care about what they mean, and not what you are trying to twist it into.
..That said Andy Burnham currently has much better political antennae and communication skills than Gordon Brown.
I know but then again 29% at the next general election could lead to a Labour landslide.
If Badenoch went full frontal One Nation Tory, dispensed with all the Reform racism- based rubbish, disposed of all the old- guard scumbags like Michael Green and called the party the New Conservatives she would be on 45%.
No she wouldn’t as half of those type of voters now vote LD. The Conservatives need to be neither LD2 nor Reform2
Become One Nation Tories and all your LDs come back home.
The Tories are already dabbling in Reform 2 narratives.
But they then lose as many in the other direction to Reform.
Caught the start of Newsnight ,and Nick sodding Clegg is lecturing others about sanctimony.
He's been popping up a bit recently.
Tell me he's not planning a return to frontline politics some way or other?
His coalition was one if the best periods of government in recent decades. Maybe I am in a minority of one, but I think he put the country ahead of his party and himself and should be given credit for that. I would give him a knighthood.
It's a view. It's also a view that his refusing to discuss our membership of the EU during the Coalition resulted in Brexit.
If Clegg and Cameron had gone into the rose garden early in the Colition and called a Referendum - recommendeding staying in - it would have been won c.60:40.
Thank you, Nick Clegg.
Alexa, explain "gaslighting" to me.
To be fair, Clegg had called for an In/Out referendum on the EU. It was his 'reasoning' for abstaining on the Lisbon referendum when his party's manifesto had committed them to supporting one.
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine a world where we'd had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We could have arrived at a world where there was a happy consensus on Europe - this far but no further. The great missed opportunity of British politics. All because the Lib Dems could not let a manifesto promise or a vague commitment to democracy outweigh their knee-jerk desire for all things Europe.
I don't disagree, in principle, but the Lisbon treaty was already ratified by 2010. How would that have worked ?
When Brown was PM, their was a vote on parliament: the government position was that Lisbon should br ratified, the Tory amendment was, I think, that there should be a referendum. There were enough Labour Eurosceptics that Lib Dems going with their stated policy position of 'there should be a referendum' would have resulted in a referendum. Knowing this, Ed Davey led a contrived walkout of Lib Dem MPs, nominally in protest that actually there should be a referendum on British EU membership per se (yes, really). It didn't need the coalition to be in power - it was one of the rare occasions where oppositiom could have forced a position.
Davey wasn't LibDem Leader then; he was quite a way away from it as I recall (Kennedy, Clegg, Farron, Swinson wee in front of him IIRC. ) Would he really have had that amount of power back then?
Yes, it was his brief and he led the walkout. I'm surprised this isn't better recalled.
A quick exchange with Chatgpt on the subject:
Hi Chatgpt - around the time of the Lisbon treaty, when it was being debated in the UK parliament, I seem to remember Ed Davey leading a walkout of Lib Dem MPs. Is there a clip of this anywhere online?
Yes — I think you're remembering the incident on 26 February 2008, during the Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty Bill.
What happened was:
The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment calling for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU, rather than just on the Lisbon Treaty itself.
The Speaker decided not to select that amendment for debate.
Ed Davey, then the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, repeatedly challenged the ruling on points of order, calling it "an outrage".
Deputy Speaker Sir Michael Lord eventually named and ejected Davey from the Chamber.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem MPs then walked out in protest.
As for video: there almost certainly was a live BBC Parliament feed, but it's surprisingly difficult to find online today.
The best leads are:
The official Hansard transcript of the exchange, which confirms the sequence of events and Davey's expulsion.
Contemporary news reports from The Guardian and Politics.co.uk, both of which describe the walkout.
A Lib Dem Voice post from the day reporting that Davey had been thrown out and that the parliamentary party had walked out.
Is there actually a clip? I couldn't find an easily accessible YouTube or Parliament-hosted video of the incident itself.
If it still exists publicly, it's most likely to be:
in the BBC Parliament archive (though much of the 2008 output isn't indexed online),
in a news package from BBC News or Sky News from 26 February 2008,
or in an archived TV recording uploaded years ago under a less obvious title.
The search results today don't surface a working video of the actual ejection or walkout.
If you're interested, I can also help dig into TV archive sources (including the BBC Genome and Internet Archive) to see whether a surviving recording of that specific Commons exchange is available somewhere obscure.
Sounds as though both the Tories and LibDems missed a genuine opportunity to get what they wanted (despite having different aims) by failing to consult ahead of time and agree on a line.
100% hindsight, of course, but if they knew back then what would ensue, both leaders would almost certainly have coordinated.
One assumes Ed has been placed there to appease the left. He probably wasn't Burnham's top choice for the job.
He's been appointed foreign secretary so he's got no say over domestic policy. It's also akin to N Ireland at the moment with Trump in the White House, trying to play nice while being belittled and mocked.
Do we have any suggestions for the pet moronic tax policies that the Treasury will get Healey to implement? I'm thinking pasty and caravan tax level, stuff that costs more than it could ever raise.
VED on ebikes or income tax on feed-in-tariff credits.
It’ll be a push on “fairness” based on harmonising things like income tax and CGT. He’ll balance it out with things like a basic rate cut.
Merge NIC and Income Tax and a basic rate cut would absolutely be affordable.
I'll call it for:
1 - The zero tax income band being synchronised with basic pension. 2 - The 100k cliff edge being sorted (this may be me hopecasting). 3 - Something modest being done on triple lock. 4 - Some tweaks around savings or income for wealthy people. 5 - Something on Council Tax. I'm speculating to myself about a rapid full revaluation, followed by a Proportional Property Tax to build on it by 2030.
Success for me will be 2/5 correct. Very success will be 3/5 right.
1) would be a very stupid idea - a quad lock would create big problems down the line (the tax allowance is probably too high and there are better ways to get money to people who are working) 2) just up the rate to 4x% for everything £100k +. 3) as I said shift it to looking back over 3 years and the problem with inflation 1 year and lagging wages the next disappears 4) going to happen 5) long term it needs to be fix but you aren't getting a ful revaluation in a hurry - the appeals would be a nightmare.
Thank-you. So I will have to wait a bit longer to judge.
There have been hints around (1), in that "no one on state pension only will pay income tax", and I have to notice anything specific of the others yet.
I am not hugely optimistic. I fear he is going to be facile and weak, reluctant to take hard decisions (eg prisoner release from overcrowded jails) and jumping from one band waggon to the next. But I very much hope that I am wrong and that we get at least some of the leadership we need.
His obsession with Manchester and thinking that is the NORTH will be his undoing. Tesco cannot be run like a cornershop.
It's fun how desperately quite a lot of very online Scottish Nationalists really want to be part of the United Kingdom when they're defining where is and isn't "The North". https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2080996738085617920
I am not hugely optimistic. I fear he is going to be facile and weak, reluctant to take hard decisions (eg prisoner release from overcrowded jails) and jumping from one band waggon to the next. But I very much hope that I am wrong and that we get at least some of the leadership we need.
His obsession with Manchester and thinking that is the NORTH will be his undoing. Tesco cannot be run like a cornershop.
It's fun how desperately quite a lot of very online Scottish Nationalists really want to be part of the United Kingdom when they're defining where is and isn't "The North". https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2080996738085617920
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
Justice is served by the criminals being deported, never to return. If I had been the victim of violent crime, I would far rather the perptrator be deported back to where they came from than serve a British sentence in a British gaol. I think there are few who would differ.
I think there will be lots of cases where people want to see perpetrator in prison. Remember the Lockerbie bombing? People were furious when the guy got deported rather than staying in prison. The American woman who killed Harry Dunn?
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
Justice is served by the criminals being deported, never to return. If I had been the victim of violent crime, I would far rather the perptrator be deported back to where they came from than serve a British sentence in a British gaol. I think there are few who would differ.
I think there will be lots of cases where people want to see perpetrator in prison. Remember the Lockerbie bombing? People were furious when the guy got deported rather than staying in prison. The American woman who killed Harry Dunn?
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
They've served x time in prison and will never return to the UK - I suspect most victims would appreciate that latter bit as much as the first bit (and probably more)..
@Luckyguy1983 appears to be saying (and correct me if I'm wrong) that we should just deport them straight away without spending an initial period in a UK prison.
Caught the start of Newsnight ,and Nick sodding Clegg is lecturing others about sanctimony.
He's been popping up a bit recently.
Tell me he's not planning a return to frontline politics some way or other?
His coalition was one if the best periods of government in recent decades. Maybe I am in a minority of one, but I think he put the country ahead of his party and himself and should be given credit for that. I would give him a knighthood.
It's a view. It's also a view that his refusing to discuss our membership of the EU during the Coalition resulted in Brexit.
If Clegg and Cameron had gone into the rose garden early in the Colition and called a Referendum - recommendeding staying in - it would have been won c.60:40.
Thank you, Nick Clegg.
Alexa, explain "gaslighting" to me.
To be fair, Clegg had called for an In/Out referendum on the EU. It was his 'reasoning' for abstaining on the Lisbon referendum when his party's manifesto had committed them to supporting one.
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine a world where we'd had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We could have arrived at a world where there was a happy consensus on Europe - this far but no further. The great missed opportunity of British politics. All because the Lib Dems could not let a manifesto promise or a vague commitment to democracy outweigh their knee-jerk desire for all things Europe.
I don't disagree, in principle, but the Lisbon treaty was already ratified by 2010. How would that have worked ?
When Brown was PM, their was a vote on parliament: the government position was that Lisbon should br ratified, the Tory amendment was, I think, that there should be a referendum. There were enough Labour Eurosceptics that Lib Dems going with their stated policy position of 'there should be a referendum' would have resulted in a referendum. Knowing this, Ed Davey led a contrived walkout of Lib Dem MPs, nominally in protest that actually there should be a referendum on British EU membership per se (yes, really). It didn't need the coalition to be in power - it was one of the rare occasions where oppositiom could have forced a position.
Davey wasn't LibDem Leader then; he was quite a way away from it as I recall (Kennedy, Clegg, Farron, Swinson wee in front of him IIRC. ) Would he really have had that amount of power back then?
Yes, it was his brief and he led the walkout. I'm surprised this isn't better recalled.
A quick exchange with Chatgpt on the subject:
Hi Chatgpt - around the time of the Lisbon treaty, when it was being debated in the UK parliament, I seem to remember Ed Davey leading a walkout of Lib Dem MPs. Is there a clip of this anywhere online?
Yes — I think you're remembering the incident on 26 February 2008, during the Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty Bill.
What happened was:
The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment calling for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU, rather than just on the Lisbon Treaty itself.
The Speaker decided not to select that amendment for debate.
Ed Davey, then the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, repeatedly challenged the ruling on points of order, calling it "an outrage".
Deputy Speaker Sir Michael Lord eventually named and ejected Davey from the Chamber.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem MPs then walked out in protest.
As for video: there almost certainly was a live BBC Parliament feed, but it's surprisingly difficult to find online today.
The best leads are:
The official Hansard transcript of the exchange, which confirms the sequence of events and Davey's expulsion.
Contemporary news reports from The Guardian and Politics.co.uk, both of which describe the walkout.
A Lib Dem Voice post from the day reporting that Davey had been thrown out and that the parliamentary party had walked out.
Is there actually a clip? I couldn't find an easily accessible YouTube or Parliament-hosted video of the incident itself.
If it still exists publicly, it's most likely to be:
in the BBC Parliament archive (though much of the 2008 output isn't indexed online),
in a news package from BBC News or Sky News from 26 February 2008,
or in an archived TV recording uploaded years ago under a less obvious title.
The search results today don't surface a working video of the actual ejection or walkout.
If you're interested, I can also help dig into TV archive sources (including the BBC Genome and Internet Archive) to see whether a surviving recording of that specific Commons exchange is available somewhere obscure.
Hansard or parliament.tv would be starting points for the Commons clip.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
What? What “transitory sample”? These are not words I have used.
Lucky hasn't worked out what happens to domestic prisoners at the end of their sentences, apparently.
If what Bondygoo is saying is that they are being deported, but only when they've served their full sentence (minus reductions) in the UK, that is the logic fail. The whole idea of deporting them in the context of this discussion is that we reduce the prison population and stop paying the equivalent of Eton fees to house them.
I never said we only deport them after they’ve served their full sentence. Please read what I’ve written. There are various schemes whereby some are deported partway through their sentence when we can be confident they are going to a country that will appropriately imprison them for the remainder of their sentence.
We could deport many foreign offenders sooner, but the downside of that is that they might get out of prison earlier. Do you think it’s acceptable that someone should get away with a lesser sentence because they are not a UK national? That really would be two-tier justice.
In my limited experience of this area a further problem with transferring foreign prisoners is what happens to them when they are released. A lot of sex offenders, for example, are subject to extended sentences where they are very carefully monitored on release and restricted in what jobs they can apply for, have notification requirements and restrictions on internet usage. Some countries don't seem to have anything similar with the result that the sentence cannot be properly served in the country they might potentially be deported to. The result is that they are subject to supervision in this country.
I am not entirely sure that most Judges get that these kinds of conditions, which are entirely appropriate for UK prisoners, might result in a continuing risk to the UK population on release.
We can't rehabilitate people we don't want in our country otherwise we end up with the weird logic where robbery gets you sent back home but rape allows you to stay in the UK.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
Foreign nationals are not for us to reform or rehabilitate. Any justification for their continued presence is removed by them comitting a severe crime. Their liberty to continue their criminal career in their country of origin isn't our problem either - it is entirely their choice whether they set the person free or continue their detention.
So, justice for British victims means nothing to you?
Justice is served by the criminals being deported, never to return. If I had been the victim of violent crime, I would far rather the perptrator be deported back to where they came from than serve a British sentence in a British gaol. I think there are few who would differ.
Let's consider a more detailed scenario. Someone comes over from Algeria and viciously assaults you. Would you rather, if these were the only choices...
a) They serve 20 years in a British gaol and are then deported to Algeria; or
b) They are immediately deported to Algeria, but serve no time or other punishment there.
I think most people would rather (a), but I've not seen polling on the matter.
Prisons are an expensive way of making bad people worse
No prisons would be an even more expensive way of making good people much worse.
I really worry about the ways things seem to be pointing. We can't deport violent foreign criminals; we haven't enough space to imprison all those who should be imprisoned; violent criminals are being let out too early; the push for medically-assisted suicide is being brought back to parliament. I really do worry that all these things will come together and we'll end up with the death penalty again. It isn't unthinkable because Rupert Lowe is already saying it. Proclaiming it, even.
We deport thousands of foreign criminals every year, and the latest figures were up 36%. Don't believe what you read in the papers about occasional exceptions.
I realise you've appointed yourself the chief rebutter of anti-PB morale, but calling 10,772 people, 12% of the prison population, 'occasional exceptions' is ludicrous even for you.
We have a system where foreign offenders are initially imprisoned in the UK, to ensure justice is done, before then being deported. The system is working as planned. Or do you think that foreign offenders shouldn’t do prison time?
If you're saying that the 12% of the prison population comprising foreign nationals is just a transitory sample of the actual total of those sentenced, what actual percentage of those given a custodial sentence are you saying are foreign nationals? 24%? 48%?
As was discussed on here earlier in the week, it should be relatively straightforward to arrange for most foreigners to be deported to their country of origin to serve the majority of their sentences.
The stick being tourist visas and aid payments. Start with the countries with most prisoners in the UK, and work down the list.
Its ok though - because the centristdadsofpb seem to think the current situation is absolutely fine.....
If it were that easy, don't you think one of the half dozen previous Tory PMs would have had a crack at it ? Or were they deliberately setting up a problem for the next Labour government ?
The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades. Politicians have ignored them. Is there any wonder the faith in the system is so low?
Politicians had ignored them. (Specifically, the Conservative Party politicians who were in power.) Politicians now aren’t ignoring them. Immigration is massively lower. UK net immigration has fallen 82% compared to its peak.
There are few things that the public want that have been so comprehensively delivered! Imagine if we could get a 82% fall in NHS waiting lists, or in robbery rates, or in the welfare bill.
Its down 82% from peak to trough, however it is at a comparable level to many years in the past and higher than it was in 2008 for instance.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
I think you have your figures wrong. The latest net immigration figures are lower than they were in 2008. You have to go back further than that.
The UK public were voting for New Labour and a looser immigration policy for many years. Mortimer was talking about what the people voted for. I don’t think the majority were voting for lower immigration before 2010.
Not sure what data you have but the data I looked at was 171,000 year to Dec 2025, the most recent data. 161,000 in 2008 is lower than that.
However if you want to discuss what people voted for then Boris gave no such pledge but Cameron and May both said "tens of thousands". Tens of thousands is the range 10,000 < x < 100,000
171,000 is not in that range. In fact it is 17x the lower bound of that range, more than 3.4x the middle of the range and 71% higher than the upper bound.
So your smug "people have been given what they asked for" does not match reality.
Mortimer said, "The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades." I pointed out that the public have been given lower immigration. If Mortimer had said, "The public have consistently voted for immigration in the tens of thousands," I would not have replied or replied differently. I was just responding to the words that were written.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
So you accept that it has not been lowered to what people voted for (which under Cameron and May at least was an explicit, defined interval) but you still insist it has been accomplished anyway and wonder why those who voted that way aren't satisfied?
I suspect voters care about what they mean, and not what you are trying to twist it into.
I was responding to Mortimer's comment. I was not responding to some hypothetical comment that was not made.
If some people want immigration to be even lower, then (as I said before) they can at least be pleased that we are moving rapidly in the direction they want, even if we're not there yet.
..That said Andy Burnham currently has much better political antennae and communication skills than Gordon Brown.
I know but then again 29% at the next general election could lead to a Labour landslide.
If Badenoch went full frontal One Nation Tory, dispensed with all the Reform racism- based rubbish, disposed of all the old- guard scumbags like Michael Green and called the party the New Conservatives she would be on 45%.
No she wouldn’t as half of those type of voters now vote LD. The Conservatives need to be neither LD2 nor Reform2
Become One Nation Tories and all your LDs come back home.
The Tories are already dabbling in Reform 2 narratives.
But they then lose as many in the other direction to Reform.
I started to respond to this and then I thought if you can't see swimming in the same excrement as Reform and Restore is sub optimal when there are Labour and LD votes to pick off if you tack to the centre, I am wasting my time.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
However, to argue against myself... * a state which has total control over the care of old people can kill anybody the state doesn't like * the classic problems of nationalised industries (bureaucracy, poor maintenance, poor management, corruption) will eventually overwhelm it
The Conservative options - the Adult Social Care Precept and Boris Johnson's Health and Social Care Levy - may be better given the urgency of the need.
Andy Burnham will unveil plans next week for adult social care in the first major policy speech of his premiership as he pledges to “face it and fix it”
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
However, to argue against myself... * a state which has total control over the care of old people can kill anybody the state doesn't like * the classic problems of nationalised industries (bureaucracy, poor maintenance, poor management, corruption) will eventually overwhelm it
The Conservative options - the Adult Social Care Precept and Boris Johnson's Health and Social Care Levy - may be better given the urgency of the need.
On this point, I can fairly confidently say from my own experience that by far the most significant factor isn't whether care is state or private provision, but whether or not friends and/or relatives of those in care visit them regularly.
Death by neglect (intentional or not) is always a risk for those who cannot advocate for themselves.
Caught the start of Newsnight ,and Nick sodding Clegg is lecturing others about sanctimony.
He's been popping up a bit recently.
Tell me he's not planning a return to frontline politics some way or other?
His coalition was one if the best periods of government in recent decades. Maybe I am in a minority of one, but I think he put the country ahead of his party and himself and should be given credit for that. I would give him a knighthood.
It's a view. It's also a view that his refusing to discuss our membership of the EU during the Coalition resulted in Brexit.
If Clegg and Cameron had gone into the rose garden early in the Colition and called a Referendum - recommendeding staying in - it would have been won c.60:40.
Thank you, Nick Clegg.
Alexa, explain "gaslighting" to me.
To be fair, Clegg had called for an In/Out referendum on the EU. It was his 'reasoning' for abstaining on the Lisbon referendum when his party's manifesto had committed them to supporting one.
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine a world where we'd had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We could have arrived at a world where there was a happy consensus on Europe - this far but no further. The great missed opportunity of British politics. All because the Lib Dems could not let a manifesto promise or a vague commitment to democracy outweigh their knee-jerk desire for all things Europe.
I don't disagree, in principle, but the Lisbon treaty was already ratified by 2010. How would that have worked ?
When Brown was PM, their was a vote on parliament: the government position was that Lisbon should br ratified, the Tory amendment was, I think, that there should be a referendum. There were enough Labour Eurosceptics that Lib Dems going with their stated policy position of 'there should be a referendum' would have resulted in a referendum. Knowing this, Ed Davey led a contrived walkout of Lib Dem MPs, nominally in protest that actually there should be a referendum on British EU membership per se (yes, really). It didn't need the coalition to be in power - it was one of the rare occasions where oppositiom could have forced a position.
Davey wasn't LibDem Leader then; he was quite a way away from it as I recall (Kennedy, Clegg, Farron, Swinson wee in front of him IIRC. ) Would he really have had that amount of power back then?
Yes, it was his brief and he led the walkout. I'm surprised this isn't better recalled.
A quick exchange with Chatgpt on the subject:
Hi Chatgpt - around the time of the Lisbon treaty, when it was being debated in the UK parliament, I seem to remember Ed Davey leading a walkout of Lib Dem MPs. Is there a clip of this anywhere online?
Yes — I think you're remembering the incident on 26 February 2008, during the Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty Bill.
What happened was:
The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment calling for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU, rather than just on the Lisbon Treaty itself.
The Speaker decided not to select that amendment for debate.
Ed Davey, then the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, repeatedly challenged the ruling on points of order, calling it "an outrage".
Deputy Speaker Sir Michael Lord eventually named and ejected Davey from the Chamber.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem MPs then walked out in protest.
As for video: there almost certainly was a live BBC Parliament feed, but it's surprisingly difficult to find online today.
The best leads are:
The official Hansard transcript of the exchange, which confirms the sequence of events and Davey's expulsion.
Contemporary news reports from The Guardian and Politics.co.uk, both of which describe the walkout.
A Lib Dem Voice post from the day reporting that Davey had been thrown out and that the parliamentary party had walked out.
Is there actually a clip? I couldn't find an easily accessible YouTube or Parliament-hosted video of the incident itself.
If it still exists publicly, it's most likely to be:
in the BBC Parliament archive (though much of the 2008 output isn't indexed online),
in a news package from BBC News or Sky News from 26 February 2008,
or in an archived TV recording uploaded years ago under a less obvious title.
The search results today don't surface a working video of the actual ejection or walkout.
If you're interested, I can also help dig into TV archive sources (including the BBC Genome and Internet Archive) to see whether a surviving recording of that specific Commons exchange is available somewhere obscure.
Here's your clip of the Deputy Speaker chucking out Ed Davey:
Comments
Mortimer said the public have voted for lower immigration. They have undoubtedly been given lower immigration. OK, maybe they want even lower immigration, but we’re still going in the right direction for them. You can fiddle around with the baseline, but however you look at it, the number is going down.
The figures for annual convictions of foreign nationals are very close indeed to the proportion of the prison population. As you would expect.
Hence my "logic fail" comment earlier.
Inflation coming down does not lower prices and in fact means they are still going up.
For anyone concerned with this, migration returning to what it was in the past when people were already concerned is not a huge triumph, let alone reverse the effects they were concerned about.
Increasingly, it is obvious that year on year there are more and more people moving to Britain. The voter is more sensible than the politico without nous, who quotes back statistics.
The UK public were voting for New Labour and a looser immigration policy for many years. Mortimer was talking about what the people voted for. I don’t think the majority were voting for lower immigration before 2010.
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Burnham is expected to give a speech setting out his vision in London next week
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2080932513829036145
2) just up the rate to 4x% for everything £100k +.
3) as I said shift it to looking back over 3 years and the problem with inflation 1 year and lagging wages the next disappears
4) going to happen
5) long term it needs to be fix but you aren't getting a ful revaluation in a hurry - the appeals would be a nightmare.
Because if it did, it would do for Labour's reputation for the rest of time. Without 'laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills', most people are not going to notice any difference in care costs.
So its just a death tax for everyone with no benefit.
And while I don't particular want robbers to remain in the UK no-one is going to want rapists staying..
This is simply a slight of hand of yours to try to maximise the rate of immigration to what you feel might be politically sustainable.
This is a hidden death tax with no tangible benefit. The Tories can have that one for free.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/latest
However if you want to discuss what people voted for then Boris gave no such pledge but Cameron and May both said "tens of thousands". Tens of thousands is the range 10,000 < x < 100,000
171,000 is not in that range. In fact it is 17x the lower bound of that range, more than 3.4x the middle of the range and 71% higher than the upper bound.
So your smug "people have been given what they asked for" does not match reality.
I think the last 20 years have left people pretty cynical about these things. Just being 'a new face' doesn't hack it - you have to produce the goods nowadays. The main basic advantage Burnham has over Starmer is the fact (currently) he is far more likely to get tactical support from Greens, Liberals and Conservatives (yes Conservatives!) against Farage and of the first two and RefUKers (yes RefUKers!) against Badenoch.
They are illegal in the UK.
Hi Chatgpt - around the time of the Lisbon treaty, when it was being debated in the UK parliament, I seem to remember Ed Davey leading a walkout of Lib Dem MPs. Is there a clip of this anywhere online?
Yes — I think you're remembering the incident on 26 February 2008, during the Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty Bill.
What happened was:
The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment calling for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU, rather than just on the Lisbon Treaty itself.
The Speaker decided not to select that amendment for debate.
Ed Davey, then the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, repeatedly challenged the ruling on points of order, calling it "an outrage".
Deputy Speaker Sir Michael Lord eventually named and ejected Davey from the Chamber.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem MPs then walked out in protest.
As for video: there almost certainly was a live BBC Parliament feed, but it's surprisingly difficult to find online today.
The best leads are:
The official Hansard transcript of the exchange, which confirms the sequence of events and Davey's expulsion.
Contemporary news reports from The Guardian and Politics.co.uk, both of which describe the walkout.
A Lib Dem Voice post from the day reporting that Davey had been thrown out and that the parliamentary party had walked out.
Is there actually a clip?
I couldn't find an easily accessible YouTube or Parliament-hosted video of the incident itself.
If it still exists publicly, it's most likely to be:
in the BBC Parliament archive (though much of the 2008 output isn't indexed online),
in a news package from BBC News or Sky News from 26 February 2008,
or in an archived TV recording uploaded years ago under a less obvious title.
The search results today don't surface a working video of the actual ejection or walkout.
If you're interested, I can also help dig into TV archive sources (including the BBC Genome and Internet Archive) to see whether a surviving recording of that specific Commons exchange is available somewhere obscure.
Great renewal this year. I really enjoyed the winner and how he did it. Never seen a pro play so quickly.
It's good for the romance of the Open to occasionally have a long shot winner for whom the stars just that one time align.
Total net migration was 171,000 in 2025. That is lower than every year since 2001, a quarter of a century ago, except for, I think, 2012 (it's complicated because they were changing how the figure was calculated, so it depends which figure you use, but it was ballpark the same) and when we were largely in COVID-19 lockdown (2020/1).
Oh and that should apply to those with family ties, yes we would be punishing the family but the fact you commit crimes and your family have to leave to continue living with you is hopefully a deterrent to stop others committing crimes in the future.
Haven't heard that since the last time a levy on estates to fund social care was mooted.
Mortimer said, "The public have consistently voted for lower immigration for several decades." I pointed out that the public have been given lower immigration. If Mortimer had said, "The public have consistently voted for immigration in the tens of thousands," I would not have replied or replied differently. I was just responding to the words that were written.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
"Asylum and Immigration" as the "most important issue" has been ticking down for nearly the last year. AFAICS for Yougov it is down from 59% to 46% over the last 9-10 months.
"Health" has also ticked down.
https://yougov.com/en-gb/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country
That suggests to me that we may be headed for a wider range of "most important issues" debate before long, if the trends persist.
It is surely not about satisfying the ideologues of Reform and Restore; they will persist - just as we can trace some of the current noisier voices back to the BNP or even the NF or the British Movement.
The name of the game for detoxifying this debate is first to make it smaller, and to marginalise it by making it less important in practice.
The Tories are already dabbling in Reform 2 narratives.
I suspect voters care about what they mean, and not what you are trying to twist it into.
100% hindsight, of course, but if they knew back then what would ensue, both leaders would almost certainly have coordinated.
There have been hints around (1), in that "no one on state pension only will pay income tax", and I have to notice anything specific of the others yet.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2080996738085617920
Remember the Lockerbie bombing? People were furious when the guy got deported rather than staying in prison. The American woman who killed Harry Dunn?
Remember the Lockerbie bombing? People were furious when the guy got deported rather than staying in prison. The American woman who killed Harry Dunn?
Hansard has it here, tacked onto the end of a 10-minute small print bill from @NickPalmer by coincidence:-
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2008-02-26/debates/08022642000001/SmallPrint
Parliament.tv has it here (for Nick Palmer)
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/fe4fdade-dfea-4dec-af5a-7d592e2be5b3?in=16:29:25
And here for Ed Davey:-
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/fe4fdade-dfea-4dec-af5a-7d592e2be5b3?in=16:36:47
a) They serve 20 years in a British gaol and are then deported to Algeria; or
b) They are immediately deported to Algeria, but serve no time or other punishment there.
I think most people would rather (a), but I've not seen polling on the matter.
If some people want immigration to be even lower, then (as I said before) they can at least be pleased that we are moving rapidly in the direction they want, even if we're not there yet.
However, to argue against myself...
* a state which has total control over the care of old people can kill anybody the state doesn't like
* the classic problems of nationalised industries (bureaucracy, poor maintenance, poor management, corruption) will eventually overwhelm it
The Conservative options - the Adult Social Care Precept and Boris Johnson's Health and Social Care Levy - may be better given the urgency of the need.
Death by neglect (intentional or not) is always a risk for those who cannot advocate for themselves.
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/fe4fdade-dfea-4dec-af5a-7d592e2be5b3?in=16:45:35
Edit the time parameter to see the before and after (scrubbing is difficult).
Adjacently:
Lib Dem Voice coverage:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/newsflash-lib-dems-walk-out-of-house-of-commons-2233.html
Mike Smithson announcing (no more bets on Lib Dems) the next day !!! :
https://www.libdemvoice.org/smithsons-view-why-i-wont-bet-on-the-lib-dems-any-more-2238.html
Liz Featherstone:
https://lynnefeatherstone.org/2008/02/26/walking-out-of-parliament/
BBC Coverage:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7265516.stm