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One in nine of those younger than 25 on the YouGov panel don’t even know who Tony Blair was – politi

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  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,285
    11% of the 18-24 age group not knowing who TB was I can believe given 7% haven't heard of Jeremy Corbyn either (I'm assuming there were not many that had heard of Blair but not Corbyn).
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811

    Poot Poot!

    Edwinnie the Poots!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,961
    edited May 2021
    FFS, Sky News making a huge thing that 4 people have died with Indian variant. Several 1000 people have had it, ~0.1% mortality rate, equals 4 people completely expected.

    Thats unfortunately the maths of it.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098
    Fishing said:

    isam said:

    ...

    People like Beckett cannot see Priti Patel, Sajid Javid, Trever Phillips etc... as minorities because minorities support their views. It's a really ugly blind spot.


    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1393160472908771332?s=20

    The far left think Thatcher didn’t really count as a female PM too. Ethnic minorities and women need to know their place
    I think what they really can't stand is that she got to the top an stayed there for 11 years on merit, without quotas, female-only shortlists or positive discirmination of any kind.

    And that she had more balls than any of them.
    Overthinking it a bit. It was mainly her politics wot done it. Although there was, no question, some misogyny thrown in. Same with all high profile women. Also medium and low profile ones. Behave like (we think) a woman should or you'll get a roasting. Fact, you might get one anyway.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,810
    kinabalu said:

    Fishing said:

    isam said:

    ...

    People like Beckett cannot see Priti Patel, Sajid Javid, Trever Phillips etc... as minorities because minorities support their views. It's a really ugly blind spot.


    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1393160472908771332?s=20

    The far left think Thatcher didn’t really count as a female PM too. Ethnic minorities and women need to know their place
    I think what they really can't stand is that she got to the top an stayed there for 11 years on merit, without quotas, female-only shortlists or positive discirmination of any kind.

    And that she had more balls than any of them.
    Overthinking it a bit. It was mainly her politics wot done it. Although there was, no question, some misogyny thrown in. Same with all high profile women. Also medium and low profile ones. Behave like (we think) a woman should or you'll get a roasting. Fact, you might get one anyway.
    Er, unfortunate wording, 'roasting' - presumably not intended.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,128
    edited May 2021
    RH1992 said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    As much as I agree that it's heavy handed (if you ask me the Home Office is rotten to the core and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch), why would the European negotiating teams be "taking notes"?

    We're not in the EU and we have our own immigration policy. We're treating them how we would treat non-EU nationals now. We have no obligation to give them special treatment and I object to The Guardian complaining about the plight of white Europeans having to stay a night in detention when people fleeing persecution have been locked up in these places for weeks or months on end unfairly.
    No Britons have been detained offsite from ports or airport in EU detention centres so far, let alone for a week ; that's why the Europeans will be taking notes.

    It does also serve an additional useful purpose of showing the routine treatment for many others from around the world, too, though, as you say, often irrespective of whether they are genuine refugees or not.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,402
    TimS said:

    Only time I ever voted Labour in a GE was in the 1997 landslide. Sadly also the only time I was (unbeknownst to the naive young me) in a Lib Dem-Tory marginal. Since which time I've lived in safe Labour seats and voted Lib Dem.

    There are many of you. Although I never did, I can think of several current Tories (soft and hard) who voted for Blair in 1997 and 2001... @AndyJS @Pulpstar @Big_G_NorthWales @isam @Philip_Thompson .. and although sadly no longer with us @plato (RIP). @Cyclefree feels like a floating voter to me.

    I'll believe Labour are on the cusp of power again when a couple of those start talking warmly about them.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Nigelb said:

    Russia’s oligarchs are now worth more than a third of the country’s GDP - making it the world’s most economically captured major country. One of many striking facts from this excellent @FTLifeArts essay on how Covid made the rich richer
    https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1393111704251379712

    Curious that social democratic Sweden comes out as second on their list.

    It would be much much lower in Sweden if you excluded Marcus & Jacob Wallenberg
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 5,282
    Hmm, I wonder if Bolton will no longer get released on Monday. Depends on the Hospitalisations so far this week, which aren't published yet, but which government should have a feel for. If they're well up (from 11), I would be tempted to put the local release on hold until Tuesday 1/6 whilst surge vaccinating. That's me as a layman saying at the very last minute with the public data, and hopefully the government saw this bus coming earlier in the week.

    But perhaps surge vaccination alone for Blackburn and Long Eaton.

    Or perhaps just go with "recommending" show your vaccine very at the pub door and the unvaccinated don't indoor visit, just in those 2-3 localities.

    And say areas of concern could have their June release delayed into July (towards end of school term).
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,285
    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    Russia’s oligarchs are now worth more than a third of the country’s GDP - making it the world’s most economically captured major country. One of many striking facts from this excellent @FTLifeArts essay on how Covid made the rich richer
    https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1393111704251379712

    Curious that social democratic Sweden comes out as second on their list.

    It would be much much lower in Sweden if you excluded Marcus & Jacob Wallenberg
    I'd assumed it was ABBA...
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,569

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,128
    edited May 2021
    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite from their side to detention centres for a week, so far. They will probably reciprocate.

    In yesterday's story, they were sent to Yarl's Wood, 200 miles away.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,721
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    MaxPB said:

    I had chat this morning with one of our vaccine supply sources/experts. They said the government's second deal with Pfizer is what is allowing us to push ahead with loads of first doses for under 40s becuase the UK now has continuous supply from Pfizer where previously it was expected the 40m order would be fully delivered in the middle of July. Now Pfizer will increase deliveries from June onwards as it brings forwards the end of our original deal to June and starts delivering the new 60m order from the agreed Q3 date.

    It will also enable a drawdown of the ~4.5m Pfizer stockpile as well given how reliable the Pfizer deliveries have been and the receding threat of export blocks now that the EU has stopped moaning about vaccines.

    The source said that these two effects will mean the government will be able to cover all first doses for 18-39 year olds within the next 5 weeks and the new Pfizer deal will be used to cover second doses as for everyone who needs one plus the possibility of a second Pfizer dose for under 40s who got AZ as a first dose though they expect the latter to be done silently.

    On the last point (interesting to me as I'm a 39 year old who just had AZN a few days ago) what's the thinking, do you know?

    Because the Pfizer supply is just more reliable?
    For simplicity (just stock Pfizer)
    For safety (clots)
    For efficacy?

    For the third I didn't think there was any evidence yet of problems in those who had first dose without issue (granted not that many younger people have had second AZN yet, I guess) and for the fourth aren't we still awating results of the trial on mixing and matching?
    I think a combination of 2 and 3. On the fourth, yes we're waiting initial trial results but we know that there's no health risk to doing it so unless evidence to the contrary appears the recommendation is going to be only Pfizer/Moderna doses for under 40s, first or second.
    Other than a higher incidence of mild to moderate side effects - ie days off with flu type symptoms. (Something like 3x as frequent.)
    Was that with AZ first or second? Interesting either way.
    AZN first, I think.
    (I don't have time to retrieve the article.)

    This is a good account of why the medical establishment resisted the aerosol transmission story for what seems like a ridiculous amount of time.

    The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Covid Helped Kill
    https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/
    There's a lot of chat in epidemiology about what experts in the 'hard' sciences can bring. However, as a physicist turned epidemiologist I can confirm that it is, largely, just chat. Until very recently, with a physicsy PhD, I wasn't even eligible for NIHR (one of the main funding bodies for epidemiogy in this country) fellowship funding, due to not having a 'relevant' (as defined by them) PhD.

    I was lucky in that, while I puzzling over this problem and relying instead on individual grants, they changed their rules. Also lucky that for my previous and current bosses (neither with 'relevant' PhDs) it was more than just chat.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,983

    TimS said:

    Only time I ever voted Labour in a GE was in the 1997 landslide. Sadly also the only time I was (unbeknownst to the naive young me) in a Lib Dem-Tory marginal. Since which time I've lived in safe Labour seats and voted Lib Dem.

    There are many of you. Although I never did, I can think of several current Tories (soft and hard) who voted for Blair in 1997 and 2001... @AndyJS @Pulpstar @Big_G_NorthWales @isam @Philip_Thompson .. and although sadly no longer with us @plato (RIP). @Cyclefree feels like a floating voter to me.

    I'll believe Labour are on the cusp of power again when a couple of those start talking warmly about them.
    I'm not very floating to be honest. Reliable voter for and long time member of the yellows.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,402
    Andy_JS said:

    Edwin Poots has been elected leader of the DUP.

    Christ.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,397
    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    Indeed. But more worrying than Gaza is the communal violence in small town Israel itself.
    That is new.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,541
    edited May 2021
    I still think Tony Blair was a good prime minister, despite the mistakes he made. I don't regret voting for him (indirectly).
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,402
    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    It gets worse:

    https://twitter.com/AP/status/1392532804722958337?s=20
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,950
    edited May 2021

    BREAK: Edwin Poots elected as the new leader of the DUP

    Reminder Poots is a young earth creationist and rejects the theory of evolution

    In an interview with BBC presenter William Crawley, when asked how old the Earth was, Poots replied: "My view on the earth is that it's a young earth. My view is 4,000 BC


    https://twitter.com/DarrenGBNews/status/1393230280559841284?s=20

    So the DUP have rejected the exciting, radical C19th vision of Donaldson for the absolute certainties of the C1st BC
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207

    Today's thought experiment: trying to imagine what Owen Jones et al would be tweeting if a Tory had called for Diane Abbott to be deported.

    https://twitter.com/francesweetman/status/1393156378836062209?s=20

    Its different ... somehow :

  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    The problem is Hamas will not stop while a Jew remains alive. If that is the case then the Israeli response is depressing but understandable
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,569

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    It gets worse:

    https://twitter.com/AP/status/1392532804722958337?s=20
    One will attract lots of comments - the other will be ignored
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    Indeed. But more worrying than Gaza is the communal violence in small town Israel itself.
    That is new.
    And they seem to have automatic weapons
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,884
    edited May 2021
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    If not legal for her to enter UK, why was she allowed to board plane for UK in the first place? And why did she attempt entry?

    Lots of questions all around?
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207
    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    Spain sent them straight home
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,541
    #TimeForBlair trending, presumably because of this:

    "Andrew Adonis
    @Andrew_Adonis
    The Tories now have a 15 point lead

    Time for Blair"

    https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1393112607133941764
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,128
    edited May 2021
    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    There's one story of people being held overnight at an airport in Sweden so far, then sent back ; no reports of detention centres. The reciprocal action from the EU is what will cause the tabloid storm imminently, so it looks like this Home Office initiative will help to damage the negotiations in the long-term.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,569

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite from their side to detention centres for a week, so far. They will probably reciprocate.

    In yesterday's story, they were sent to Yarl's Wood, 200 miles away.
    You didn't answer the question (not that you have to, of course). What would you do with them?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,402
    Floater said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    It gets worse:

    https://twitter.com/AP/status/1392532804722958337?s=20
    One will attract lots of comments - the other will be ignored
    "a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing"
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207

    People like Beckett cannot see Priti Patel, Sajid Javid, Trever Phillips etc... as minorities because minorities support their views. It's a really ugly blind spot.


    https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1393160472908771332?s=20

    The Blessed Owen has weighed in:

    Double standards Jones...if a Tory or a business had suggested deporting an ethnic minority MP, he would be organizing a pile-on and boycott.
    I saw a post earlier from Owen where he did just that

  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Covid update: FM @NicolaSturgeon confirms Glasgow and Moray to remain in level 3 for at least another week when restrictions are eased in rest of Scotland on May 17th

    https://twitter.com/GlennBBC/status/1393227892780412936?s=20

    The idea that Glasgow will be out in a week is fanciful.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,128
    edited May 2021
    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite from their side to detention centres for a week, so far. They will probably reciprocate.

    In yesterday's story, they were sent to Yarl's Wood, 200 miles away.
    You didn't answer the question (not that you have to, of course). What would you do with them?
    What Europeans appear to be doing ; held briefly in airports only, and *only* if they are breaching the rules. Several of these people, especially in yesterday's article, appear not even to be breaching the rule in the first place, but the Home Office's hostile environment is doing its normal work.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    MaxPB said:

    I had chat this morning with one of our vaccine supply sources/experts. They said the government's second deal with Pfizer is what is allowing us to push ahead with loads of first doses for under 40s becuase the UK now has continuous supply from Pfizer where previously it was expected the 40m order would be fully delivered in the middle of July. Now Pfizer will increase deliveries from June onwards as it brings forwards the end of our original deal to June and starts delivering the new 60m order from the agreed Q3 date.

    It will also enable a drawdown of the ~4.5m Pfizer stockpile as well given how reliable the Pfizer deliveries have been and the receding threat of export blocks now that the EU has stopped moaning about vaccines.

    The source said that these two effects will mean the government will be able to cover all first doses for 18-39 year olds within the next 5 weeks and the new Pfizer deal will be used to cover second doses as for everyone who needs one plus the possibility of a second Pfizer dose for under 40s who got AZ as a first dose though they expect the latter to be done silently.

    On the last point (interesting to me as I'm a 39 year old who just had AZN a few days ago) what's the thinking, do you know?

    Because the Pfizer supply is just more reliable?
    For simplicity (just stock Pfizer)
    For safety (clots)
    For efficacy?

    For the third I didn't think there was any evidence yet of problems in those who had first dose without issue (granted not that many younger people have had second AZN yet, I guess) and for the fourth aren't we still awating results of the trial on mixing and matching?
    I think a combination of 2 and 3. On the fourth, yes we're waiting initial trial results but we know that there's no health risk to doing it so unless evidence to the contrary appears the recommendation is going to be only Pfizer/Moderna doses for under 40s, first or second.
    Other than a higher incidence of mild to moderate side effects - ie days off with flu type symptoms. (Something like 3x as frequent.)
    Was that with AZ first or second? Interesting either way.
    AZN first, I think.
    (I don't have time to retrieve the article.)

    This is a good account of why the medical establishment resisted the aerosol transmission story for what seems like a ridiculous amount of time.

    The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Covid Helped Kill
    https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/
    Does this say that masks actually cause Covid? Asking for @NerysHughes
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    Indeed. But more worrying than Gaza is the communal violence in small town Israel itself.
    That is new.
    1948 says hello.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,569

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    There's one story of people being held overnight at an airport in Sweden so far, then sent back ; no reports of detention centres. The reciprocal action from the EU is what will cause the tabloid storm imminently, so it looks like this Home Office initiative will help to damage the negotiations in the long-term.
    I take your point about there being a big difference between being detained at the airport and being taken 200 miles away to a detention centre. But I suspect Colnbrook is roughly the same as "held overnight at an airport in Sweden".
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Covid update: FM @NicolaSturgeon confirms Glasgow and Moray to remain in level 3 for at least another week when restrictions are eased in rest of Scotland on May 17th

    https://twitter.com/GlennBBC/status/1393227892780412936?s=20


    She's taken her "eye off the ball" again.

    She will do anything to keep the pubs shut - puritan nonsense.
    If she'd do anything to keep the pubs shut why is she letting the rest of the country open up?
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207

    Floater said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    It gets worse:

    https://twitter.com/AP/status/1392532804722958337?s=20
    One will attract lots of comments - the other will be ignored
    "a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing"
    In one case a small country who some say control the world - on the other a huge populous country flexing its muscles to be top dog and smashing internal dissent
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,397
    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    Indeed. But more worrying than Gaza is the communal violence in small town Israel itself.
    That is new.
    Yes, this is a dreadful new chapter

    I can't help feeling the inevitable end is the destruction of Israel. So much violence and hate can only produce the same in return, and one day the Arabs will find a way. Unbearably sad
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Edwin Poots has been elected leader of the DUP.

    The first of his family to achieve that in the entire 6 025 year history of the Universe!
    Some achievement.
    6,021. He believes ++Ussher was wrong
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,569

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite from their side to detention centres for a week, so far. They will probably reciprocate.

    In yesterday's story, they were sent to Yarl's Wood, 200 miles away.
    You didn't answer the question (not that you have to, of course). What would you do with them?
    What Europeans appear to be doing ; held briefly in airports only, and *only* if they are breaching the rules. Several of these people, especially in yesterday's article, appear not even to be breaching the rule in the first place, but the Home Office's hostile environment is doing its normal work.
    It is true that "attending an interview" or "looking for work" are allowed post-brexit for EU citizens during normal times. It is against the rules because, and only because we are in a pandemic.

    If we allowed it any tourist could come in, and when questioned, simply say they were looking for work.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,128
    edited May 2021
    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    There's one story of people being held overnight at an airport in Sweden so far, then sent back ; no reports of detention centres. The reciprocal action from the EU is what will cause the tabloid storm imminently, so it looks like this Home Office initiative will help to damage the negotiations in the long-term.
    I take your point about there being a big difference between being detained at the airport and being taken 200 miles away to a detention centre. But I suspect Colnbrook is roughly the same as "held overnight at an airport in Sweden".
    Yarl's Wood and Colnbrook are both full detention centres with barbed wire ; I don't think the experience of being held at an airport overnight is the same.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,397

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    Indeed. But more worrying than Gaza is the communal violence in small town Israel itself.
    That is new.
    1948 says hello.
    In recent years.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,128
    edited May 2021
    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    Quite so. You can be sure if there'd been anything remotely comparable it would have been all over the tabloid front pages already, too.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Thats what the neighbours appear to be banking on
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    Children playing on a trampoline even as the Israeli shells rain down



    "NOW - Unreal scene in #Gaza minutes ago. Children still celebrating Eid during heavy IDF shelling."

    https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1392967219227791365?s=20

    This is the first big Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" in the era of universal social media and smartphones. I wonder if that will make a difference
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    Russia’s oligarchs are now worth more than a third of the country’s GDP - making it the world’s most economically captured major country. One of many striking facts from this excellent @FTLifeArts essay on how Covid made the rich richer
    https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1393111704251379712

    Curious that social democratic Sweden comes out as second on their list.

    It would be much much lower in Sweden if you excluded Marcus & Jacob Wallenberg
    I'd assumed it was ABBA...
    The most recent figures I saw were that their sphere employs about 600k people and has revenues of $164 billion a year

    It includes small companies like Enskilda, Eriksen, SAAB, Atlas, AstraZeneca, etc…
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110
    RH1992 said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    As much as I agree that it's heavy handed (if you ask me the Home Office is rotten to the core and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch), why would the European negotiating teams be "taking notes"?

    We're not in the EU and we have our own immigration policy. We're treating them how we would treat non-EU nationals now. We have no obligation to give them special treatment and I object to The Guardian complaining about the plight of white Europeans having to stay a night in detention when people fleeing persecution have been locked up in these places for weeks or months on end unfairly.
    Hang on: there is a significant difference.

    People travelling from the EEA don't need visas to enter the UK as tourists (and nor do people from the US or Canada or Japan, etc.)

    If want to impose a requirement for people coming from the EEA to get visas prior to travel, then that's one thing. But if we do not, then the presumption should be that they are legally travelling as tourists or short-term business travellers.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,397
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Right now I fear it may be keeping Netanyahu in power and thus not before the Courts.
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,285
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    Russia’s oligarchs are now worth more than a third of the country’s GDP - making it the world’s most economically captured major country. One of many striking facts from this excellent @FTLifeArts essay on how Covid made the rich richer
    https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1393111704251379712

    Curious that social democratic Sweden comes out as second on their list.

    It would be much much lower in Sweden if you excluded Marcus & Jacob Wallenberg
    I'd assumed it was ABBA...
    The most recent figures I saw were that their sphere employs about 600k people and has revenues of $164 billion a year

    It includes small companies like Enskilda, Eriksen, SAAB, Atlas, AstraZeneca, etc…
    ABBA or the Wallenburgs?
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058
    edited May 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel does has nukes though
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058
    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    France’s rules are up to them. In the UK they would need to follow the quarantine rules which I am sure they are. Rights for returning residents are different to those of visitors
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Nigelb said:

    Russia’s oligarchs are now worth more than a third of the country’s GDP - making it the world’s most economically captured major country. One of many striking facts from this excellent @FTLifeArts essay on how Covid made the rich richer
    https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1393111704251379712

    Curious that social democratic Sweden comes out as second on their list.

    It would be much much lower in Sweden if you excluded Marcus & Jacob Wallenberg
    I'd assumed it was ABBA...
    The most recent figures I saw were that their sphere employs about 600k people and has revenues of $164 billion a year

    It includes small companies like Enskilda, Eriksen, SAAB, Atlas, AstraZeneca, etc…
    ABBA or the Wallenburgs?
    The Wallenbergs - I’ve never met ABBA so can’t comment on their sphere
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,169
    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    On Gaza ?!
    It is 45 miles from Tel Aviv
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,854
    edited May 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    The endgame is to keep Netenyahu in power. Or at least, that will be the result.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/analysis-israel-riots-jews-arabs-hand-netanyahu-political-lifeline/

    Every flare-up consolidates the Israeli hardliners and the Hamas hardliners in their positions.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811
    Leon said:

    Children playing on a trampoline even as the Israeli shells rain down



    "NOW - Unreal scene in #Gaza minutes ago. Children still celebrating Eid during heavy IDF shelling."

    https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1392967219227791365?s=20

    This is the first big Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" in the era of universal social media and smartphones. I wonder if that will make a difference

    There was one in 2014.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    If not legal for her to enter UK, why was she allowed to board plane for UK in the first place? And why did she attempt entry?

    Lots of questions all around?
    Indeed: if it was not legal for her to enter the UK, then it is the responsibility of the airline to return her to Italy.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    Poots only beat Donaldson 19-17.

    He’s said he’ll appoint a First Minister, while he concentrates on rebuilding the party.

    Hmmm.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,639
    Boris - no change to Stage 3, Monday

    But he is right to refer to greater uncertainty for Stage 4, 21 June
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,118
    edited May 2021

    RH1992 said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    As much as I agree that it's heavy handed (if you ask me the Home Office is rotten to the core and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch), why would the European negotiating teams be "taking notes"?

    We're not in the EU and we have our own immigration policy. We're treating them how we would treat non-EU nationals now. We have no obligation to give them special treatment and I object to The Guardian complaining about the plight of white Europeans having to stay a night in detention when people fleeing persecution have been locked up in these places for weeks or months on end unfairly.
    No Britons have been detained offsite from ports or airport in EU detention centres so far, let alone for a week ; that's why the Europeans will be taking notes.

    It does also serve an additional useful purpose of showing the routine treatment for many others from around the world, too, though, as you say, often irrespective of whether they are genuine refugees or not.
    EUians.

    We are Europeans.

    Perhaps it needs a new word - though euian is fairly good.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,810
    edited May 2021
    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110
    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite from their side to detention centres for a week, so far. They will probably reciprocate.

    In yesterday's story, they were sent to Yarl's Wood, 200 miles away.
    You didn't answer the question (not that you have to, of course). What would you do with them?
    What Europeans appear to be doing ; held briefly in airports only, and *only* if they are breaching the rules. Several of these people, especially in yesterday's article, appear not even to be breaching the rule in the first place, but the Home Office's hostile environment is doing its normal work.
    It is true that "attending an interview" or "looking for work" are allowed post-brexit for EU citizens during normal times. It is against the rules because, and only because we are in a pandemic.

    If we allowed it any tourist could come in, and when questioned, simply say they were looking for work.
    The UK government has a website on who is allowed to travel to the UK.

    https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control

    The UK borders are not closed to Italians travelling from Italy.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811
    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Although China also has discovered a distinctly Islamophobic streak in Xinjiang in recent years.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Step 3 from MONDAY goes ahead.

    Vaccination gap for over 50 year olds cut to 8 weeks
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
    Around 50% want a further referendum. Not an overwhelming case.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811
    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
    Oslo wouldn't have resulted in a viable Palestinian state and the Israelis know it.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
    Oslo wouldn't have resulted in a viable Palestinian state and the Israelis know it.
    The PLO agreed to it
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926

    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    Quite so. You can be sure if there'd been anything remotely comparable it would have been all over the tabloid front pages already, too.
    There have been plenty of cases of Brits being refused entry, you just have to search for them.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
    This is way beyond "not displaying weakness". This is not "fighting". Who the fuck are they fighting? They are lynching Arabs on Israeli streets and hurling down brimstone on Gaza

    Israeli society has been coarsened and brutalised by decades of occupation of its "inferior" neighbour. This is what horrible occupations do to the occupiers, they corrode their morality

    Hamas are loathsome, but Israel, now, is just as bad, and arguably much crueller

  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
    Oslo wouldn't have resulted in a viable Palestinian state and the Israelis know it.
    The PLO agreed to it
    You just said "the PLO walked away"! (??)
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,810
    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
    Around 50% want a further referendum. Not an overwhelming case.
    More than half the Scottish Pmt. And most of the Scottish representation in HoC. Which is the way things work in a representative democracy. Which is where we were before. So I'll change the subject now and admire the blue sky asnd puffy white clouds outside.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
    Oslo wouldn't have resulted in a viable Palestinian state and the Israelis know it.
    The PLO agreed to it
    You just said "the PLO walked away"! (??)
    They agreed and then reneged
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110
    RobD said:

    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    Quite so. You can be sure if there'd been anything remotely comparable it would have been all over the tabloid front pages already, too.
    There have been plenty of cases of Brits being refused entry, you just have to search for them.
    Isn't that Brits who told the immigration staff that they were resident in Spain, who had not followed the proper procedures for getting a residence card?

    And, for the record, I would much rather be refused entry, spend the night at the airport and fly home, than spend a week in Colnbrook detention centre. Which - according to Wikipedia - is "built to Class B prison standards".
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,397
    MattW said:

    RH1992 said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    As much as I agree that it's heavy handed (if you ask me the Home Office is rotten to the core and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch), why would the European negotiating teams be "taking notes"?

    We're not in the EU and we have our own immigration policy. We're treating them how we would treat non-EU nationals now. We have no obligation to give them special treatment and I object to The Guardian complaining about the plight of white Europeans having to stay a night in detention when people fleeing persecution have been locked up in these places for weeks or months on end unfairly.
    No Britons have been detained offsite from ports or airport in EU detention centres so far, let alone for a week ; that's why the Europeans will be taking notes.

    It does also serve an additional useful purpose of showing the routine treatment for many others from around the world, too, though, as you say, often irrespective of whether they are genuine refugees or not.
    EUians.

    We are Europeans.

    Perhaps it needs a new word - though euian is fairly good.
    Reminds me of my final turn at Scrabble.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
    Around 50% want a further referendum. Not an overwhelming case.
    More than half the Scottish Pmt. And most of the Scottish representation in HoC. Which is the way things work in a representative democracy. Which is where we were before. So I'll change the subject now and admire the blue sky asnd puffy white clouds outside.
    Not in ultra vires matters

    - Holyrood has no authority in this matter. It’s composition is irrelevant
    - Westminster doesn’t have a nationalist majority
    - The case that the SNP can make is that there is a moral imperative for Westminster to grant a referendum because there is overwhelming demand. But if you add all the votes cast in the latest election is about 50/50.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,961
    edited May 2021
    And now time for the dickhead questions....

    Can you tell us to the second when...
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,811
    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
    Around 50% want a further referendum. Not an overwhelming case.
    More than half the Scottish Pmt. And most of the Scottish representation in HoC. Which is the way things work in a representative democracy. Which is where we were before. So I'll change the subject now and admire the blue sky asnd puffy white clouds outside.
    Not in ultra vires matters

    - Holyrood has no authority in this matter. It’s composition is irrelevant
    - Westminster doesn’t have a nationalist majority
    - The case that the SNP can make is that there is a moral imperative for Westminster to grant a referendum because there is overwhelming demand. But if you add all the votes cast in the latest election is about 50/50.
    Are you afraid of losing, Charles?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926
    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    Quite so. You can be sure if there'd been anything remotely comparable it would have been all over the tabloid front pages already, too.
    There have been plenty of cases of Brits being refused entry, you just have to search for them.
    Isn't that Brits who told the immigration staff that they were resident in Spain, who had not followed the proper procedures for getting a residence card?

    And, for the record, I would much rather be refused entry, spend the night at the airport and fly home, than spend a week in Colnbrook detention centre. Which - according to Wikipedia - is "built to Class B prison standards".
    Yeah, denied entry because they had insufficient evidence for their trip. Exactly as what happened here. Hard to get outraged over such behaviour when it happens all the time. As for the long stay before their return flight, that does suggest there is more to that particular case than is being reported.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,950
    Alistair said:

    Covid update: FM @NicolaSturgeon confirms Glasgow and Moray to remain in level 3 for at least another week when restrictions are eased in rest of Scotland on May 17th

    https://twitter.com/GlennBBC/status/1393227892780412936?s=20

    A
    She's taken her "eye off the ball" again.

    She will do anything to keep the pubs shut - puritan nonsense.
    If she'd do anything to keep the pubs shut why is she letting the rest of the country open up?
    She’s punishing the WATP in advance for them going mental in Glasgow tomorrow which btw is now totally justified because a thousand Glasgow Wokies defied the Queen and Priti Patel.
    #Hunlogic
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,231
    No blood, no gore, no broken bodies, but this is tremendously difficult to watch


    Palestinian children screaming, under a bombardment

    "This is how Gaza people are spending night under heavy Israeli bombardment"

    https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1392964670089318401?s=20
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
    Around 50% want a further referendum. Not an overwhelming case.
    More than half the Scottish Pmt. And most of the Scottish representation in HoC. Which is the way things work in a representative democracy. Which is where we were before. So I'll change the subject now and admire the blue sky asnd puffy white clouds outside.
    Not in ultra vires matters

    - Holyrood has no authority in this matter. It’s composition is irrelevant
    - Westminster doesn’t have a nationalist majority
    - The case that the SNP can make is that there is a moral imperative for Westminster to grant a referendum because there is overwhelming demand. But if you add all the votes cast in the latest election is about 50/50.
    Are you afraid of losing, Charles?
    It’s not up to me.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,110
    edited May 2021
    RobD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    Quite so. You can be sure if there'd been anything remotely comparable it would have been all over the tabloid front pages already, too.
    There have been plenty of cases of Brits being refused entry, you just have to search for them.
    Isn't that Brits who told the immigration staff that they were resident in Spain, who had not followed the proper procedures for getting a residence card?

    And, for the record, I would much rather be refused entry, spend the night at the airport and fly home, than spend a week in Colnbrook detention centre. Which - according to Wikipedia - is "built to Class B prison standards".
    Yeah, denied entry because they had insufficient evidence for their trip. Exactly as what happened here. Hard to get outraged over such behaviour when it happens all the time. As for the long stay before their return flight, that does suggest there is more to that particular case than is being reported.
    Look, we don't know the full details, and it's entirely possible there is more to the story.

    But:

    (1) Immigration detention centres are not like hotel quarantines - they are much more like prisons. There's a world of difference between refusing entry to someone who came without proper documentation (when it is the airline's duty to get them back) and putting someone in a one of these centres for a week.

    (2) I've posted the link to the government's travel to the UK site. There are no restrictions on Italians entering the UK posted on there. Now it's possible that there are restrictions that are not published on the "what you need to know before travelling to the UK website", but it is notable that she clearly didn't know them, and nor did the airline.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,205

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    Leon said:

    CatMan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    This is grim

    Israeli Jews chuckling as they talk about wiping out the Arabs. Not settlers, "normal" folk

    https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1393015740291162120?s=20


    Unfortunately, I can believe this is true. I was in Israel ten years ago and I heard very racist stuff from kids, and I feared for the future, then

    “We conquered these places.... they are ours”.

    “Devine justice”.

    Yuck.

    It’s the same lines you get from IS in reverse.

    I do have some limited empathy on the basis that I might just want to carpet bomb Dublin, irrespective of who started the dispute, if the Irish lobbed rockets at us every night for a week; but empathy on an emotional level only. We need to walk them back from the ledge or this will just get worse and worse.
    When I was in Israel ten years ago I witnessed horrible racist chanting at football grounds. It's a major problem in Israeli football

    "Beitar Jerusalem fans: 'Here we are, we're the most racist football team in the country'"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8

    It was largely kids age 12-20, and it was obvious what lay ahead. It is a perverse irony that some Jews have turned into Nazis
    Yes, I’ve always been careful about the sensitivity of that analogy, but it’s hard not to think of it more and more.

    Because this is the internet, and you’re only ever one step away from being called all sorts of names, I will also emphasise that I have no time at all for Hammas. But then the passing of the PLO and a chance for peace was kind of the Israeli’s fault too.
    The problem is that I don't really understand what Israel's endgame is.

    Being in perpetual war with your neigbours ends with your destruction, because you have to be lucky every time and they only have to be lucky once.

    Israel has nukes though...
    So the endgame is Israel using its nukes?!

    That should play out fine
    I don't know, but if they were about to be defeated, would they really not use them?
    I am pretty certain they would use them, and I'm pretty certain the Arab/Muslim world would find a way to respond in kind, destroying Israel forever

    Israel urgently needs to seek out peace. America's power in the region is fading, China has no pro-Israel lobby

    Trouble is, I don't think Israelis particularly want peace any more. They've given up on the idea. They want the Palestinians kicked out, that is their ultimate solution, see that video downthread. Everything Israel does points to this - make life for Palestinians so appalling they quit, and go "somewhere else".

    But it is madness
    They don’t trust the Palestinian leadership. They were very close to a deal in Oslo and then the PLO walked away. Since then there have been constant attacks.

    I think the Israelis handle things very badly. But they believe that if they show weakness they will be rolled over. So they fight.

    It’s not clear to me the way out of this mess. But Kushner did manage to get 3/4 minor states to sign peace agreements with Israel - baby steps but some progress.
    Oslo wouldn't have resulted in a viable Palestinian state and the Israelis know it.
    The PLO agreed to it
    You just said "the PLO walked away"! (??)
    Arafat was somewhat famous for agreeing to 8 incompatible things before breakfast.

    This either made him a genius or a total pillock. Maybe both.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,961
    Sam Coates making a dick of himself, asking question to somebody who isn't there.....
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,397

    Step 3 from MONDAY goes ahead.

    Vaccination gap for over 50 year olds cut to 8 weeks

    Crumbs. That means I'm due on Thursday.
    No details I assume.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,810
    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    There's a widespread expectation among Westminster-based journalists and foreign correspondents reporting from London that a huge constitutional bust up between Sturgeon and Johnson is inevitable. But it's not clear the British government has to do anything 1/9
    ....

    In either event, the constitutional clash between London and Edinburgh doesn't happen. The 2nd referendum is stopped by Scots in Scottish courts by Scottish judges, with the Johnson government looking on. Not quite the SNP playbook. 9/9


    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1393201453863419909?s=20

    Very plausable
    Doesn't surprise me, esp after the prorogation case (which had Unionists astounded as the UKSC wouldn't override Scots law as she is spoke in Parliament Square - remember).

    The law does need to be checked and tested, but the issue always was that the law itself was incompatible with the mandates conferred on the Scottish Pmt. Which will put the ball in the Westminster court sooner or later.
    The MSPs *can’t* get a mandate that is ultra vires. It simply isn’t a mandate.

    It’s like a candidate for PCC in Yorkshire making a declaration of war on Germany the centrepiece of his manifesto. Even if he’s elected it doesn’t mean he has a mandate to declare war on Germany
    That's right, if you are relying solely on a legal technicality, but it expresses what is wanted - a change in the law, and that is in the political realm [edit]. And I'm off to finish what I am doing as we are now at the same old logjam.
    Around 50% want a further referendum. Not an overwhelming case.
    More than half the Scottish Pmt. And most of the Scottish representation in HoC. Which is the way things work in a representative democracy. Which is where we were before. So I'll change the subject now and admire the blue sky asnd puffy white clouds outside.
    Not in ultra vires matters

    - Holyrood has no authority in this matter. It’s composition is irrelevant
    - Westminster doesn’t have a nationalist majority
    - The case that the SNP can make is that there is a moral imperative for Westminster to grant a referendum because there is overwhelming demand. But if you add all the votes cast in the latest election is about 50/50.
    Popped in again - still sticking to the There are more of us so we tell you what to do line.

    But an actual testing of the law will be a useful step forward. I don't expect much, but remember that even the idea of Scots law having equal parity with English was a hell of a shock to PBTories quite recently. Hence |I'd like to see exactly where we are.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926
    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    dixiedean said:

    carnforth said:

    carnforth said:

    "The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said.

    An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

    There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

    On Friday the EU’s co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

    Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

    But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

    Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. “We were never approached or told where she was,” he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset."

    The ugly face of Brexit - and the best way to thank NHS workers. You can be certain the European negotiating teams are taking notes, as mentioned in the article, and as I mentioned yesterday.

    Sadly, it isn't legal for this lady to come to the UK to visit her uncle at the moment, because of the pandemic.

    It's not always possible to put a person on the next flight back at the moment, because there are not many flights each day.

    Colnbrook immigration centre is right next to heathrow.

    What would you have them do? Make her sleep in the airport on a bench overnight? Let her in anyway despite the coronavirus risk?
    Once again, the only thing that will interest the Europeans is that they haven't been sending people offsite to detention centres for a week. They will probably reciprocate.
    I have no objection to EU countries reciprocating. Why should they not?

    What have the Europeans been doing with British people who turn up without a proper reason? Just letting them in to their country anyway? Making them sleep in the airport?
    My partner's aunt and uncle have travelled between their homes in England and France on an approximately monthly basis, depending on the relative state of the pandemic, and their own particular whims and convenience.
    They have at no stage quarantined, nor been questioned by any bugger in authority at all.
    Quite so. You can be sure if there'd been anything remotely comparable it would have been all over the tabloid front pages already, too.
    There have been plenty of cases of Brits being refused entry, you just have to search for them.
    Isn't that Brits who told the immigration staff that they were resident in Spain, who had not followed the proper procedures for getting a residence card?

    And, for the record, I would much rather be refused entry, spend the night at the airport and fly home, than spend a week in Colnbrook detention centre. Which - according to Wikipedia - is "built to Class B prison standards".
    Yeah, denied entry because they had insufficient evidence for their trip. Exactly as what happened here. Hard to get outraged over such behaviour when it happens all the time. As for the long stay before their return flight, that does suggest there is more to that particular case than is being reported.
    Look, we don't know the full details, and it's entirely possible there is more to the story.

    But:

    (1) Immigration detention centres are not like hotel quarantines - they are much more like prisons. There's a world of difference between refusing entry to someone who came without proper documentation (when it is the airline's duty to get them back) and putting someone in a one of these centres for a week.

    (2) I've posted the link to the government's travel to the UK site. There are no restrictions on Italians entering the UK posted on there. Now it's possible that there are restrictions that are not published on the "what you need to know before travelling to the UK website", but it is notable that she clearly didn't know them, and nor did the airline.
    Of course there are restrictions on Italians entering the UK. The story was about people trying to enter to look for jobs. While EU citizens might have been able to do that last year, they can't do that now.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,961
    dixiedean said:

    Step 3 from MONDAY goes ahead.

    Vaccination gap for over 50 year olds cut to 8 weeks

    Crumbs. That means I'm due on Thursday.
    No details I assume.
    NHS will be contacting everybody that it applies to.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,771
    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Extraordinarily bleak videos coming out of Gaza

    2020-21 is, perhaps, the worst era in human history since WW2

    Indeed. But more worrying than Gaza is the communal violence in small town Israel itself.
    That is new.
    Yes, this is a dreadful new chapter

    I can't help feeling the inevitable end is the destruction of Israel. So much violence and hate can only produce the same in return, and one day the Arabs will find a way. Unbearably sad
    This is bad.
    However, I don't agree that this is the worst era since WW2.
    On several occasions during the cold war the whole world came close to destruction. And fewer people are dying in wars now and over the past five years than, er, ever, I think.
    Moreover, despite covid, the world is at present immeasurably richer and healthier than pretty much any other point in history, with the possible exception of the 2016-2020 period.

    Because life in the UK has only got quite a lot better in our lifetimes, we overlook the astonishing transformation in almost all of Asia, some of South America and bits of Africa.

    There will always be conflict, it will always be worrying. But on average, truly, there has never been a better time to be alive. Apart from the 2016-2020 period.
This discussion has been closed.