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A prelude to the next general election? – politicalbetting.com

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  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,833

    Taz said:

    lots of stuff on the news about VE Day celebrations.

    Surprisingly no mention of Churchill’s Islamophobia on the BBC..

    BBC have covered it well but, and I hate to say this, what really struck me is how thin the crowds were.

    This particular one feels like fading into history now.
    This VE anniversary seemed to come out of nowhere. There was almost no detailed publicity. I've not seen anything round here. The day itself is Thursday but the flypast was today, still officially the Early May bank holiday because no-one in government had the wit to rebrand it. Timothy Spall read out (can't actors learn lines?) Churchill's "iconic" speech, or a bit of it, but that speech is not iconic, it is barely known.
    Why are the Idiots In Charge celebrating TODAY instead of THURSDAY??

    It's like celebrating Christmas on the 22nd December :lol:
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890
    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    Perhaps because many people don't recognise your so called moral obligation, we have a uk government...if it has a moral obligation it is to look after its citizens not the rest of the world
    Well all I can say is that I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that we do have a moral obligation to help those fleeing war and persecution and that time and again it has made the UK a better place for doing so. You can look at all asylum seekers and see potential terrorists if you like but I'd prefer to see potential Freddie Mercury's, Ncuti Gatwa's and Lord Dubs'.
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890

    MaxPB said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    You write primary legislation that's clearly declares that any migrant that can't show legitimate documents that indicates they are from an invited party (Ukraine, Hong Kong or have a specific invite as an Afghani translator) has no right to remain, no right of appeal and will be deported to a safe third country of the state's choosing should they refuse to return home voluntarily. Close all of the loopholes, close all of the challenges and deport them within days of their processing.

    Declare that foreign criminals will be deported to their home nation of safe third country with no right of appeal, amend the HRA to specifically rule out any use of article 8 by non-citizen convicted criminals.

    The government has a huge, huge majority. It needs to start using it or we'll get a Reform majority in 2029 and PM Nige.
    That's what we'll get.

    This thread shows they STILL don't get it, outside a very small handful.
    I am sick to death of that argument. You, Leon and others have been trying to insist that everyone needs to get behind restrictive asylum and immigration policies because if we don't then something much worse will come for us. I'd rather have PM Nige than a Labour government which implements policies it doesn't believe in out of fear of it.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    Perhaps because many people don't recognise your so called moral obligation, we have a uk government...if it has a moral obligation it is to look after its citizens not the rest of the world
    Well all I can say is that I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that we do have a moral obligation to help those fleeing war and persecution and that time and again it has made the UK a better place for doing so. You can look at all asylum seekers and see potential terrorists if you like but I'd prefer to see potential Freddie Mercury's, Ncuti Gatwa's and Lord Dubs'.
    I assume you accept climate change is happening so can I ask you a thought experiment

    3 countries a b and c.....each has 5 million citizens....due to climate change a and b have crop failures and can only feed and water half a million...due to geographical features country c can manage to feed and water its whole population with rationing.

    How many refugees from a and b should c take in? What is their moral obligation bearing in mind that they will be putting increasing hardship on their own citizens?

    Immigration here is already doing that due to increased stress on housing and public services downward pressure on wages etc , and its largely falling on the bottom 50%
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 39,896
    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    You write primary legislation that's clearly declares that any migrant that can't show legitimate documents that indicates they are from an invited party (Ukraine, Hong Kong or have a specific invite as an Afghani translator) has no right to remain, no right of appeal and will be deported to a safe third country of the state's choosing should they refuse to return home voluntarily. Close all of the loopholes, close all of the challenges and deport them within days of their processing.

    Declare that foreign criminals will be deported to their home nation of safe third country with no right of appeal, amend the HRA to specifically rule out any use of article 8 by non-citizen convicted criminals.

    The government has a huge, huge majority. It needs to start using it or we'll get a Reform majority in 2029 and PM Nige.
    That's what we'll get.

    This thread shows they STILL don't get it, outside a very small handful.
    I am sick to death of that argument. You, Leon and others have been trying to insist that everyone needs to get behind restrictive asylum and immigration policies because if we don't then something much worse will come for us. I'd rather have PM Nige than a Labour government which implements policies it doesn't believe in out of fear of it.
    Lots of democrats said this about Trump, that Biden shouldn't bend on immigration and border control and that Trump would be preferable. How do you think those people feel today?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 55,031
    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    Perhaps because many people don't recognise your so called moral obligation, we have a uk government...if it has a moral obligation it is to look after its citizens not the rest of the world
    Well all I can say is that I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that we do have a moral obligation to help those fleeing war and persecution and that time and again it has made the UK a better place for doing so. You can look at all asylum seekers and see potential terrorists if you like but I'd prefer to see potential Freddie Mercury's, Ncuti Gatwa's and Lord Dubs'.
    If you believe that the government's duty to humanity supersedes its duty to its own citizens then you believe in theocracy, not democracy. You are preaching a form of religious fanaticism.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,123

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    This might work if RoI were in Schengen, but it isn't.

    "It is compulsory for all passengers (including babies) to have their own valid passport or officially recognised European Union I.D. card when travelling to and from Ireland or France". (Irish ferries)
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 7,381
    isam said:
    Camilla looking enthralled there…
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,836
    Cookie said:

    CatMan said:

    How many of us on PB, are married to, or have relatives, or friends, who are immigrants?

    And do they class those people as 'immigrants' when they say, or read, the word 'immigrants' on PB?

    My mother is from France. Does that count? (Serious question)
    @Leon’s* great x20 grandfather was from France too.

    (*And so was mine. And yours probably.)
    If you're talking about the Norman Conquest, I'd argue that's a very bad advert for the benfits of immigration to the host nation.
    @BartholomewRoberts would consider it a proportionate response to Harold II breaking his word
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890
    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    Perhaps because many people don't recognise your so called moral obligation, we have a uk government...if it has a moral obligation it is to look after its citizens not the rest of the world
    Well all I can say is that I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that we do have a moral obligation to help those fleeing war and persecution and that time and again it has made the UK a better place for doing so. You can look at all asylum seekers and see potential terrorists if you like but I'd prefer to see potential Freddie Mercury's, Ncuti Gatwa's and Lord Dubs'.
    I assume you accept climate change is happening so can I ask you a thought experiment

    3 countries a b and c.....each has 5 million citizens....due to climate change a and b have crop failures and can only feed and water half a million...due to geographical features country c can manage to feed and water its whole population with rationing.

    How many refugees from a and b should c take in? What is their moral obligation bearing in mind that they will be putting increasing hardship on their own citizens?

    Immigration here is already doing that due to increased stress on housing and public services downward pressure on wages etc , and its largely falling on the bottom 50%
    Thanks that's an interesting thing to think about. I don't object to controls on asylum claims and immigration because of course as is the case for individuals, countries can only help people according to their capacity to do so. I don't agree that our failure to provide adequate housing levels and decent public services to UK citizens is fundamentally down to refugees though. I think we could ban all immigration and kick out all current asylum seekers and people still wouldn't be able to get a doctors or dentist appointment.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,123

    Taz said:

    lots of stuff on the news about VE Day celebrations.

    Surprisingly no mention of Churchill’s Islamophobia on the BBC..

    BBC have covered it well but, and I hate to say this, what really struck me is how thin the crowds were.

    This particular one feels like fading into history now.
    This VE anniversary seemed to come out of nowhere. There was almost no detailed publicity. I've not seen anything round here. The day itself is Thursday but the flypast was today, still officially the Early May bank holiday because no-one in government had the wit to rebrand it. Timothy Spall read out (can't actors learn lines?) Churchill's "iconic" speech, or a bit of it, but that speech is not iconic, it is barely known.
    Why are the Idiots In Charge celebrating TODAY instead of THURSDAY??

    It's like celebrating Christmas on the 22nd December :lol:
    This year is the palest possible shadow of the 50th, but 30 years ago, when all the 97 year olds were 67 and millions of WWII veterans still alive. In my small town it was a spectacle to behold.

    I suggest we stop the lot except for 11th November/second Sunday in November and just focus on keeping that remembrance going indefinitely.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 5,832
    edited May 5
    algarkirk said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    This might work if RoI were in Schengen, but it isn't.

    "It is compulsory for all passengers (including babies) to have their own valid passport or officially recognised European Union I.D. card when travelling to and from Ireland or France". (Irish ferries)
    Also between Belfast and Stranraer, in fact. Well, UK or Irish driving license and some others too, but essentially the same.

    https://www.stenaline.co.uk/customer-service/pre-travel/what-identification-documents-do-i-need-to-travel

    NB neither CTA nor Schengen seem to help.
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890
    MaxPB said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    You write primary legislation that's clearly declares that any migrant that can't show legitimate documents that indicates they are from an invited party (Ukraine, Hong Kong or have a specific invite as an Afghani translator) has no right to remain, no right of appeal and will be deported to a safe third country of the state's choosing should they refuse to return home voluntarily. Close all of the loopholes, close all of the challenges and deport them within days of their processing.

    Declare that foreign criminals will be deported to their home nation of safe third country with no right of appeal, amend the HRA to specifically rule out any use of article 8 by non-citizen convicted criminals.

    The government has a huge, huge majority. It needs to start using it or we'll get a Reform majority in 2029 and PM Nige.
    That's what we'll get.

    This thread shows they STILL don't get it, outside a very small handful.
    I am sick to death of that argument. You, Leon and others have been trying to insist that everyone needs to get behind restrictive asylum and immigration policies because if we don't then something much worse will come for us. I'd rather have PM Nige than a Labour government which implements policies it doesn't believe in out of fear of it.
    Lots of democrats said this about Trump, that Biden shouldn't bend on immigration and border control and that Trump would be preferable. How do you think those people feel today?
    People advocating for what they believe in isn't what causes their opponents to get elected. At the end of the day if a majority of the country think differently to me and elect a government that I find abhorrent then that's democracy.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    Perhaps because many people don't recognise your so called moral obligation, we have a uk government...if it has a moral obligation it is to look after its citizens not the rest of the world
    Well all I can say is that I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that we do have a moral obligation to help those fleeing war and persecution and that time and again it has made the UK a better place for doing so. You can look at all asylum seekers and see potential terrorists if you like but I'd prefer to see potential Freddie Mercury's, Ncuti Gatwa's and Lord Dubs'.
    I assume you accept climate change is happening so can I ask you a thought experiment

    3 countries a b and c.....each has 5 million citizens....due to climate change a and b have crop failures and can only feed and water half a million...due to geographical features country c can manage to feed and water its whole population with rationing.

    How many refugees from a and b should c take in? What is their moral obligation bearing in mind that they will be putting increasing hardship on their own citizens?

    Immigration here is already doing that due to increased stress on housing and public services downward pressure on wages etc , and its largely falling on the bottom 50%
    Thanks that's an interesting thing to think about. I don't object to controls on asylum claims and immigration because of course as is the case for individuals, countries can only help people according to their capacity to do so. I don't agree that our failure to provide adequate housing levels and decent public services to UK citizens is fundamentally down to refugees though. I think we could ban all immigration and kick out all current asylum seekers and people still wouldn't be able to get a doctors or dentist appointment.
    Because we would still be left with an extra 10 million population compared to 1990 largely due to immigration and since then housing and public services have not grown commensurate with the population growth. They haven't grown commensurate because a lot of that immigration has not been net contributors.....instead politicians and pro immigration groups have focussed on is "its added x% to gdp" not its added "x% to gdp per capita"

    I living in slough met a lot of immigrants, a lot were of the "its great you are here" type...however there were also a lot of the "you are just actually costing us money type". I welcome the former but question why we are letting the latter in
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,123
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    Not really I am all for deporting lawyers making spurious claims, I am all for lawyers that make proper claims. Too many immigration lawyers take the piss and should face consequences for it
    Thank you Mr Trump.

    I all smells very right wing on here tonight.
    Too many lawyers, not merely on immigration take the piss around the law like the loophole guy who gets speeders off. Sorry the country would be better off without them
    Parliament makes laws, judges, juries and magistrates make the decisions. The lawyers are doing their best for their client. They are failing in their duty otherwise.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 60,175
    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    How many murders and terrorist atrocities is it worth to allow asylum seekers from these countries that we have not invited to remain in the country. What if it was your wife, son, daughter or parents that were killed in the terrorist attack if the security services hadn't caught these ones? Would their deaths be acceptable losses?
    How many deaths from IRA bombs was it worth for us to remain a society tolerant of Irish people or Catholics? Terrorists want us to be a fearful, suspicious, intolerant society because it's their best recruitment tool. You don't get to sow fear about asylum seekers because a few might be terrorists. That would be unacceptable if you applied that logic to any other group.
    The IRA were British/Irish citizens, and of these British isles, and they had a direct grievance which could be addressed, even as their violence was loathsome

    Angry young men from Somalia or Syria or wherever have nothing to do with us and we owe them zero. Moreover they have no legitimate grievance they just want to enjoy western incomes and benefits while reserving the right to despise us, reject our values, repress women and impose sharia law as soon as they get the chance

    Grow up
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,836
    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,667
    algarkirk said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    Not really I am all for deporting lawyers making spurious claims, I am all for lawyers that make proper claims. Too many immigration lawyers take the piss and should face consequences for it
    Thank you Mr Trump.

    I all smells very right wing on here tonight.
    Too many lawyers, not merely on immigration take the piss around the law like the loophole guy who gets speeders off. Sorry the country would be better off without them
    Parliament makes laws, judges, juries and magistrates make the decisions. The lawyers are doing their best for their client. They are failing in their duty otherwise.
    Within reason. Falsifying court paperwork as rather too many did over Horizon is going much too far.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    algarkirk said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    Not really I am all for deporting lawyers making spurious claims, I am all for lawyers that make proper claims. Too many immigration lawyers take the piss and should face consequences for it
    Thank you Mr Trump.

    I all smells very right wing on here tonight.
    Too many lawyers, not merely on immigration take the piss around the law like the loophole guy who gets speeders off. Sorry the country would be better off without them
    Parliament makes laws, judges, juries and magistrates make the decisions. The lawyers are doing their best for their client. They are failing in their duty otherwise.
    Their is a difference between doing the best for their clients and trying to leverage loopholes however, we all complain it especially when it comes to tax payments.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 60,175

    I got caught in another thunderstorm yesterday

    No massive hailstones this time, but three and a half hours of constant heavy rain, and thunder and lightning. All while I was climbing quite a large hill

    I eventually arrived, completely soaked to my skin, at the place where I'd booked the room (and had a confirmation email), but the gate was locked. I rang the bell next to it to no avail. I called the phone number and spoke to a very cross sounding lady, who sounded even crosser after I told her I'd booked a room

    I don't know exactly what she said, but it seemed pretty clear I wasn't staying there. I had no idea what to do; there were no other places close and available on any of my apps. And after a lull in the weather, the heavens opened again

    I made my way to the nearest main street, but all I found was a little bit of shelter in the side porch of a derelict commercial building. I managed to get my fingers dry enough to operate my phone again, and went to Google maps

    Apparently there was a hotel about half a mile away. I called the number, and asked the man who answered if he spoke English. Not only did he speak he English, he was English

    When I asked if he had a room for the night, he told me he was very sorry but he was on holiday in Italy and the hotel was closed..

    But..

    He had a friend who lived a few doors down who might be able to help. He had my number and would call me back in five minutes

    I stood there wet and shivering, staring at my phone, until he replied. I could barely hear him over the now torrential rain. I got the important bit - "call my friend Shaun, he might have a room for you"

    I called the number he sent me, and spoke to Yorkshireman Shaun. Five minutes later he arrived in his car and drove me back to his place

    He gave me his spare room, dinner, breakfast, and the warmest welcome. I went from near distraught despair to contentment and comfort in fifteen minutes

    Great story. The kindness of strangers!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,667
    Congratulations to Zhao for his first world championship.

    Will John Virgo kindly STFU? He totally ruined that session.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143
    CatMan said:

    How many of us on PB, are married to, or have relatives, or friends, who are immigrants?

    And do they class those people as 'immigrants' when they say, or read, the word 'immigrants' on PB?

    My mother is from France. Does that count? (Serious question)
    My mum applauds Trumps executive order banning mixed race marriages in TV commercials - she calls them woke hypnotising and they have been winding her up for years.

    But for a Konger to marry a white British man is perfectly fine. Obviously.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890

    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    What's so beautiful in this post is that you can't see the rich irony in it.
    You'll have to explain. The first few explanations for your comment that jumped to mind were pretty grim, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have some more justifiable reason.
    You are unable to work out that the one thing that stood out consistently, that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work, is because they are economic migrants.
    That one popped into my head, but I thought I'd credit you with a little more intelligence. Sadly not. Maybe don't think the first thing that pops into your head is correct, and therefore no more thought is required*

    Now consider you're an asylum seeker, coming from somewhere like Iraq, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. You've made the journey to the UK. What do you want to do? Sit around in a hotel, with your little handout, doing nothing? Or perhaps you're desperate to do something with your days? It may be tricky to comprehend, but those people counting down, were also pretty grateful to have been "welcomed", and were keen to be contributing, rather than taking (and I wasn't in a position where they would benefit from telling me this - I got to know many refugees very well, and it may be difficult to believe, but that thought process of wanting to contribute was very common).

    I am curious though. How would you want an asylum seeker to behave, to not be classed in a negative fashion? Surely the alternative to being desperate to work is that they were quite content to sit around and live off state handouts. I don't like to assume, but I find it hard to believe that's what you'd prefer.

    *I'm only teasing of course. Your comment about the dense Liberal herd amused me (I do realise that there are plenty of people who appear not to understood your arguments today, so realise it wasn't aimed directly at me), and thought you'd enjoy a little in return. One of the beauties of this site, after all, is that it's not an echo chamber.
    I'd want them to not come at all, they haven't been specifically invited. Put into a detention camp to await deportation to a designated safe third country or voluntary return to their home country if they don't want to end up in Rwanda.

    No one who hasn't been specifically invited by the government to seek asylum, currently Hong Kongers, Ukrainians and about 3,000 Afghani translators is owed anything and certainly not entitled to remain in the country. It is our soft touch system that allows them to stay and this soft touch system is going to result in a Reform majority government and PM Nige. People are simply fed up, how many of the arrested terrorists do you think we're migrants? What have they added to the nation, enriched us by trying to bomb the Israeli embassy and costing us millions in surveillance, court cases and supermax prison time. Simply refuse them in the first place and deport them to a safe third country or they return home voluntarily. No right of appeal, no prolonged court cases, just refusal and deportation within a week of arrival.
    Why not flip that question on its head and ask how many migrants are arrested terrorists? A fraction of a percentage is the answer and for that you think it's fine to withdraw any moral obligation to provide asylum?
    Perhaps because many people don't recognise your so called moral obligation, we have a uk government...if it has a moral obligation it is to look after its citizens not the rest of the world
    Well all I can say is that I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that we do have a moral obligation to help those fleeing war and persecution and that time and again it has made the UK a better place for doing so. You can look at all asylum seekers and see potential terrorists if you like but I'd prefer to see potential Freddie Mercury's, Ncuti Gatwa's and Lord Dubs'.
    If you believe that the government's duty to humanity supersedes its duty to its own citizens then you believe in theocracy, not democracy. You are preaching a form of religious fanaticism.
    No because I believe that a commitment to providing asylum to refugees (according to it's capacity to do so) is in the interests of it's citizens too for reasons I've set out. I also object to being called undemocratic. If you and a majority of the country want to vote for a party which advocates ending asylum then I'll recognise the legitimacy of that policy. It doesn't mean I have to change my own views and in turn you need to accept that the current government was elected on a manifesto which remains commited to the concept of providing asylum (albeit better managed).
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,531
    RobD said:

    Fishing said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    Why do you think they're a guaranteed fiscal drag?

    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    They are a fiscal drag because the moronic May government prevented them from working. As I've posted on here before, one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime. Vicious, spineless, stupid and totally counter-productive.

    And it has survived four PMs and counting, making them just as bad as her.
    The ban on working for the first 12 months was introduced in 2005. Was it changed to a total ban?
    According to this, in the Immigration Act 2014, when May was Home Secretary (not, as I thought, during her Prime Minstership).

    https://libguides.bham.ac.uk/c.php?g=672295&p=4775845

    So that's five PMs, not four, that it has survived.

    New legislation should automatically sunset after two years so the garbage at least has to be passed again, rather than going on zombie-like by default.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 60,175
    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    You write primary legislation that's clearly declares that any migrant that can't show legitimate documents that indicates they are from an invited party (Ukraine, Hong Kong or have a specific invite as an Afghani translator) has no right to remain, no right of appeal and will be deported to a safe third country of the state's choosing should they refuse to return home voluntarily. Close all of the loopholes, close all of the challenges and deport them within days of their processing.

    Declare that foreign criminals will be deported to their home nation of safe third country with no right of appeal, amend the HRA to specifically rule out any use of article 8 by non-citizen convicted criminals.

    The government has a huge, huge majority. It needs to start using it or we'll get a Reform majority in 2029 and PM Nige.
    That's what we'll get.

    This thread shows they STILL don't get it, outside a very small handful.
    I am sick to death of that argument. You, Leon and others have been trying to insist that everyone needs to get behind restrictive asylum and immigration policies because if we don't then something much worse will come for us. I'd rather have PM Nige than a Labour government which implements policies it doesn't believe in out of fear of it.
    You are sick to death of this argument because it is inarguably true. And you have no comeback

    Look at the election results on Thursday. Reform crushed all comers, especially Labour and Conservative

    Why? Is it their exciting proposals for reviving operetta? No, it’s immigration. That’s it

    If the govt doesn’t get a severe grip on this then Nigel wins in 2028. Now you say you’d prefer that outcome rather than diluting your absurd moral purity on migration. Fair enough, you will get your wish and Farage will be PM
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,610
    Well played Zhao Xintong.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 31,476
    ...
    ydoethur said:

    Congratulations to Zhao for his first world championship.

    Will John Virgo kindly STFU? He totally ruined that session.

    Hazel going on about the suspension again isn't helpful. He's won, now leave it out Hazel. She wouldn't have been banging on to Higgins about his previous crimes and misdemeanors.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    If its a safe country why cant they stay?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 31,476
    F***! Just Stop Oil have just dropped a shit load of confetti all over the Crucible!
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 4,720
    algarkirk said:

    Taz said:

    lots of stuff on the news about VE Day celebrations.

    Surprisingly no mention of Churchill’s Islamophobia on the BBC..

    BBC have covered it well but, and I hate to say this, what really struck me is how thin the crowds were.

    This particular one feels like fading into history now.
    This VE anniversary seemed to come out of nowhere. There was almost no detailed publicity. I've not seen anything round here. The day itself is Thursday but the flypast was today, still officially the Early May bank holiday because no-one in government had the wit to rebrand it. Timothy Spall read out (can't actors learn lines?) Churchill's "iconic" speech, or a bit of it, but that speech is not iconic, it is barely known.
    Why are the Idiots In Charge celebrating TODAY instead of THURSDAY??

    It's like celebrating Christmas on the 22nd December :lol:
    This year is the palest possible shadow of the 50th, but 30 years ago, when all the 97 year olds were 67 and millions of WWII veterans still alive. In my small town it was a spectacle to behold.

    I suggest we stop the lot except for 11th November/second Sunday in November and just focus on keeping that remembrance going indefinitely.
    I wonder if cutting out the other semi-random "47th anniversary of X" days and focussing on the 11th - adding a public holiday - would be a vote winner. For instance, if you were a quite middle-class leader of a nominally socialist party elected on a 'Change' mandate and really quite desperate for things that appealed to working class and older voters.

  • spudgfshspudgfsh Posts: 1,563
    ydoethur said:

    Congratulations to Zhao for his first world championship.

    Will John Virgo kindly STFU? He totally ruined that session.

    JV's verbal diarrhea has always got my goat.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,833
    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    Put them on Ailsa Craig
    Better to let them Mull over their situation.
    They'll get Eigg on their face.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,836
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,123
    Pagan2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    Not really I am all for deporting lawyers making spurious claims, I am all for lawyers that make proper claims. Too many immigration lawyers take the piss and should face consequences for it
    Thank you Mr Trump.

    I all smells very right wing on here tonight.
    Too many lawyers, not merely on immigration take the piss around the law like the loophole guy who gets speeders off. Sorry the country would be better off without them
    Parliament makes laws, judges, juries and magistrates make the decisions. The lawyers are doing their best for their client. They are failing in their duty otherwise.
    Their is a difference between doing the best for their clients and trying to leverage loopholes however, we all complain it especially when it comes to tax payments.
    If courts and tribunals don't like the 'leveraging of loopholes' they will have to find against these wicked lawyers. These lawyers are not the ones making the decisions. Look elsewhere for someone to criticise. I like the rule of law; when I think about the USA I like the rule of law more and more. And I like lawyers who make it their job to represent people against a powerful and well funded government and state. And I like and respect the ones in the USA even more than ours.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,667
    spudgfsh said:

    ydoethur said:

    Congratulations to Zhao for his first world championship.

    Will John Virgo kindly STFU? He totally ruined that session.

    JV's verbal diarrhea has always got my goat.
    And mine.

    How they can keep him and let Thorne* and McManus, who were both very good, go, I have no idea.

    *I realise Thorne won't be making a comeback...
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,610

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    Not really I am all for deporting lawyers making spurious claims, I am all for lawyers that make proper claims. Too many immigration lawyers take the piss and should face consequences for it
    Thank you Mr Trump.

    It all smells very right wing on here tonight.
    It isn't right-wing at all to want to defend the borders of the country against illegal migration.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?

    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 4,720
    isam said:
    If you leave it playing on a loop - it begins to sound like the intro to a Gavin Bryars or Steve Reich piece.
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890
    Leon said:

    Stereodog said:

    MaxPB said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    You write primary legislation that's clearly declares that any migrant that can't show legitimate documents that indicates they are from an invited party (Ukraine, Hong Kong or have a specific invite as an Afghani translator) has no right to remain, no right of appeal and will be deported to a safe third country of the state's choosing should they refuse to return home voluntarily. Close all of the loopholes, close all of the challenges and deport them within days of their processing.

    Declare that foreign criminals will be deported to their home nation of safe third country with no right of appeal, amend the HRA to specifically rule out any use of article 8 by non-citizen convicted criminals.

    The government has a huge, huge majority. It needs to start using it or we'll get a Reform majority in 2029 and PM Nige.
    That's what we'll get.

    This thread shows they STILL don't get it, outside a very small handful.
    I am sick to death of that argument. You, Leon and others have been trying to insist that everyone needs to get behind restrictive asylum and immigration policies because if we don't then something much worse will come for us. I'd rather have PM Nige than a Labour government which implements policies it doesn't believe in out of fear of it.
    You are sick to death of this argument because it is inarguably true. And you have no comeback

    Look at the election results on Thursday. Reform crushed all comers, especially Labour and Conservative

    Why? Is it their exciting proposals for reviving operetta? No, it’s immigration. That’s it

    If the govt doesn’t get a severe grip on this then Nigel wins in 2028. Now you say you’d prefer that outcome rather than diluting your absurd moral purity on migration. Fair enough, you will get your wish and Farage will be PM
    Well actually you can't speak to the reasons why people voted for Reform in local elections. Were all the people who voted Lib Dem absolutely committed to proportional representation? I also wouldn't count on the fact that they're also going to vote Reform at the next General Election. All of that is besides the point though. I'm not going to agree to accept one of their key policies that I disagree with because I think that might stop people actually electing them. If everyone who disagrees with Reform did that then it wouldn't matter whether they were in power or not.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,123

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    I take no sides in this horrific thing; but it is relevant that Hamas has not surrendered, nor returned all the hostages. They should have done both these things, and long ago, for they were in no position to fight and win. For Israel to be in a continuing state of war is therefore justified. Which does not mean I support them.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 65,116

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 4,720

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    If you've got some time on your hands, the old 70s 'alternate future' series "1990" starring Edward Woodward is worth a shot. There's a specific episode about people - ironically - trying to emigrate and how the lawyers behave.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_(TV_series)

  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143
    edited May 5
    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    If its a safe country why cant they stay?
    Because it would mean we have backed away from asylum, and all our treaties we help set up to help with asylum, when it is a zero issue on its own, compared to immigration running not only higher than ten of thousands but a million a year is the actual issue - but all people can actually see are the dingys. Nefarious politicians more than happy to blur 2 complete different things. And this leads to easily fooled people posting things like you just posted.

    if immigration was tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands, would you really be pushing to change the DNA of Great Britain, and change DNA of the British, with the zero asylum here policy you just proposed?

    Firstly, the channel crossings have changed a bit, from people crossing Europe to stow away on trucks and vans to organised dingy crossings run by powerful criminal gangs. So smash the gangs isn’t such a bad idea.

    Secondly, with our Brexit vote, we chose to process in UK not overseas.

    On immigration - in the face of absolute hostility on immigration, why did the Conservative Party let a million a year in? I say start there. Answer that question and start there.

    In your opinion does the triple lock, universal and not means tested winter fuel payment etc and other government bills get paid, without immigration at a million a year?

    You see my point?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,472

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    Just for clarity- where do they stay?

    The place where they have been processed, or the country where they sought asylum?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    If its a safe country why cant they stay?
    Because it would mean we have backed away from asylum, and all our treaties we help set up to help with asylum, when it is a zero issue on its own, compared to immigration running not only higher than ten of thousands but a million a year is the actual issue - but all people can actually see are the dingys. Nefarious politicians more than happy to blur 2 complete different things. And this leads to easily fooled people posting things like you just posted.

    if immigration was tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands, would you really be pushing to change the DNA of Great Britain, and change DNA of the British, with the zero asylum here policy you just proposed?

    Firstly, the channel crossings have changed a bit, from people crossing Europe to stow away on trucks and vans to organised dingy crossings run by powerful criminal gangs. So smash the gangs isn’t such a bad idea.

    Secondly, with our Brexit vote, we chose to process in UK not overseas.

    On immigration - in the face of absolute hostility on immigration, why did the Conservative Party let a million a year in? I say start there. Answer that question and start there.

    In your opinion does the triple lock, universal and not means tested winter fuel payment etc and other government bills get paid, without immigration at a million a year?

    You see my point?
    No I don't see your point
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    Just for clarity- where do they stay?

    The place where they have been processed, or the country where they sought asylum?
    They sought a safe country they are now in one job done
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 65,116

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    Just for clarity- where do they stay?

    The place where they have been processed, or the country where they sought asylum?
    The country they sought asylum and allowed to work

    The only caveat is if the government decide arriving by boat negates any entitlement to asylum
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 24,447
    ohnotnow said:

    isam said:
    If you leave it playing on a loop - it begins to sound like the intro to a Gavin Bryars or Steve Reich piece.
    • isam: posts video of Starmer farting
    • ohnotnow: puts it on a loop
    Best. PB. Evah.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 79,335
    algarkirk said:

    Pagan2 said:

    algarkirk said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    No, you haven’t. Taking us out of the ECHR doesn’t suddenly stop lawyers from fight deportations. Nor does leaving the ECHR suddenly make it any less or more legal to deport immigrants.

    There’s also the issue that taking away rights from asylum seekers also means taking away rights from Britons. Again, that’s also a fact. You may think that’s worth it and maybe you’re right, but it’s worth considering.

    There’s also a discussion to be had as to how much process you remove. One extreme is no due process at all in which case you might accidentally deport British citizens - see the USA.

    If you have some process, say one hearing to establish immigration status, you will still need somewhere to house immigrants as well as a well funded system to hear the cases, as well as lawyers. If you decide they don’t deserve or don’t need lawyers, suddenly you’ve removed a fundamental part of our legal system which has nothing to do with the ECHR.
    Simple lawyer fights immigration case and its judged to be an activist lawyer trying to take the piss...then we deport the lawyer with his client
    I mean I think you’re joking but see my last paragraph for my response.
    Not really I am all for deporting lawyers making spurious claims, I am all for lawyers that make proper claims. Too many immigration lawyers take the piss and should face consequences for it
    Thank you Mr Trump.

    I all smells very right wing on here tonight.
    Too many lawyers, not merely on immigration take the piss around the law like the loophole guy who gets speeders off. Sorry the country would be better off without them
    Parliament makes laws, judges, juries and magistrates make the decisions. The lawyers are doing their best for their client. They are failing in their duty otherwise.
    Their is a difference between doing the best for their clients and trying to leverage loopholes however, we all complain it especially when it comes to tax payments.
    If courts and tribunals don't like the 'leveraging of loopholes' they will have to find against these wicked lawyers. These lawyers are not the ones making the decisions. Look elsewhere for someone to criticise. I like the rule of law; when I think about the USA I like the rule of law more and more. And I like lawyers who make it their job to represent people against a powerful and well funded government and state. And I like and respect the ones in the USA even more than ours.
    The UK.
    Lawyers, subcontractors and process for the sake of process.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,472

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    And then we get into "if the UK (rich and fairly small numbers of asylum seekers in the grand scheme of things- after all, we're pretty much at the end of the line) can do that, why can't other countries?" In which case, the planet's humans end up in the Bad Place.

    "What would happen if everyone in the world behaved that way?" isn't a perfect moral test, but it's not a bad place to start.

    Oh, and thanks @Big_G_NorthWales for the clarification. The distinction between offshore processing and offshore asylum is an important one, which a lot of people missed during the Rwanda farago.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    Most of those treaties were written by long dead politicians when the world was different shortly after the second world war. I am sure you would pipe up and say the same if we decided to insist the treaty of troyes was honoured.

    Those treaties are no longer fit for purpose in our modern age and need to be abrograted and if necessary new treaties be created
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143
    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    No. Burning our obligations on asylum is something we never do.

    Get tough on immigration by getting tough on UK governments heroin like addiction to immigration is what we must do.
  • maxhmaxh Posts: 1,584
    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    It is the very peak of entitlement for someone who has benefitted massively from the rules-based international order of the past 80 years or so to dismiss that rules-based order without even trying to engage in a nuanced argument about how to preserve it.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,836
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?


    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
    They are restricting suppliers from international relief agencies from entering Gaza. That is against the Geneva Conventions.

    I am sure that members of the Hamas government (which is not legitimately elected) knew about the attack. That still does not make it more than a particularly horrific terrorist act. I have no issue with them seeking reprisals and overthrowing Hamas. That is not the same as conquering territory.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    No. Burning our obligations on asylum is something we never do.

    Get tough on immigration by getting tough on UK governments heroin like addiction to immigration is what we must do.
    Yes repudiating treaties almost a century old is done all the time. Whether you like it or not most countries are going to over then next decade or two but they are no longer fit for the world we live in
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    maxh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    It is the very peak of entitlement for someone who has benefitted massively from the rules-based international order of the past 80 years or so to dismiss that rules-based order without even trying to engage in a nuanced argument about how to preserve it.
    Why would I want to preserve these treaties when they are fundamentally wrong? It is one set of treaties not the whole rules based order I am advocating getting rid of and even said that treaties fit for the current modern world could replace them. The fact is when those treaties were written the world was a lot different and they never envisaged mass migration of the scale we have now
  • DopermeanDopermean Posts: 972
    Fishing said:

    RobD said:

    Fishing said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    Why do you think they're a guaranteed fiscal drag?

    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    They are a fiscal drag because the moronic May government prevented them from working. As I've posted on here before, one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime. Vicious, spineless, stupid and totally counter-productive.

    And it has survived four PMs and counting, making them just as bad as her.
    The ban on working for the first 12 months was introduced in 2005. Was it changed to a total ban?
    According to this, in the Immigration Act 2014, when May was Home Secretary (not, as I thought, during her Prime Minstership).

    https://libguides.bham.ac.uk/c.php?g=672295&p=4775845

    So that's five PMs, not four, that it has survived.

    New legislation should automatically sunset after two years so the garbage at least has to be passed again, rather than going on zombie-like by default.
    So coalition govt then... any lib dems want to explain why they not only supported deliberate slowing down of asylum applications but an indefinite ban on working while waiting for the application to be processed?
    It's almost as if the government deliberately created the asylum hotel problem to aggravate grievances about asylum seekers, you can see where Reform got the idea for migrant tent cities.
  • maxhmaxh Posts: 1,584
    Pagan2 said:

    maxh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    It is the very peak of entitlement for someone who has benefitted massively from the rules-based international order of the past 80 years or so to dismiss that rules-based order without even trying to engage in a nuanced argument about how to preserve it.
    Why would I want to preserve these treaties when they are fundamentally wrong? It is one set of treaties not the whole rules based order I am advocating getting rid of and even said that treaties fit for the current modern world could replace them. The fact is when those treaties were written the world was a lot different and they never envisaged mass migration of the scale we have now
    Asylum isn't mass migration.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?


    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
    They are restricting suppliers from international relief agencies from entering Gaza. That is against the Geneva Conventions.

    I am sure that members of the Hamas government (which is not legitimately elected) knew about the attack. That still does not make it more than a particularly horrific terrorist act. I have no issue with them seeking reprisals and overthrowing Hamas. That is not the same as conquering territory.
    As far as I am aware unless you can show evidence otherwise the 2006 election that swept hamas into power with 42% of the vote was perfectly legitimate
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    edited May 5
    maxh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    maxh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    It is the very peak of entitlement for someone who has benefitted massively from the rules-based international order of the past 80 years or so to dismiss that rules-based order without even trying to engage in a nuanced argument about how to preserve it.
    Why would I want to preserve these treaties when they are fundamentally wrong? It is one set of treaties not the whole rules based order I am advocating getting rid of and even said that treaties fit for the current modern world could replace them. The fact is when those treaties were written the world was a lot different and they never envisaged mass migration of the scale we have now
    Asylum isn't mass migration.
    68k asylum applications is absolutely mass migration, its the size of a mid sized town. When those treaties were penned asylum was envisages as a couple of thousand

    For example total migration 1997 was 47k so asylum applications now exceed that
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    Most of those treaties were written by long dead politicians when the world was different shortly after the second world war. I am sure you would pipe up and say the same if we decided to insist the treaty of troyes was honoured.

    Those treaties are no longer fit for purpose in our modern age and need to be abrograted and if necessary new treaties be created
    No, the world wasn’t different in the first sixty years of the 20th century - if anything more need for genuine asylum during that period, than now.

    Not everyone of 100,000 coming across on dingys this year is a genuine asylum seeker. We don’t allow all to stay.

    But. Since the year dot, people have had to flee their home where they grew up. And we don’t pass by on the other side of the road when people need help like that.

    You are not a bad immoral person Pagan. You have been conned by desperate and simple minded politicians and media commentators into confusing asylum with insane economic addiction to immigration, rather than properly sorting out government finances. The amount of universal benefits and previous sweeteners to groups of voters going to the un needy has to be top of the list, becuase that is what is actually driving the immigration numbers.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 60,389
    Fishing said:

    RobD said:

    Fishing said:

    nova said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    In any case, the Boriswave is only tangentially relevant. The immigration which is politically the most toxic is the boats. It was the failure to address that which most scuppered the Tories.
    But as Gallowgate points out, there was no politically acceptable answer then. Rwanada was shouted down. I think the mood of the country has changed since then.

    No, it’s both

    People want the boats stopped ASAFP and they want immigration brought down to near-zero, and the Boriswave must be gently returned whence they came, not given ILR

    The boats are the enraging symptom but the pathology is deeper and wider. And the voters have made it very clear they want this sorted NOW or next time Farage wins the keys to Number 10

    As Dan Hodges put it, the politicians have been given a blatant final warning
    Yes but you’re still not answering any of the difficult questions.

    Are you actually proposing to machine gun boats in the channel? I mean it’s a possible solution but when the first kids get shot at by the Royal Navy there might be a backlash. Maybe not though?

    In terms of “Rwanda” or equivalent, how much are we willing to pay to deport these people? What if it costs more than the hotels? I ask because the common complaint is that our services are on their arse and we’re paying for asylum seekers to sit in hotels. If we are still paying the same money or more to deport people by long haul flight and then paying the recipient country to host them, is that palatable? I don’t know. I don’t know the figures.

    If there was an easy answer to this issue it would have been solved.
    Oh do piss off. I’ve literally said “shooting the boats” is hideous, inhumane and mustn’t happen. It’s right up there. I wrote it

    As for “Rwanda”, we are spending £4-5bn on hotels etc - and rising. Add in the long term fiscal drag of migrants who will always be a net negative on the economy and we’re talking billions more

    Plus all the social fracturing and decay that comes with illegal immigration

    So we can afford to spend a LOT on a version of Rwanda and still save vast amounts of money. What’s more as soon as we start doing this properly - despatching every single boat person to faraway dismal-place, then the boats will stop. Very quickly. No one will bother crossing if you can’t stay in Britain

    Sorted
    Why do you think they're a guaranteed fiscal drag?

    A huge number of successful businesses are run by migrants, and someone who is willing to travel half way across the world, with a channel crossing being just one dangerous element, suggests we're dealing with people who have huge drive. I worked with refugees before the boat crossings, but one thing that stood out consistently was that they were counting the days till they were able to apply to work.
    They are a fiscal drag because the moronic May government prevented them from working. As I've posted on here before, one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime. Vicious, spineless, stupid and totally counter-productive.

    And it has survived four PMs and counting, making them just as bad as her.
    The ban on working for the first 12 months was introduced in 2005. Was it changed to a total ban?
    According to this, in the Immigration Act 2014, when May was Home Secretary (not, as I thought, during her Prime Minstership).

    https://libguides.bham.ac.uk/c.php?g=672295&p=4775845

    So that's five PMs, not four, that it has survived.

    New legislation should automatically sunset after two years so the garbage at least has to be passed again, rather than going on zombie-like by default.
    I had a look in the Immigration Act 2014 and couldn't see any changes to the previous policy.

    This research paper suggests the 2005 policy is still in force:

    https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01908/SN01908.pdf

    The 12-month waiting period

    The 12-month waiting period for eligibility for permission to work was
    introduced in 2005 to bring UK policy into line with the provisions of a 2003
    European Union directive on reception conditions for asylum seekers.21 The
    directive did not prevent signatory states from giving asylum seekers access
    to their labour market sooner.

    The Coalition government opted out of a revised reception conditions
    directive which allowed asylum seekers to seek permission to work after nine
    months waiting for a decision. It decided that the directive did not strike the
    right balance between the rights of asylum seekers and the needs of the UK
    and could encourage fraudulent claims.22

    In December 2022, Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock said
    Labour’s policy was that the waiting period should be reduced to six months.23
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,472

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    Most of those treaties were written by long dead politicians when the world was different shortly after the second world war. I am sure you would pipe up and say the same if we decided to insist the treaty of troyes was honoured.

    Those treaties are no longer fit for purpose in our modern age and need to be abrograted and if necessary new treaties be created
    No, the world wasn’t different in the first sixty years of the 20th century - if anything more need for genuine asylum during that period, than now.

    Not everyone of 100,000 coming across on dingys this year is a genuine asylum seeker. We don’t allow all to stay.

    But. Since the year dot, people have had to flee their home where they grew up. And we don’t pass by on the other side of the road when people need help like that.

    You are not a bad immoral person Pagan. You have been conned by desperate and simple minded politicians and media commentators into confusing asylum with insane economic addiction to immigration, rather than properly sorting out government finances. The amount of universal benefits and previous sweeteners to groups of voters going to the un needy has to be top of the list, becuase that is what is actually driving the immigration numbers.
    Amen. Except the politicians and commentators aren't desperate and simple-minded.

    They are opprtunistic scumbags who know exactly what they are doing.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    And then we get into "if the UK (rich and fairly small numbers of asylum seekers in the grand scheme of things- after all, we're pretty much at the end of the line) can do that, why can't other countries?" In which case, the planet's humans end up in the Bad Place.

    "What would happen if everyone in the world behaved that way?" isn't a perfect moral test, but it's not a bad place to start.

    Oh, and thanks @Big_G_NorthWales for the clarification. The distinction between offshore processing and offshore asylum is an important one, which a lot of people missed during the Rwanda farago.
    Yes. they are not here. They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. And I support such overseas processing. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”

    The situation under the last government was, you could only apply for asylum if you get to UK? Is that not music to the ears of the criminal gangs ordering dingys - the UK government policy was the actual recruiting agent for people contacting criminal gangs and giving them all their money for a boat half fuelled for the trip? Overseas processing is the way to go, provided its Big G’s policy type to let the genuine in.

    I with those who believe the last Conservative government got into a mess over this.

    And Those criminal gangs are real. Did you you hear the BBC investigation into it. They went into a corner shop and mentioned the leaders name, almost immediately 5 cars full of men came and parked up outside. Let’s certainly smash such gangs.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    Most of those treaties were written by long dead politicians when the world was different shortly after the second world war. I am sure you would pipe up and say the same if we decided to insist the treaty of troyes was honoured.

    Those treaties are no longer fit for purpose in our modern age and need to be abrograted and if necessary new treaties be created
    No, the world wasn’t different in the first sixty years of the 20th century - if anything more need for genuine asylum during that period, than now.

    Not everyone of 100,000 coming across on dingys this year is a genuine asylum seeker. We don’t allow all to stay.

    But. Since the year dot, people have had to flee their home where they grew up. And we don’t pass by on the other side of the road when people need help like that.

    You are not a bad immoral person Pagan. You have been conned by desperate and simple minded politicians and media commentators into confusing asylum with insane economic addiction to immigration, rather than properly sorting out government finances. The amount of universal benefits and previous sweeteners to groups of voters going to the un needy has to be top of the list, becuase that is what is actually driving the immigration numbers.
    I havent been conned by anyone and you have no right to judge me as good/bad or moral/immoral so I really don't care what you think of me as its irrelevant.

    The government has the duty to look after the best interests of its citizens. Accept the migrants that benefit us and turn away the rest is my view. If there country turned into a shithole its not us responsible to clean up the mess their own countrymen made.

    Now in a better world I might agree with you however we are heading into a world where climate change is going to cause food and water shortages and the next wars are likely to be over water resources. We need to look at that future and make choices for the benefit of our citizens not the "good feels" of people like you
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 14,143

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Unless the boats are stopped this issue will fester like an open wound for Starmer and labour

    'Smashing the gangs' is just as ill fated as Rwanda and ultimately the UK will have to recluse part of the ECHR and find a way to remove all those landing by boat immediately to a processing centre somewhere far away and certainly no accommodation in hotels in the UK

    It sounds drastic but Starmer has a choice, take dramatic action or see Farage and Reform overwhelm his government
    You’re just stating the obvious. I agree we need to take action but it’s pointless just calling for “drastic action”, ANY “drastic action” without any consideration of how and what that looks like.

    We could legislate to take rights away from ourselves in order to more efficiently tackle the issue and that will work, but is it worth the trade off? Why is nobody talking about that?

    Grown up politics is about trade offs. Nothing is ever easy and nothing is ever cost free. Nobody is talking about what costs we are willing to pay to solve the issue, both economically, socially, morally and politically.
    There is only one way to stop the boats and I have described it

    Until Starmer and labour understand how toxic it is for them Farage and Reform will run rings round them
    No Big G, you haven’t.
    I have but it is not acceptable to the left and there lies the problem and serious electoral consequences for labour
    What if, in your Plan of far away processing of asylum claim, the processing concludes yes, you can stay?
    They stay
    They get flown back from Rwanda, Albania, etc etc to stay in UK. That meets all our treaty obligations. But unfortunately Conservatives Rwanda policy wasn’t that they come back, so it broke all our treaty obligations - leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations.”
    "leading to “let’s burn all our asylum obligations."

    Finally you get it
    Most of those treaties were written by long dead politicians when the world was different shortly after the second world war. I am sure you would pipe up and say the same if we decided to insist the treaty of troyes was honoured.

    Those treaties are no longer fit for purpose in our modern age and need to be abrograted and if necessary new treaties be created
    No, the world wasn’t different in the first sixty years of the 20th century - if anything more need for genuine asylum during that period, than now.

    Not everyone of 100,000 coming across on dingys this year is a genuine asylum seeker. We don’t allow all to stay.

    But. Since the year dot, people have had to flee their home where they grew up. And we don’t pass by on the other side of the road when people need help like that.

    You are not a bad immoral person Pagan. You have been conned by desperate and simple minded politicians and media commentators into confusing asylum with insane economic addiction to immigration, rather than properly sorting out government finances. The amount of universal benefits and previous sweeteners to groups of voters going to the un needy has to be top of the list, becuase that is what is actually driving the immigration numbers.
    Amen. Except the politicians and commentators aren't desperate and simple-minded.

    They are opprtunistic scumbags who know exactly what they are doing.
    I’m far too polite 😇
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,836
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?


    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
    They are restricting suppliers from international relief agencies from entering Gaza. That is against the Geneva Conventions.

    I am sure that members of the Hamas government (which is not legitimately elected) knew about the attack. That still
    does not make it more than a particularly horrific terrorist act. I have no issue with them seeking reprisals and overthrowing Hamas. That is not the same as conquering territory.
    As far as I am aware unless you can show evidence otherwise the 2006 election that swept hamas into power with 42% of the vote was perfectly legitimate
    The *2006* election

    That doesn’t bestow permanent legitimacy
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 2,120

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    Put them on Ailsa Craig
    Better to let them Mull over their situation.
    They'll get Eigg on their face.
    Better than Muck. But no, you Canna do that.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?


    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
    They are restricting suppliers from international relief agencies from entering Gaza. That is against the Geneva Conventions.

    I am sure that members of the Hamas government (which is not legitimately elected) knew about the attack. That still
    does not make it more than a particularly horrific terrorist act. I have no issue with them seeking reprisals and overthrowing Hamas. That is not the same as conquering territory.
    As far as I am aware unless you can show evidence otherwise the 2006 election that swept hamas into power with 42% of the vote was perfectly legitimate
    The *2006* election

    That doesn’t bestow permanent legitimacy
    Didn't claim it did but just like the us voting for trump they got elected in a free and fair election intially the fact they turned it into a perpetual fiefdom doesn't change that....hell not having read hamas's manifesto might even be what they campaigned on for all I know
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,610
    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform voters are not simply voting irrationally against the system

    They are voting FOR a clear, coherent, & legitimate set of things, including an end to mass immigration, a return to strong borders and a system that prioritises British people"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919486967974396077
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,833
    sarissa said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    Put them on Ailsa Craig
    Better to let them Mull over their situation.
    They'll get Eigg on their face.
    Better than Muck. But no, you Canna do that.
    You're Arran a laugh!
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,833
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?


    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
    They are restricting suppliers from international relief agencies from entering Gaza. That is against the Geneva Conventions.

    I am sure that members of the Hamas government (which is not legitimately elected) knew about the attack. That still
    does not make it more than a particularly horrific terrorist act. I have no issue with them seeking reprisals and overthrowing Hamas. That is not the same as conquering territory.
    As far as I am aware unless you can show evidence otherwise the 2006 election that swept hamas into power with 42% of the vote was perfectly legitimate
    The *2006* election

    That doesn’t bestow permanent legitimacy
    Didn't claim it did but just like the us voting for trump they got elected in a free and fair election intially the fact they turned it into a perpetual fiefdom doesn't change that....hell not having read hamas's manifesto might even be what they campaigned on for all I know
    More than half of Gaza's population weren't even old enough to vote in 2006.
  • BattlebusBattlebus Posts: 728

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    So should the Royal Navy sit in French waters to turn back small boats? What if they refuse? What if the French refuse? It is not that simple no matter how much you like it to be.
    Then tow them to some offshore island etc
    Isle of Wight?

    Lampedusa on Solent.
    Worth a listen.

    https://open.spotify.com/track/6HMrdo2aPHXiEC0FbQqNLt
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Seems Thomas Friedman's prediction right back at the beginning was correct:

    ‪Shashank Joshi‬
    @shashj.bsky.social‬


    A big & lamentable shift. “The plan provides for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said Monday morning. The security cabinet unanimously approved the plan to expand the Gaza operation, the official said.” www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays...

    https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3logcfgmivk2b

    Sounds like a plan that might defeat Hamas and end the cycle of violence.

    I don't hear any others that might.
    That’s what Putin said about Ukraine.

    We benefit from a presumption that conquest is always wrong
    I must have missed Ukrainians invading Russia, killing thousands, kidnapping hundreds and raping many. Perhaps you can tell me when that happened, or STFU with the false comparison.

    Israel is perfectly entitled to wipe out Hamas and they have every right to do so - and Gaza is stateless currently, there is no Palestinian state, it was Egyptian and Egypt abandoned it, so if Israel ends up annexing it and the Palestinians end up back in Egypt or in other Middle Eastern states then I have no qualms with that whatsoever.

    Serves Hamas right for what they did.
    Karma's a bitch.
    Conquest is a bad thing. Regardless of any claimed justification. As a medium sized nation we benefit from global institutions.

    What Hamas and its allies did in Israel was unfathomable. Israel had every right to react robustly and I was (and am) a strong supporter of their right to do so.

    But that doesn’t give them a carte blanche to withhold food from the general population. That is a war crime. It doesn’t give them the right to invade and conquer a neighbouring territory.

    I believe Gaza was the one that invaded
    israel on the 7th of october
    It was from Gaza not by Gaza.


    Who is the government of Gaza? Oh thats right its hamas....who invaded israel...oh
    thats right it was hamas. However given your statement maybe we should send the royal marines to retake calais then say hey wasn't the uk it was just from the uk
    It was not an official act by the state, but actions by individual who are members of the governing party.

    In any event starving civilians is a war crime and that is what the Israeli government is doing
    Should we have sent food to germany in ww2?


    And sorry it wasnt an action by the governing party but members of the governing party? For one if you think the hamas government had no knowledge of the intended action I have a bridge to sell you, for two if members of the labour party invaded france do you really think the french wouldnt take that as an act of war?
    They are restricting suppliers from international relief agencies from entering Gaza. That is against the Geneva Conventions.

    I am sure that members of the Hamas government (which is not legitimately elected) knew about the attack. That still
    does not make it more than a particularly horrific terrorist act. I have no issue with them seeking reprisals and overthrowing Hamas. That is not the same as conquering territory.
    As far as I am aware unless you can show evidence otherwise the 2006 election that swept hamas into power with 42% of the vote was perfectly legitimate
    The *2006* election

    That doesn’t bestow permanent legitimacy
    Didn't claim it did but just like the us voting for trump they got elected in a free and fair election intially the fact they turned it into a perpetual fiefdom doesn't change that....hell not having read hamas's manifesto might even be what they campaigned on for all I know
    More than half of Gaza's population weren't even old enough to vote in 2006.
    I don't really have much interest in the middle east in the first place to be honest, I was more just pointing out that the current contretemps was caused by the gazan ruling partys supported invading. Personally my view is just build a wall round the middle east and leave them to either sort it out or emerge with one winner
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,610
    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087
  • TimSTimS Posts: 15,115
    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087

    Nice big FU to Ukraine. Thanks Nige.
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 6,296
    I’m now in an Airbnb studio in the centre of a place called Saint Gaudens

    I made it to the supermarket with five minutes to spare and have made myself dinner

    Entrecôte steak with a mushroom and blue cheese sauce (in the mug), potatoes and green beans

    It’s pretty bloody good


  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    For all those saying we have a duty to asylum seekers cogitate on this

    If you are a british citizen and fall ill you will not get treatment if it exceeds nice guidelines (about 25k) and be left to die

    then you have this from a progressive think tank the ippr

    "New analysis conducted by the think tank finds that the average annual cost of housing and supporting an asylum seeker has soared from £17,000 per person in 2019/20 (adjusted for inflation) to approximately £41,000 in 2023/24"

    source
    https://www.ippr.org/media-office/decentralise-asylum-accommodation-to-tackle-soaring-costs-and-substandard-quality-says-ippr#:~:text=New analysis conducted by the,£41,000 in 2023/24.
  • eekeek Posts: 29,889
    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087

    Because Farage wants to keep in Putin's good books?

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 38,325
    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087

    https://x.com/jonwalker121/status/1919449720809803866
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 10,281
    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087

    Nice big FU to Ukraine. Thanks Nige.
    And no Royal Standard either.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 38,325
    They already backtracked on the flag announcement

    https://x.com/MarkHam80780803/status/1919410143877333212
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,963

    sarissa said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    Put them on Ailsa Craig
    Better to let them Mull over their situation.
    They'll get Eigg on their face.
    Better than Muck. But no, you Canna do that.
    You're Arran a laugh!
    'Tis a Rum do. I don't we should Handa free pass to anyone.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 10,281
    edited May 5
    Scott_xP said:

    They already backtracked on the flag announcement

    https://x.com/MarkHam80780803/status/1919410143877333212

    Now follows an infantile flag battle in Reform voting areas. Will just be like IndyRef all over again 🥰
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    sarissa said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    I don’t think even the most woke liberal wants to house asylum seekers in hotels. The question is, what to do with them? Do we house them in camps? Do we deport them immediately? What do we do if we don’t know where they came from? What do we do if they are genuinely in danger? What if their host country refuses to take them back?

    fuel them up and send them back or stop them getting into our waters rather than sending out taxis and booking hotels for them
    If I were an asylum seeker in France, I'd get the ferry to Cork,find some buses to Belfast, take the ferry to Stranraer, rock up to West Ayrshire and demand Starmer billets me free of charge in the Marine Hotel, Troon.
    Put them on Ailsa Craig
    Better to let them Mull over their situation.
    They'll get Eigg on their face.
    Better than Muck. But no, you Canna do that.
    You're Arran a laugh!
    'Tis a Rum do. I don't we should Handa free pass to anyone.
    thats a kraken good idea but they can prise the free pass out of my dead mans fingers
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 55,031
    Eabhal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    They already backtracked on the flag announcement

    https://x.com/MarkHam80780803/status/1919410143877333212

    Now follows an infantile flag battle in Reform voting areas. Will just be like IndyRef all over again 🥰
    Sectarian murals will be next.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 54,402
    Pagan2 said:

    For all those saying we have a duty to asylum seekers cogitate on this

    If you are a british citizen and fall ill you will not get treatment if it exceeds nice guidelines (about 25k) and be left to die

    then you have this from a progressive think tank the ippr

    "New analysis conducted by the think tank finds that the average annual cost of housing and supporting an asylum seeker has soared from £17,000 per person in 2019/20 (adjusted for inflation) to approximately £41,000 in 2023/24"

    source
    https://www.ippr.org/media-office/decentralise-asylum-accommodation-to-tackle-soaring-costs-and-substandard-quality-says-ippr#:~:text=New analysis conducted by the,£41,000 in 2023/24.

    Wrong.

    Nice uses a number of *upwards* of £20k (beyond £30K for some treatments) per *QALY*.

    So if a treatment will enable you to live 10 years longer in a reasonable state (not screaming in pain), the NHS will happily spend £250k on that.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971

    Pagan2 said:

    For all those saying we have a duty to asylum seekers cogitate on this

    If you are a british citizen and fall ill you will not get treatment if it exceeds nice guidelines (about 25k) and be left to die

    then you have this from a progressive think tank the ippr

    "New analysis conducted by the think tank finds that the average annual cost of housing and supporting an asylum seeker has soared from £17,000 per person in 2019/20 (adjusted for inflation) to approximately £41,000 in 2023/24"

    source
    https://www.ippr.org/media-office/decentralise-asylum-accommodation-to-tackle-soaring-costs-and-substandard-quality-says-ippr#:~:text=New analysis conducted by the,£41,000 in 2023/24.

    Wrong.

    Nice uses a number of *upwards* of £20k (beyond £30K for some treatments) per *QALY*.

    So if a treatment will enable you to live 10 years longer in a reasonable state (not screaming in pain), the NHS will happily spend £250k on that.
    And if its a chronic condition requiring medication every day that comes to more than 25k a year it will say pay privately or die
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,472
    edited May 5
    Eabhal said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087

    Nice big FU to Ukraine. Thanks Nige.
    And no Royal Standard either.
    Or Commonwealth flag;

    https://www.havering.gov.uk/news/article/737/havering-celebrates-commonwealth-day-with-flag-raising

    (we take flags very seriously in the London Borough of Havering.)

    (I think we all know what the bad flags they wanted to ban were; it's genuinely odd that they didn't just say that. The other curious thing is that this has come from Reform HQ, not from the poor bloody elected members. I do hope this isn't going to be a pattern.)
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 5,268
    Maybe Reform councils can fly the Russian flag !

    Fxck Farage and his band of traitors .
  • StereodogStereodog Posts: 890
    Pagan2 said:

    For all those saying we have a duty to asylum seekers cogitate on this

    If you are a british citizen and fall ill you will not get treatment if it exceeds nice guidelines (about 25k) and be left to die

    then you have this from a progressive think tank the ippr

    "New analysis conducted by the think tank finds that the average annual cost of housing and supporting an asylum seeker has soared from £17,000 per person in 2019/20 (adjusted for inflation) to approximately £41,000 in 2023/24"

    source
    https://www.ippr.org/media-office/decentralise-asylum-accommodation-to-tackle-soaring-costs-and-substandard-quality-says-ippr#:~:text=New analysis conducted by the,£41,000 in 2023/24.

    Given that the politicians who advocate for ending asylum are often the same ones who say that we shouldn't be throwing money at the NHS, I'm sceptical that my chances of treatment would improve.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,971
    Stereodog said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For all those saying we have a duty to asylum seekers cogitate on this

    If you are a british citizen and fall ill you will not get treatment if it exceeds nice guidelines (about 25k) and be left to die

    then you have this from a progressive think tank the ippr

    "New analysis conducted by the think tank finds that the average annual cost of housing and supporting an asylum seeker has soared from £17,000 per person in 2019/20 (adjusted for inflation) to approximately £41,000 in 2023/24"

    source
    https://www.ippr.org/media-office/decentralise-asylum-accommodation-to-tackle-soaring-costs-and-substandard-quality-says-ippr#:~:text=New analysis conducted by the,£41,000 in 2023/24.

    Given that the politicians who advocate for ending asylum are often the same ones who say that we shouldn't be throwing money at the NHS, I'm sceptical that my chances of treatment would improve.
    I am merely pointing out its treating the lives of asylum seekers as worth more than a citizen
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,833

    Eabhal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    They already backtracked on the flag announcement

    https://x.com/MarkHam80780803/status/1919410143877333212

    Now follows an infantile flag battle in Reform voting areas. Will just be like IndyRef all over again 🥰
    Sectarian murals will be next.
    Hmmm... "Asylum seekers: Time for Peace. Time to Go."
  • TimSTimS Posts: 15,115
    edited May 5

    Eabhal said:

    TimS said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Matt Goodwin
    @GoodwinMJ

    Reform UK confirms the English County Councils it controls will only fly the Union flag, St George’s flag and County flags"

    https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1919422420957471087

    Nice big FU to Ukraine. Thanks Nige.
    And no Royal Standard either.
    Or Commonwealth flag;

    https://www.havering.gov.uk/news/article/737/havering-celebrates-commonwealth-day-with-flag-raising

    (we take flags very seriously in the London Borough of Havering.)

    (I think we all know what the bad flags they wanted to ban were; it's genuinely odd that they didn't just say that. The other curious thing is that this has come from Reform HQ, not from the poor bloody elected members. I do hope this isn't going to be a pattern.)
    The thought process would have been:

    “Let’s ban the LGBT flag”
    “If we do that they’ll sue us for discrimination”
    “Oh, in that case let’s just ban everything except for these, then they can’t get us”

    But I expect getting rid of the Ukraine and Palestine flags would have been a nice fringe benefit for them. 3 birds with one stone.
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