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Getting into a culture war with the RNLI looks pretty dumb – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    IshmaelZ said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    It isn't usual to write Father like that unless you are referring to the Almighty. Of course there's no knowing who is who on the internet.
    "Big G" is pretty unambiguous, I'd have thought. Although it puts North Wales in a new and rather flattering light.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Foxy said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    I am so glad that PB was able to wake you up to this threat. Sometimes stupid legislation isn't done by accident, it is malicious. Like in this case where the angry forrin out end of the Brexiteer community has been upset by scenes of RNLI heroes rescuing drowning migrants. "Not a good look" as one of their supporters described on here.

    So the traitor Patel comes up with a wheeze. Draft a bill that leaves RNLI crews on the hook. Refuse to engage with critics, "it won't do that" when the bill clearly will. Show just enough support for the "drown the forrin" Tory supporters and hope the row makes people think anyone backing the RNLI are soft on migration.

    I hope it has backfired. Rescuing drowning migrants is not a play in their faux culture war. It is literal life and death, and highlights just how grotesque some of them are. A Tory Party that wanted to prosecute the RNLI for rescuing drowning children? "Not a good look"
    The RNLI rescues anyone and everyone no matter their circumstances when they are in peril on the sea and they place their own lives at risk

    Patel is not an instinctive Tory. She is a Revolutionary. They riddle the modern incarnation of the Conservative Party.

    If she was a Tory she would understand the special place charities like the RNLI hold in society. Most other states fund these rescue services through taxation, but not the UK. The RNLI must be one of the most British institutions around.

    What next for Patel? Legislating to hinder the monarch in her core duties?
    Patel is doing "performative cruelty" and Johnson is open to this too, hence his "chain gang" comments.

    "They should do work in high-vis jackets!" for your entertainment!
    Err Prime Minister, they already have to wear high-vis jackets when working in the community

    Not only was it performative cruelty, it was performative ignorance of their own policies.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,087
    edited July 2021
    Morning all.

    I hear from R4 Today that the Oxford-AZ vaccine has now done a billion vaccines from a total of 20 manufacturing sites worldwide. That is presumably slightly approximate one way or the other.

    First 20 seconds here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIn2B36Pr8Y

    The latest list of production sites I have (from June production) is: China, USA, various EU/EFTA, UK, India, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Australia, Argentina. Suspect that is missing a few.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    I think you might consult her before asking us.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    pigeon said:

    Olympics Covid latest: entire Australian track & field team in isolation and awaiting test results. Would appear to be consequence of one member being a close contact of the American pole vault world champion Sam Kendricks, who was ruled out by a positive test earlier today.

    The athletics programme starts tomorrow. Oh dear.

    British media: DOES THIS INCREASE TEAM GB MEDAL CHANCES?!!!
    I remember being in NZ for the Commonwealth games in 1990. The coverage was spectacularly local, but all countries do that.

    "Now we go to the finals of the 100m and an interview with the 7th place NZ runner..."

    Not to be beaten by the Leicester Mercury who once led with the headline:

    "Bali bombing death toll reaches 200, Leicester family's holiday ruined"

    Nothing will ever beat “Fog in Channel - Continent Isolated”
    The sadly apocryphal "Titanic sinks, Dundee man drowns" for the Courier is pretty regularly cited up here.
    The Aberdeen P&J's apocryphal version is "Titanic Sinks. Aberdeen man gets hair wet".
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585
    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/donate https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1420500685993480196/photo/1

    Because Grace fucking Darling deserves every penny we can spare her.

    The pot of charitable funding is not infinitely elastic, so why are we all cheering donations to an appallingly rich institution dedicated to smoothing the way of well heeled tossers who cannot read a tide table or work a diesel engine?
    There must be a vacancy at GBNews for someone with such a well defined degree of misanthropy.

    I've donated now too.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    They hate the SNP for trying to rip their country apart. That’s not the same thing.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited July 2021
    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    As the "lets deport the forrin to Madagascar" proposal isn't realistic, we need to look at what is. Europe faces a massive refugee problem because of the burning mess on its borders. One way to stop the flow is to fix these problems. If Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were safe and functioning then less migrants need to flee.

    As that isn't very realistic then plan B - share the burden. Refugees can be distributed out amongst safe countries by agreement. But as its Britain Uber Alles these days we will enter no such agreement. Not that we need to considering we only get a small number of refugees anyway.

    Then we have Plan C. Make it so awful for refugees that the word gets to them not to come. Hence the "Drown the Migrants" bill.
    Plan D take refugees from camps close to the crisis. Judge anyone else who arrives outside an airport by economic migrant standards and process them offshore.
    The problem is that we started doing Plan D in the early days taking people directly from Turkish camps. The issue is that the EU didn't take enough quickly enough to stop significant numbers walking into and across Europe. So as a solution it only worked in the very short term.

    What we need to do (as with a lot of things) is to speed processes up after they arrive here (which means spending money and employing more people). And find a way of removing the incentives migrants have in losing paperwork...
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    pigeon said:

    Olympics Covid latest: entire Australian track & field team in isolation and awaiting test results. Would appear to be consequence of one member being a close contact of the American pole vault world champion Sam Kendricks, who was ruled out by a positive test earlier today.

    The athletics programme starts tomorrow. Oh dear.

    British media: DOES THIS INCREASE TEAM GB MEDAL CHANCES?!!!
    I remember being in NZ for the Commonwealth games in 1990. The coverage was spectacularly local, but all countries do that.

    "Now we go to the finals of the 100m and an interview with the 7th place NZ runner..."

    Not to be beaten by the Leicester Mercury who once led with the headline:

    "Bali bombing death toll reaches 200, Leicester family's holiday ruined"

    Nothing will ever beat “Fog in Channel - Continent Isolated”
    The sadly apocryphal "Titanic sinks, Dundee man drowns" for the Courier is pretty regularly cited up here.
    The Aberdeen P&J's apocryphal version is "Titanic Sinks. Aberdeen man gets hair wet".
    Surely "Titanic sinks, Aberdeen man loses wallet" would be more appropriate.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,040
    ydoethur said:

    Thorough take down by Chris Snowden of the anti-vax and covid denier brigade. Especially the loons cheering the mad ex-nurse who thinks all doctors are Nazis:


    https://quillette.com/2021/07/28/vaccines-and-the-coronavirus-crank-crisis/


    Ends with this warning:

    "But without herd immunity for SARS-CoV-2, the refuseniks are on their own. They are facing an endemic disease armed with nothing but worming tablets and excessive faith in their immune system. That is their choice and whilst we should deter gullible people from being pulled into their orbit, we should not coerce them. There is no free ride this time. They alone will face the consequences of their actions."

    Reposted FPT as it deserves the widest possible audience.

    What is depressing is the state of the comments under it. Somebody’s obviously reposted it on an anti-vax forum and a load of utter shitheads - no other word will suffice - have turned up with a load of nasty and dishonest claims trying to refute the article.

    As they are unable to do so it being founded on these things called ‘facts,’ they resort to nasty personal abuse. Thoroughly unedifying.

    Contrarian is clearly the rule not the exception with such people.
    Thanks. I hadn't looked at the comments. Some of them are ridiculously long. Is there no limit on Quillette?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    As the "lets deport the forrin to Madagascar" proposal isn't realistic, we need to look at what is. Europe faces a massive refugee problem because of the burning mess on its borders. One way to stop the flow is to fix these problems. If Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were safe and functioning then less migrants need to flee.

    As that isn't very realistic then plan B - share the burden. Refugees can be distributed out amongst safe countries by agreement. But as its Britain Uber Alles these days we will enter no such agreement. Not that we need to considering we only get a small number of refugees anyway.

    Then we have Plan C. Make it so awful for refugees that the word gets to them not to come. Hence the "Drown the Migrants" bill.
    Plan D: take refugees from camps close to the crisis. Judge anyone else who arrives outside an airport by economic migrant standards and process them offshore.
    The problem is that no offshore country seems willing to take them. Rwanda keeps being mentioned, but is there any evidence that Rwanda has seriously been interested?

    Australia managed to send its to PNG and Nauru, but these have been defacto colonies for some time, and I think even PNG got fed up with being used this way.

    An internment camp in the UK seems the obvious solution, with asylum courts on site, as well as medical facilities etc. Far fewer would come if they couldn't dissappear into the underground economy.

    Performative cruelty is not going to work on people who have often walked a few hundred miles across deserts, and trapped by gangs in Libya etc. It is just not viable to be more cruel than what they have already suffered.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    eek said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    I am so glad that PB was able to wake you up to this threat. Sometimes stupid legislation isn't done by accident, it is malicious. Like in this case where the angry forrin out end of the Brexiteer community has been upset by scenes of RNLI heroes rescuing drowning migrants. "Not a good look" as one of their supporters described on here.

    So the traitor Patel comes up with a wheeze. Draft a bill that leaves RNLI crews on the hook. Refuse to engage with critics, "it won't do that" when the bill clearly will. Show just enough support for the "drown the forrin" Tory supporters and hope the row makes people think anyone backing the RNLI are soft on migration.

    I hope it has backfired. Rescuing drowning migrants is not a play in their faux culture war. It is literal life and death, and highlights just how grotesque some of them are. A Tory Party that wanted to prosecute the RNLI for rescuing drowning children? "Not a good look"
    The RNLI rescues anyone and everyone no matter their circumstances when they are in peril on the sea and they place their own lives at risk

    Indeed, and we never questioned that. Only that the bill seeks to criminalise them doing their job.
    I would disagree with your ascertain the bill 'seeks to criminalise the RNLI' rather than it is poorly drafted

    As has previously been mentioned over the last few weeks, this anomaly will be addressed as the bill progresses through the HOC
    It's not poorly drafted because it's been weeks since the issue was highlighted and absolutely nothing has been done to say it's a mistake and will be redrafted.

    So I assume via the lack of apology and a lack of any promise to rewrite the law to provide a fix for the RNLI that the intention is to retain the law as is for dodgy reasons.
    They have stated that criminalising the RNLI is not their intention

    This was the easiest I could find (apologies for the Richard Murphy link but the response is clear)

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1412755421845245957
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Once again the Nats conflate the SNP with Scotland.

    Some of us want better for Scotland and do not reflexively genuflect to whatever tosh Sturgeon has come up with.

    Sturgeon, who was briefing the media while mentally completing the New York Times crossword and getting her doctorate in propositional calculus, lamented ‘an interpretation by opposition politicians and by some journalists'.

    They had somehow got it into their smaller, less advanced heads that, when she said all 40-to-49 year olds would have been 'given' their second dose by a certain date, 'what I actually meant [was] that I was giving a guarantee that, by a certain date, 100 per cent of people would not just have been offered the vaccine but would have had the vaccine'.

    The First Minister's contention was that, contrary to centuries of standard usage, 'have given' is really the future perfect tense of 'to offer'. In the bad old days, SNP leaders were open to the charge of being anti-English but Nicola Sturgeon might be the first to have it in for the language.


    https://stephendaisley.substack.com/p/nicolas-level
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    DavidL said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Stuart, you really need to learn to differentiate between that embarrassing shambles that calls itself the Scottish government and the country. However much the SNP wish it were otherwise their administration is not the country and laughing at or despairing of their idiocy is not in any way denigrating the latter.
    What is exasperating about all the devolved administrations is just how bad they are. You have effectively three fiefdoms of one-party states, where realistically only one party can win power no matter how awful they are or what they do - and they are awful and do many bad things - where the opposition is just as bad, and where the real underlying problems we were assured devolution would deal with are not only not dealt with but in many cases made worse.

    All so Tony Blair could win a few seats he was going to win anyway.

    It’s very depressing, and to be honest while Blair will forever be tainted by Iraq his actions on devolution were a far worse mistake. Not merely the effects, but the hubris. Remember his ‘parish council’ remark?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I think the difficulty that the Government have here is how do you create a law that allows the RNLI to continue rescuing people that isn't open to abuse / gaming the system. We've already seen situations in the med where boats are deliberately sent out with just enough fuel to get them into international waters after which all they can do is hope.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    Charles said:

    A much biggerr story than the RNLI which so far has received little coverage is the failure to deal with illegal immigration. Unless Priti Patel can deal with this she's finished.

    What’s your proposed solution?
    Copy the French , use the navy to guide the boats back to safety of France
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    I really don't think it does. But the failure to respond in the manner you indicate does suggest that Patel is more interested in noises off from the likes of Farage than mainstream public opinion which is unhealthy for the government and yet another example of why she should not be in post.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    edited July 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    As I prepare to publish my biography of Sir Keir Starmer on August 19, I am pleased to announce that my next project will be a book about Carrie Johnson.

    Carrie has interested me for some time. Many people know her as Boris Johnson’s wife, but her influence developed long before she moved into 10 Downing Street via her work over the last decade within the Conservative Party and also through the posts she has held working for government ministers. Aside from politics, she has campaigned in the fields of the environment and animal rights, both of which are areas of great interest to me.

    As with all of my political biographies, this project will be independent, objective, open-minded, fair, factual and even-handed. The research I’ve done already has proved fascinating.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2021/07/lord-ashcroft-exclusive-my-next-book-will-be-on-carrie-johnson.html
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    We don't need to rinse and repeat the old arguments. You know the law better than me, but as we all agreed last time "ah but the Home Secretary of the time said it doesn't apply" is no protection when the law says that it does.

    All the government needs to do is say "this is a drafting issue, we will revise it when the bill comes to parliament". Instead Patel smirks and says nothing. It is no error.
    Yes, well as I made clear the last time I am no fan of Patel. This is actually cowardice. Farage spouts some poisonous rubbish and the government wants to be seen to react instead of doing the right thing which is ignoring the sad old has been. But it is a meaningless gesture and there is no chance of anyone being prosecuted in the circumstances that apply to the RNLI.
    “No chance of anyone being prosecuted “.

    How can you guarantee that?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    As with all of my political biographies, this project will be independent, objective, open-minded, fair, factual and even-handed. The research I’ve done already has proved fascinating.

    https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2021/07/lord-ashcroft-exclusive-my-next-book-will-be-on-carrie-johnson.html

    Bloody hell. How can he tell a lie like that with a straight face?

    Why did he bother decamping to Belize? If he can get away with a fraud like that he curtly won’t have needed to pay tax.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    Roger said:

    What kind of a county do we live in? Since the days of Thatcher's support for apartheid I can't remember being so repulsed and ashamed of our own government.

    Patel is Poison.

    I was pretty upset by the invasion of Iraq TBF.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    Where is the bill in the drafting process?

    If it’s out for comment it makes sense you’d make all the changes in one go rather than pull it for 1 change and then have to start the process again
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    IshmaelZ said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    It isn't usual to write Father like that unless you are referring to the Almighty. Of course there's no knowing who is who on the internet.
    "Big G" is pretty unambiguous, I'd have thought. Although it puts North Wales in a new and rather flattering light.
    @Big_G_NorthWales has something to be justly proud about. He is the father of someone who puts their life on the line for others. Makes him and his daughter/son vastly superior than a couple of pompous arseholes who want to mock him for using a capital letter incorrectly.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Charles said:

    eek said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    I am so glad that PB was able to wake you up to this threat. Sometimes stupid legislation isn't done by accident, it is malicious. Like in this case where the angry forrin out end of the Brexiteer community has been upset by scenes of RNLI heroes rescuing drowning migrants. "Not a good look" as one of their supporters described on here.

    So the traitor Patel comes up with a wheeze. Draft a bill that leaves RNLI crews on the hook. Refuse to engage with critics, "it won't do that" when the bill clearly will. Show just enough support for the "drown the forrin" Tory supporters and hope the row makes people think anyone backing the RNLI are soft on migration.

    I hope it has backfired. Rescuing drowning migrants is not a play in their faux culture war. It is literal life and death, and highlights just how grotesque some of them are. A Tory Party that wanted to prosecute the RNLI for rescuing drowning children? "Not a good look"
    The RNLI rescues anyone and everyone no matter their circumstances when they are in peril on the sea and they place their own lives at risk

    Indeed, and we never questioned that. Only that the bill seeks to criminalise them doing their job.
    I would disagree with your ascertain the bill 'seeks to criminalise the RNLI' rather than it is poorly drafted

    As has previously been mentioned over the last few weeks, this anomaly will be addressed as the bill progresses through the HOC
    It's not poorly drafted because it's been weeks since the issue was highlighted and absolutely nothing has been done to say it's a mistake and will be redrafted.

    So I assume via the lack of apology and a lack of any promise to rewrite the law to provide a fix for the RNLI that the intention is to retain the law as is for dodgy reasons.
    They have stated that criminalising the RNLI is not their intention

    This was the easiest I could find (apologies for the Richard Murphy link but the response is clear)

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1412755421845245957
    What is the road to hell paved with? Magistrates courts are not bound by what the home office said on Twitter.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    eek said:

    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    As the "lets deport the forrin to Madagascar" proposal isn't realistic, we need to look at what is. Europe faces a massive refugee problem because of the burning mess on its borders. One way to stop the flow is to fix these problems. If Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were safe and functioning then less migrants need to flee.

    As that isn't very realistic then plan B - share the burden. Refugees can be distributed out amongst safe countries by agreement. But as its Britain Uber Alles these days we will enter no such agreement. Not that we need to considering we only get a small number of refugees anyway.

    Then we have Plan C. Make it so awful for refugees that the word gets to them not to come. Hence the "Drown the Migrants" bill.
    Plan D take refugees from camps close to the crisis. Judge anyone else who arrives outside an airport by economic migrant standards and process them offshore.
    The problem is that we started doing Plan D in the early days taking people directly from Turkish camps. The issue is that the EU didn't take enough quickly enough to stop significant numbers walking into and across Europe. So as a solution it only worked in the very short term.

    What we need to do (as with a lot of things) is to speed processes up after they arrive here (which means spending money and employing more people). And find a way of removing the incentives migrants have in losing paperwork...
    Your second paragraph is right. (And the paperwork issue is one reason why I like the offshoring concept).

    Taking people from camps is more about a moral obligation to help asylum seekers rather than how we deal with economic migrants
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Roger said:

    Since the days of Thatcher's support for apartheid I can't remember being so repulsed and ashamed of our own government.

    Thatcher and Botha met at the height of the apartheid government in 1984 - a crucial breach in South Africa's international isolation. But papers released under the 30 year rule reveal that Thatcher did not waver from her opposition to Botha’s racial policies.

    https://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/01/what-really-happened-when-margaret-thatcher-met-south-africas-p-w-botha

    Although she was a consistent critic of apartheid, she had no illusions about the challenges that we faced. She doggedly resisted demands for more sanctions and always gave me - and our negotiating partners - strong support for the achievement of a genuine non-racial constitutional democracy. Further sanctions would have substantially weakened those in favour of negotiations and would have strengthened white conservatives who were grimly prepared to resist foreign pressure to the bitter end.

    https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/margaret-thatchers-role-sas-transformation-fw-de-klerk-5-december-2016
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I wasn’t actually meaning the RNLI (I think they are making a strategic mistake playing this game in public) but the assorted lawyers and campaigners who started this line of attack
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    Where is the bill in the drafting process?

    If it’s out for comment it makes sense you’d make all the changes in one go rather than pull it for 1 change and then have to start the process again
    Given that the government has already thought about exemptions it is a little odd that they did not already include the RNLI in the existing exemption clause. Either they did not realise it was caught or they deliberately excluded it.

    The trouble is that if they exempt the RNLI and the Coastguard they need to exempt every other vessel which might come across people in a dinghy as well, not least because the Law of the Sea would probably override this legislation if it were ever challenged.

    It is also worth noting that the bill is not restricted to what one does at sea.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    We don't need to rinse and repeat the old arguments. You know the law better than me, but as we all agreed last time "ah but the Home Secretary of the time said it doesn't apply" is no protection when the law says that it does.

    All the government needs to do is say "this is a drafting issue, we will revise it when the bill comes to parliament". Instead Patel smirks and says nothing. It is no error.
    Yes, well as I made clear the last time I am no fan of Patel. This is actually cowardice. Farage spouts some poisonous rubbish and the government wants to be seen to react instead of doing the right thing which is ignoring the sad old has been. But it is a meaningless gesture and there is no chance of anyone being prosecuted in the circumstances that apply to the RNLI.
    “No chance of anyone being prosecuted “.

    How can you guarantee that?
    Well the legislation would by law have to be construed in a way that is compatible with ECHR. Article 1 of which grants the right to life. So the legislation would be construed so that anyone whose principal purpose was protecting that right had not committed an offence. They are not assisting immigration, they are protecting life. No doubt many other arguments could also be made, even if some prosecutor were mad enough to consider this in the first place.

    But changing the draft legislation in the manner suggested by @Cyclefree is the decent thing to do and the government should do it without more fuss or indulging rather repulsive viewpoints.
    David, surely the mere appointment of Priti Patel was indulging some pretty repulsive viewpoints?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    Foxy said:

    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    As the "lets deport the forrin to Madagascar" proposal isn't realistic, we need to look at what is. Europe faces a massive refugee problem because of the burning mess on its borders. One way to stop the flow is to fix these problems. If Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were safe and functioning then less migrants need to flee.

    As that isn't very realistic then plan B - share the burden. Refugees can be distributed out amongst safe countries by agreement. But as its Britain Uber Alles these days we will enter no such agreement. Not that we need to considering we only get a small number of refugees anyway.

    Then we have Plan C. Make it so awful for refugees that the word gets to them not to come. Hence the "Drown the Migrants" bill.
    Plan D: take refugees from camps close to the crisis. Judge anyone else who arrives outside an airport by economic migrant standards and process them offshore.
    The problem is that no offshore country seems willing to take them. Rwanda keeps being mentioned, but is there any evidence that Rwanda has seriously been interested?

    Australia managed to send its to PNG and Nauru, but these have been defacto colonies for some time, and I think even PNG got fed up with being used this way.

    An internment camp in the UK seems the obvious solution, with asylum courts on site, as well as medical facilities etc. Far fewer would come if they couldn't dissappear into the underground economy.

    Performative cruelty is not going to work on people who have often walked a few hundred miles across deserts, and trapped by gangs in Libya etc. It is just not viable to be more cruel than what they have already suffered.
    Why not go the full hog and put prison hulks off the south coast, only need to send the odd tender out with food once a week. Some gunships to circle them and make sure no-one makes a dash for it.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,087
    edited July 2021
    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/donate https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1420500685993480196/photo/1

    Because Grace fucking Darling deserves every penny we can spare her.

    The pot of charitable funding is not infinitely elastic, so why are we all cheering donations to an appallingly rich institution dedicated to smoothing the way of well heeled tossers who cannot read a tide table or work a diesel engine?
    Charitable expenditure of RNLI in 2019: £165 million. 2020: £144 million.
    Unrestricted Reserves at year end. 2019: £118 million. 2020: £122 million.
    https://rnli.org/about-us/how-the-rnli-is-run/annual-report-and-accounts

    That's not "appallingly rich", @Ishmael_Z.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674

    As I prepare to publish my biography of Sir Keir Starmer on August 19, I am pleased to announce that my next project will be a book about Carrie Johnson.

    Carrie has interested me for some time. Many people know her as Boris Johnson’s wife, but her influence developed long before she moved into 10 Downing Street via her work over the last decade within the Conservative Party and also through the posts she has held working for government ministers. Aside from politics, she has campaigned in the fields of the environment and animal rights, both of which are areas of great interest to me.

    As with all of my political biographies, this project will be independent, objective, open-minded, fair, factual and even-handed. The research I’ve done already has proved fascinating.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2021/07/lord-ashcroft-exclusive-my-next-book-will-be-on-carrie-johnson.html

    Can two pages be called a book
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/donate https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1420500685993480196/photo/1

    Because Grace fucking Darling deserves every penny we can spare her.

    The pot of charitable funding is not infinitely elastic, so why are we all cheering donations to an appallingly rich institution dedicated to smoothing the way of well heeled tossers who cannot read a tide table or work a diesel engine?
    There must be a vacancy at GBNews for someone with such a well defined degree of misanthropy.

    I've donated now too.
    I've just made a charitable donation too, to sightsavers. Happy to prove it, provided that anyone who calls for proof agrees to match it. Call me morally illiterate, but I'd rather that lets say 3 year old Lucy in Nigeria gets to see stuff than that Mr miggins of Tonbridge gets a tow because he doesn't know how the engine works in his beneteau 32.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I wasn’t actually meaning the RNLI (I think they are making a strategic mistake playing this game in public) but the assorted lawyers and campaigners who started this line of attack
    "Line of attack".

    Pointing out the consequences of a piece of proposed legislation is now an attack is it.

    For God's sake.....!
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Stuart, you really need to learn to differentiate between that embarrassing shambles that calls itself the Scottish government and the country. However much the SNP wish it were otherwise their administration is not the country and laughing at or despairing of their idiocy is not in any way denigrating the latter.
    What is exasperating about all the devolved administrations is just how bad they are. You have effectively three fiefdoms of one-party states, where realistically only one party can win power no matter how awful they are or what they do - and they are awful and do many bad things - where the opposition is just as bad, and where the real underlying problems we were assured devolution would deal with are not only not dealt with but in many cases made worse.

    All so Tony Blair could win a few seats he was going to win anyway.

    It’s very depressing, and to be honest while Blair will forever be tainted by Iraq his actions on devolution were a far worse mistake. Not merely the effects, but the hubris. Remember his ‘parish council’ remark?
    You think Westminster is any different , wisen up.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,087
    Bigger question is this- why is the government developing a reputation for picking unwinnable fights with National Treasures? Certainly Rashford and the RNLI.

    Is it deliberate (they think it plays well to their base) or incompetent?

    If it's incompetence, is it a symptom of 15 months in the Covid Bunker (fixable) or because of an arrogance that can't admit being wrong?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Lots of coverage across the newspapers today about whether the 3rd wave and, with it, covid is over for the UK. Bizarrely, Sky News and the Daily Mail use yesterday's data to headline exactly the opposite. Sky report cases rising for the first time, the Mail claim it's the 8th day in a row of falls. The reason the Mail can claim this is, I think, that they're using the rolling 7 day average but that's still a piece of chicanery.

    There's another piece in today's Telegraph suggesting we may now be at, or very close to, the holy grail of herd immunity. The suggestion is that the Euros may have helped speed up that process. The argument relies on a combination of vaccination and antibodies from infection. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/28/britain-may-finally-nearing-holy-grail-herd-immunity/

    I remain cautious about this idea. Even when the current cohort of single jabbed have received their second doses, there will still be 1/3rd of the UK population un-vaccinated. I continue to have concerns (following the World Health Organisation) that we may be creating the perfect breeding grounds for the virus, including mutations. We need to press on with vaccinating younger groups, including under-18's.

    So in what way is the UK the 'perfect breeding grounds for the virus, including mutations' which France, Spain, USA, India, South America and numerous other places aren't ?

    This is at least the third time I've asked you this but I've not noticed any answer yet.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
    Refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

    That’s international law, as defined by the 1951UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 UN Refugee Protocol.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/donate https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1420500685993480196/photo/1

    Because Grace fucking Darling deserves every penny we can spare her.

    The pot of charitable funding is not infinitely elastic, so why are we all cheering donations to an appallingly rich institution dedicated to smoothing the way of well heeled tossers who cannot read a tide table or work a diesel engine?
    You are not an instinctive Tory. You riddle the modern incarnation of the Conservative Party.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    IshmaelZ said:

    Charles said:

    eek said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    I am so glad that PB was able to wake you up to this threat. Sometimes stupid legislation isn't done by accident, it is malicious. Like in this case where the angry forrin out end of the Brexiteer community has been upset by scenes of RNLI heroes rescuing drowning migrants. "Not a good look" as one of their supporters described on here.

    So the traitor Patel comes up with a wheeze. Draft a bill that leaves RNLI crews on the hook. Refuse to engage with critics, "it won't do that" when the bill clearly will. Show just enough support for the "drown the forrin" Tory supporters and hope the row makes people think anyone backing the RNLI are soft on migration.

    I hope it has backfired. Rescuing drowning migrants is not a play in their faux culture war. It is literal life and death, and highlights just how grotesque some of them are. A Tory Party that wanted to prosecute the RNLI for rescuing drowning children? "Not a good look"
    The RNLI rescues anyone and everyone no matter their circumstances when they are in peril on the sea and they place their own lives at risk

    Indeed, and we never questioned that. Only that the bill seeks to criminalise them doing their job.
    I would disagree with your ascertain the bill 'seeks to criminalise the RNLI' rather than it is poorly drafted

    As has previously been mentioned over the last few weeks, this anomaly will be addressed as the bill progresses through the HOC
    It's not poorly drafted because it's been weeks since the issue was highlighted and absolutely nothing has been done to say it's a mistake and will be redrafted.

    So I assume via the lack of apology and a lack of any promise to rewrite the law to provide a fix for the RNLI that the intention is to retain the law as is for dodgy reasons.
    They have stated that criminalising the RNLI is not their intention

    This was the easiest I could find (apologies for the Richard Murphy link but the response is clear)

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1412755421845245957
    What is the road to hell paved with? Magistrates courts are not bound by what the home office said on Twitter.
    Let’s see what the bill says once it’s been through comment / parliament shall we?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    As the "lets deport the forrin to Madagascar" proposal isn't realistic, we need to look at what is. Europe faces a massive refugee problem because of the burning mess on its borders. One way to stop the flow is to fix these problems. If Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were safe and functioning then less migrants need to flee.

    As that isn't very realistic then plan B - share the burden. Refugees can be distributed out amongst safe countries by agreement. But as its Britain Uber Alles these days we will enter no such agreement. Not that we need to considering we only get a small number of refugees anyway.

    Then we have Plan C. Make it so awful for refugees that the word gets to them not to come. Hence the "Drown the Migrants" bill.
    Plan D: take refugees from camps close to the crisis. Judge anyone else who arrives outside an airport by economic migrant standards and process them offshore.
    The problem is that no offshore country seems willing to take them. Rwanda keeps being mentioned, but is there any evidence that Rwanda has seriously been interested?

    Australia managed to send its to PNG and Nauru, but these have been defacto colonies for some time, and I think even PNG got fed up with being used this way.

    An internment camp in the UK seems the obvious solution, with asylum courts on site, as well as medical facilities etc. Far fewer would come if they couldn't dissappear into the underground economy.

    Performative cruelty is not going to work on people who have often walked a few hundred miles across deserts, and trapped by gangs in Libya etc. It is just not viable to be more cruel than what they have already suffered.
    Why not go the full hog and put prison hulks off the south coast, only need to send the odd tender out with food once a week. Some gunships to circle them and make sure no-one makes a dash for it.
    Out of the question. We haven’t got any gunships.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    Indeed there is some truth in that. England Scotland and N. Ireland are not even countries in the conventional sense because they are not sovereign in their own right because they chose, a long time ago, to combine (OK the NI bit is a bit later and more complicated). Scotland only became Scotland in the 10th Century, so was a country for only 700 years prior to it joining the Union, which in fact was really preceded by James VI of Scotland becoming king of England and Ireland in 1603; essentially a Scottish King making claim on England and Ireland. Of course there is also the period prior to this when the Welsh Tudors held power in England

    So, if any uninformed Scottish Nationalist tells you "Scotland" is a colony of "England" , they are either lying (it is what nationalists do!) or are completely ignorant of their own history.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    Not quite the same thing, since they are real it's just the name for them is disputed. That is, a name is needed for the collection of islands even if some dont like that one, rather than the islands not being real, which seemed to be the premise of Toms' 'categorismus'.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    So, if any uninformed Scottish Nationalist tells you "Scotland" is a colony of "England" , they are either lying (it is what nationalists do!) or are completely ignorant of their own history.
    Or both.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    eek said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    I am so glad that PB was able to wake you up to this threat. Sometimes stupid legislation isn't done by accident, it is malicious. Like in this case where the angry forrin out end of the Brexiteer community has been upset by scenes of RNLI heroes rescuing drowning migrants. "Not a good look" as one of their supporters described on here.

    So the traitor Patel comes up with a wheeze. Draft a bill that leaves RNLI crews on the hook. Refuse to engage with critics, "it won't do that" when the bill clearly will. Show just enough support for the "drown the forrin" Tory supporters and hope the row makes people think anyone backing the RNLI are soft on migration.

    I hope it has backfired. Rescuing drowning migrants is not a play in their faux culture war. It is literal life and death, and highlights just how grotesque some of them are. A Tory Party that wanted to prosecute the RNLI for rescuing drowning children? "Not a good look"
    The RNLI rescues anyone and everyone no matter their circumstances when they are in peril on the sea and they place their own lives at risk

    Indeed, and we never questioned that. Only that the bill seeks to criminalise them doing their job.
    I would disagree with your ascertain the bill 'seeks to criminalise the RNLI' rather than it is poorly drafted

    As has previously been mentioned over the last few weeks, this anomaly will be addressed as the bill progresses through the HOC
    I wish I shared your confidence.

    However, conversely I've seen a letter from Ms Patel, on the Electoral ID Bill, in which she says, inter alia, that
    "The list of approved photographic identification will not be limited to passports and driving licences. A broad range of documents will be accepted, including, for example, various concessionary travel passes, Proof of Age Standards Scheme (PASS) cards and photocard parking permits issued as part of the Blue Badge scheme......
    In addition, expired photographic ID will be accepted as long as the photograph is of a good enough likeness to allow polling station staff to confirm the identity of the holder."

    I think the last sentence in particular is less 'illiberal' than we were led to expect by some at least on here.

    Still don't like the basic idea. Not when nothing is being done about postal voting.
    Yep - the issue with voting ID is that its solving a problem that doesn't exist while ignoring postal voters where there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of actual abuse.
    Yes. Polling card + utility bill, and reasonable ID would be quite enough. Postal votes problem can't be solved now as both major parties rely on them and to secure the vote it would have to be done in person with an official present in the house. Nothing else achieves what the polling booth achieves in terms of security.

    Postal votes is a major flaw in an otherwise decent system.

    PS RE earlier stuff on pasting copyright articles. Isn't the issue this: It's just wrong to do anything here which could lead to trouble for Mike Smithson and co, who are generous hosts. Defamation and obvious breach of copyright (tiny excerpts and quotes used for critical appraisal are ok) should be out.

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    What they intend matters less than what is written, and it's either idiocy or disingenuity to counter accusations of what it seems to permit with reference to the intent being something else.

    A very easy thing to address without looking weak, if they want.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/donate https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1420500685993480196/photo/1

    Because Grace fucking Darling deserves every penny we can spare her.

    The pot of charitable funding is not infinitely elastic, so why are we all cheering donations to an appallingly rich institution dedicated to smoothing the way of well heeled tossers who cannot read a tide table or work a diesel engine?
    You are not an instinctive Tory. You riddle the modern incarnation of the Conservative Party.
    Not sure what riddle is an autocorrect for, or if it's a scotticism unknown to me, but I am every bit an instinctive Tory and an implacable loather of Johnson and his party.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited July 2021

    Lots of coverage across the newspapers today about whether the 3rd wave and, with it, covid is over for the UK. Bizarrely, Sky News and the Daily Mail use yesterday's data to headline exactly the opposite. Sky report cases rising for the first time, the Mail claim it's the 8th day in a row of falls. The reason the Mail can claim this is, I think, that they're using the rolling 7 day average but that's still a piece of chicanery.

    There's another piece in today's Telegraph suggesting we may now be at, or very close to, the holy grail of herd immunity. The suggestion is that the Euros may have helped speed up that process. The argument relies on a combination of vaccination and antibodies from infection. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/28/britain-may-finally-nearing-holy-grail-herd-immunity/

    I remain cautious about this idea. Even when the current cohort of single jabbed have received their second doses, there will still be 1/3rd of the UK population un-vaccinated. I continue to have concerns (following the World Health Organisation) that we may be creating the perfect breeding grounds for the virus, including mutations. We need to press on with vaccinating younger groups, including under-18's.

    XX Edit
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I wasn’t actually meaning the RNLI (I think they are making a strategic mistake playing this game in public) but the assorted lawyers and campaigners who started this line of attack
    Once again we come back to Shakespeare's "let's kill all the lawyers" sentiment.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Something that hasn't been mentioned by anyone, as far as I know, on the migrants-in-the-channel issue.

    The Channel, as we discussed in the Sealion discussion, is a nasty body of water. Cold enough to give you hypothermia in minutes. In summer. Harsh currents and tides. Stuffed full of huge ships - often with inadequate lookouts. On occasion, ships have been found to have no-one on the bridge and are proceeding on auto-pilot....

    All this adds up to the fact that if people are sailing across in small boats a serious percentage will not make it. They will die.

    I think it is certain that 25%+ of the attempted crossings fail. Probably more.

    So, if 400 people try to cross in a day......
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    Where is the bill in the drafting process?

    If it’s out for comment it makes sense you’d make all the changes in one go rather than pull it for 1 change and then have to start the process again
    Given that the government has already thought about exemptions it is a little odd that they did not already include the RNLI in the existing exemption clause. Either they did not realise it was caught or they deliberately excluded it.

    The trouble is that if they exempt the RNLI and the Coastguard they need to exempt every other vessel which might come across people in a dinghy as well, not least because the Law of the Sea would probably override this legislation if it were ever challenged.

    It is also worth noting that the bill is not restricted to what one does at sea.
    I never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    edited July 2021

    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    Indeed there is some truth in that. England Scotland and N. Ireland are not even countries in the conventional sense because they are not sovereign in their own right because they chose, a long time ago, to combine (OK the NI bit is a bit later and more complicated). Scotland only became Scotland in the 10th Century, so was a country for only 700 years prior to it joining the Union, which in fact was really preceded by James VI of Scotland becoming king of England and Ireland in 1603; essentially a Scottish King making claim on England and Ireland. Of course there is also the period prior to this when the Welsh Tudors held power in England

    So, if any uninformed Scottish Nationalist tells you "Scotland" is a colony of "England" , they are either lying (it is what nationalists do!) or are completely ignorant of their own history.
    England only united into one country from 934. By that time the main Welsh kingdoms - Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Morgannwg - accepted the overlordship of the King of Wessex as well.

    Ironically, the following year Strathclyde and Scotland were both forced to accept English overlordship as well due to Aethelstan’s invasion, which was confirmed when an attempted counter-invasion in 937 ended in disaster at the Battle of Brunanburh and Constantine of Scotland was forced to abdicate, his heir having been killed.

    Of course, it’s easy to overstate the importance of that. Aethelstan died three years later and his brothers never achieved the same level of power and influence he had. The Welsh and Scots broke away from the control of Winchester, as did the Kingdom of Northumberland which was seized by a Norse adventurer from Ireland called Olaf. Although the last was reconquered about fifteen years later, it wasn’t for literally centuries that the English - now under the rule of the Normans - started to significantly re-extend their influence over first Wales, then Ireland, then Scotland.

    But it is perhaps a reminder that as @DougSeal says ‘countries’ are arbitrary constructs. Had Aethelstan lived another ten years he might successfully have united the whole of mainland Britain into one kingdom.

    I would point out though, as far as the Welshness of the Tudors goes, Henry VII had one Welsh grandparent and Henry VIII so far as is known never visited Wales.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    We don't need to rinse and repeat the old arguments. You know the law better than me, but as we all agreed last time "ah but the Home Secretary of the time said it doesn't apply" is no protection when the law says that it does.

    All the government needs to do is say "this is a drafting issue, we will revise it when the bill comes to parliament". Instead Patel smirks and says nothing. It is no error.
    Yes, well as I made clear the last time I am no fan of Patel. This is actually cowardice. Farage spouts some poisonous rubbish and the government wants to be seen to react instead of doing the right thing which is ignoring the sad old has been. But it is a meaningless gesture and there is no chance of anyone being prosecuted in the circumstances that apply to the RNLI.
    They might be prosecuted but could a jury be found who would convict?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Charles said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    As the "lets deport the forrin to Madagascar" proposal isn't realistic, we need to look at what is. Europe faces a massive refugee problem because of the burning mess on its borders. One way to stop the flow is to fix these problems. If Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were safe and functioning then less migrants need to flee.

    As that isn't very realistic then plan B - share the burden. Refugees can be distributed out amongst safe countries by agreement. But as its Britain Uber Alles these days we will enter no such agreement. Not that we need to considering we only get a small number of refugees anyway.

    Then we have Plan C. Make it so awful for refugees that the word gets to them not to come. Hence the "Drown the Migrants" bill.
    Plan D: take refugees from camps close to the crisis. Judge anyone else who arrives outside an airport by economic migrant standards and process them offshore.
    The problem is that no offshore country seems willing to take them. Rwanda keeps being mentioned, but is there any evidence that Rwanda has seriously been interested?

    Australia managed to send its to PNG and Nauru, but these have been defacto colonies for some time, and I think even PNG got fed up with being used this way.

    An internment camp in the UK seems the obvious solution, with asylum courts on site, as well as medical facilities etc. Far fewer would come if they couldn't dissappear into the underground economy.

    Performative cruelty is not going to work on people who have often walked a few hundred miles across deserts, and trapped by gangs in Libya etc. It is just not viable to be more cruel than what they have already suffered.
    Why not go the full hog and put prison hulks off the south coast, only need to send the odd tender out with food once a week. Some gunships to circle them and make sure no-one makes a dash for it.
    Because we don’t have enough gunships?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    edited July 2021
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
    Refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

    That’s international law, as defined by the 1951UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 UN Refugee Protocol.
    Whereas Amnesty International says this:


    Neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor EU law requires a refugee to claim asylum in one country rather than another.

    There is no rule requiring refugees to claim in the first safe country in which they arrive.


    Anyone fancy adjudicating? Fight? Best of three?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    MattW said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/donate https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1420500685993480196/photo/1

    Because Grace fucking Darling deserves every penny we can spare her.

    The pot of charitable funding is not infinitely elastic, so why are we all cheering donations to an appallingly rich institution dedicated to smoothing the way of well heeled tossers who cannot read a tide table or work a diesel engine?
    Charitable expenditure of RNLI in 2019: £165 million. 2020: £144 million.
    Unrestricted Reserves at year end. 2019: £118 million. 2020: £122 million.
    https://rnli.org/about-us/how-the-rnli-is-run/annual-report-and-accounts

    That's not "appallingly rich", @Ishmael_Z.
    1 year’s reserves is a lot.

    The guidance is 3-5% of income in a year should be put into reserves
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    The assault on the RNLI is appalling and bringing out the very worst of the Alf Garnett Brexiteers.

    Meanwhile, there's a brilliant, blistering, attack on the Conservatives by Alister Heath in today's Daily Telegraph.

    All pb tories should read this:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/28/rudderless-labour-lite-tories-face-autumn-political-carnage/

    Yes, it's behind a paywall but they're offering 3 months for £1 at which point you can just cancel.


    It's good to see a Johnsonite tell the faithful how useless and rubbish their government is (particularly his description of them as the return of the BLOB) but there is little in Heath's own vision that would appeal to anyone not on the extreme right.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Stuart, you really need to learn to differentiate between that embarrassing shambles that calls itself the Scottish government and the country. However much the SNP wish it were otherwise their administration is not the country and laughing at or despairing of their idiocy is not in any way denigrating the latter.
    What is exasperating about all the devolved administrations is just how bad they are. You have effectively three fiefdoms of one-party states, where realistically only one party can win power no matter how awful they are or what they do - and they are awful and do many bad things - where the opposition is just as bad, and where the real underlying problems we were assured devolution would deal with are not only not dealt with but in many cases made worse.

    All so Tony Blair could win a few seats he was going to win anyway.

    It’s very depressing, and to be honest while Blair will forever be tainted by Iraq his actions on devolution were a far worse mistake. Not merely the effects, but the hubris. Remember his ‘parish council’ remark?
    I look forward to the next Conservative manifesto promising to abolish the three devolved legislatures.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Lots of coverage across the newspapers today about whether the 3rd wave and, with it, covid is over for the UK. Bizarrely, Sky News and the Daily Mail use yesterday's data to headline exactly the opposite. Sky report cases rising for the first time, the Mail claim it's the 8th day in a row of falls. The reason the Mail can claim this is, I think, that they're using the rolling 7 day average but that's still a piece of chicanery.

    There's another piece in today's Telegraph suggesting we may now be at, or very close to, the holy grail of herd immunity. The suggestion is that the Euros may have helped speed up that process. The argument relies on a combination of vaccination and antibodies from infection. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/28/britain-may-finally-nearing-holy-grail-herd-immunity/

    I remain cautious about this idea. Even when the current cohort of single jabbed have received their second doses, there will still be 1/3rd of the UK population un-vaccinated. I continue to have concerns (following the World Health Organisation) that we may be creating the perfect breeding grounds for the virus, including mutations. We need to press on with vaccinating younger groups, including under-18's.

    So in what way is the UK the 'perfect breeding grounds for the virus, including mutations' which France, Spain, USA, India, South America and numerous other places aren't ?

    This is at least the third time I've asked you this but I've not noticed any answer yet.
    I'll have a guess that for some people the 'perfect breeding grounds for new variants' are always at whatever the UK's current levels of infections and vaccinations are.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    You are correct all countries are, ultimately, imaginary constructs. I'm deeply attacked to mine but I know that people have believed in different ones and will in the future. It's why I get mad if someone attacks the UK as not a real country as if any imaginary border line or division by historic 'race' matters.

    These things are real to us not least as it's hard to get tribal level attachment to all humanity, and can be a good thing as driver of competition and belonging.

    But it shouldn't be taken too far, as it is all arbitrary in the end, even as it is all real and valid if enough believe it.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I wasn’t actually meaning the RNLI (I think they are making a strategic mistake playing this game in public) but the assorted lawyers and campaigners who started this line of attack
    "Line of attack".

    Pointing out the consequences of a piece of proposed legislation is now an attack is it.

    For God's sake.....!
    It was used as a line of attack

    It was the usual suspects of people who had the government

    It is possible to point out consequences of legislation, as you say, without drawing wider conclusions
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    algarkirk said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
    Refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

    That’s international law, as defined by the 1951UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 UN Refugee Protocol.
    Whereas Amnesty International says this:


    Neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor EU law requires a refugee to claim asylum in one country rather than another.

    There is no rule requiring refugees to claim in the first safe country in which they arrive.


    Anyone fancy adjudicating? Fight? Best of three?
    @Sandpit I've looked at this in detail - there is nothing that says you need to claim asylum in the first safe country you arrive at. Which is why Turkey, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria etc make themselves as unwelcoming as possible to ensure they continue the journey.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,399
    All this talk of the RNLI reminds me that certain folk get very worked up about the RSPCA for some reason
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Bigger question is this- why is the government developing a reputation for picking unwinnable fights with National Treasures? Certainly Rashford and the RNLI.

    Is it deliberate (they think it plays well to their base) or incompetent?

    If it's incompetence, is it a symptom of 15 months in the Covid Bunker (fixable) or because of an arrogance that can't admit being wrong?

    It started well before Covid kicked off - it's the nature of the current leadership as they try to follow Farage's playbook and pick distractions.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    Indeed there is some truth in that. England Scotland and N. Ireland are not even countries in the conventional sense because they are not sovereign in their own right because they chose, a long time ago, to combine (OK the NI bit is a bit later and more complicated). Scotland only became Scotland in the 10th Century, so was a country for only 700 years prior to it joining the Union, which in fact was really preceded by James VI of Scotland becoming king of England and Ireland in 1603; essentially a Scottish King making claim on England and Ireland. Of course there is also the period prior to this when the Welsh Tudors held power in England

    So, if any uninformed Scottish Nationalist tells you "Scotland" is a colony of "England" , they are either lying (it is what nationalists do!) or are completely ignorant of their own history.
    England only united into one country from 934. By that time the main Welsh kingdoms - Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Morgannwg - accepted the overlordship of the King of Wessex as well.

    Ironically, the following year Strathclyde and Scotland were both forced to accept English overlordship as well due to Aethelstan’s invasion, which was confirmed when an attempted counter-invasion in 937 ended in disaster at the Battle of Brunanburh and Constantine of Scotland was forced to abdicate, his heir having been killed.

    Of course, it’s easy to overstate the importance of that. Aethelstan died three years later and his brothers never achieved the same level of power and influence he had. The Welsh and Scots broke away from the control of Winchester, as did the Kingdom of Northumberland which was seized by a Norse adventurer from Ireland called Olaf. Although the last was reconquered about fifteen years later, it wasn’t for literally centuries that the English - now under the rule of the Normans - started to significantly re-extend their influence over first Wales, then Ireland, then Scotland.

    But it is perhaps a reminder that as @DougSeal says ‘countries’ are arbitrary constructs. Had Aethelstan lived another ten years he might successfully have united the whole of mainland Britain into one kingdom.

    I would point out though, as far as the Welshness of the Tudors goes, Henry VII had one Welsh grandparent and Henry VIII so far as is known never visited Wales.
    If he was running for office in America hed say he was welsh then.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    MaxPB said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I wasn’t actually meaning the RNLI (I think they are making a strategic mistake playing this game in public) but the assorted lawyers and campaigners who started this line of attack
    Once again we come back to Shakespeare's "let's kill all the lawyers" sentiment.
    Is that a criticism or a recommendation?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    Where is the bill in the drafting process?

    If it’s out for comment it makes sense you’d make all the changes in one go rather than pull it for 1 change and then have to start the process again
    Given that the government has already thought about exemptions it is a little odd that they did not already include the RNLI in the existing exemption clause. Either they did not realise it was caught or they deliberately excluded it.

    The trouble is that if they exempt the RNLI and the Coastguard they need to exempt every other vessel which might come across people in a dinghy as well, not least because the Law of the Sea would probably override this legislation if it were ever challenged.

    It is also worth noting that the bill is not restricted to what one does at sea.
    I think it is that classic - wide ranging legislation to catch everyone and everything, because it's easier that way. Criminalise everyone and then pick who you prosecute.

    As to why - look at what happened in the Med. The next step was the people smugglers calling the coastguard to pick up their victims.... even tow them out to sea and abandon them with no engine etc. By doing this they get their clients onto a rescue/military/coastguard ship. Who then has to bring them to port....

    So the worse the danger for the migrants..... which led to alot of deaths among the migrants, of course.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793

    philiph said:

    philiph said:

    @Cocky_cockney

    Pasting the article is a seriously bad idea.
    .

    Relax

    They allow half a dozen free articles anyway. The publicity for their subscription trial will probably make them more than happy.
    In your dreams.

    It is not in your gift to make that assumption. And it is wrong.
    Free articles require a sign up.

    Breach of copyright is black and white. Your personal introduction of your interpretation is wrong and dangerous to the site owner.

    You have no right to knowingly put him in jeopardy.
    Put him in jeopardy knowingly.
    Ultra-pedantically, I would argue that the first version is better English, despite the split infinitive:

    - Refusal to split an infinitive is a "rule" that some stylists adopted in order to make drafting one's words in Latin easier. It has no further merit, as English is a very different language to Latin.
    - Good English is characterised by how easy it is to understand. ABC = Accurate, Brief, Clear. The first version feels clearer and runs smoother. The second feels more contorted (cf Churchill's famous rejoinder on being picked up for ending a sentence with a preposition (another artificial "rule" brought in solely because a newspaper editor felt that the "pre-" part in "preposition" meant that it HAD to be before something else): "That is the sort of nonsense up with which I shall not put")
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    On topic: sadly I suspect the RNLI attack will prove effective. Its purpose is to convince the Tories' target voters that the traditional institutions and totems of nationhood have been corrupted, that their way of life is under threat, and only the Party can save them. Hence the Tory attacks not on peripheral organisations but on bodies like the National Trust and the English football team.

    It's a well-worn playbook adopted from the Republicans in the US (see also: attacks on voting rights, dog-whistle racism on law and order). But it also has antecedents in other populist-nationalist parties through history. Traditional Toryism it ain't.

    The common denominator is that the institutions being attacked are not English Nationalist enough for the new Conservative Revolutionary Party.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Charles said:

    MaxPB said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    They totally have another agenda @DavidL

    I’m surprised that you’re so naive that you just “a bit suspicious” 😉
    Well, I like to think the best of people Charles, especially in institutions such as the RNLI.
    I wasn’t actually meaning the RNLI (I think they are making a strategic mistake playing this game in public) but the assorted lawyers and campaigners who started this line of attack
    Once again we come back to Shakespeare's "let's kill all the lawyers" sentiment.
    Is that a criticism or a recommendation?
    It depends, are you a lawyer?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    edited July 2021
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
    Refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

    That’s international law, as defined by the 1951UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 UN Refugee Protocol.
    But this is not strictly applied, and can't be, because geography and logistics would mean they'd all concentrate in just a handful of places and countries like the UK would end up getting virtually none. Rich countries have to co-operate to achieve a just and reasonable outcome.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751

    All this talk of the RNLI reminds me that certain folk get very worked up about the RSPCA for some reason

    If the RSPCA want to avoid criticism, they should stop ordering their animal welfare officers, whom they very misleadingly call inspectors and give police style uniforms to, to break the law.

    Not that difficult, really.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,751
    kle4 said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    Indeed there is some truth in that. England Scotland and N. Ireland are not even countries in the conventional sense because they are not sovereign in their own right because they chose, a long time ago, to combine (OK the NI bit is a bit later and more complicated). Scotland only became Scotland in the 10th Century, so was a country for only 700 years prior to it joining the Union, which in fact was really preceded by James VI of Scotland becoming king of England and Ireland in 1603; essentially a Scottish King making claim on England and Ireland. Of course there is also the period prior to this when the Welsh Tudors held power in England

    So, if any uninformed Scottish Nationalist tells you "Scotland" is a colony of "England" , they are either lying (it is what nationalists do!) or are completely ignorant of their own history.
    England only united into one country from 934. By that time the main Welsh kingdoms - Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Morgannwg - accepted the overlordship of the King of Wessex as well.

    Ironically, the following year Strathclyde and Scotland were both forced to accept English overlordship as well due to Aethelstan’s invasion, which was confirmed when an attempted counter-invasion in 937 ended in disaster at the Battle of Brunanburh and Constantine of Scotland was forced to abdicate, his heir having been killed.

    Of course, it’s easy to overstate the importance of that. Aethelstan died three years later and his brothers never achieved the same level of power and influence he had. The Welsh and Scots broke away from the control of Winchester, as did the Kingdom of Northumberland which was seized by a Norse adventurer from Ireland called Olaf. Although the last was reconquered about fifteen years later, it wasn’t for literally centuries that the English - now under the rule of the Normans - started to significantly re-extend their influence over first Wales, then Ireland, then Scotland.

    But it is perhaps a reminder that as @DougSeal says ‘countries’ are arbitrary constructs. Had Aethelstan lived another ten years he might successfully have united the whole of mainland Britain into one kingdom.

    I would point out though, as far as the Welshness of the Tudors goes, Henry VII had one Welsh grandparent and Henry VIII so far as is known never visited Wales.
    If he was running for office in America hed say he was welsh then.
    Well, Henry VII did.

    And very useful it proved at the election, um, Battle of Bosworth.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,087
    Roger said:

    The assault on the RNLI is appalling and bringing out the very worst of the Alf Garnett Brexiteers.

    Meanwhile, there's a brilliant, blistering, attack on the Conservatives by Alister Heath in today's Daily Telegraph.

    All pb tories should read this:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/28/rudderless-labour-lite-tories-face-autumn-political-carnage/

    Yes, it's behind a paywall but they're offering 3 months for £1 at which point you can just cancel.


    It's good to see a Johnsonite tell the faithful how useless and rubbish their government is (particularly his description of them as the return of the BLOB) but there is little in Heath's own vision that would appeal to anyone not on the extreme right.
    Still significant. The success of Johnsonism is that it's absorbed UKIP and gained more from that than it's lost in the centre.

    Thus far, Farage hasn't been given any popular ground to plant his feet on. If that changes, things get more interesting.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400
    kle4 said:

    DougSeal said:

    ydoethur said:

    DougSeal said:

    Toms said:

    At the risk of falling into a logical black hole I've just invented a word.
    It is "categorismus" to describe the process of making something seem real by putting a name to it.

    Eg. “the British Isles”.
    “Scotland”
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    What I do find amusing about your love-in for Jim Murphy is that you keep reposting this photo of him in the referendum campaign suggesting that he was a negative influence.

    And yet No won...
    It illustrates one of the key fallacies of the BetterTogether platform: that Unionists love Scotland. As so often illustrated on these threads, Unionists often despise Scotland and do everything within their power to denigrate the country.
    Really? I’ve never seen it, but then I will admit haven’t been looking like you have.

    I’ve seen lots of Nats say that Scotland is a corrupt impoverished shithole because it’s not independent. I’m not sure I agree with them either, although in fairness the SNP government are working very hard to ensure we have plenty of evidence of the first.
    I am a unionist and I love Scotland and will be taking a holiday there in a few weeks time. Perhaps we could meet Stuart, as unlike most other Nat posters you do seem to have a genuine sense of humour? Oh hang on, that won't work; you love Scotland so much you don't live there do you? lol .

    Seriously though, I think you mistake people mocking Scottish Nationalists for people mocking Scotland. It isn't the same thing, in the same way that mocking British National Party or UKIP members isn't the same as mocking Britain.
    Countries, all countries, are imaginary constructs. If everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in Canada, Canada would be as real as the Kingdom of Tolosa is now. There should be no problem mocking any such imaginary construct but we are all deeply wedded to them and take ridiculous offence when ours is.
    You are correct all countries are, ultimately, imaginary constructs. I'm deeply attacked to mine but I know that people have believed in different ones and will in the future. It's why I get mad if someone attacks the UK as not a real country as if any imaginary border line or division by historic 'race' matters.

    These things are real to us not least as it's hard to get tribal level attachment to all humanity, and can be a good thing as driver of competition and belonging.

    But it shouldn't be taken too far, as it is all arbitrary in the end, even as it is all real and valid if enough believe it.
    Plus national myth making is frequently nonsense, and even when there is a solid basis the cohesiveness of the identity historically, and its geographic extent , is often wildly over extended based on present day identity being pushed back.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    All this talk of the RNLI reminds me that certain folk get very worked up about the RSPCA for some reason

    The RSPCA has some very er.... strange people working there. Some who combine the worst of the police mentality with a belief that they *are* the police.

    Read Private Eye. On occasion, for example, someone in the RSCPCA will decide that an independent animal rescue centre is too successful - raising too much money, to big.. So they make them an offer - join us (and kick a pile of that contributed money up the chain), or we will prosecute you into the ground for real/alleged minor infringements of animal protection laws.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731
    Does the second dose of AZ generally cause the same side effects as the first?
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    algarkirk said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
    Refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

    That’s international law, as defined by the 1951UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 UN Refugee Protocol.
    Whereas Amnesty International says this:


    Neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor EU law requires a refugee to claim asylum in one country rather than another.

    There is no rule requiring refugees to claim in the first safe country in which they arrive.


    Anyone fancy adjudicating? Fight? Best of three?
    https://fullfact.org/immigration/refugees-first-safe-country/

    The claim has been made so often many believe it but it does not seem to stand up.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    Where is the bill in the drafting process?

    If it’s out for comment it makes sense you’d make all the changes in one go rather than pull it for 1 change and then have to start the process again
    Given that the government has already thought about exemptions it is a little odd that they did not already include the RNLI in the existing exemption clause. Either they did not realise it was caught or they deliberately excluded it.

    The trouble is that if they exempt the RNLI and the Coastguard they need to exempt every other vessel which might come across people in a dinghy as well, not least because the Law of the Sea would probably override this legislation if it were ever challenged.

    It is also worth noting that the bill is not restricted to what one does at sea.
    I think it is that classic - wide ranging legislation to catch everyone and everything, because it's easier that way. Criminalise everyone and then pick who you prosecute.

    As to why - look at what happened in the Med. The next step was the people smugglers calling the coastguard to pick up their victims.... even tow them out to sea and abandon them with no engine etc. By doing this they get their clients onto a rescue/military/coastguard ship. Who then has to bring them to port....

    So the worse the danger for the migrants..... which led to alot of deaths among the migrants, of course.
    I think I made that comment earlier - the issue with the law is that it's too broad and therefore bad, but there is zero ways of making it better because any get out clauses will be abused quickly.

    In my mind that just makes it a bad law, so fix is to find a law attacking the issue in a different way but equally I suspect that's been thought about.

    So we end up with a law that looks bad, and has obvious flaws in it but with no one defending why its been written the way it was because that requires effort and would reveal the actual plan.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    eek said:

    algarkirk said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    As the Father of a lifeboat crew member I completely endorse the thread header and it is intolerable the issue has even arisen

    Patel needs to deal with this

    In her head she has. Incredibly.

    A member of my extended family is a lifeboat crew member in another country; his father describes the situation as 'his alarm goes and he's off out. Immediately!"

    Yes, lifeboatmen do meet idiots who should never have gone to sea. That doesn't mean they should be left to drown.
    I know a couple of people who do mountain rescue. They’re forever risking their own lives, to pick up people dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops with severe hypothermia, or who went for a walk and got completely lost as weather closed in. Idiots the lot of them, but still humans.

    The only way the boat crossings stop, is if the demand goes away. It’s clear that the French government doesn’t care, and is turning a blind eye to people eager to leave France to live in a safe country. We need to take the Denmark route, of facilitating settlement in a safe third country, and let it be known that anyone arriving by boat from France will be resettled elsewhere.
    Yes, got a (former, too old now) mountain rescuer in the EF, too. And a couple of surf rescuers down in Cornwall. Admirable people, those who do that.

    Is Denmark getting a reduction in asylum seekers? Or do they get processed more quickly than here? In any event, apparently treated more humanely than appears to be the case in UK?
    What Denmark are doing is opening a migrant processing centre, likely to be in Rwanda. Anyone arriving in Denmark and claiming asylum is sent there, and if their application is successful they’re allowed to settle in Rwanda, with the Danish government paying the Rwandan government for each settled migrant. No-one arriving in Denmark by boat and claiming asylum, will be allowed to resettle in Denmark.

    Trying to find a link that isn’t screaming about the system one way or the other is difficult, this most impartial one I can quickly find.
    https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/28/migrants-who-want-to-come-to-uk-may-be-sent-to-processing-centres-in-africa-14836904/
    Surely there is a simple step - take a breath, ignore the froth on either side, and think. Denmark has *proposed* such a thing. It doesn't exist yet hence "likely to be in Rwanda". The likelihood of a foreign government accepting someone else's migrants for cash seems so unlikely as to be absurd. "They're allowed to settle in Rwanda" - are they imprisoned there? Won't they just leave and head somewhere they want to settle?

    As for the idea that the Danes pay Rwanda for settled migrants, for how long? Imagine the headlines here "Your Taxpayers fund foreigners living abroad" - whatever agreement we managed to make with Madagascar would be torn up at the next budget review. "We negotiated and signed this deal, but we had no idea that it meant we had to keep paying".

    We know where "lets deport them somewhere else" came from. Its truly shameful that we have people advocating Nazi policies and yes that includes the idiots in the Danish government.
    What should we do to those arriving by boat?

    1. Allow them to settle in the U.K.?
    2. Deport them back to the safe country they came from (France or Belgium)?
    3. Process them offshore and allow the genuine refugees somewhere to live in a safe country?

    If we go with 1, should I buy a dingy and push my wife off the beach at Calais? Because that would save me shedloads of time and money, compared to trying to arrange legal migration through the proper channels.
    Lets go through these one at a time:
    1. Allow them to settle in the UK. If their claim is accepted, yes. If not, deport them. Asylum Seekers become a major problem because despite "take back control of our border" the smirking traitor has cut Border Force and the Police and the Home Office. We can't process claims with any speed so they get housed in "murder row" accommodation (e.g. on Teesside and in Sunderland the refugee houses were the ones that the housing association couldn't let), receive not enough to live on vouchers for sustenance and legally can't work. So they go into the black labour market.

    That is a problem of our own making. Accepting Asylum Seekers into the UK for processing is not a guarantee they can stay.

    2. The "safe country" myth. This is simply not present in the UN Refugee Convention, a position backed up by UK case law. So as there is no compulsion on refugees to settle in France there is no legal way to force the French to accept the deportees back. If we had international agreements to distribute refugees then perhaps we could, but Brexit killed that and we withdrew from the Dublin convention doing precisely that

    3. Process them offshore as the Nazis proposed for the Jews. A fantasy. Denmark has proposed it. The idea that Madagascar is willing to take our deportees for cash AND the deportees stay there and don't just try again is laughable. How long would the UK need to pay this foreign government to house our foreign undesirables? What happens when the UK stops paying the bill? Would the foreign government be required to imprison them there?
    1. The fact hat they’ve come from France or Belgium is enough to deny their asylum application. Those are not unsafe countries, and the migrants are not fleeing state persecution there.
    2. It’s impossible in practice to deport anyone who arrives with no papers, that’s the biggest problem.
    3. 8:30 in the morning and Godwin already? That doesn’t deserve a response.
    Except (1) is a bit of a nonsense. If refugees have to claim asylum in the 1st safe country they reach we'd get hardly any.
    Refugees have to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

    That’s international law, as defined by the 1951UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 UN Refugee Protocol.
    Whereas Amnesty International says this:


    Neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor EU law requires a refugee to claim asylum in one country rather than another.

    There is no rule requiring refugees to claim in the first safe country in which they arrive.


    Anyone fancy adjudicating? Fight? Best of three?
    @Sandpit I've looked at this in detail - there is nothing that says you need to claim asylum in the first safe country you arrive at. Which is why Turkey, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria etc make themselves as unwelcoming as possible to ensure they continue the journey.
    Hmm, I thought I’d looked at it too, but it does seem that UK a case law disagrees, and says that it’s possible to claim asylum providing you’ve not tried to claim asylum elsewhere.

    The obligation is on the first safe country they reach to hear their claim, but there’s no obligation to claim asylum in that first safe country.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    edited July 2021

    All this talk of the RNLI reminds me that certain folk get very worked up about the RSPCA for some reason

    Woke, innit? Well known that all do-gooders are lefty guardianistas with a deep hatred of Britain. I, for one, spluttered into my cornflakes the other morning when the RSPB magazine arrived and the front page was covered in revisionist nonsense about it being founded by a bunch of women over a hundred years ago. I mean, as if!

    Edit: charmingly, one of it's original rules was (per wiki) that
    "That Lady-Members shall refrain from wearing the feathers of any bird not killed for purposes of food, the ostrich only excepted."
    Men were presumably allowed to wear whatever bits of dead animal they liked!
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    isam said:

    Does the second dose of AZ generally cause the same side effects as the first?

    It’s usually the first AZ that gives the biggest reaction, but the second Pfizer.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    eek said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Charles said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DavidL said:

    Did we not discuss this recently on a thread by @Cyclefree ? The position, AIUI, is that the draft legislation removed the criteria that the offence of assisting illegal immigration had to be "for profit". The context was that there was apparently a practice of prosecuting those who steered the boat if they got a discount in their fare for doing so. The purpose of that nonsense is presumably to make it easier to deport the steerers.

    The question is what does this have to do with the RNLI? I think their concern is that if they pick people up in distress in the channel and bring them ashore they could now be caught by the legislation. The government is clear that this is rescue work, not "assisting illegal immigration". This is so obviously so that I am frankly a bit suspicious that the person or persons raising the alarm has another agenda.

    On a separate point I agree with those criticising @Cocky_cockney for copying and pasting the latest Heath drivel in its entirety. Mike has had letters from lawyers about this before and has been clear that we should not do it. It really should be removed.

    We did indeed.

    The intention may not be to criminalise the RNLI or anyone else performing rescue work. But the draft legislation - as currently drafted - does have that consequence. If the government wanted it could easily and quickly amend the draft Bill. It hasn't.

    The Bill has a specific exemption for charities which exist to assist refugees. So the government has clearly at some level realised what the Bill will do and has thought about exemptions. But it has not included the RNLI within those exemptions.
    Where is the bill in the drafting process?

    If it’s out for comment it makes sense you’d make all the changes in one go rather than pull it for 1 change and then have to start the process again
    Given that the government has already thought about exemptions it is a little odd that they did not already include the RNLI in the existing exemption clause. Either they did not realise it was caught or they deliberately excluded it.

    The trouble is that if they exempt the RNLI and the Coastguard they need to exempt every other vessel which might come across people in a dinghy as well, not least because the Law of the Sea would probably override this legislation if it were ever challenged.

    It is also worth noting that the bill is not restricted to what one does at sea.
    I think it is that classic - wide ranging legislation to catch everyone and everything, because it's easier that way. Criminalise everyone and then pick who you prosecute.

    As to why - look at what happened in the Med. The next step was the people smugglers calling the coastguard to pick up their victims.... even tow them out to sea and abandon them with no engine etc. By doing this they get their clients onto a rescue/military/coastguard ship. Who then has to bring them to port....

    So the worse the danger for the migrants..... which led to alot of deaths among the migrants, of course.
    I think I made that comment earlier - the issue with the law is that it's too broad and therefore bad, but there is zero ways of making it better because any get out clauses will be abused quickly.

    In my mind that just makes it a bad law, so fix is to find a law attacking the issue in a different way but equally I suspect that's been thought about.

    So we end up with a law that looks bad, and has obvious flaws in it but with no one defending why its been written the way it was because that requires effort and would reveal the actual plan.
    Yes, exactly. And this is why broad, bad laws get created.
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