The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:
Mr Justice Chamberlain When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.
Jude Bunting KC One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.
Jude Bunting KC The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Justice Chamberlain It is very striking.
Jude Bunting KC It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.
Mr Justice Chamberlain How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.
Jude Bunting KC Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.
Cathryn McGahey KC It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.
Mr Justice Chamberlain There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?
Cathryn McGahey KC It would tell as much of the truth as possible.
Mr Justice Chamberlain I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]
Cathryn McGahey KC It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
How very sinister….
To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed
These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.
If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?
Agreed, they've been put in mortal danger due to the incompetence of a marine (was anyone sacked over this, I wonder). It's the cover-up that stinks.
We don't know this?
All we know - AFAICS - is that a lot of these people ASKED to be put on the UK "rescue list". They were being vetted, to see if they qualified, or not. That process was then scotched by the "leak" and then we felt we had no choice but to briskly allow in everyone on the list. If you have info that proves this wrong, please show me. It is my understanding from what I have read so far
And if that is true, that means we are potentially rehousing, at vast expense, tens of thousands of Afghans who could be potential criminals, rapists, Taliban supporters - they have not been vetted yet
Again, I emphasise I could be wrong. This torrent of info is only now cascading down to us, the pitiful voters
Hmmmm, yes. I had assumed it was just a list of collaborators (for want of a better word), rather than people who had expressed an interest in going to the UK.
Looks like I'm right. From The Times
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Just.......... gobsmacking. How do you even begin to describe this?
Doing the right thing
A Debt of Honour?
Why are you wheeling out all of this sentimental and faux patriotic rhetoric?
Because we were talking about British values and culture earlier. Behaving honourably and keeping our word rank pretty highly for me as core British values.
I'm curious as to when the British people were told that as a reward for sacrificing hundreds of British lives and billions of British pounds in Afghanistan we would then be rewarded by spending tens of billions more to settle tens of thousands of Afghans in this country ?
Or does behaving honourably and keeping our word not count when it only applies to how the British government treats British people ?
The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:
Mr Justice Chamberlain When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.
Jude Bunting KC One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.
Jude Bunting KC The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Justice Chamberlain It is very striking.
Jude Bunting KC It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.
Mr Justice Chamberlain How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.
Jude Bunting KC Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.
Cathryn McGahey KC It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.
Mr Justice Chamberlain There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?
Cathryn McGahey KC It would tell as much of the truth as possible.
Mr Justice Chamberlain I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]
Cathryn McGahey KC It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
How very sinister….
To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed
These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.
If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?
Agreed, they've been put in mortal danger due to the incompetence of a marine (was anyone sacked over this, I wonder). It's the cover-up that stinks.
We don't know this?
All we know - AFAICS - is that a lot of these people ASKED to be put on the UK "rescue list". They were being vetted, to see if they qualified, or not. That process was then scotched by the "leak" and then we felt we had no choice but to briskly allow in everyone on the list. If you have info that proves this wrong, please show me. It is my understanding from what I have read so far
And if that is true, that means we are potentially rehousing, at vast expense, tens of thousands of Afghans who could be potential criminals, rapists, Taliban supporters - they have not been vetted yet
Again, I emphasise I could be wrong. This torrent of info is only now cascading down to us, the pitiful voters
Hmmmm, yes. I had assumed it was just a list of collaborators (for want of a better word), rather than people who had expressed an interest in going to the UK.
Looks like I'm right. From The Times
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Just.......... gobsmacking. How do you even begin to describe this?
Doing the right thing
A Debt of Honour?
Why are you wheeling out all of this sentimental and faux patriotic rhetoric?
Because we were talking about British values and culture earlier. Behaving honourably and keeping our word rank pretty highly for me as core British values.
Can you show me where we gave our word that anyone who so much as spoke nicely to us in Afghanistan was entitled to settlement here?
Does your concern for keeping our word extend to the government keeping its word on things like bringing down overall migration to the tens of thousands?
You can blame the Tory government for not keeping it's word on that, not this government.
Did you feel ashamed that so many people thought we should break our word and not enact the decision of the referendum?
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The best reason for getting rid of the licence fee and shutting down the BBC is that we would then be spared these endless BBC stories.
The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln · 1h Every single Republican member of Congress has turned their back on the values they campaigned on: voting to block the release of the Epstein files.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln · 1h Every single Republican member of Congress has turned their back on the values they campaigned on: voting to block the release of the Epstein files.
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
And now the guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke off Masterchef". Nobody at the time complained and the people who even brought it up in the inquiry seemed to play it down as not directed at anybody etc. We don't even know what racist thing he said, there is racist and there is racist.
The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:
Mr Justice Chamberlain When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.
Jude Bunting KC One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.
Jude Bunting KC The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Justice Chamberlain It is very striking.
Jude Bunting KC It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.
Mr Justice Chamberlain How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.
Jude Bunting KC Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.
Cathryn McGahey KC It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.
Mr Justice Chamberlain There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?
Cathryn McGahey KC It would tell as much of the truth as possible.
Mr Justice Chamberlain I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]
Cathryn McGahey KC It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
How very sinister….
To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed
These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.
If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?
Agreed, they've been put in mortal danger due to the incompetence of a marine (was anyone sacked over this, I wonder). It's the cover-up that stinks.
We don't know this?
All we know - AFAICS - is that a lot of these people ASKED to be put on the UK "rescue list". They were being vetted, to see if they qualified, or not. That process was then scotched by the "leak" and then we felt we had no choice but to briskly allow in everyone on the list. If you have info that proves this wrong, please show me. It is my understanding from what I have read so far
And if that is true, that means we are potentially rehousing, at vast expense, tens of thousands of Afghans who could be potential criminals, rapists, Taliban supporters - they have not been vetted yet
Again, I emphasise I could be wrong. This torrent of info is only now cascading down to us, the pitiful voters
Hmmmm, yes. I had assumed it was just a list of collaborators (for want of a better word), rather than people who had expressed an interest in going to the UK.
Looks like I'm right. From The Times
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Just.......... gobsmacking. How do you even begin to describe this?
Doing the right thing
A Debt of Honour?
Do these Afghans have a debt of honour to the UK ?
They do now.
And how will that be repaid ?
Perhaps they should join the Ukrainian military and fight for that country's freedom.
Why not our military?
I suspect the Ukrainians would be better able to deal with people with a tendency to run away.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke". We don't even know what racist thing he said. There is racist and there is racist.
We already knew that about him though, from his time editing the Mirr...oh, you mean this Masterchef bloke?
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke". We don't even know what racist thing he said. There is racist and there is racist.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
Or/And, whisper it quietly, not everyone wants to uproot their entire lives and move to another country - even if it's a richer and safer one.
Even when the government of your country is actively seeking to kill you?
We don't know that's true, though. We're just worried it might be. The individuals themselves are probably best placed to know if they're sufficiently protected locally.
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The best reason for getting rid of the licence fee and shutting down the BBC is that we would then be spared these endless BBC stories.
New : A majority of viewers would favour bbc closure if it led to reduced coverage of BBC stories, new Newsnight investigation finds.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke". We don't even know what racist thing he said. There is racist and there is racist.
If that is all he did, the BBC should be ashamed
I have a very simple test with these kind of situations. First of all what exactly was said and to whom. Was it a one off or was it a pattern of consistent behaviour. If it was a one off, people can apologise and we can all move on.
In this case they are saying a one off ages ago and even the people reporting downplayed it severity. Which suggest he wasn't exactly ranting about f##king n###ers in the pub for hours or anything like that.
Some of the stories even about Greg Wallace were a bit like oh come on if it was a single even in isolation. There was a fair bit of I was offended because I took it as.... However, when we start to talk about him inviting ladies into dressing room and getting his wang out because autism or something, now we have a problem. And it appears this went on a lot.
The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:
Mr Justice Chamberlain When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.
Jude Bunting KC One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.
Jude Bunting KC The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Justice Chamberlain It is very striking.
Jude Bunting KC It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.
Mr Justice Chamberlain How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.
Jude Bunting KC Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.
Cathryn McGahey KC It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.
Mr Justice Chamberlain There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?
Cathryn McGahey KC It would tell as much of the truth as possible.
Mr Justice Chamberlain I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]
Cathryn McGahey KC It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
How very sinister….
To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed
These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.
If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?
Agreed, they've been put in mortal danger due to the incompetence of a marine (was anyone sacked over this, I wonder). It's the cover-up that stinks.
We don't know this?
All we know - AFAICS - is that a lot of these people ASKED to be put on the UK "rescue list". They were being vetted, to see if they qualified, or not. That process was then scotched by the "leak" and then we felt we had no choice but to briskly allow in everyone on the list. If you have info that proves this wrong, please show me. It is my understanding from what I have read so far
And if that is true, that means we are potentially rehousing, at vast expense, tens of thousands of Afghans who could be potential criminals, rapists, Taliban supporters - they have not been vetted yet
Again, I emphasise I could be wrong. This torrent of info is only now cascading down to us, the pitiful voters
Hmmmm, yes. I had assumed it was just a list of collaborators (for want of a better word), rather than people who had expressed an interest in going to the UK.
Looks like I'm right. From The Times
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Just.......... gobsmacking. How do you even begin to describe this?
Doing the right thing
A Debt of Honour?
Why are you wheeling out all of this sentimental and faux patriotic rhetoric?
Because we were talking about British values and culture earlier. Behaving honourably and keeping our word rank pretty highly for me as core British values.
Can you show me where we gave our word that anyone who so much as spoke nicely to us in Afghanistan was entitled to settlement here?
Does your concern for keeping our word extend to the government keeping its word on things like bringing down overall migration to the tens of thousands?
You can blame the Tory government for not keeping it's word on that, not this government.
Did you feel ashamed that so many people thought we should break our word and not enact the decision of the referendum?
I’ll answer this question for myself and the answer is no. I didn’t vote for Brexit nor did I vote for the government who promised to enact it. You don’t just give up on a belief because it’s been defeated in an election and I’m entitled to advocate all legal and political means for what I believe in. It’s like asking someone whose house is in the way of HS2 to stop fighting its compulsory purchase just because the party who won the 2019 election supported the project. I don’t deny the validity of Brexit. It won a majority in an advisory referendum and then much more importantly it eventually won a majority in Parliament. It doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of voting for a party in 2019 who opposed it and if I were an MP I would have voted against it having made it clear to the electorate that those were my beliefs.
The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:
Mr Justice Chamberlain When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.
Jude Bunting KC One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.
Jude Bunting KC The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Justice Chamberlain It is very striking.
Jude Bunting KC It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.
Mr Justice Chamberlain How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.
Jude Bunting KC Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.
Cathryn McGahey KC It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.
Mr Justice Chamberlain There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?
Cathryn McGahey KC It would tell as much of the truth as possible.
Mr Justice Chamberlain I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]
Cathryn McGahey KC It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
How very sinister….
To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed
These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.
If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?
Agreed, they've been put in mortal danger due to the incompetence of a marine (was anyone sacked over this, I wonder). It's the cover-up that stinks.
We don't know this?
All we know - AFAICS - is that a lot of these people ASKED to be put on the UK "rescue list". They were being vetted, to see if they qualified, or not. That process was then scotched by the "leak" and then we felt we had no choice but to briskly allow in everyone on the list. If you have info that proves this wrong, please show me. It is my understanding from what I have read so far
And if that is true, that means we are potentially rehousing, at vast expense, tens of thousands of Afghans who could be potential criminals, rapists, Taliban supporters - they have not been vetted yet
Again, I emphasise I could be wrong. This torrent of info is only now cascading down to us, the pitiful voters
Hmmmm, yes. I had assumed it was just a list of collaborators (for want of a better word), rather than people who had expressed an interest in going to the UK.
Looks like I'm right. From The Times
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Just.......... gobsmacking. How do you even begin to describe this?
Doing the right thing
A Debt of Honour?
Why are you wheeling out all of this sentimental and faux patriotic rhetoric?
Because we were talking about British values and culture earlier. Behaving honourably and keeping our word rank pretty highly for me as core British values.
Can you show me where we gave our word that anyone who so much as spoke nicely to us in Afghanistan was entitled to settlement here?
Does your concern for keeping our word extend to the government keeping its word on things like bringing down overall migration to the tens of thousands?
You can blame the Tory government for not keeping it's word on that, not this government.
Did you feel ashamed that so many people thought we should break our word and not enact the decision of the referendum?
I’ll answer this question for myself and the answer is no. I didn’t vote for Brexit nor did I vote for the government who promised to enact it. You don’t just give up on a belief because it’s been defeated in an election and I’m entitled to advocate all legal and political means for what I believe in. It’s like asking someone whose house is in the way of HS2 to stop fighting its compulsory purchase just because the party who won the 2019 election supported the project. I don’t deny the validity of Brexit. It won a majority in an advisory referendum and then much more importantly it eventually won a majority in Parliament. It doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of voting for a party in 2019 who opposed it and if I were an MP I would have voted against it having made it clear to the electorate that those were my beliefs.
It was a rhetorical question to demonstrate that @Foxy ’s appeal to “British values” is hollow and hypocritical.
Not quite true, Reform in Kent wants more immigrant care workers. Reform’s leadership haven’t yet been asked if that’s what they want and I suspect the answer would be no.
The squaring of what Reform needs for their councils to succeed and what their voters want is going to be an interesting problem.
In Durham the council have announced they need to find £31m in cuts to cover an expected social care overspend
I thought boatloads of potential care workers arrive in Kent on every tide. What more do they want?
A reminder that the government shutdown the right of care homes to directly recruit from abroad, because next to no-one they sold* a visa to ended up working in a care home.
Nearly all the migrants who ended up working in care homes did so via other visa routes.
As a result of this comedy, we don’t have reliable numbers for shortages of workers. This is because the care home owners created visas for jobs that didn’t exist, in many cases. So the non-existent job went on the tally of vacancies. And since it didn’t exist, was never filled…
*Selling a visa like this is a crime.
There's no such thing as a shortage that can't be filled.
It is unskilled labour. That's not to be disrespectful, I have the greatest respect for those who choose to do it, but the only qualification needed is to pass a DBS Check. You don't even need a GCSE let alone a degree, literally anyone with a clean DBS can do it.
If the vacancy isn't filled, its because either the terms and conditions are shit, the pay is shit, or the way management treat their employees is shit. Or a combination of the above.
All the above are readily fixable problems.
All of the above are readily fixable... with money... money that Kent CC doesn't have, presumably. Thus they wish to increase the supply so the price comes down.
Which is an utterly false economy as if you increase supply you need to increase infrastructure. You need new transport, infrastructure, as well as housing etc to cater for the added supply. All of which costs money.
Are they planning to do that? Or just boost supply and ignore infrastructure.
If you're just bringing in people to work in care, the total number is small, so those additional costs are small.
More importantly, the people are doing useful work, so they are earning and adding to the economy (even if they are earning less than otherwise). That's what pays for infrastructure etc. That's how we afford anyone! People doing productive work are not a drain on the economy.
But I'm not here defending Reform UK. I agree that we should value care work more and pay higher salaries.
Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”
Doesn’t it take longer than that to strangle someone - I know films show it taking about 30 seconds (like how chloroform knocks people out in a matter of seconds in film world) but I thought it takes about 5 minutes to cause death. So whoever is supposed to do it got in to his cell, overpowered him and strangled him to death in 2 mins 35 seconds? Seems a bit unlikely.
I imagine it would depend upon the skill of the strangler. The Deceivers could do it remarkably swiftly.
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke". We don't even know what racist thing he said. There is racist and there is racist.
If that is all he did, the BBC should be ashamed
I have a very simple test with these kind of situations. First of all what exactly was said and to whom. Was it a one off or was it a pattern of consistent behaviour. If it was a one off, people can apologise and we can all move on.
In this case they are saying a one off ages ago and even the people reporting downplayed it severity. Which suggest he wasn't exactly ranting about f##king n###ers in the pub for hours or anything like that.
They seem to have taken action far quicker against Torode for this long past one-off than against Wallace for his persistent behaviour.
The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:
Mr Justice Chamberlain When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.
Jude Bunting KC One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.
Jude Bunting KC The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.
Mr Justice Chamberlain It is very striking.
Jude Bunting KC It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.
Mr Justice Chamberlain How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.
Jude Bunting KC Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.
Cathryn McGahey KC It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.
Mr Justice Chamberlain There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?
Cathryn McGahey KC It would tell as much of the truth as possible.
Mr Justice Chamberlain I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]
Cathryn McGahey KC It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
How very sinister….
To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed
These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.
If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?
Agreed, they've been put in mortal danger due to the incompetence of a marine (was anyone sacked over this, I wonder). It's the cover-up that stinks.
We don't know this?
All we know - AFAICS - is that a lot of these people ASKED to be put on the UK "rescue list". They were being vetted, to see if they qualified, or not. That process was then scotched by the "leak" and then we felt we had no choice but to briskly allow in everyone on the list. If you have info that proves this wrong, please show me. It is my understanding from what I have read so far
And if that is true, that means we are potentially rehousing, at vast expense, tens of thousands of Afghans who could be potential criminals, rapists, Taliban supporters - they have not been vetted yet
Again, I emphasise I could be wrong. This torrent of info is only now cascading down to us, the pitiful voters
Hmmmm, yes. I had assumed it was just a list of collaborators (for want of a better word), rather than people who had expressed an interest in going to the UK.
Looks like I'm right. From The Times
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Just.......... gobsmacking. How do you even begin to describe this?
Doing the right thing
A Debt of Honour?
Why are you wheeling out all of this sentimental and faux patriotic rhetoric?
Because we were talking about British values and culture earlier. Behaving honourably and keeping our word rank pretty highly for me as core British values.
Can you show me where we gave our word that anyone who so much as spoke nicely to us in Afghanistan was entitled to settlement here?
Does your concern for keeping our word extend to the government keeping its word on things like bringing down overall migration to the tens of thousands?
You can blame the Tory government for not keeping it's word on that, not this government.
Did you feel ashamed that so many people thought we should break our word and not enact the decision of the referendum?
I’ll answer this question for myself and the answer is no. I didn’t vote for Brexit nor did I vote for the government who promised to enact it. You don’t just give up on a belief because it’s been defeated in an election and I’m entitled to advocate all legal and political means for what I believe in. It’s like asking someone whose house is in the way of HS2 to stop fighting its compulsory purchase just because the party who won the 2019 election supported the project. I don’t deny the validity of Brexit. It won a majority in an advisory referendum and then much more importantly it eventually won a majority in Parliament. It doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of voting for a party in 2019 who opposed it and if I were an MP I would have voted against it having made it clear to the electorate that those were my beliefs.
"You lost. Ger over it. End of. Remoaners."
All meaningless drivel, with no content of rationality."
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke". We don't even know what racist thing he said. There is racist and there is racist.
If that is all he did, the BBC should be ashamed
I have a very simple test with these kind of situations. First of all what exactly was said and to whom. Was it a one off or was it a pattern of consistent behaviour. If it was a one off, people can apologise and we can all move on.
In this case they are saying a one off ages ago and even the people reporting downplayed it severity. Which suggest he wasn't exactly ranting about f##king n###ers in the pub for hours or anything like that.
They seem to have taken action far quicker against Torode for this long past one-off than against Wallace for his persistent behaviour.
It feels a bit over reaction. Remember Jermaine Jenas got chucked under the bus really because they were so slow with Huw Edwards.
Jenas story seemed to be on a couple of occasion with a staff member and another woman when away with work for the BBC, he got flirty with them after works in pubs, they said they responded positively, but later changed their minds. Scum bag as he is married and it sounds like he sent them dirty texts, it might well sent too many texts, but he did knocked it off. There was a weird claim, but but power dynamic, but I bet he has little say over who the BBC hire as showrunner for footy matches he did punditry on.
Reform in Leics County council have voted to move £2million from what they call "Net Stupid Zero" to...
...flooding defences.
You could not make this shit up.
That does not seem obviously outrageous.
It is the opposite of outrageous. Outrageous would be a council not having adequate flood defences yet spending £2million of council tax payers' money on tokenistic activity that even if the entire UK eliminated carbon emmissions, let alone just Leicester, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
You can be sure that when any of these Afghans commits a crime they will be officially described as a 'local'.
Have I got this right? The BBC has fired @JohnTorode1 because he allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in a bar EIGHT YEARS ago, that he immediately apologised for, and now doesn’t remember ever saying? Salem wants its witch trials back.
The guy will now be ever more be "that racist bloke". We don't even know what racist thing he said. There is racist and there is racist.
If that is all he did, the BBC should be ashamed
I have a very simple test with these kind of situations. First of all what exactly was said and to whom. Was it a one off or was it a pattern of consistent behaviour. If it was a one off, people can apologise and we can all move on.
In this case they are saying a one off ages ago and even the people reporting downplayed it severity. Which suggest he wasn't exactly ranting about f##king n###ers in the pub for hours or anything like that.
Some of the stories even about Greg Wallace were a bit like oh come on if it was a single even in isolation. There was a fair bit of I was offended because I took it as.... However, when we start to talk about him inviting ladies into dressing room and getting his wang out because autism or something, now we have a problem. And it appears this went on a lot.
Yes
I like Wallace (as a presenter) but there are enough stories that you sadly have to admit, OK he's no Jimmy Savile, but he crossed a lot of lines a lot of times. Shame, but there it is
But - unless something is being hidden - Torode is being chucked under the 29 bus because of ONE off colour racial remark nearly a decade ago??!!
I sense BBC panic, again. As a PB-er said earlier, it is characteristic of corporatoins in terminal decline, they flail and make terrible errors, compounding earlier mistakes
Personally, I would be sad to see the BBC go. It is a great expression of British soft power, at its best, and a brilliant brand. But it needs to be rethought and retooled, or it will not survive
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
You can be sure that when any of these Afghans commits a crime they will be officially described as a 'local'.
Is there an official reason for court reporting always referring to the perpetrator as being ‘from’ their most recent address?
Not quite true, Reform in Kent wants more immigrant care workers. Reform’s leadership haven’t yet been asked if that’s what they want and I suspect the answer would be no.
The squaring of what Reform needs for their councils to succeed and what their voters want is going to be an interesting problem.
In Durham the council have announced they need to find £31m in cuts to cover an expected social care overspend
I thought boatloads of potential care workers arrive in Kent on every tide. What more do they want?
A reminder that the government shutdown the right of care homes to directly recruit from abroad, because next to no-one they sold* a visa to ended up working in a care home.
Nearly all the migrants who ended up working in care homes did so via other visa routes.
As a result of this comedy, we don’t have reliable numbers for shortages of workers. This is because the care home owners created visas for jobs that didn’t exist, in many cases. So the non-existent job went on the tally of vacancies. And since it didn’t exist, was never filled…
*Selling a visa like this is a crime.
There's no such thing as a shortage that can't be filled.
It is unskilled labour. That's not to be disrespectful, I have the greatest respect for those who choose to do it, but the only qualification needed is to pass a DBS Check. You don't even need a GCSE let alone a degree, literally anyone with a clean DBS can do it.
If the vacancy isn't filled, its because either the terms and conditions are shit, the pay is shit, or the way management treat their employees is shit. Or a combination of the above.
All the above are readily fixable problems.
All of the above are readily fixable... with money... money that Kent CC doesn't have, presumably. Thus they wish to increase the supply so the price comes down.
Some of us believe unlimited unskilled immigration is a bad idea AND believe in higher taxes to pay the higher costs implied for social care of wages needing to rise because we don't have unlimited labour.
This will have two benefits: We don't fill our country up Lower paid people get paid more
Which will have the knock on benefit that state spending on these two things can fall.
Rachel Reeves needs to whack the basic rate of tax up to 25%. It's the only way to balance the books.
The only way to balance the books - longer-term - is to have economic growth.
The right question is what do we need to do to get economic growth moving, so that rising tax receipts cover expenses?
And the right answer is obvious to anyone with a decent knowledge of economics - cut government spending, and deregulate, making a start with planning.
There are some areas where we do need to spend more. The payback on properly funding the criminal justice system, so that people are caught, prosecuted and punished is going to be huge. People feeling safe also almost certainly contributed directly to economic activity, because - you know - they're not sitting at home watching Netflix.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
I would imagine they were disciplined at least but these injunctions are super to prevent any public discussion of the matter, not least to protect the identity of the Afghans concerned
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
It is another example of what Big Dom has been banging on about. The thing we can't mention, his specific claim that sounded tinfoil stuff was actually true.
Reform in Leics County council have voted to move £2million from what they call "Net Stupid Zero" to...
...flooding defences.
You could not make this shit up.
That does not seem obviously outrageous.
It is the opposite of outrageous. Outrageous would be a council not having adequate flood defences yet spending £2million of council tax payers' money on tokenistic activity that even if the entire UK eliminated carbon emmissions, let alone just Leicester, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
Given you are a climate change denier and believe net zero is a literal conspiracy, maybe your views about the value of net zero measures are distorted.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
I would imagine they were disciplined at least but these injunctions are super to prevent any public discussion of the matter, not least to protect the identity of the Afghans concerned
And how convenient that the superinjunction also protects the govt, the Home Office, the MoD, the leaking miscreants, and also any Afghans who are simply trying their luck at getting into the UK, plus those who are actively criminal or hostile
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
You can be sure that when any of these Afghans commits a crime they will be officially described as a 'local'.
Is there an official reason for court reporting always referring to the perpetrator as being ‘from’ their most recent address?
Listening to OBR bods, they made interesting point about "wealth taxes". They don't work trying to do all wealth as very difficult to work out people total wealth. But they state, council tax is broken, stamp duty is terrible tax and each increase has lead to reduction in transactions and blocking oldies from downsizing.
They advocate remove business rates, council tax, and stamp duty, replace with a straight tax on property value.
Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”
Doesn’t it take longer than that to strangle someone - I know films show it taking about 30 seconds (like how chloroform knocks people out in a matter of seconds in film world) but I thought it takes about 5 minutes to cause death. So whoever is supposed to do it got in to his cell, overpowered him and strangled him to death in 2 mins 35 seconds? Seems a bit unlikely.
He was found hanging from the side of his bed, so they'd only have to get him unconscious and in the ligature. Medical examiners don't seem to be in dispute that he had multiple fractures in the neck, they only dispute the cause. I can see that happening if he'd jumped off a desk or chair in a noose but not if he'd let a noose take his weight off the side of a bedframe.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
It is another example of what Big Dom has been banging on about. The thing we can't mention, his specific claim that sounded tinfoil stuff was actually true.
Yes, and cf his favourite phrase of the moment
"The purpose of the system is what it does"
At the moment, the UK system appears to get the maximum number of migrants - legal or illegal - into the UK, and hang the cost to the rest of us. So that is what it does, that is its purpose
Not quite true, Reform in Kent wants more immigrant care workers. Reform’s leadership haven’t yet been asked if that’s what they want and I suspect the answer would be no.
The squaring of what Reform needs for their councils to succeed and what their voters want is going to be an interesting problem.
In Durham the council have announced they need to find £31m in cuts to cover an expected social care overspend
I thought boatloads of potential care workers arrive in Kent on every tide. What more do they want?
A reminder that the government shutdown the right of care homes to directly recruit from abroad, because next to no-one they sold* a visa to ended up working in a care home.
Nearly all the migrants who ended up working in care homes did so via other visa routes.
As a result of this comedy, we don’t have reliable numbers for shortages of workers. This is because the care home owners created visas for jobs that didn’t exist, in many cases. So the non-existent job went on the tally of vacancies. And since it didn’t exist, was never filled…
*Selling a visa like this is a crime.
There's no such thing as a shortage that can't be filled.
It is unskilled labour. That's not to be disrespectful, I have the greatest respect for those who choose to do it, but the only qualification needed is to pass a DBS Check. You don't even need a GCSE let alone a degree, literally anyone with a clean DBS can do it.
If the vacancy isn't filled, its because either the terms and conditions are shit, the pay is shit, or the way management treat their employees is shit. Or a combination of the above.
All the above are readily fixable problems.
All of the above are readily fixable... with money... money that Kent CC doesn't have, presumably. Thus they wish to increase the supply so the price comes down.
Some of us believe unlimited unskilled immigration is a bad idea AND believe in higher taxes to pay the higher costs implied for social care of wages needing to rise because we don't have unlimited labour.
This will have two benefits: We don't fill our country up Lower paid people get paid more
Which will have the knock on benefit that state spending on these two things can fall.
Rachel Reeves needs to whack the basic rate of tax up to 25%. It's the only way to balance the books.
The only way to balance the books - longer-term - is to have economic growth.
The right question is what do we need to do to get economic growth moving, so that rising tax receipts cover expenses?
And the right answer is obvious to anyone with a decent knowledge of economics - cut government spending, and deregulate, making a start with planning.
There are some areas where we do need to spend more. The payback on properly funding the criminal justice system, so that people are caught, prosecuted and punished is going to be huge. People feeling safe also almost certainly contributed directly to economic activity, because - you know - they're not sitting at home watching Netflix.
But for governments the political payback of handing out more welfare is much quicker.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
I would imagine they were disciplined at least but these injunctions are super to prevent any public discussion of the matter, not least to protect the identity of the Afghans concerned
There is no super injunction any more hence why we now know.
I seem to fall into the category of Dissenting Disruptor, although I don't really fit the socio-economic profile.
Indeed, neither do I of a Progressive Activust. I think I'm more of some kind of stew of Traditional and Radical.
I got Incrementalist Left on the quiz. I broadly agree with that although not the bit about being politically engaged. A few years back I probably would have identified with Established Liberal more.
Listening to OBR bods, they made interesting point about "wealth taxes". They don't work trying to do all wealth as very difficult to work out people total wealth. But they state, council tax is broken, stamp duty is terrible tax and each increase has lead to reduction in transactions and blocking oldies from downsizing.
They advocate remove business rates, council tax, and stamp duty, replace with a straight tax on property value.
You mean exactly what various posters ( @Malmesbury, myself) on here have been saying for years
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
I would imagine they were disciplined at least but these injunctions are super to prevent any public discussion of the matter, not least to protect the identity of the Afghans concerned
There is no super injunction any more hence why we now know.
We still haven't had much disclosed beyond being now allowed to know the event happened that is it
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
It is another example of what Big Dom has been banging on about. The thing we can't mention, his specific claim that sounded tinfoil stuff was actually true.
Yes, and cf his favourite phrase of the moment
"The purpose of the system is what it does"
At the moment, the UK system appears to get the maximum number of migrants - legal or illegal - into the UK, and hang the cost to the rest of us. So that is what it does, that is its purpose
Net immigration is now falling thanks to the higher visa wage requirements and restrictions on dependents being brought in Rishi brought in
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
You can be sure that when any of these Afghans commits a crime they will be officially described as a 'local'.
Reform in Leics County council have voted to move £2million from what they call "Net Stupid Zero" to...
...flooding defences.
You could not make this shit up.
That does not seem obviously outrageous.
It is the opposite of outrageous. Outrageous would be a council not having adequate flood defences yet spending £2million of council tax payers' money on tokenistic activity that even if the entire UK eliminated carbon emmissions, let alone just Leicester, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
Given you are a climate change denier and believe net zero is a literal conspiracy, maybe your views about the value of net zero measures are distorted.
One's views on climate change are irrelevant. You could be the world's biggest believer in it and see that Rottenborough's assertion is nonsense.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Very interesting, not least in the fact that the only group the Tories lead with now is established Liberals, where they are 1% ahead of Labour and 15% of the LDs and 25% ahead of Reform.
Reform meanwhile are on a massive 58% with dissenting disruptors and Reform lead the Tories by 16% with rooted patriots and by 2% with traditional Conservatives. Reform lead Labour by 8% with sceptical scrollers too.
Labour lead the LDs meanwhile by 14% with the incrementalist Left and Labour lead the Greens by 3% with Progressive activists
I'm a dissenting disruptor. Which is weird because I'm more left-wing than Labour 😀, at least these days. Although let's be fair, Heseltine was more left-wing than 2025 Labour... ☹️
Well, knock me down with a feather, I'm a Progressive Activist.
Reform in Leics County council have voted to move £2million from what they call "Net Stupid Zero" to...
...flooding defences.
You could not make this shit up.
That does not seem obviously outrageous.
It is the opposite of outrageous. Outrageous would be a council not having adequate flood defences yet spending £2million of council tax payers' money on tokenistic activity that even if the entire UK eliminated carbon emmissions, let alone just Leicester, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
Given you are a climate change denier and believe net zero is a literal conspiracy, maybe your views about the value of net zero measures are distorted.
One's views on climate change are irrelevant. You could be the world's biggest believer in it and see that Rottenborough's assertion is nonsense.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
I would imagine they were disciplined at least but these injunctions are super to prevent any public discussion of the matter, not least to protect the identity of the Afghans concerned
There is no super injunction any more hence why we now know.
Yep, so there's 20000-33000 in the spreadsheet and only 3600 in the UK. So that's 16-30 thousand who've just been sent an email by the UK govt, that an idiot on BBC R4 news read out verbatim, so now the Afghan secret service can trace them using the IT tools sold to despotic regimes. A big well done to the UK govt for not protecting them, the journos who took legal action to get the super injunction lifted and the Judges who lifted it. It's on you.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
I would imagine they were disciplined at least but these injunctions are super to prevent any public discussion of the matter, not least to protect the identity of the Afghans concerned
There is no super injunction any more hence why we now know.
Yep, so there's 20000-33000 in the spreadsheet and only 3600 in the UK. So that's 16-30 thousand who've just been sent an email by the UK govt, that an idiot on BBC R4 news read out verbatim, so now the Afghan secret service can trace them using the IT tools sold to despotic regimes. A big well done to the UK govt for not protecting them, the journos who took legal action to get the super injunction lifted and the Judges who lifted it. It's on you.
The file is already out there, and has been from the moment it appeared on Facebook when this sorry saga began.
According to the Guardian this scheme (the ARAP scheme) has led to 900 principals and 3600 family members moving to Britain, with 600 further ones accepted, with immediate family. The scheme is now closed.
So far fewer than the 33000 names on the data breach, so clearly a filtering process was applied to ensure legitimate claims.
So far, 36,000 people have arrived from the country, as of the end of March, and the government says that the total cost of all relocation schemes will be between £5.5bn and £6bn.
And from the Times:
"Many others had not [served with UK forces], but were on the list because they had applied to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) on the chance they might have their applications granted.
In October last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, signed off a secret plan, which had begun under the Conservatives, to spend up to £7 billion over five years on bringing 25,000 of those affected to the UK.
Court documents disclosed that the cabinet’s home and economic affairs committee, which included Reeves and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, agreed the plan remained “appropriate”. The 25,000 were not previously eligible to come to the UK. The policy was widened in June to include more than 42,500 individuals."
Its good to know those responsible were sacked...right? Checks notes, government today saying none of our business if they were even disciplined. So that's a no then?
It would, indeed, seem to be a No
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
You can be sure that when any of these Afghans commits a crime they will be officially described as a 'local'.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
No matter one’s views on this it is absolutely breathtaking that some news organisations think the sacking of the presenter of a cookery show is more important than this story.
Reform in Leics County council have voted to move £2million from what they call "Net Stupid Zero" to...
...flooding defences.
You could not make this shit up.
That does not seem obviously outrageous.
It is the opposite of outrageous. Outrageous would be a council not having adequate flood defences yet spending £2million of council tax payers' money on tokenistic activity that even if the entire UK eliminated carbon emmissions, let alone just Leicester, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
Given you are a climate change denier and believe net zero is a literal conspiracy, maybe your views about the value of net zero measures are distorted.
One's views on climate change are irrelevant. You could be the world's biggest believer in it and see that Rottenborough's assertion is nonsense.
"One's views"? Are you the King?
Can’t be the king as he’s notoriously on board with net zero.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
The judge who lifted the order explicitly said “£7bn?” and this was confirmed by the governments lawyer. The transcript of the hearing is in the Telegraph and I’ve pasted it above
To be candid, so much of this was deadly secret and so much of it is STILL secret (parts of the injunction remain) it is almost impossible to pin down the precise truth, right now. There are conflicting reports everywhere
What we can say for certain is that it is a shitshow for Tories AND Labour which is no doubt why they were so keen to keep it under wraps
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
The judge who lifted the order explicitly said “£7bn?” and this was confirmed by the governments lawyer. The transcript of the hearing is in the Telegraph and I’ve pasted it above
To be candid, so much of this was deadly secret and so much of it is STILL secret (parts of the injunction remain) it is almost impossible to pin down the precise truth, right now. There are conflicting reports everywhere
What we can say for certain is that it is a shitshow for Tories AND Labour which is no doubt why they were so keen to keep it under wraps
As for bondegezou, the political strategy espoused reminds me of the brexit bus. “We didn’t lie to you about spending £7bn to import some known sex offenders, it was only £1bn!”.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
"They lied about this one thing, so it's OK to make up numbers," does not seem to me to be a particularly strong argument.
His political legacy is now in tatters, can’t blame him for trying to soften how his obituary will read one day but it’s not going to work I don’t think.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
The judge who lifted the order explicitly said “£7bn?” and this was confirmed by the governments lawyer. The transcript of the hearing is in the Telegraph and I’ve pasted it above
To be candid, so much of this was deadly secret and so much of it is STILL secret (parts of the injunction remain) it is almost impossible to pin down the precise truth, right now. There are conflicting reports everywhere
What we can say for certain is that it is a shitshow for Tories AND Labour which is no doubt why they were so keen to keep it under wraps
As for bondegezou, the political strategy espoused reminds me of the brexit bus. “We didn’t lie to you about spending £7bn to import some known sex offenders, it was only £1bn!”.
Something can be both a good campaigning tactic and corrosive to democracy. The Brexit bus was a good campaigning tactic. It was also a lie.
I'm not saying that we should note that the cost of this scheme was under £1 billion rather than £7 billion as a political strategy. I'm saying we should note that because it's true.
Truth matters. Look at the US to see what happens when a significant proportion of the politicians, media and public give up on truth.
Listening to OBR bods, they made interesting point about "wealth taxes". They don't work trying to do all wealth as very difficult to work out people total wealth. But they state, council tax is broken, stamp duty is terrible tax and each increase has lead to reduction in transactions and blocking oldies from downsizing.
They advocate remove business rates, council tax, and stamp duty, replace with a straight tax on property value.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
The judge who lifted the order explicitly said “£7bn?” and this was confirmed by the governments lawyer. The transcript of the hearing is in the Telegraph and I’ve pasted it above
To be candid, so much of this was deadly secret and so much of it is STILL secret (parts of the injunction remain) it is almost impossible to pin down the precise truth, right now. There are conflicting reports everywhere
What we can say for certain is that it is a shitshow for Tories AND Labour which is no doubt why they were so keen to keep it under wraps
As for bondegezou, the political strategy espoused reminds me of the brexit bus. “We didn’t lie to you about spending £7bn to import some known sex offenders, it was only £1bn!”.
That’s devastating from Farage. He’s so good at this
Is he right? Did we knowingly invite Afghan sex offenders?! And is it true they excluded all these numbers - thousands - from the immigration data???
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again
Hence, a Reform victory
Or, ten years later, even a Green one. I know a couple of people who drop them interchangeably into conversation as the only option.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again
Hence, a Reform victory
Reform to win most seats at the next GE is at its shortest ever price on BF now. Seems like this story is damning for both Lab & Tory
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
The judge who lifted the order explicitly said “£7bn?” and this was confirmed by the governments lawyer. The transcript of the hearing is in the Telegraph and I’ve pasted it above
To be candid, so much of this was deadly secret and so much of it is STILL secret (parts of the injunction remain) it is almost impossible to pin down the precise truth, right now. There are conflicting reports everywhere
What we can say for certain is that it is a shitshow for Tories AND Labour which is no doubt why they were so keen to keep it under wraps
As for bondegezou, the political strategy espoused reminds me of the brexit bus. “We didn’t lie to you about spending £7bn to import some known sex offenders, it was only £1bn!”.
That’s devastating from Farage. He’s so good at this
Is he right? Did we knowingly invite Afghan sex offenders?! And is it true they excluded all these numbers - thousands - from the immigration data???
It gets worse. Worse and worse
Smallish point, but he has to stop saying ‘frankly’ so often
Very interesting, not least in the fact that the only group the Tories lead with now is established Liberals, where they are 1% ahead of Labour and 15% of the LDs and 25% ahead of Reform.
Reform meanwhile are on a massive 58% with dissenting disruptors and Reform lead the Tories by 16% with rooted patriots and by 2% with traditional Conservatives. Reform lead Labour by 8% with sceptical scrollers too.
Labour lead the LDs meanwhile by 14% with the incrementalist Left and Labour lead the Greens by 3% with Progressive activists
I'm a dissenting disruptor. Which is weird because I'm more left-wing than Labour 😀, at least these days. Although let's be fair, Heseltine was more left-wing than 2025 Labour... ☹️
Well, knock me down with a feather, I'm a Progressive Activist.
That's what I want to be. Let's see if I am when I do it.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again
Hence, a Reform victory
Or, ten years later, even a Green one. I know a couple of people who drop them interchangeably into conversation as the only option.
Yes. Far from impossible
I get a sense of nausea from friends/acquaintances when I talk politics now. Absolute sickened disgust re the two main parties
Most are going right but some lefties are going further left. Anything but Labour/Tory
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
"They lied about this one thing, so it's OK to make up numbers," does not seem to me to be a particularly strong argument.
We must believe whatever numbers the government is currently saying even though we know that they've both been incompetent and have been lying isn't a particularly strong argument either.
On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.
Yes
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.
But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
But what are the facts ?
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again
Hence, a Reform victory
You keep saying "the government" but it wasn't a single government. It was at least two administrations, possibly three (I can't be arsed to work out whether Boris was just about in charge when this first hit).
Each new PM is asked by the King to form a new government.
Edit: maybe it is FOUR? I had forgotten the Lettuce.
Comments
Reform in Leics County council have voted to move £2million from what they call "Net Stupid Zero" to...
...flooding defences.
You could not make this shit up.
Or does behaving honourably and keeping our word not count when it only applies to how the British government treats British people ?
The Lincoln Project
@ProjectLincoln
·
1h
Every single Republican member of Congress has turned their back on the values they campaigned on: voting to block the release of the Epstein files.
https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1945190155846930847
We can't prevent what is coming - only marginally reduce its effects - but we will have to live with it.
Ideally we would both mitigate and adapt, but given the choice of only one pot of money...
It must be nice to work for HMG and know you can fuck up so badly you lose the country £7bn and not only do you not face a trial, or even discipline, you get to keep your job and no doubt your pension. Because the government will keep it all secret and prosecute anyone who tries to talk about it, even tho they won't prosecute YOU
Honestly, the more I read about this, the worse it gets for the Govt. The optics are hellish
You can see why they were scared of riots
In this case they are saying a one off ages ago and even the people reporting downplayed it severity. Which suggest he wasn't exactly ranting about f##king n###ers in the pub for hours or anything like that.
Some of the stories even about Greg Wallace were a bit like oh come on if it was a single even in isolation. There was a fair bit of I was offended because I took it as.... However, when we start to talk about him inviting ladies into dressing room and getting his wang out because autism or something, now we have a problem. And it appears this went on a lot.
More importantly, the people are doing useful work, so they are earning and adding to the economy (even if they are earning less than otherwise). That's what pays for infrastructure etc. That's how we afford anyone! People doing productive work are not a drain on the economy.
But I'm not here defending Reform UK. I agree that we should value care work more and pay higher salaries.
All meaningless drivel, with no content of rationality."
Jenas story seemed to be on a couple of occasion with a staff member and another woman when away with work for the BBC, he got flirty with them after works in pubs, they said they responded positively, but later changed their minds. Scum bag as he is married and it sounds like he sent them dirty texts, it might well sent too many texts, but he did knocked it off. There was a weird claim, but but power dynamic, but I bet he has little say over who the BBC hire as showrunner for footy matches he did punditry on.
I like Wallace (as a presenter) but there are enough stories that you sadly have to admit, OK he's no Jimmy Savile, but he crossed a lot of lines a lot of times. Shame, but there it is
But - unless something is being hidden - Torode is being chucked under the 29 bus because of ONE off colour racial remark nearly a decade ago??!!
I sense BBC panic, again. As a PB-er said earlier, it is characteristic of corporatoins in terminal decline, they flail and make terrible errors, compounding earlier mistakes
Personally, I would be sad to see the BBC go. It is a great expression of British soft power, at its best, and a brilliant brand. But it needs to be rethought and retooled, or it will not survive
They advocate remove business rates, council tax, and stamp duty, replace with a straight tax on property value.
"The purpose of the system is what it does"
At the moment, the UK system appears to get the maximum number of migrants - legal or illegal - into the UK, and hang the cost to the rest of us. So that is what it does, that is its purpose
Plane had to turn back after one passenger kicked off because the cabin crew refused to take tuna off the menu.
I imagine they'll be dumped off the plane and told to get a boat.
Never fly cattle class on cattle airlines.
I'm sorry.
On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…
regimes.
A big well done to the UK govt for not protecting them, the journos who took legal action to get the super injunction lifted and the Judges who lifted it. It's on you.
A few hours 'working' for your cousin is not the same as someone working full time in a skilled or essential job.
Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.
How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?
And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.
To be candid, so much of this was deadly secret and so much of it is STILL secret (parts of the injunction remain) it is almost impossible to pin down the precise truth, right now. There are conflicting reports everywhere
What we can say for certain is that it is a shitshow for Tories AND Labour which is no doubt why they were so keen to keep it under wraps
It’s another solid gold gift for Farage
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/15/we-could-not-betray-afghan-allies-who-fought-alongside-us/
https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1945152631833292822?s=46
As for bondegezou, the political strategy espoused reminds me of the brexit bus. “We didn’t lie to you about spending £7bn to import some known sex offenders, it was only £1bn!”.
@phillewis.bsky.social
Speaker Mike Johnson says Pam Bondi needs to "come forward and explain" her statements on Jeffrey Epstein
https://bsky.app/profile/phillewis.bsky.social/post/3ltzthgdyos2p
I'm not saying that we should note that the cost of this scheme was under £1 billion rather than £7 billion as a political strategy. I'm saying we should note that because it's true.
Truth matters. Look at the US to see what happens when a significant proportion of the politicians, media and public give up on truth.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5209583#Comment_5209583
Hence, a Reform victory
I'll have a bash at it myself with honest answers and report back.
Is he right? Did we knowingly invite Afghan sex offenders?! And is it true they excluded all these numbers - thousands - from the immigration data???
It gets worse. Worse and worse
I get a sense of nausea from friends/acquaintances when I talk politics now. Absolute sickened disgust re the two main parties
Most are going right but some lefties are going further left. Anything but Labour/Tory
It seems the plane only got as far as lining up on the runway but even so a 45 minute delay will cost £££.
Each new PM is asked by the King to form a new government.
Edit: maybe it is FOUR? I had forgotten the Lettuce.