The fight for Nadine’s seat hots up even though there’s no vacancy – politicalbetting.com
The fight for Nadine’s seat hots up even though there’s no vacancy – politicalbetting.com
Even though Johnson is still PM and we are 11 days away from us knowing a successor at least three parties have already started knocking on doors and delivering leaflets in the Mid-Beds seat where Nadine Dorries is the MP.
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1.08 Liz Truss 93%
13 Rishi Sunak 8%
Next Conservative leader
1.07 Liz Truss 93%
14 Rishi Sunak 7%
Confected outrage is more about bringing down the Government than helping workers
Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Felixstowe port found itself in the grip of a crisis. After all, someone at the terminal’s parent company – possibly after being repeatedly hit round the head with a large, wet fish – thought it was a good idea to employ Chris Grayling as a “strategic adviser”, on £100,000 a year for just seven hours a week work no less.
“Strategic” is not necessarily a word that springs to mind when looking back on Grayling’s highlights reel as a Cabinet minister. In fact you would struggle to find a less strategic act than his decision to award a £14m ferry contract to a firm that had no ferries, while serving as transport secretary, though there is a wealth of alternative material to choose from in Grayling’s case.
The selection of outsourcing giant Carillion to run prison maintenance when the company was on the brink of collapse, during his time as justice secretary, must come a close second.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/23/felixstowe-strike-exposes-true-colours-militant-union-barons/ (£££)
Well, I thought it was funny, including the enormo-haddock reference.
Currently GCSE and A-level students are only categorised as boys or girls
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/23/exam-results-non-binary-pupils-could-recorded-separately/ (£££)
Spox for the pressure group Sex Matters complains this will mean losing data when comparing boys with girls. This sounds like nonsense to me, since we do not know how trans candidates are currently recorded. A better objection might be that in less popular subjects, with small schools, it risks identifying individual students.
Oh wait, you mean that they should never been allowed anywhere near a ministerial post and salary in the first place.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3613160-oz-campaign-bites-down-on-crudite-if-john-fetterman-had-ever-eaten-a-vegetable-in-his-life-then-maybe-he-wouldnt-have-had-a-major-stroke/
Ukraine, of course, will remind everyone today that this war actually started eight years ago.
I just hope it passes in relative peace today. I can’t afford any more windows.
And Crist wins comfortably in the primary to challenge DeSantis; rival says she’s prepared to run on his ticket.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/23/florida-new-york-primaries-august-23-00053400
The UK needs to agree with France that boats can be intercepted by them in French waters, with their permission, and all aboard landed back in Calais. No-one gets into UK waters.
The UK then agrees to accept a quota of vulnerable migrants directly from France once (and only once) these claims have been processed in country.
Sweeten the deal with lots of cash. Royal Navy also helps out France in the Med in return.
They don't need 'help' in the Mediterranean as the vast majority of asylum seeker traffic is either Libya/Tunisia to Lampedusa (so Italy's problem) or Algeria/Morocco to Spain.
The government don't have the fortitude for a full Australian style Operation Sovereign Borders operation with tow backs and offshore detention so it'll have to be the French solution.
There's effectively a salary floor for it at the moment.
I'm under no illusions that migrants scarpering from near Calais into Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands is in France's interests (they don't want them) but killing the people smuggler's business model, taking only vulnerable refugees that are genuine (and a quota at that) and co-operating in tackling the problem at source all seem like wins to me.
Hope it’s not Hundred Years' War II.
Incidentally, Scotland and England (with Ireland & Wales) were on opposing sides in Hundred Years' War I. The Scottish side won.
It'd be a bigger polling failure than the Michigan 2016 Democratic primary, which is the biggest polling failure I can find
It could go up one-hundred fold.
This is no answer without an answer on numbers.
An off shore processing centre just becomes a de facto and massive refugee camp so who is going to sign up to host that?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/24/nine-protesters-arrested-surrey-damaging-fuel-pumps-m25/
Evidence: Danish Social Democrats. And to a lesser extent Swedish Social Democrats. Other examples surely exist.
Incidentally, tomorrow voting opens for the Swedish general election. I don’t mean postal voting, I mean normal physical voting. Although “Polling Day” is not until Sunday 11 September, we’re allowed to nip down to the local (fantastically stocked) library and express our democratic will from tomorrow. If we change our minds before 11 September we just turn up then and that vote is the one that counts.
If only I knew who to vote for…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo
I understand that it is very very clever. I understand that he is extremely talented. But I’m sorry, it’s just not that funny.
Is it a US thing? An age thing? A humour failure on my part?
Right now it looks like Russia is finished as a great power as it descends towards open fascism and an increasingly likely civil war or even civil wars.
Putin unprovoked attack looks more and more like a catastrophic miscalculation.
Your question on numbers pivots to the other problem.
Problem 1: people coming in on little boats which are dangerous. We *could* do all kinds of things to stop the boats. Crack down on businesses using illegal labour. Off-shore processing of claims. Actual routes to make a claim. But we don't. Because the boats are a disguise for:
Problem 2: too many English hate foreigners coming into their country taking over the schools and shops and simultaneously taking the jobs and benefits. There are no legal routes for Afghans to apply for asylum because England doesn't want the forrin.
I'm happy to discuss a managed asylum policy with you. I live in a nation which openly wants migration. But as the Tory parts of England are awash with jingoism, we can't have that conversation. Because their proposed answer to your "how many" question is "zero".
It also leads to complete absurdities. I was speaking to a friend yesterday who is acting for someone who has overstayed his academic visa because he has now got his qualifications and is employed by a front rank Scottish University teaching computing science. We are trying to send him back to Nigeria. Its completely absurd. We absolutely need people like this.
Once we accept that asylum is entirely at our discretion and that we choose who comes here and whom we want or need immigration will not stop but it will be directed at our needs rather than those who are less fortunate. Harsh, but inevitable in my view.
No Scots = no French victory = England retaining her continental possessions
Scots caused English exceptionalism. Discuss.
Attitudes to immigration and immigrants are constantly in flux depending on the economic and social conditions of the country in question. The USA had an open door immigration policy until the door started to be closed by the Asian Immigration (Page) Act in 1875. Restrictions would increase until after WW2 when the door began to open again to fill openings created by the strong economy in the 50s, similarly in the 90s there was huge immigration into the US, until the tide turned again over the last few years.
A similar pattern can be seen in England. Immigration not a problem until it is and then not a problem again. Free movement was not an issue until the expansion of the EU roughly coincided with the GFC. If you think that Scotland has always been and always will be a bed of roses for immigration then go listen to the Rangers fans who sing about reversing Irish immigration to Scotland in less than polite terms.
While I agree with Mr Mr L's general opinion the problem with sending people to the Lord is that they get a great deal more than the square root of et cetera.
And they hang around politics contributing their bizarre views.
The west will be facing a big migration wave as the world heats and poorer countries struggle. So a number of things we can do:
1. Develop poorer countries. Vast solar farms across the more arid parts. Generates power for domestic AC to make the climate more tolerable. Creates jobs. Exports power to the west.
2. Actually co-operate with our neighbours. Stop treating Europe as the enemy - we need them.
3. Treat migration as an opportunity. Who do we want, where do we want them? We have so many unfillable jobs - offer work visas for specific areas. Migrants likely to accept poorer living standards than locals, so can fit them in. We need so many new brains, new ideas, new technologies which we can then exploit and sell. Your ex-Nigerian should be welcome.
Again, the number of asylum seekers millions of voters want is zero. You can't discuss asylum policy with them because they don't want them here. So there can be no solution, until they are back in their jingoism box and the rest of the country can fix it.
You are of course correct. All my fault.
JRM is made Lord JRM as resported
JRM is appointed Levelling Up Secretary. From the Lords.
Ukranians really notice these gestures - things that seems meaningless or virtue signalling to us, come across very differently to those actually caught up in the war. It tells them that they are not being forgotten.
Same goes for the Ukranian flags at sporting events, jacket pins worn by people on TV or in Parliament, even social media banners. Keep it up everyone.
In any event, the Scots contribution was exemplified by the disastrous Battles of Cravant and Verneuil where the limitations of Scots forces were brutally exposed and their contributions were limited thereafter.
Hmm… a bit like the piles of rubbish in Edinburgh being nothing to do with the Lab-LD-Con council but all the fault of the SNP.
Racism in Scottish cricket? Not the fault of Conservative board members. All the SNP.
St George’s School discriminating against brown MI6 hero? All the SNP’s fault. Nothing to do with the bigoted English parents.
Etc etc etc ad infinitum.
So, back to the attitude of southern Brits to migration...
In reality? Its everyone's fault.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20220822/danish-pm-singles-out-foreigners-as-government-plans-clampdown-on-gangs/
Danish prime minister wants country to accept ‘zero’ asylum seekers
https://www.thelocal.dk/20210122/danish-prime-minister-wants-country-to-accept-zero-asylum-seekers/
The issue being the latter had only seized power due to a very blatant stitch up that set aside claims through the female line to ensure the King of England (who certainly had the best claim under the law as it stood) couldn't inherit the French throne. They were obsessed about that to the extent of giving up the personal Union with Navarre where different rules applied (although doubts about the legitimacy of the heiress of Navarre may have helped).
Incidentally a similar manoeuvre by Edward III himself was part of the issue in the Wars of the Roses.
It could be to stop the small boats. That could easily be done by having safe legal routes in. But that comes up against...
It could be to keep numbers right down, preferably to zero. The Hunger Games route in probably helps there, though it does nothing about the "get a tourist visa than vanish" route. That implies the real issue is...
We don't want to see it happening. The small boats are visible, and the failure to catch them is humiliating.
Also, a lot of the attraction of the UK is that it's normal not to have papers, which is convenient if you are unofficial or you wish to employ them. But We The British are allergic to ID checks for us.
It's very on-brand for this government to deny the tradeoffs, and very on-brand for us as a society to not want to inconvenience ourselves at all.
"Are you thinking what we're thinking?"
Asylum needs to be qualified and capped and not an unconstrained right. Or, at least, it needs to be if existing Western democratic polities are to survive in their present form.
I didn’t mention the SNP. You did. Try reading posts before you launch into your blinkered rants.
Look at how generous the UK has been to tens of thousands of Ukranians seeking shelter over the past six months, and tens of thousands more from Hong Kong.
I understand the concerns of some people about migration. Genuinely. Some parts of the UK have been transformed by it, and change drives fear drives hatred. The problem is that whilst parts have been negatively changed by migration, others have been negatively changed by the removal of migration. We genuinely need quite a lot of people in various sectors and regions. But can't have them because the good people in sparsely populated Lincolnshire are described as "full" by their MP.
Compare and contrast the treatment of Ukrainian refugees across Europe - numbers, process, welcome - and then look at the "don't call us, we won't call you either" signs and website we threw at their women and children as they attempted to flee for their lives.
Give local government proper tax powers, and trust the electorate to kick the fuckers out if they abuse said powers.
Here in Sweden, most folk pay zilch PAYE to central government, but a huge sum to the local council and the region (which includes healthcare by the way). Only the wealthy pay significant income tax to central government.
It is terrific. All 3 of my votes on 11 September really mean something. I am almost certainly going to split my votes between two or three parties. The chimps running the council for example have just gotta go, whereas I may well vote for one of those parties at Riksdag level.
@Sandpit how is your property in Ukraine. I know this is less important than life, but it must be a worry.
Five minutes with him and they won't want to come to Britain any longer...
So, back to the point. You pinned the blame on the council. Who point to their slashed budget from the government. Can you accept that is a genuine problem? For *all* councils whichever party runs them?
1. They are pretty similar
2. Most people are reasonably positive about immigration
This survey was done back in 2018:
https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/social-welfare/pdfs/non-secure/d/o/s/do-scotland-and-england-and-wales-have-different-views-about-immigration-18.pdf
Immigration is well down the list of stated concerns in recent surveys. It temporarily jumped around 2015-2016 coinciding with blanket news coverage of the European migrant crisis and the aftermath of the Arab spring. It is back down again.
There is simply not the evidence to suggest Britain (North or South of the border) is a seething mass of anti foreigner resentment. This is a meme indulged in as a joint venture between both right wing commentators and left wingers or separatists who view England/Britain as a uniquely racist country.
As for Stuart’s Rangers fans response, was there were ever a more literal demonstration of the no true Scotsman fallacy?
They are way, way, way, way up their own arses.
The Oaf and fucking sunflowers. Puhrleese.
So many of our current problems come from the fact that England - southern England especially - has too many people and not enough infrastructure to support them. From housing to sewage, we are overcrowded
And then there are the other problems brought by mass immigration, which are uncomfortable for middle class liberals to talk about, but nonetheless exist
Enough. If the UKG doesn’t get a grip on this then the voters will seek a government that does. And it won’t be Labour
In this light Brexit will be seen as merely the opening shot
So, no "the English" aren't racist. *Certain English voters* in certain constituencies are xenophobes on this particular topic. Other nationalities have their own angry gammony ranters, its just that they usually aren't in government.
One, going back at least to Maggie and the Rates Cap, is that Westminster simply doesn't trust anyone else with tax raising powers. My father stopped being a local councillor nearly twenty years ago- even then, the discretion on council budgets was pretty tiny. Most of the income was from central government, the Council Tax element wasn't easy to meaningfully vary, and most of the spending was fairly long-term contracts on statutory services. It's all got worse since then.
That, in turn, is partly because FPTP with council wards isn't great at kicking out councils that go mad. It can happen, but a lot of local elections are about something else. And then you get a vicious circle where governments "save" electroates by reducing the freedom of councils to do stuff, so the elections become more pointless, and we all circle the plughole.