Mr Abd El-Fattah is busy deleting his old tweets where he calls for the murder and rape of Jews and white people etc.
If he done that just a week ago, none of this might even have come out.
I do find it the craziest of cases.
Nobody - not MPs, not the Home Office, not the Foreign Office, not the NGOs, not the celebrities - seem to have actually CHECKED whether the guy was a psychotic nutter or not.
Also, someone apparently waived the necessity of his attending a consular centre to provide proof of identity in order to get the citizenship. Currently the evidence points to Priti Patel.
Was he not, under the prevailing law at the time, simply entitled to citizenship as his mother was a citizen ? The guy is at the shitty end of the spectrum, but the bar for revoking citizenship is rightly an extremely high one.
I don't get the debate over this. It seems largely performative.
He had to apply for it, and there is a Fit and Proper test which is supposed to be assessed.
I am not calling for the revocation of his citizenship, I don’t believe in that (nor for Shamima Begum). But the quid pro quo is that I expect authorities to take reasonable, UK-protecting, precaution when granting nationality, expel ally in what are after all modestly tenuous circumstances.
The man has never been to been the UK, so far as I can tell.
No character test for a s4C application, which this was:
It would appear that the good character provision was removed in 2019, either by Sajid Javid or Priti Patel.
Someone said it was stripped out by a ECHR judgement. Seems a bit weird because there's still a good character test in Ireland, also a signatory to the same court.
Fuck the "principle" the right thing to do by British people is to rescind his citizenship and send him back to Egypt before they can take Egyptian citizenship away.
The country is a laughing stock and this is the kind of white liberal suicidal empathy that is destroying the nation. The same fools who don't want to stop the boats and hold up "refugees" welcome signs have been pushing for this. The useless Tory government too scared of rocking the liberal boat and fighting the woke consensus allowed it to happen and the idiots in Labour completed the fooling endeavour and are now too stupid to undo it by rescinding the decision.
This is the kind of shit that make me want to vote Reform just to burn the whole liberal political consensus down, it clearly doesn't work for law abiding citizens anymore.
You would honestly like to create a precedent that could see you stripped of your citizenship by a minister you had upset due to offensive tweets written more than a decade ago?
Have you completely lost all sense of proportion?
Reversing the decision to award citizenship, not stripping it. The government should never have given him citizenship in the first place and they should still reverse that decision. British citizenship is a privilege for people who aren't born with it and need to be naturalised or apply otherwise. We can and should have refused on multiple occasions and now that a clearly incorrect decision was made it should be reversed and his naturalisation certificate should be burned before delivery.
Quite simply whatever has taken place here is not in the interests of this nation and the millions of law abiding citizens, it should be reversed and the government should apologise to the voters for letting it get this far and Kemi needs to clean house of any Tory MP in the shadow cabinet that enabled it.
This is suicidal empathy. We have given citizenship to someone who hates British people, is an antisemite and supports terrorists. This man brings nothing to the table, in fact he's a severe detractor and fixing a mistake is by far the better course than living with it.
Labour are constantly proving that they aren't on the side of law abiding citizens of this country. Once again they've put themselves on the wrong side of the argument and I can't wait until they get absolutely obliterated at the next election.
How do you explain key former Cabinet Members on your team were rooting for this guy? Are the Conservatives (except Jenrick* and Philp) also not on the side of law abiding citizens?
* Oh wait, wasn't Jenrick an advocate for using 5* hotels to house immigrants whilst he was a Minister responsible in Government?
Mr Abd El-Fattah is busy deleting his old tweets where he calls for the murder and rape of Jews and white people etc.
If he done that just a week ago, none of this might even have come out.
I do find it the craziest of cases.
Nobody - not MPs, not the Home Office, not the Foreign Office, not the NGOs, not the celebrities - seem to have actually CHECKED whether the guy was a psychotic nutter or not.
Also, someone apparently waived the necessity of his attending a consular centre to provide proof of identity in order to get the citizenship. Currently the evidence points to Priti Patel.
Was he not, under the prevailing law at the time, simply entitled to citizenship as his mother was a citizen ? The guy is at the shitty end of the spectrum, but the bar for revoking citizenship is rightly an extremely high one.
I don't get the debate over this. It seems largely performative.
He had to apply for it, and there is a Fit and Proper test which is supposed to be assessed.
I am not calling for the revocation of his citizenship, I don’t believe in that (nor for Shamima Begum). But the quid pro quo is that I expect authorities to take reasonable, UK-protecting, precaution when granting nationality, expel ally in what are after all modestly tenuous circumstances.
The man has never been to been the UK, so far as I can tell.
No character test for a s4C application, which this was:
The judgment of the Supreme Court in Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department found that it was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to require applicants to meet the ‘good character’ requirement for citizenship where they were born to a British father who was not married to their non-British mother.
A consent order was subsequently made in the case of R (on the application of David Fenton Bangs) v Secretary of State for the Home Department that declared that it was incompatible with the ECHR to apply the ‘good character’ test to those applying for registration under the provision for people born to British mothers.
Mr Abd El-Fattah is busy deleting his old tweets where he calls for the murder and rape of Jews and white people etc.
If he done that just a week ago, none of this might even have come out.
I do find it the craziest of cases.
Nobody - not MPs, not the Home Office, not the Foreign Office, not the NGOs, not the celebrities - seem to have actually CHECKED whether the guy was a psychotic nutter or not.
Also, someone apparently waived the necessity of his attending a consular centre to provide proof of identity in order to get the citizenship. Currently the evidence points to Priti Patel.
Was he not, under the prevailing law at the time, simply entitled to citizenship as his mother was a citizen ? The guy is at the shitty end of the spectrum, but the bar for revoking citizenship is rightly an extremely high one.
I don't get the debate over this. It seems largely performative.
He had to apply for it, and there is a Fit and Proper test which is supposed to be assessed.
I am not calling for the revocation of his citizenship, I don’t believe in that (nor for Shamima Begum). But the quid pro quo is that I expect authorities to take reasonable, UK-protecting, precaution when granting nationality, expel ally in what are after all modestly tenuous circumstances.
The man has never been to been the UK, so far as I can tell.
No character test for a s4C application, which this was:
I don't think we really can rescind Al Fataa's citizenship. It is our fault he's here in the first place - we have made a massive fuss about wanting him. Egypt will be glad to be shot of him and will not want him back. I can't see anyone else wanting to take him either. He is, like it or not, Britain's responsibility.
Basically the Foreign Office is unfit for purpose. The best outcome that could come from this is that someone goes through that place like a dose of salts.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
I'm following the logic of your own statements. If that looks absurd to you then I would reconsider what you're saying.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
The David Fenton Bangs case is identical to the Johnson one, except that his grounds for citizenship were via his mother, and he committed two murders rather than merely a manslaughter.
Still no peerage for me for services to political blogging.
You don't want a peerage. There's at least a presumed expectation to actually show up occasionally to legislate, though the government of the day then yells at you if you do it when they don't like it (and plenty ignore it). An honour opens doors with the right crowd and comes with no expectatiosn at all.
Costs less to procure as well.
I can see the 'fun' when I turn up to vote to remove benefits from the poor whilst wearing a £550 Turnbull & Asser shirt, £6,000 bespoke suit, £1,400 loafers, and a £12,000 watch.
The politics of envy is grim in this country (and that's with me slumming it.)
I hope you have the cost of that suit pinned to the front, as I'm sorry to tell you that people cannot tell the difference between a £2000 suit and a £6000 suit (and if someone says otherwise they are a liar or someone trying to sell a £6000 suit) so the poor might miss the scale of the burn otherwise.
It’s that old suit faux pas of not removing that small label on the jacket wrist.
When I was quite young, I had a Turnbull & Asser suit. A friend, who was on the charity shop diving habit found it for me - £20… purely by accident it fitted me perfectly.
When I wore it to work it was stared at by some of the more senior people. A couple complimented me on it. One asked why I bothered - “since all the youngsters are wearing M&S suits”.
Some people can tell - they were getting the tailor right without seeing a label.
Wake up, babe. The new Malmesbury anecdote just dropped and it's a banger.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
That sounds complicated.
{cracks knuckles}
How about
• Three or four Foreign grandparents - Full Foreigner, no rights in the UK • Two Foreign grandparents - Foreigner in the First Degree, rights limited. No right to property, voting etc. • One Foreign grandparent - Foreigner in the Second Degree. Rights limited but modifiable based on things like military service with medals etc
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
The law makes all sorts of discriminations on the basis of marital status. That's a large part of the point of getting married and registering your relationship with the State.
Seems a bit weird for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise.
Conclusion from a good thread on the Challenger upgrade
25/25 The British Army’s efforts to introduce the Challenger 3 are hampered by weight issues, turret integration challenges, component omissions, track supply concerns, the makeshift reactivation of stored vehicles, and now a deliberately vague production timeline tied solely to trial outcomes rather than fixed dates. These problems mirror those in the Ajax programme and broader armoured procurement failures, highlighting systemic inefficiencies. Compared to Germany’s expansion of Leopard 2 production and Poland’s massive acquisitions, the UK’s upgrade strategy appears shortsighted, potentially leaving it with an obsolescent force. To rectify this, the MoD should reconsider off-the-shelf procurements, fostering greater interoperability and industrial vitality. Ultimately, in a volatile security landscape, the UK must prioritise bold modernisation to maintain its armoured credibility. Tough and unpopular choices may lie ahead - that’s what leadership is all about https://x.com/MtarfaL/status/2005636292281856023
On top of all these caveats, I'd add that in the context of the massive European tank orders, the UK has no pressing requirement for an MBT upgrade (of already dubious utility) anyway.
We'd be better off spending the money to either help sort out the Ajax debacle, or put towards its replacement.
We might donate more Challenger hulls to Ukraine, but the British army just isn't going to deploy them anywhere in the foreseeable future.
Which is the best performing part of the British armed forces at the moment?
I've heard of problems with the RAF Typhoons. That the Navy has trouble keeping the attack submarines at sea.
Is there any part of it that can be relied on?
Probably the Royal Navy. The "D" destroyers are being repaired, the Type 31s are proceeding nicely. But of remaining concern is the carriers: underdefended, not sufficient supply/maintenance vessels to form a carrier group without allies, projects like Ark Royal and Vixen have dribbled into the sand without results. Plus if our next war is the defence of the Baltic States whilst the Americans fuck off, goodness knows what the carriers will do.
The Army's travails are well known. I don't know what the RAF is planning and I don't really care, since I don't know what they can do that will help: provide air cover while we evacuate the Baltic governments probably.
I'm not best pleased about any of this, as you can tell.
What's this mad "Baltic War" you've imagined? Russia currently gains about 400-500km2 / month in the SMO. How fucking long do you think it's going to take them to get to Daugavpils?
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
I'm following the logic of your own statements. If that looks absurd to you then I would reconsider what you're saying.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
That sounds complicated.
{cracks knuckles}
How about
• Three or four Foreign grandparents - Full Foreigner, no rights in the UK • Two Foreign grandparents - Foreigner in the First Degree, rights limited. No right to property, voting etc. • One Foreign grandparent - Foreigner in the Second Degree. Rights limited but modifiable based on things like military service with medals etc
That's much simpler.
Ah, no, I see where I went wrong. I was using a percentage system. How ghastly continental of me. It should have been based on twelfths.
I guess that's the sort of thing that takes a few generations to bed in.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
I'm following the logic of your own statements. If that looks absurd to you then I would reconsider what you're saying.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
What’s that got to do with it?
It would be a child born abroad to a British parent - precisely the scenario under discussion.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
That sounds complicated.
{cracks knuckles}
How about
• Three or four Foreign grandparents - Full Foreigner, no rights in the UK • Two Foreign grandparents - Foreigner in the First Degree, rights limited. No right to property, voting etc. • One Foreign grandparent - Foreigner in the Second Degree. Rights limited but modifiable based on things like military service with medals etc
That's much simpler.
Ah, no, I see where I went wrong. I was using a percentage system. How ghastly continental of me. It should have been based on twelfths.
I guess that's the sort of thing that takes a few generations to bed in.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
I'm following the logic of your own statements. If that looks absurd to you then I would reconsider what you're saying.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
What’s that got to do with it?
It would be a child born abroad to a British parent - precisely the scenario under discussion.
El Fattah’s mum was born here to Egyptian parents and left aged 2 in 1958. Her son was then granted British citizenship, having allegedly never set foot here, over sixty years later as a move to get him out of prison in his home country of Egypt. It’s ludicrous to frame this in the terms you are straining to attempt
Reduction of demand should come first, just as reduction of energy demand should come before building more power stations or windmills or solar farms.
I do beg to differ, here. Demand reduction measures are an admission a country's energy policy has failed. Abundant, affordable energy has long been acknowledged to be a significant economic asset and social good. Now that we have multiple ways of generating power with little environmental impact, that should always be the priority.
Spending money on insulation schemes, to pick the example you mentioned, is, on a macro level, a complete waste of money. It's an extremely expensive way of reducing demand in one very specific area, without having enough scale to give any general benefits.
Spend that money on new generation facilities and overall supply improves, prices go down for everyone (presuming a free market) and it increases reliability in the system. Build enough and you end up with a surplus of supply, which attracts energy-intensive industries, providing jobs, and can bring opportunities to profit by supplying excess to countries with an energy shortfall.
We should be building wind farms, solar and SMRs as fast as possible. Having too much energy is always better than not having enough.
Could not agree more. This 100% is correct.
If energy is clean, then there's no environmental reason to demand less.
If energy is not clean, then there's no way to get to net zero.
Demand reduction achieves diddly squat and is unscientific gibberish to further hairshirt agendas.
Clean, abundant, cheap and well-used energy is the future.
I think efficiency is always a benefit, so I would support improved insulation, LED lighting, air fryers, etc, but when some people talk about demand reduction it sounds like rationing.
Efficiency is great, yes. I love my air fryer, and LED lights and so on and so forth.
But that is embracing newer technologies that are an improvement, not stepping backwards.
My air fryer cooks better than the oven, most days of the year. Christmas Day I cooked with the oven due to the scale of what was being cooked, but most other days the air fryer operates instead, cooking better and cheaper.
When people want to say "don't travel", or "sit in the cold", or "don't consume" then they're not seeking to either help the environment in a scientific manner, or improve matters for people, they're pushing a bonkers agenda.
Air fryer = small oven
Arguably ‘very small oven’ to be accurate. Very efficient. I have no idea why they are/were marketed as air fryers, as they don’t fry food(at best it’s roasted).
They've very small fan ovens. The circulation of the hot air is a crucial part of how they work.
Unless you live in a caravan, I still don’t really see the point in them. Air fryer owners bang on about them but it doesn’t feel like they do anything I can’t already do with my oven
They don’t but they are cheaper to run and you can put them in the dishwasher
Can I recommend to you all a thoroughly interesting 45 minute conversation between Polanski and James Medway, one of the economists I respect most: https://pca.st/episode/aa464011-8ea3-4f3f-8903-0cef76bf3481. Even if Polanski is not your cup of tea (and he isn't mine economically), Meadway is both very intelligent and an excellent communicator.
Two points, a trigger warning and a question: 1. One of the things I respect most about Meadway is that, almost uniquely amongst left-wing economists, he engages with the reality of the power of the bond markets in the UK, resisting the simplistic 'just borrow more' that Polanski wants to hear. 2. Meadway laces his conversation about economics with an understanding of the current and likely future impacts of climate change. At a time when it feels like everyone has just stopped talking about this, that's really refreshing.
The trigger warning: Meadway was economic adviser to McDonnell when he was Shadow Chancellor. If your thinking goes McDonnell=Corbyn=Antisemitism=Evil, maybe spend your scarce 45 mins elsewhere. But if you're interested in a coherent left-wing critique of our economic system it's worth your time.
The question: particularly for @Luckyguy1983 as I know you have views on this, but also for any right of centre person interested in economics - what do you make of Meadway's arguments (first 10 mins of the podcast) about how the BoE deals with its ownership of government debt?
The fact everyone has stopped talking about it shows just how fickle and faddish most public opinion is.
Trump has blocked it on the Right and the Left has decided that Gaza offers a far better social bonding experience.
I will still talk about climate change, but I have asymptotically approached my personal limit on the number of times I am willing to have the same fruitless "debate" with people who deny the science.
As fruitless internet debates go it has nearly a 15 year head start on Brexit, for example.
I think it's more that the debate is effectively over. Very few people continue to deny it exists, or that humans are responsible for it. You still get people like Casino_Royale who think it's just some culture war game, but the data is becoming metronomic - we're about to declare this year our hottest year on record (again). I think we all understand that with Trump any debate/campaign for mitigation is fruitless until we get a sane Thatcher-type figure on the right again.
At some point we are going to need to have a serious conversation about adaptation. That's what so pathetic about those people who suggest we can't stop it happening - fine, so where's the big plan for 3 degrees+?
On the domestic front, we have nobody building any water infrastructure, and a virtual ban on dredging for the last 20-25 years, due to EU habitat legislation, then we blame the resulting summer droughts and winter floods on climate change.
I don't think it is included in the above - one of our basic planning policies since about 2010 has been that surface water runoff from a development should be no more than the pre-existing site - that's where all our balancing ponds come from. The last one of these I did required a preliminary design as part of Outline Permission, required to establish that the site was suitable for development; it was done by Mott McDonald and came to around £250 per potential housing unit just for the preliminary design.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel, which came online last year, was about £5 billion on its own.
That's all water infrastructure, as is investment in sewerage treatment, canal and river maintenance, and the rest.
That is a fair response to a point I made that included hyperbole but was still an important one.
There have been no major reservoirs built for over 30 years - the last one (there are some being built now) was completed in 1992. At the same time, the population has risen by 11 million.
I find that staggering, and it makes me extremely cynical when people panic about our weather conditions.
In general I'd argue that building more reservoirs should be the last resort, as it is a 'tailpipe' solution. Reduction of demand should come first, just as reduction of energy demand should come before building more power stations or windmills or solar farms. So for me that means measures such as leak reduction and 100% water meters, which apply the market mechanism and themselves generate a reduction of 10-12% in water usage, before we spend hundreds of millions on new reservoirs.
I think one of the unforeseen problems of the last budget will be caused by the unbundling of insulation etc programmes from energy bills - it can now be seen and will be far easier to target in political debate. The programme has been very successful for 15 years doing basics such as loft insulation, until the current one is under severe question - when the programme has been doing more complex installations (eg external wall insulation) with inadequate standards / supervision.
I am sure you would argue that - I would argue the opposite. Your argument leads to the British economy where it now is - mine leads to the Chinese economy where it now is. Abundant and cheap energy is a pre-requisite for any prosperous society, and is the lifeblood of human progress.
More specifically, having a deliberate policy of failing to build sufficient reservoirs, and instead blame the public for water shortages - encouraging them to water their gardens less, even to shower less (truly revolting) and take other punitive measures to combat 'water shortages' (when Winter floods will be along soon) is simply gaslighting.
I admit I just don't see that as a viable argument. I think you are assuming a zero-sum game, which is not the case. I don't see how a concept of blame applies.
Achieving the same outcome using fewer resources is a simple increase in efficiency. How is that not a benefit.
Why should we want to use 25% more water (or electricity) than necessary? Would you argue against reduced fuel consumption in a motor vehicle on the same basis?
The point about reservoirs is that if water consumption is reduced, fewer reservoirs is not "insufficient"; it changes the definition of "sufficient" to be a smaller quantity.
To turn the question around, why should we waste scarce resources on building unnecessary reservoirs or power stations?
For a specific example on water, current use in Denmark is around 105l per person per day, compared to 130-140l in England. Denmark does not seem to have an economy on its knees, and is noticeably prosperous.
Because water is not scarce. It is especially unscarce in the UK. It is an abundant resource that is there to be enjoyed and used. The idea of convincing the public that it is running out and that they are showering too long or gardening too much is a despicable perversion of the truth that would mystify and appall our ancestors.
I just can't compute this. Who said anything about shorter showers or gardening less? It's a pair of 100% red herrings ! To me, these comments are in "I am a poached egg" territory.
Why would you take shorter showers because you have had a water meter installed, which will generally reduce your bills?
There are about 11-12 million households in this country with water meters, yet I don't tell me friends apart by which ones are stinky because they have such a device.
We get our gardening water from the roof and a couple of rainwater butts, including for the automatic watering system for the plants in containers. No problems, and the water bills are under £300 per annum. If we need more, we can switch to IBC storage for a small one off sum.
(And for the record, the South East is an area of High Water Stress; by 2030 it will be roughly SE of a line from Southampton to Birmingham and then East. We've known that for decades, which is why we have had Water Management Strategies in place for nearly 20 year.
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
The law makes all sorts of discriminations on the basis of marital status. That's a large part of the point of getting married and registering your relationship with the State.
Seems a bit weird for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise.
I understand the logic of the Supreme Court. However the right answer would be to actually apply a good character test to all naturalisations, regardless of parentage.
My own children are entitled to be New Zealanders via naturalisation, but should they commit crimes or rant about killing and raping on Twitter, I don’t see why NZ owes them citizenship.
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
The law makes all sorts of discriminations on the basis of marital status. That's a large part of the point of getting married and registering your relationship with the State.
Seems a bit weird for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise.
I understand the logic of the Supreme Court. However the right answer would be to actually apply a good character test to all naturalisations, regardless of parentage.
My own children are entitled to be New Zealanders via naturalisation, but should they commit crimes or rant about killing and raping on Twitter, I don’t see why NZ owes them citizenship.
For all the talk of the 'administrative state', there's actually an administrative bias against wielding any kind of discretion. They'd rather tie their hands and hand the responsbiliity to the courts.
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
I'm following the logic of your own statements. If that looks absurd to you then I would reconsider what you're saying.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
What’s that got to do with it?
It would be a child born abroad to a British parent - precisely the scenario under discussion.
El Fattah’s mum was born here to Egyptian parents and left aged 2 in 1958. Her son was then granted British citizenship, having allegedly never set foot here, over sixty years later as a move to get him out of prison in his home country of Egypt. It’s ludicrous to frame this in the terms you are straining to attempt
Right, this is why I suggested percentages, because where is the dividing line?
What if his mum had been age 10 when she left Britain? Or 15? What if one of her parents had been British?
You're the one who suggested it was a sliding scale, but you don't like it when I try to find out where I lie on your sliding scale.
Can anyone see any way for Starmer to continue as PM beyond the May elections next year?
The results will be interesting. They are priced in here, because PB looks at polls and thinks of the future. It will come as a uprise to most party members, though. To the wider public, it will be a bolt out of the blue.
The papers will be full of news of horrendous loses for Labour, and almost certainly, the Conservatives. The Greens will be making big gains. Fruit & Nuts will probably fizzle.
Of these, the Conservatives have the easiest time in changing leaders, procedurally. Kemi is probably saved by the fact that no-one looks like doing a better job.
For Labour, the numbers will be horrendous, unless the polls are wrong in a way we have never seen before. But Labour leaders are procedurally nearly invulnerable. You'd need 81 MPs to trigger a challenge, IIRC. And the Corbyn precedent would make that unlikely to be tried.
I can't see Starmer going voluntarily.
So I don't think that anything will shift him.
There will be some betting opportunities around the time of the May elections - a lot of people will believe that he will/can be got rid of and the betting prices will move according to sentiment.
Can anyone see any way for Starmer to continue as PM beyond the May elections next year?
His grasp on power would seem to be quite tenuous, but it's not easy for the Labour party to replace a leader who doesn't want to budge.
Think of it as the resistable force meets the movable object. Often we talk of the difficulty of calculating the difference between two large numbers, but here it is the difficulty of the difference between two small numbers.
I think it likely only succeeds if there's a clear successor for opponents to Starmer to rally around.
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
The law makes all sorts of discriminations on the basis of marital status. That's a large part of the point of getting married and registering your relationship with the State.
Seems a bit weird for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise.
I understand the logic of the Supreme Court. However the right answer would be to actually apply a good character test to all naturalisations, regardless of parentage.
My own children are entitled to be New Zealanders via naturalisation, but should they commit crimes or rant about killing and raping on Twitter, I don’t see why NZ owes them citizenship.
For all the talk of the 'administrative state', there's actually an administrative bias against wielding any kind of discretion. They'd rather tie their hands and hand the responsbiliity to the courts.
That's exactly the Process State. The ultimate Process is the Law. Just make it ever more complicated and inconsistent - and less and less about justice, decency or humanity.
"Law is the ultimate science" - House Corrino motto
Mr Abd El-Fattah is busy deleting his old tweets where he calls for the murder and rape of Jews and white people etc.
If he done that just a week ago, none of this might even have come out.
I do find it the craziest of cases.
Nobody - not MPs, not the Home Office, not the Foreign Office, not the NGOs, not the celebrities - seem to have actually CHECKED whether the guy was a psychotic nutter or not.
Also, someone apparently waived the necessity of his attending a consular centre to provide proof of identity in order to get the citizenship. Currently the evidence points to Priti Patel.
Do you have a link to that. Kemi specifically said in her article yesterday that it was done by a junior civil servant and not escalated to ministers
"Foreign secretary orders review of 'serious failures' in case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah
"Abhorrent" social media posts by Alaa Abd El-Fattah emerged after he returned to the UK on Boxing Day following several years of imprisonment in Egypt."
Can anyone see any way for Starmer to continue as PM beyond the May elections next year?
His grasp on power would seem to be quite tenuous, but it's not easy for the Labour party to replace a leader who doesn't want to budge.
Think of it as the resistable force meets the movable object. Often we talk of the difficulty of calculating the difference between two large numbers, but here it is the difficulty of the difference between two small numbers.
I think it likely only succeeds if there's a clear successor for opponents to Starmer to rally around.
Which, since a whole bunch left for the Fruit & Nuts..... (and Greens, of course)
Can you imagine the constant calls there will be for stripping citizenship from the likes of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson or all manner of people if such a precedent is established. It will be unrelenting. And it won't stop there.
Surely there is a sliding scale when it comes to what is tolerable when calling for citizenship to be stripped? This fellow wasn’t granted citizenship until he was in his 40s, and allegedly hadn’t stepped foot in the UK until Friday
We got him out of prison, now he can say thanks and fuck off
Pretty much everything is on a scale - most categorical divisions are (useful) human constructs.
The status quo is that Britain is willing to strip citizenship from someone who travels abroad to join a jihadi group and actively participates in serious acts of violence.
The proposal is to extend that down the scale to include stripping citizenship from people for words they have written on Twitter that advocate for violence.
I don't think it's that much further at all to take that down the scale to strip citizenship from someone like Katie Hopkins for the things she has said in the past on social media.
The man in question wasn’t even a British citizen when he typed the words written on Twitter! It’s completely different from Shamima Begum, who was born and raised here and, despite her treachery, is British. This bloke is about as British as Tony Cascarino is Irish!
So you're proposing to give everyone a percentage British score then? And apply different rules at different thresholds?
One of my grandparents was an Austrian Jew - a refugee no less - so presumably I don't score the full 100%. Do I lose a percentage point every year that I am resident in Ireland? Can I buy percentage points back by making a contribution to HMRC?
You’re being absurd.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
I'm following the logic of your own statements. If that looks absurd to you then I would reconsider what you're saying.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
What’s that got to do with it?
It would be a child born abroad to a British parent - precisely the scenario under discussion.
El Fattah’s mum was born here to Egyptian parents and left aged 2 in 1958. Her son was then granted British citizenship, having allegedly never set foot here, over sixty years later as a move to get him out of prison in his home country of Egypt. It’s ludicrous to frame this in the terms you are straining to attempt
Right, this is why I suggested percentages, because where is the dividing line?
What if her mum had been age 10 when she left Britain? Or 15? What if one of her parents had been British?
You're the one who suggested it was a sliding scale, but you don't like it when I try to find out where I lie on your sliding scale.
I don’t really care, and wouldn’t know because I am not aware of your family’s circumstances. But someone who has never been to Britain before, aged 44, is at the extreme end of the tolerance sliding scale if that soothes your nerves. He’s obviously not British, he’s had a result that we got involved and he’s out of prison.
Stripping him of citizenship doesn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few middle aged Africans who, though they’ve never set foot in Britain, can tenuously claim citizenship because their 70 year old Egyptian mum was born here, but left before she could talk.
Reduction of demand should come first, just as reduction of energy demand should come before building more power stations or windmills or solar farms.
I do beg to differ, here. Demand reduction measures are an admission a country's energy policy has failed. Abundant, affordable energy has long been acknowledged to be a significant economic asset and social good. Now that we have multiple ways of generating power with little environmental impact, that should always be the priority.
Spending money on insulation schemes, to pick the example you mentioned, is, on a macro level, a complete waste of money. It's an extremely expensive way of reducing demand in one very specific area, without having enough scale to give any general benefits.
Spend that money on new generation facilities and overall supply improves, prices go down for everyone (presuming a free market) and it increases reliability in the system. Build enough and you end up with a surplus of supply, which attracts energy-intensive industries, providing jobs, and can bring opportunities to profit by supplying excess to countries with an energy shortfall.
We should be building wind farms, solar and SMRs as fast as possible. Having too much energy is always better than not having enough.
Could not agree more. This 100% is correct.
If energy is clean, then there's no environmental reason to demand less.
If energy is not clean, then there's no way to get to net zero.
Demand reduction achieves diddly squat and is unscientific gibberish to further hairshirt agendas.
Clean, abundant, cheap and well-used energy is the future.
I think that analysis is incomplete Bart.
You've ignored demand on other resources such as land. And the opportunity cost of having to build infrastructure to generate and distribute all the extra power.
On demand reduction, since 2008 the average EPC of a house (English numbers) has gone from 51 to 69 (High E to Low C ) now. That's demand reduction by insulation improvement, more universal double glazing, and the rest, with the main impact from old housing stock being improved. New housing stock (mainly post-2010 when newbuild standards became decently high) is efficient enough that it weighs lightly in the overall balance.
That's a difference in household energy bills of around 40% on a like for like basis. which saves enormous amounts of money for the customer - with no need to build generation extra capacity.
In my case, I ran the number and I reckon I have saved roughly 15k on like for like energy bills since 2013, compared with if we had not paid attention to our energy efficiency. And here that's not insulation mainly, because it was already fully renovated, though not quite to my standards.
On process state, there was a really interesting account of how the Civil Service made it impossible for Rory Stuart as the relevant minister to cancel a funding project in an area of Afghanistan where the money would have gone to militia groups.
He had been running an NGO in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, so he knew the situation on the ground.
They all told him that he, as Minister, had no authority, but they all pointed in different directions as to who could make such a decision about use of a budget in his department.
Boris Johnson's government was probably the worst we've ever had, even worse than the current one. Starmer at least has a certain sincerity about him which is quite attractive, (while disagreeing with most of his policies).
Boris Johnson's government was probably the worst we've ever had, even worse than the current one. Starmer at least has a certain sincerity about him which is quite attractive, (while disagreeing with most of his policies).
Johnson’s government was horrendously inept, like a sick farce. At times Carrie was actually running large chunks of government policy, holding court with various hooray henries, while her dog soiled the carpets with abandon.
On process state, there was a really interesting account of how the Civil Service made it impossible for Rory Stuart as the relevant minister to cancel a funding project in an area of Afghanistan where the money would have gone to militia groups.
He had been running an NGO in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, so he knew the situation on the ground.
They all told him that he, as Minister, had no authority, but they all pointed in different directions as to who could make such a decision about use of a budget in his department.
Still no peerage for me for services to political blogging.
You don't want a peerage. There's at least a presumed expectation to actually show up occasionally to legislate, though the government of the day then yells at you if you do it when they don't like it (and plenty ignore it). An honour opens doors with the right crowd and comes with no expectatiosn at all.
Costs less to procure as well.
I can see the 'fun' when I turn up to vote to remove benefits from the poor whilst wearing a £550 Turnbull & Asser shirt, £6,000 bespoke suit, £1,400 loafers, and a £12,000 watch.
The politics of envy is grim in this country (and that's with me slumming it.)
I hope you have the cost of that suit pinned to the front, as I'm sorry to tell you that people cannot tell the difference between a £2000 suit and a £6000 suit (and if someone says otherwise they are a liar or someone trying to sell a £6000 suit) so the poor might miss the scale of the burn otherwise.
It’s that old suit faux pas of not removing that small label on the jacket wrist.
There was a time in the early 2000s when this was a sort of fashion amongst the young.
Doing up the bottom button is a vastly more common faux pas.
"Foreign secretary orders review of 'serious failures' in case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah
"Abhorrent" social media posts by Alaa Abd El-Fattah emerged after he returned to the UK on Boxing Day following several years of imprisonment in Egypt."
On the subject of vetting, if Labour are going to suffer a bloodbath in the locals, they’ll quickly want to make the story about the unsavoury characters that Reform have just had elected. One hopes that Farage and Tice now have a decent process and staff in place to at least pay a cursory glance to their candidates beforehand?
Can anyone see any way for Starmer to continue as PM beyond the May elections next year?
His grasp on power would seem to be quite tenuous, but it's not easy for the Labour party to replace a leader who doesn't want to budge.
Think of it as the resistable force meets the movable object. Often we talk of the difficulty of calculating the difference between two large numbers, but here it is the difficulty of the difference between two small numbers.
I think it likely only succeeds if there's a clear successor for opponents to Starmer to rally around.
Which, since a whole bunch left for the Fruit & Nuts..... (and Greens, of course)
“Your Party” does appear to be a parody at this point.
They’re still trying to get support for our friend Alaa.
On process state, there was a really interesting account of how the Civil Service made it impossible for Rory Stuart as the relevant minister to cancel a funding project in an area of Afghanistan where the money would have gone to militia groups.
He had been running an NGO in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, so he knew the situation on the ground.
They all told him that he, as Minister, had no authority, but they all pointed in different directions as to who could make such a decision about use of a budget in his department.
The takedown of “Big NGO” is probably going to be a huge story next year.
It’s already starting to happen in the US, where it’s becoming a domestic as much as an international issue that will feature heavily in the mid-term elections in November.
Comments
* Oh wait, wasn't Jenrick an advocate for using 5* hotels to house immigrants whilst he was a Minister responsible in Government?
But isn’t that the bloody point?
A consent order was subsequently made in the case of R (on the application of David Fenton Bangs) v Secretary of State for the Home Department that declared that it was incompatible with the ECHR to apply the ‘good character’ test to those applying for registration under the provision for people born to British mothers.
Basically the Foreign Office is unfit for purpose. The best outcome that could come from this is that someone goes through that place like a dose of salts.
This bloke wasn’t considered a British citizen until he was the wrong side of forty, and handy even been to Britain until this week. ‘Stripping him of British citizenship’ makes it sound too grandiose; he’s not British, he never really was, and I’d he were stripped of it, it wouldn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few similar circumstances in which it has been awarded
Clayton Leslie Johnson was born in Jamaica in 1985 to a British father and a Jamaican mother who were not married at the time. Under the law at the time, he did not automatically acquire British citizenship because citizenship could only be passed through the father to a non-marital child if the parents were married. He was brought to the UK as a child and granted indefinite leave to remain.
Deportation Proceedings: After serving a prison sentence for manslaughter, the Home Secretary (Secretary of State for the Home Department) issued an automatic deportation order against him as a "foreign criminal" under the UK Borders Act 2007.
Legal Challenge: Mr. Johnson appealed the deportation order, arguing it was a breach of his human rights, specifically the right to family life (Article 8 ECHR) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14 ECHR). He contended he would not have been liable for deportation if his parents had been married, as he would have been a British citizen by birth.
The Supreme Court Ruling: The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered by Lady Hale, unanimously held in October 2016 that the difference in treatment based on his parents' marital status was unjustified discrimination and a breach of his rights under the ECHR.
Suppose I have a child while resident in Ireland. How British are they?
https://youtu.be/GIj-O4dWze4?si=UNBN140YggRqeMQ9
{cracks knuckles}
How about
• Three or four Foreign grandparents - Full Foreigner, no rights in the UK
• Two Foreign grandparents - Foreigner in the First Degree, rights limited. No right to property, voting etc.
• One Foreign grandparent - Foreigner in the Second Degree. Rights limited but modifiable based on things like military service with medals etc
That's much simpler.
Seems a bit weird for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise.
I guess that's the sort of thing that takes a few generations to bed in.
Why would you take shorter showers because you have had a water meter installed, which will generally reduce your bills?
There are about 11-12 million households in this country with water meters, yet I don't tell me friends apart by which ones are stinky because they have such a device.
We get our gardening water from the roof and a couple of rainwater butts, including for the automatic watering system for the plants in containers. No problems, and the water bills are under £300 per annum. If we need more, we can switch to IBC storage for a small one off sum.
(And for the record, the South East is an area of High Water Stress; by 2030 it will be roughly SE of a line from Southampton to Birmingham and then East. We've known that for decades, which is why we have had Water Management Strategies in place for nearly 20 year.
However the right answer would be to actually apply a good character test to all naturalisations, regardless of parentage.
My own children are entitled to be New Zealanders via naturalisation, but should they commit crimes or rant about killing and raping on Twitter, I don’t see why NZ owes them citizenship.
What if his mum had been age 10 when she left Britain? Or 15? What if one of her parents had been British?
You're the one who suggested it was a sliding scale, but you don't like it when I try to find out where I lie on your sliding scale.
The papers will be full of news of horrendous loses for Labour, and almost certainly, the Conservatives. The Greens will be making big gains. Fruit & Nuts will probably fizzle.
Of these, the Conservatives have the easiest time in changing leaders, procedurally. Kemi is probably saved by the fact that no-one looks like doing a better job.
For Labour, the numbers will be horrendous, unless the polls are wrong in a way we have never seen before. But Labour leaders are procedurally nearly invulnerable. You'd need 81 MPs to trigger a challenge, IIRC. And the Corbyn precedent would make that unlikely to be tried.
I can't see Starmer going voluntarily.
So I don't think that anything will shift him.
There will be some betting opportunities around the time of the May elections - a lot of people will believe that he will/can be got rid of and the betting prices will move according to sentiment.
Think of it as the resistable force meets the movable object. Often we talk of the difficulty of calculating the difference between two large numbers, but here it is the difficulty of the difference between two small numbers.
I think it likely only succeeds if there's a clear successor for opponents to Starmer to rally around.
"Law is the ultimate science" - House Corrino motto
"Foreign secretary orders review of 'serious failures' in case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah
"Abhorrent" social media posts by Alaa Abd El-Fattah emerged after he returned to the UK on Boxing Day following several years of imprisonment in Egypt."
https://news.sky.com/story/foreign-secretary-orders-review-of-serious-failures-in-case-of-british-egyptian-activist-alaa-abd-el-fattah-13488426
Stripping him of citizenship doesn’t set much of a precedent, because there are so few middle aged Africans who, though they’ve never set foot in Britain, can tenuously claim citizenship because their 70 year old Egyptian mum was born here, but left before she could talk.
Are you a Human Rights lawyer?
You've ignored demand on other resources such as land. And the opportunity cost of having to build infrastructure to generate and distribute all the extra power.
On demand reduction, since 2008 the average EPC of a house (English numbers) has gone from 51 to 69 (High E to Low C ) now. That's demand reduction by insulation improvement, more universal double glazing, and the rest, with the main impact from old housing stock being improved. New housing stock (mainly post-2010 when newbuild standards became decently high) is efficient enough that it weighs lightly in the overall balance.
That's a difference in household energy bills of around 40% on a like for like basis. which saves enormous amounts of money for the customer - with no need to build generation extra capacity.
In my case, I ran the number and I reckon I have saved roughly 15k on like for like energy bills since 2013, compared with if we had not paid attention to our energy efficiency. And here that's not insulation mainly, because it was already fully renovated, though not quite to my standards.
He had been running an NGO in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, so he knew the situation on the ground.
They all told him that he, as Minister, had no authority, but they all pointed in different directions as to who could make such a decision about use of a budget in his department.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRkoYHZOGcw
I saw similar at Deutsche Bank - use of multiple reporting lines enable insubordination to the point of blocking *anything*.
One wonders how the Civil Service will take the push back, when it comes.
He’d been nominated for international awards and then been withdrawn, things that made the news at the time a decade ago. His supporters (on all sides) should have been well aware of who he was, and those in charge of vetting him should have been able to research this in a few minutes.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egyptian-human-rights-activist-hits-back-after-peace-prize-nomination-withdrawn
On the subject of vetting, if Labour are going to suffer a bloodbath in the locals, they’ll quickly want to make the story about the unsavoury characters that Reform have just had elected. One hopes that Farage and Tice now have a decent process and staff in place to at least pay a cursory glance to their candidates beforehand?
They’re still trying to get support for our friend Alaa.
https://x.com/thisisyourparty/status/2005369682426306582
(By the way, one side effect of that party name is that it’s really difficult to search for).
It’s already starting to happen in the US, where it’s becoming a domestic as much as an international issue that will feature heavily in the mid-term elections in November.