Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
Reforms good night will also be measured against expectation this year not out of nothing like last year. Them being able to win will not be new. And, this year, they will also face a lot of not winning (esp at the national and capital city level) that they largely avoided in 2025. This is the last set of elections Reform will be fighting where the big 2 were both 30% plus on NEV last time out so probably the last 'mega gain' set
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
Interesting, though I expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
But then they will have to deliver on those expectations the voters have.
I reckon any boost will be short lived. There will be some horror candidates elected. There'll be plenty of flouncing as people don't get the portfolio they were expecting/promised. Ther ewon't be sving to be made - just cuts.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I am hearing via the focus groups that Farage is taking a real kicking over being so close to Trump.
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
It’s the same bloke isn’t it using ageing software?
He’ll probably get elected
In the style of Private Eye, perhaps readers may know of other examples of people going by multiple identities, potentially to avoid controversy from things posted online after the lagershed.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Oops - The court found that the protections of the law were followed.
That's the thing with the law, you are arguing for the law as you want it to be, rather than the law as it is.
Yes. I'm well aware that I'm arguing for a change in the law. It's perfectly possible for an otherwise democratic and law-abiding country to make a law that contradicts fundamental legal principles.
The British use of internment in Northern Ireland is another example. Or the Israeli apartheid execution law.
Giving the state the power to strip citizenship from its citizens puts the citizen in a very vulnerable position in relation to the state. It fundamentally alters the power dynamic between the two, and weakens every citizens legal protection from the exercise of arbitrary state power.
But, of course, it can be legal if suitably codified in an Act of Parliament. I dunno, you seem to be arguing against a different person and a different argument. I've always said that the law is an arbitrary human-created thing. I don't see why that contradicts my argument at all.
I was replying to your second paragraph, the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one . . . the protections of the law were followed, in full.
Any further protections don't exist and are not law. Maybe they should be, but if they are, there's nothing preventing a future government from changing the law back and cancelling those protections.
I think we're back to a word having two different meanings in two different contexts here.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I am hearing via the focus groups that Farage is taking a real kicking over being so close to Trump.
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
It would be very dispiriting to think Farage was NOT losing consoderable support, when he is on the Putin/Trump side of too many issues to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I am hearing via the focus groups that Farage is taking a real kicking over being so close to Trump.
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
Maybe MAGA could send Vance over to show it is not just all Trump? That strategy seems to be working, so fa so good at least.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
That 6% decline will mean a hell of a lot of near misses that would previously have been councillors.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi has not got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Badenoch was terrible again today. Starmer not great either, he was very techy. Davey made more sense and asked the questions we wanted to hear answers to.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Oops - The court found that the protections of the law were followed.
That's the thing with the law, you are arguing for the law as you want it to be, rather than the law as it is.
Yes. I'm well aware that I'm arguing for a change in the law. It's perfectly possible for an otherwise democratic and law-abiding country to make a law that contradicts fundamental legal principles.
The British use of internment in Northern Ireland is another example. Or the Israeli apartheid execution law.
Giving the state the power to strip citizenship from its citizens puts the citizen in a very vulnerable position in relation to the state. It fundamentally alters the power dynamic between the two, and weakens every citizens legal protection from the exercise of arbitrary state power.
But, of course, it can be legal if suitably codified in an Act of Parliament. I dunno, you seem to be arguing against a different person and a different argument. I've always said that the law is an arbitrary human-created thing. I don't see why that contradicts my argument at all.
Yes and no. There is on PB and elsewhere a common assumption that an act of Parliament, however deranged, has priority over everything in the system in the UK. This has the status of an axiom, a presumption upon which other presumptions are based and is generally not a bad one. But its truth is uncertain.
However, SFAICS this is not in an act of parliament itself, and, of course if it were it could be changed because it can't bind its successors. So it can't be so codified.
The Supreme Court suffers no such fetter. In particular it is not bound by its previous decisions, so that authority (which does exist) saying that acts of parliament are supreme can be overturned.
A remaining bit of the 'good chaps theory of government' is this: Both parliament and the supreme court have the final determination of legal things - parliament obeys the SC, and the SC obeys parliament, or as Ukridge once put it 'The cats eat the rats and the rats eat the cats'.
This works fine for just as long as some degree of good chappery prevails. If it doesn't you discover why we have an army and a monarchy.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I am hearing via the focus groups that Farage is taking a real kicking over being so close to Trump.
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
Maybe MAGA could send Vance over to show it is not just all Trump? That strategy seems to be working, so fa so good at least.
"JD Vance has said stopping funding for Ukraine is one of the “proudest” things he has done since entering government."
The depths to which these people will go continues to amaze and appal.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
The state didn't. The law did, as interpeted by lawyers.
The Home Sec. has the power to deprive anyone of citizenship. In practise, this means they have to have another citizenship. Since legally, you can’t make someone stateless.
Stroke of the pen.
If that isn’t the state being arbitrary, what is?
The lawyers decided Begum had another citizenship.
I mean, I can understand why Bangladesh don't want her. But our legal position has much greater basis than the Bangladeshi's.
It is a source of shame to live in a country where UK citizenship for those born in the UK can be removed under any circumstances.
Then may I suggest you lobby your MP to ensure that is the subject of statute to provide the protection you seek.
Until then, it is not there.
A lot of Jewish people are also worried by this ad they have dual nationality.
It’s not difficult to imagine how a hard right or hard left government strips them of their British citizenship.
This forum has a blind spot in thinking that only hard right or hard left governments will misbehave against their own citizens.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I am hearing via the focus groups that Farage is taking a real kicking over being so close to Trump.
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
The one positive legacy from the US’s fiasco with Trump will be that he kills off Europeans’ appetite for going down the same futile rabbit hole.
China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn't that beat fighting??? BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!! President DJT
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
That 6% decline will mean a hell of a lot of near misses that would previously have been councillors.
The Reform-Tory shares were roughly 31-17 at the end of last September, and are now maybe 25-18. So a Reform +14 advantage is down to +7.
Compared to Labour the change is from 31-21 to 25-18. So a Reform +10 advantage is down to +7.
It's a point of evidence in favour of the "Badenoch has steadied the ship" thesis.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi has not got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Badenoch was terrible again today. Starmer not great either, he was very techy. Davey made more sense and asked the questions we wanted to hear answers to.
The LDs are trapped into the terrible dilemma of how you can cut through, from opposition and in the current media climate, by being eminently sensible. Yet if sensible politicians can’t cut through from opposition, surely meaningful democratic politics is doomed?
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
That 6% decline will mean a hell of a lot of near misses that would previously have been councillors.
it has seemed to me for some months that the chance of Reform governing with 325+ seats is virtually zero%. But their decline has been occurring a lot faster than I expected. Trump has helped a lot with this. And the effective use of tactical voting by Lab/LD and Green is still at a very preliminary stage so there is far to go.
If it happens this fast there is an outside new possibility: That the Tories creep ahead of Reform in the polling, even if only just, and can then stop being Reformlite junior partner to Reform and look like an alternative to a left of centre government. I don't think Kemi can make that transition. She ain't a stateswoman, and we live in serious times. Hunt, Stride or Hat maybe. But they need to find a male or female Carney from central casting who is also a genius with charisma. Don't bet the farm.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi has not got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Badenoch was terrible again today. Starmer not great either, he was very techy. Davey made more sense and asked the questions we wanted to hear answers to.
The LDs are trapped into the terrible dilemma of how you can cut through, from opposition and in the current media climate, by being eminently sensible. Yet if sensible politicians can’t cut through from opposition, surely meaningful democratic politics is doomed?
LDs projected to be main opposition on the new Nowcast with 82 MPs to 274 for Reform.
Tories third on 69 MPs just ahead of Greens on 68 and Labour 5th just behind them on 67
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I am hearing via the focus groups that Farage is taking a real kicking over being so close to Trump.
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
Maybe MAGA could send Vance over to show it is not just all Trump? That strategy seems to be working, so fa so good at least.
"JD Vance has said stopping funding for Ukraine is one of the “proudest” things he has done since entering government."
The depths to which these people will go continues to amaze and appal.
Proud to help the Russians kill more Ukrainians ! If this lot had been around in WWII they’d be shipping gas to the Nazis !
The whole current US administration are treasonous scum .
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Oops - The court found that the protections of the law were followed.
That's the thing with the law, you are arguing for the law as you want it to be, rather than the law as it is.
Yes. I'm well aware that I'm arguing for a change in the law. It's perfectly possible for an otherwise democratic and law-abiding country to make a law that contradicts fundamental legal principles.
The British use of internment in Northern Ireland is another example. Or the Israeli apartheid execution law.
Giving the state the power to strip citizenship from its citizens puts the citizen in a very vulnerable position in relation to the state. It fundamentally alters the power dynamic between the two, and weakens every citizens legal protection from the exercise of arbitrary state power.
But, of course, it can be legal if suitably codified in an Act of Parliament. I dunno, you seem to be arguing against a different person and a different argument. I've always said that the law is an arbitrary human-created thing. I don't see why that contradicts my argument at all.
Yes and no. There is on PB and elsewhere a common assumption that an act of Parliament, however deranged, has priority over everything in the system in the UK. This has the status of an axiom, a presumption upon which other presumptions are based and is generally not a bad one. But its truth is uncertain.
However, SFAICS this is not in an act of parliament itself, and, of course if it were it could be changed because it can't bind its successors. So it can't be so codified.
The Supreme Court suffers no such fetter. In particular it is not bound by its previous decisions, so that authority (which does exist) saying that acts of parliament are supreme can be overturned.
A remaining bit of the 'good chaps theory of government' is this: Both parliament and the supreme court have the final determination of legal things - parliament obeys the SC, and the SC obeys parliament, or as Ukridge once put it 'The cats eat the rats and the rats eat the cats'.
This works fine for just as long as some degree of good chappery prevails. If it doesn't you discover why we have an army and a monarchy.
The monarchy is a busted flush.
QEII went along with Johnson's prorogation, which was an abuse of process intended to defy the will of Parliament.
It suggests that the royal family are not willing to risk their position by doing anything controversial to defend democratic norms. I have no confidence that they would do anything to inhibit "bad chaps" subverting the system.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
The Tories’ (who you always end up voting for) record on maintaining the state of our armed forces has been truly abysmal.
Interesting, though i expect a boost for them after May as even if 25 is right they'll have a good night at the locals.
The 5% decline is more than MOE?
I think you're right about a Reform boost as the Labour and Tory skittles fall in May but with three years to go Reform really don't look as they have sealed the deal at all. Greens on just 13% will be good news for Labour too.
There was a time when, conceivably, the Tories faced an extinction event. That time seems to have passed. Labour always less vulnerable - and Greens, in my view, possibly more of a threat to the LibDems? Maybe a discussion to be had there?
All in all, all to play for, surely.
The Reform shares from the last several More in Common polls (over about two months) have been:
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
That 6% decline will mean a hell of a lot of near misses that would previously have been councillors.
it has seemed to me for some months that the chance of Reform governing with 325+ seats is virtually zero%. But their decline has been occurring a lot faster than I expected. Trump has helped a lot with this. And the effective use of tactical voting by Lab/LD and Green is still at a very preliminary stage so there is far to go.
If it happens this fast there is an outside new possibility: That the Tories creep ahead of Reform in the polling, even if only just, and can then stop being Reformlite junior partner to Reform and look like an alternative to a left of centre government. I don't think Kemi can make that transition. She ain't a stateswoman, and we live in serious times. Hunt, Stride or Hat maybe. But they need to find a male or female Carney from central casting who is also a genius with charisma. Don't bet the farm.
As I’ve said before, the smart bet right now is probably backing Tories for most seats at next GE. With backing Labour being the next best bet. Sad though it is, we’ve probably not yet succeeded in breaking free of these two cheeks of the same political arse.
China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn't that beat fighting??? BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!! President DJT
I feel like that post needs an editorial addendum on the actual current status of the Strait of Hormuz, and on any public indication of China's happiness, or otherwise.
The extent and nature of the physical contact between Trump and Xi when they meet is, however, not something that needs to be speculated upon.
"A shadow industry of law firms and advisers is charging thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay in order to stay in the UK, the BBC has found.
In the first part of a major undercover investigation, we reveal how migrants whose visas are due to run out are being given fake cover stories and instructed in how to obtain fabricated evidence, including supporting letters, photographs and medical reports.
They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay and in fear for their lives if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh."
If you create ridiculous systems like this people will game the system. That is a story as old as time. The only way to stop this nonsense is to abolish the "right" to asylum. We can choose to give it in cases where we think that is appropriate but the whole concept of rights in this area is fraught with problems and creates absurdities.
Quite so. Abolish the right to asylum. It no longer works in an era of global travel and it is creating dangerous political pressures worldwide. One reason the madman Trump was elected was many thousands of people crossing the Mexican/American border and fraudulently claiming asylum. That angered Americans and they elected Trump
If we don’t want a British Trump then abolish asylum. It’s that simple
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Oops - The court found that the protections of the law were followed.
That's the thing with the law, you are arguing for the law as you want it to be, rather than the law as it is.
Yes. I'm well aware that I'm arguing for a change in the law. It's perfectly possible for an otherwise democratic and law-abiding country to make a law that contradicts fundamental legal principles.
The British use of internment in Northern Ireland is another example. Or the Israeli apartheid execution law.
Giving the state the power to strip citizenship from its citizens puts the citizen in a very vulnerable position in relation to the state. It fundamentally alters the power dynamic between the two, and weakens every citizens legal protection from the exercise of arbitrary state power.
But, of course, it can be legal if suitably codified in an Act of Parliament. I dunno, you seem to be arguing against a different person and a different argument. I've always said that the law is an arbitrary human-created thing. I don't see why that contradicts my argument at all.
Yes and no. There is on PB and elsewhere a common assumption that an act of Parliament, however deranged, has priority over everything in the system in the UK. This has the status of an axiom, a presumption upon which other presumptions are based and is generally not a bad one. But its truth is uncertain.
However, SFAICS this is not in an act of parliament itself, and, of course if it were it could be changed because it can't bind its successors. So it can't be so codified.
The Supreme Court suffers no such fetter. In particular it is not bound by its previous decisions, so that authority (which does exist) saying that acts of parliament are supreme can be overturned.
A remaining bit of the 'good chaps theory of government' is this: Both parliament and the supreme court have the final determination of legal things - parliament obeys the SC, and the SC obeys parliament, or as Ukridge once put it 'The cats eat the rats and the rats eat the cats'.
This works fine for just as long as some degree of good chappery prevails. If it doesn't you discover why we have an army and a monarchy.
The monarchy is a busted flush.
QEII went along with Johnson's prorogation, which was an abuse of process intended to defy the will of Parliament.
It suggests that the royal family are not willing to risk their position by doing anything controversial to defend democratic norms. I have no confidence that they would do anything to inhibit "bad chaps" subverting the system.
Rubbish, there was no judicial precedent a prorogation was illegal until the SC ruled it was, of course Boris only tried it as Parliament consistently refused to implement the 2016 EU referendum result and UK voters voted by a landslide for Boris and Brexit in 2019 anyway.
Without a judicial precedent on prorogation it would have been dangerous for the Queen to side with the liberal Remoaner elite over a PM heading for a landslide general election victory.
Now of course King Charles III would have to follow the SC precedent and refuse to allow any prorogation of Parliament but there was no such precedent for his mother to follow.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi has not got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Badenoch was terrible again today. Starmer not great either, he was very techy. Davey made more sense and asked the questions we wanted to hear answers to.
Davey is very angry and wants us to stop the royal visit and virtually tell Trump to get lost
Now that chimes with the vast majority, but wiser heads know Trump is a passing nightmare and set against 250 years of friendship with deep commitments on defence, security and trade, it is in the country's interest to use the royals for soft diplomacy
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
Wasn't the primary purpose of the Carriers to retain the Scottish Labour vote?
"A shadow industry of law firms and advisers is charging thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay in order to stay in the UK, the BBC has found.
In the first part of a major undercover investigation, we reveal how migrants whose visas are due to run out are being given fake cover stories and instructed in how to obtain fabricated evidence, including supporting letters, photographs and medical reports.
They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay and in fear for their lives if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh."
If you create ridiculous systems like this people will game the system. That is a story as old as time. The only way to stop this nonsense is to abolish the "right" to asylum. We can choose to give it in cases where we think that is appropriate but the whole concept of rights in this area is fraught with problems and creates absurdities.
Quite so. Abolish the right to asylum. It no longer works in an era of global travel and it is creating dangerous political pressures worldwide. One reason the madman Trump was elected was many thousands of people crossing the Mexican/American border and fraudulently claiming asylum. That angered Americans and they elected Trump
If we don’t want a British Trump then abolish asylum. It’s that simple
Sadly, as usual with your posts, the simplicity is entirely within your own mind.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn't that beat fighting??? BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!! President DJT
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Oops - The court found that the protections of the law were followed.
That's the thing with the law, you are arguing for the law as you want it to be, rather than the law as it is.
Yes. I'm well aware that I'm arguing for a change in the law. It's perfectly possible for an otherwise democratic and law-abiding country to make a law that contradicts fundamental legal principles.
The British use of internment in Northern Ireland is another example. Or the Israeli apartheid execution law.
Giving the state the power to strip citizenship from its citizens puts the citizen in a very vulnerable position in relation to the state. It fundamentally alters the power dynamic between the two, and weakens every citizens legal protection from the exercise of arbitrary state power.
But, of course, it can be legal if suitably codified in an Act of Parliament. I dunno, you seem to be arguing against a different person and a different argument. I've always said that the law is an arbitrary human-created thing. I don't see why that contradicts my argument at all.
Yes and no. There is on PB and elsewhere a common assumption that an act of Parliament, however deranged, has priority over everything in the system in the UK. This has the status of an axiom, a presumption upon which other presumptions are based and is generally not a bad one. But its truth is uncertain.
However, SFAICS this is not in an act of parliament itself, and, of course if it were it could be changed because it can't bind its successors. So it can't be so codified.
The Supreme Court suffers no such fetter. In particular it is not bound by its previous decisions, so that authority (which does exist) saying that acts of parliament are supreme can be overturned.
A remaining bit of the 'good chaps theory of government' is this: Both parliament and the supreme court have the final determination of legal things - parliament obeys the SC, and the SC obeys parliament, or as Ukridge once put it 'The cats eat the rats and the rats eat the cats'.
This works fine for just as long as some degree of good chappery prevails. If it doesn't you discover why we have an army and a monarchy.
The monarchy is a busted flush.
QEII went along with Johnson's prorogation, which was an abuse of process intended to defy the will of Parliament.
It suggests that the royal family are not willing to risk their position by doing anything controversial to defend democratic norms. I have no confidence that they would do anything to inhibit "bad chaps" subverting the system.
Whatever the merits of your point, the principle point in mine in fact is that the army's loyalty is to the crown not the government and in extremis this can matter.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
The Tories’ (who you always end up voting for) record on maintaining the state of our armed forces has been truly abysmal.
The same goverment that was in coalition with the Lib Dems, but yes and without Ukraine, Trump, and Iran it would not be controversial
The problem labour have is that it is one of their own attacking the present government on welfare spending and not defence spending
Farage or his party have previously called for deregulation, and proposed a new “bitcoin reserve fund” and the forcing of HMRC to accept crypto as a payment for taxes. Cooper also highlighted the £9m donation Reform received last year from Christopher Harborne, an investor in the cryptocurrency firm Tether, making it the largest donation of its kind in UK history.
And it wasn’t just the usual centrist and left-leaning suspects raising concerns about Farage’s link with Stack.
Fraser Nelson, the former editor of the Spectator, last month described it as “a scandal hiding in plain sight”, adding that most politicians sell shares to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. He also argued that if investors concluded that Farage was within reach of No 10, and believed his party would promote crypto, “the upside becomes self-fulfilling. The investment is not just a bet on bitcoin but on political power itself.”
When it comes to Farage, Fraser Nelson is the definition of 'usual suspects'.
Furthermore, I must have missed Fraser's fury at Sunak making big political decisions that benefitted companies like Moderna that were within his own investment portfolio. These were placed in a 'blind trust' at the beginning of his premiership, but how blind can something be if you know you're up to the hilt in shares of something already?
"A shadow industry of law firms and advisers is charging thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay in order to stay in the UK, the BBC has found.
In the first part of a major undercover investigation, we reveal how migrants whose visas are due to run out are being given fake cover stories and instructed in how to obtain fabricated evidence, including supporting letters, photographs and medical reports.
They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay and in fear for their lives if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh."
If you create ridiculous systems like this people will game the system. That is a story as old as time. The only way to stop this nonsense is to abolish the "right" to asylum. We can choose to give it in cases where we think that is appropriate but the whole concept of rights in this area is fraught with problems and creates absurdities.
Quite so. Abolish the right to asylum. It no longer works in an era of global travel and it is creating dangerous political pressures worldwide. One reason the madman Trump was elected was many thousands of people crossing the Mexican/American border and fraudulently claiming asylum. That angered Americans and they elected Trump
If we don’t want a British Trump then abolish asylum. It’s that simple
Sadly, as usual with your posts, the simplicity is entirely within your own mind.
Clearly it isn't simple, but a world of globalised rapid travel in which perhaps billions of people have a currently legitimate ground to claim asylum without any regard to the proximity of the place where the claim is made is not sustainable. It is a point which the boringly sensible Matthew Parris has made over many years.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Oops - The court found that the protections of the law were followed.
That's the thing with the law, you are arguing for the law as you want it to be, rather than the law as it is.
Yes. I'm well aware that I'm arguing for a change in the law. It's perfectly possible for an otherwise democratic and law-abiding country to make a law that contradicts fundamental legal principles.
The British use of internment in Northern Ireland is another example. Or the Israeli apartheid execution law.
Giving the state the power to strip citizenship from its citizens puts the citizen in a very vulnerable position in relation to the state. It fundamentally alters the power dynamic between the two, and weakens every citizens legal protection from the exercise of arbitrary state power.
But, of course, it can be legal if suitably codified in an Act of Parliament. I dunno, you seem to be arguing against a different person and a different argument. I've always said that the law is an arbitrary human-created thing. I don't see why that contradicts my argument at all.
Yes and no. There is on PB and elsewhere a common assumption that an act of Parliament, however deranged, has priority over everything in the system in the UK. This has the status of an axiom, a presumption upon which other presumptions are based and is generally not a bad one. But its truth is uncertain.
However, SFAICS this is not in an act of parliament itself, and, of course if it were it could be changed because it can't bind its successors. So it can't be so codified.
The Supreme Court suffers no such fetter. In particular it is not bound by its previous decisions, so that authority (which does exist) saying that acts of parliament are supreme can be overturned.
A remaining bit of the 'good chaps theory of government' is this: Both parliament and the supreme court have the final determination of legal things - parliament obeys the SC, and the SC obeys parliament, or as Ukridge once put it 'The cats eat the rats and the rats eat the cats'.
This works fine for just as long as some degree of good chappery prevails. If it doesn't you discover why we have an army and a monarchy.
The monarchy is a busted flush.
QEII went along with Johnson's prorogation, which was an abuse of process intended to defy the will of Parliament.
It suggests that the royal family are not willing to risk their position by doing anything controversial to defend democratic norms. I have no confidence that they would do anything to inhibit "bad chaps" subverting the system.
Rubbish, there was no judicial precedent a prorogation was illegal until the SC ruled it was, of course Boris only tried it as Parliament consistently refused to implement the 2016 EU referendum result and UK voters voted by a landslide for Boris and Brexit in 2019 anyway.
Without a judicial precedent on prorogation it would have been dangerous for the Queen to side with the liberal Remoaner elite over a PM heading for a landslide general election victory.
Now of course King Charles III would have to follow the SC precedent and refuse to allow any prorogation of Parliament but there was no such precedent for his mother to follow.
Most dictators now head republics anyway
It seems to me that the SC's judgment does not help the monarch himself at all as to how to act, and might leave him in an impossible position. I think they acted on the assumption that this wasn't really a royal decision, which was why they could adjudicate on it at all, so it rather leaves open the question of how KCIII can exercise discretion at all by granting or not granting a prorogation. They are both discretionary acts. (A follow on may be that this parliament will run until July 2029 since the king won't feel able to agree or disagree to a dissolution before 5 years and the statute will have to take its course. Which would mean August 2029 GE! DYOR and don't bet accordingly.
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
You are proposing your own interpretation as fact again.
"A shadow industry of law firms and advisers is charging thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay in order to stay in the UK, the BBC has found.
In the first part of a major undercover investigation, we reveal how migrants whose visas are due to run out are being given fake cover stories and instructed in how to obtain fabricated evidence, including supporting letters, photographs and medical reports.
They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay and in fear for their lives if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh."
If you create ridiculous systems like this people will game the system. That is a story as old as time. The only way to stop this nonsense is to abolish the "right" to asylum. We can choose to give it in cases where we think that is appropriate but the whole concept of rights in this area is fraught with problems and creates absurdities.
Quite so. Abolish the right to asylum. It no longer works in an era of global travel and it is creating dangerous political pressures worldwide. One reason the madman Trump was elected was many thousands of people crossing the Mexican/American border and fraudulently claiming asylum. That angered Americans and they elected Trump
If we don’t want a British Trump then abolish asylum. It’s that simple
Sadly, as usual with your posts, the simplicity is entirely within your own mind.
Clearly it isn't simple, but a world of globalised rapid travel in which perhaps billions of people have a currently legitimate ground to claim asylum without any regard to the proximity of the place where the claim is made is not sustainable. It is a point which the boringly sensible Matthew Parris has made over many years.
Yes. I remember Parris saying exactly this about 20 years ago. For which he received a lot of criticism
Turns out he was just prescient, and ahead of everyone else
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
The Tories’ (who you always end up voting for) record on maintaining the state of our armed forces has been truly abysmal.
The same goverment that was in coalition with the Lib Dems, but yes and without Ukraine, Trump, and Iran it would not be controversial
The problem labour have is that it is one of their own attacking the present government on welfare spending and not defence spending
I suggest you read this, written before the general election.
In this rare instance the problem goes back to the Thatcher government.
White House is sending @VP Vance to Iowa on April 30 to campaign for Republican US Rep. @ZachNunn, who's in one of the most competitive battleground districts in the US, @olivialarinaldi reports.
White House is sending @VP Vance to Iowa on April 30 to campaign for Republican US Rep. @ZachNunn, who's in one of the most competitive battleground districts in the US, @olivialarinaldi reports.
"I have arrived at the Sándor Palace to meet the President of Hungary.
"@DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model.
"Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately."
Kemi wriggling and squirming but just digging a deeper hole.
She can't rewrite her call to war. Backed by her foreign secretary the MP for Tel Aviv.
If she just for once admitt6she made an error of judgement it would draw a line.
Her shithousery, downright lies and constant denial mean this issue will end her leadership.
I don't think Kemi said anything wrong from her supporters side, she backed the RAF launching strikes against Iranian missile sites.
Not her fault Trump is too chicken to send in the ground troops to actually remove the Iranian regime
Kemi asked serious questions about Lord Robertson's report and Starmer just blustered so much so the Speaker intervened telling him it is Prime Minister questions
Embarrassing and Kemi is taking the fight on defence v welfare plus oil and gas direct to Starmer who has no answer
I expect the public will be on Kemi's side
She is going nowhere despite frantic attempts by some to discredit her
Beth Rigby on Sky very much saying Starmer has really difficult and uncomfortable questions to answer
Kemi gas it got a leg to stand on re defence
She. might want to lie more and deny it, she needs to own as does every fucking Tory the wilful destruction of our Armed Forces 2010 to 2024
Maybe read Lord Robertson report as he firmly attacks Starmer and Reeves for underfunding defence and instead handing out benefits
It is very obviously a difficult attack from one of labour's own, and no amount of whataboutery is going to deflect from the questions Lord Robertson asks of his own government
It not exactly whataboutery, since the current state uf our armed forces is largely down to the last decade and a half of Tory government. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.
Thanks to them, Starmer has some tough decisions to make ... and has put them off for the best part of a year.
You are talking of the peace dividend enjoyed by countries over decades and the reliance on US contributions to NATO
There was no political objection to defence spending cuts as nobody expected the Trump effect
The problem for Starmer and Reeves is Lord Robertson is effectively saying they are prioritizing welfare spending at the cost of an urgent and substantial increases in defence spending which in view of Iran will chime with the public
It is Starmer and Reeves misfortune to be the one's in office and if they do not prioritize defence spending then they will have to answer to the electorate, not previous government's
It happened with Boris on the war in Ukraine and covid and now a very unpopular PM and COE before this crisis has to face the reality they are in government
That is the politics
Your defence of the Tories is about as convincing as Brixian's of Starmer. Precisely the same putting off of hard choices (Ajax, for example) and penny pinching, characterises their record on defence.
Not really
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
The Tories’ (who you always end up voting for) record on maintaining the state of our armed forces has been truly abysmal.
The same goverment that was in coalition with the Lib Dems, but yes and without Ukraine, Trump, and Iran it would not be controversial
The problem labour have is that it is one of their own attacking the present government on welfare spending and not defence spending
I suggest you read this, written before the general election.
In this rare instance the problem goes back to the Thatcher government.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
Unless they're being packed into these luxury flats at higher densities, in which case they're not.
Gonna be a toss up when he finally gets completely bored with losing to Iran whether to go for Cuba or Greenland.
Probably Cuba . Less likely to cause issues in the mid-terms . If Trump was crazy enough to go after Greenland that would be a line crossed that even he wouldn’t recover from .
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
Gonna be a toss up when he finally gets completely bored with losing to Iran whether to go for Cuba or Greenland.
Will the point come where Farage makes a last throw of the dice and makes a speech denouncing Trump and all his works. As of now Farage has already lost in 2029. Ignore the figures and look at the trend.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
Defeated at all costs!? We haven't even sent troops to Ukraine.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
You've never attended a wedding at a hotel? I’m actually slightly shocked; hotels feel pretty much the standard for the secular middle classes under the age of 50.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
I don't think its just that that enrages people. A lot of it is the idea that many of those coming are not 'genuine' refugees. As per the story today. There is a belief, right or wrong, that many are doing whatever they can get to live here.
In some ways we should want this - aspirational people trying to come to the UK to get a better life. Look at America for hundreds of years - born of people with the get up and go attitude to building a new life in a new country. And we do need people - our demographics are worsening.
But for many people the issue is WHO is coming. The cultural challenges of people coming from non-Christian, non-Western backgrounds, often with different views to that espoused by the majority of the host nation. You may wish to call it racism. Others will say its not. But too often people in this country feel that they don't have a say, as 'all politicians are the same' and nothing every really changes. And then you get Brexit, and now Reform.
White House is sending @VP Vance to Iowa on April 30 to campaign for Republican US Rep. @ZachNunn, who's in one of the most competitive battleground districts in the US, @olivialarinaldi reports.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Gonna be a toss up when he finally gets completely bored with losing to Iran whether to go for Cuba or Greenland.
Probably Cuba . Less likely to cause issues in the mid-terms . If Trump was crazy enough to go after Greenland that would be a line crossed that even he wouldn’t recover from .
Did you hear about the Hungarian who moved to Cuba?
White House is sending @VP Vance to Iowa on April 30 to campaign for Republican US Rep. @ZachNunn, who's in one of the most competitive battleground districts in the US, @olivialarinaldi reports.
For what it's worth, that looks like a fairly doomed endeaveour. The Iowa 3rd has tended to swing hard against againt the Party in power. So, the Republicans won from the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. And the Democrats had previously won it from the Republicans at the 2018 midterms. And prior to that the Republicans took it from the Democrats half way through Obama.
Given that the incumbent in the White House is not popular, the boundaries have not changed and that the district contains most of Des Moines, I would think that Iowa 3rd will be among the easier Democrat pickups in November, even without a visit from VP Vance to boost their chances.
Whilst the headline refers to men, I didn't find that the most striking finding. Very left wing, pro communist, nihilistic and unremittingly bleak. More young white women think Britain is a racist country than non-white women do. The radicalism does seem to skew towards the upper social classes.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
I don't think its just that that enrages people. A lot of it is the idea that many of those coming are not 'genuine' refugees. As per the story today. There is a belief, right or wrong, that many are doing whatever they can get to live here.
In some ways we should want this - aspirational people trying to come to the UK to get a better life. Look at America for hundreds of years - born of people with the get up and go attitude to building a new life in a new country. And we do need people - our demographics are worsening.
But for many people the issue is WHO is coming. The cultural challenges of people coming from non-Christian, non-Western backgrounds, often with different views to that espoused by the majority of the host nation. You may wish to call it racism. Others will say its not. But too often people in this country feel that they don't have a say, as 'all politicians are the same' and nothing every really changes. And then you get Brexit, and now Reform.
Occasionally you see interesting snippets of what people are really thinking. Behind the presentation.
A while back there was a report that lambasted Australia for creaming off the “non-problematic immigrants” with their exacting standards.
Which told a story, I think. About the report writers.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
"I have arrived at the Sándor Palace to meet the President of Hungary.
"@DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model.
"Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately."
Can't argue with that.
So he will just get the new parliament to dump the president the old parliament elected, shows why republics are so awful in selecting heads of state and we must stick with constitutional monarchy
Tony Diver @Tony_Diver EXC The Iran war could stop Labour reaching its housebuilding target, officials believe.
Rachel Reeves is planning emergency bill relief for energy intensive firms - but concrete manufacturers and steel are among the hardest hit.
The cost of construction is about to spike.
Tony Diver @Tony_Diver · 1h The Telegraph has seen a leaked memo given to ministers ahead of yesterday's Cabinet meeting, showing which firms will be worst hit.
They include steel, concrete, glass, paper and ceramic producers, all in the red zone. Hospitality, food and drink are rated amber.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
It's one thing distancing ourselves from Trump. But why alienate the Gulf states? Dean's answer is that it is fear of our own populations. I have to say I cannot understand Macron's blathering about Lebanon. Did the Lebanese government ask him to do it?
Tony Diver @Tony_Diver EXC The Iran war could stop Labour reaching its housebuilding target, officials believe.
Rachel Reeves is planning emergency bill relief for energy intensive firms - but concrete manufacturers and steel are among the hardest hit.
The cost of construction is about to spike.
Tony Diver @Tony_Diver · 1h The Telegraph has seen a leaked memo given to ministers ahead of yesterday's Cabinet meeting, showing which firms will be worst hit.
They include steel, concrete, glass, paper and ceramic producers, all in the red zone. Hospitality, food and drink are rated amber.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
Mrs C & I are going to a funeral, or at least the 'afters/wake' at a 4* hotel next week. Must admit I don't think we have before.
Tony Diver @Tony_Diver EXC The Iran war could stop Labour reaching its housebuilding target, officials believe.
Rachel Reeves is planning emergency bill relief for energy intensive firms - but concrete manufacturers and steel are among the hardest hit.
The cost of construction is about to spike.
Tony Diver @Tony_Diver · 1h The Telegraph has seen a leaked memo given to ministers ahead of yesterday's Cabinet meeting, showing which firms will be worst hit.
They include steel, concrete, glass, paper and ceramic producers, all in the red zone. Hospitality, food and drink are rated amber.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
Defeated at all costs!? We haven't even sent troops to Ukraine.
Indeed. Macron, Starmer etc. would be happy to see Russia completely defeated, but they're not pushing for it. They'd happily settle for a peace deal in which Russia gets to keep Crimea!
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
I don't think its just that that enrages people. A lot of it is the idea that many of those coming are not 'genuine' refugees. As per the story today. There is a belief, right or wrong, that many are doing whatever they can get to live here.
In some ways we should want this - aspirational people trying to come to the UK to get a better life. Look at America for hundreds of years - born of people with the get up and go attitude to building a new life in a new country. And we do need people - our demographics are worsening.
But for many people the issue is WHO is coming. The cultural challenges of people coming from non-Christian, non-Western backgrounds, often with different views to that espoused by the majority of the host nation. You may wish to call it racism. Others will say its not. But too often people in this country feel that they don't have a say, as 'all politicians are the same' and nothing every really changes. And then you get Brexit, and now Reform.
The issue with those coming under asylum rules isn’t race per se.
It’s, in general:
1. A total lack of cultural behavioural standards, especially with regard to sexual behaviour. 2. That people are claiming asylum when they are actually economic refugees. They’re not under threat, in fact many travel back ‘home’ regularly. 3. That most of them are either arrivals from France (a safe country) on small boats, or overstayers on student visas. 4. That they are a burden on the State, not financial contributors to the country. 5. That the “establishment” appears to think that the situation is wonderful and there should be more of it.
"I have arrived at the Sándor Palace to meet the President of Hungary.
"@DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model.
"Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately."
Can't argue with that.
So he will just get the new parliament to dump the president the old parliament elected, shows why republics are so awful in selecting heads of state and we must stick with constitutional monarchy
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
It baffles me that people seriously argue the 4* hotel point. Even if we agree that the migrants aren’t getting 4* hotel treatment, the fact remains that what once was a 4* hotel is now a refugee centre, and locals are right to be angry about the way their town or village is going. Obviously it’s a handy tactic to be able to put the idea in people’s minds that the migrants are getting 4* treatment, but even without that it’s not on
In Chelmsford they are living in what are marketed as luxury flats, so they are getting accommodation above the level of the native people who are struggling
People will also have memories of these hotels. They’d have been there for weddings, Christmases, graduations, Granny’s 90th birthday party, and her funeral a year later…
I've never attended a wedding, Xmas, graduation, birthday party or funeral at a hotel, let alone a 4* one. Church halls, community centres, pubs, etc. are what most of us plebs do! But, sure, if people wanted a 4* hotel and didn't want a refugee centre, then they can complain about that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
You've never attended a wedding at a hotel? I’m actually slightly shocked; hotels feel pretty much the standard for the secular middle classes under the age of 50.
I'm secular and middle class, but over 50!
Church, church hall, registry office, private residence, that space you can rent under the Globe, gardens of a stately home. In so far as I can remember.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
So perhaps Starmer and Macron should offer deal with Trump and Vance, that they’ll help each other out in defeating enemies.
Yet I’ve not seen that suggestion anywhere in the past six weeks, and dare I say I’m closer to both conflicts than most on here!
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
It's one thing distancing ourselves from Trump. But why alienate the Gulf states? Dean's answer is that it is fear of our own populations. I have to say I cannot understand Macron's blathering about Lebanon. Did the Lebanese government ask him to do it?
Isn't the UK's Marine Insurance market a factor in this. If Trump want's to go around blowing up the ME, it won't affect London. Doing the same to ships will.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
It's one thing distancing ourselves from Trump. But why alienate the Gulf states? Dean's answer is that it is fear of our own populations. I have to say I cannot understand Macron's blathering about Lebanon. Did the Lebanese government ask him to do it?
The Lebanese government hates Hezbollah and would quite happily see it defeated.
As with Starmer, it’s pandering to their own domestic antisemite base.
But it doesn't work like that on the coalface. My son works six months contract followed by another six month contract with the BBC. He can be terminated at the end of each six month term. He is paid a little more than living wage.
Fifteen or so people on my son's wage equates to one Fiona Bruce or one Chris Mason or one Laura Kuennsberg. Get rid of those three and I have just saved the BBC well over a million pounds a year. No one would miss them.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
It's one thing distancing ourselves from Trump. But why alienate the Gulf states? Dean's answer is that it is fear of our own populations. I have to say I cannot understand Macron's blathering about Lebanon. Did the Lebanese government ask him to do it?
It’s almost like France has a longstanding relationship when it comes to Lebanon going back to when France had a mandate to rule Lebanon.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region.
(He isn’t that polite).
Well perhaps the Gulf states should come up with a plan to actually defeat Iran rather than supporting Trump bomb them until he gets bored of it at which point he won't give a shit about what happens.
If it was an Arab led mission there would be far more chance of faster regime change so it would have a plausible chance of success unlike Trumps one.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
So perhaps Starmer and Macron should offer deal with Trump and Vance, that they’ll help each other out in defeating enemies.
Yet I’ve not seen that suggestion anywhere in the past six weeks, and dare I say I’m closer to both conflicts than most on here!
You're forgetting that Trump moved first by stopping all aid to Ukraine when he became President again. The truth is he regards Europe as his real adversary. He likes strongmen leaders who enrich themselves and aren't constrained by busy bodies. So yes we should have been prepared to offer him something on CRINK (and far too many in Europe don't have a global view of foreign policy) but I doubt he'd be interested anyway. He doesn't want a coalition that will stand up to China. He'll happily bend over and do a deal.
"I have arrived at the Sándor Palace to meet the President of Hungary.
"@DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model.
"Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately."
Can't argue with that.
So he will just get the new parliament to dump the president the old parliament elected, shows why republics are so awful in selecting heads of state and we must stick with constitutional monarchy
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
It's one thing distancing ourselves from Trump. But why alienate the Gulf states? Dean's answer is that it is fear of our own populations. I have to say I cannot understand Macron's blathering about Lebanon. Did the Lebanese government ask him to do it?
By yourself a history book and stop making such a clown of yourself
But it doesn't work like that on the coalface. My son works six months contract followed by another six month contract with the BBC. He can be terminated at the end of every bsix month term. He is paid a little more than living wage.
Fifteen or so people on my son's wage equates to one Fiona Bruce or one Chris Mason or one Laura Kuennsberg. Get rid of those three and I have just saved the BBC well over a million pounds a year. No one would miss them.
Yes, the Beeb is massively top-heavy with layers of executives and ‘talent’, which they do their best to hide in their annual reports with outsourcing to theoretically production companies.
They should be nurturing ‘talent’, not holding onto it for decades like Fiona, Chris, Laura, and Huw Edwards.
I reckon I could cut the BBC headline budget by 10% per year without anyone noticing for five years. Which is just as well, because they’re losing licence fees at an astonishing rate at the moment.
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region
People care about their proximate enemy, shocker.
Oh indeed, but look at the European reaction to what’s perceived as US indifference about Ukraine.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Sure:
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
It's one thing distancing ourselves from Trump. But why alienate the Gulf states? Dean's answer is that it is fear of our own populations. I have to say I cannot understand Macron's blathering about Lebanon. Did the Lebanese government ask him to do it?
By yourself a history book and stop making such a clown of yourself
I thought Empires were things of the past that we let go? Or do you support European countries continuing to exude imperial grandeur?
China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn't that beat fighting??? BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!! President DJT
Not sure what you can take away from the Chinese.
You'll find they have menus. Often easiest to order by the numbers.
But it doesn't work like that on the coalface. My son works six months contract followed by another six month contract with the BBC. He can be terminated at the end of every bsix month term. He is paid a little more than living wage.
Fifteen or so people on my son's wage equates to one Fiona Bruce or one Chris Mason or one Laura Kuennsberg. Get rid of those three and I have just saved the BBC well over a million pounds a year. No one would miss them.
Yes, the Beeb is massively top-heavy with layers of executives and ‘talent’, which they do their best to hide in their annual reports with outsourcing to theoretically production companies.
They should be nurturing ‘talent’, not holding onto it for decades like Fiona, Chris, Laura, and Huw Edwards.
I reckon I could cut the BBC headline budget by 10% per year without anyone noticing for five years. Which is just as well, because they’re losing licence fees at an astonishing rate at the moment.
I agree. Most of the news talent have worked their way to £350k plus a year from being BBC graduate trainees. Cut them lose. If they are any good they will find their way onto other channels.
Likewise poaching Amanda Holden, Alan Carr and Bradley Walsh from ITV can't have been cheap.
But it doesn't work like that on the coalface. My son works six months contract followed by another six month contract with the BBC. He can be terminated at the end of every bsix month term. He is paid a little more than living wage.
Fifteen or so people on my son's wage equates to one Fiona Bruce or one Chris Mason or one Laura Kuennsberg. Get rid of those three and I have just saved the BBC well over a million pounds a year. No one would miss them.
Yes, the Beeb is massively top-heavy with layers of executives and ‘talent’, which they do their best to hide in their annual reports with outsourcing to theoretically production companies.
They should be nurturing ‘talent’, not holding onto it for decades like Fiona, Chris, Laura, and Huw Edwards.
I reckon I could cut the BBC headline budget by 10% per year without anyone noticing for five years. Which is just as well, because they’re losing licence fees at an astonishing rate at the moment.
Better yet.
Talent shows with the prize being a BBC newsreader, talking head, sports commentator etc at a sizeable salary. But a fraction of the current rates.
This would cut nepotism, drive engagement and create programs that millions would watch.
Comments
This is the last set of elections Reform will be fighting where the big 2 were both 30% plus on NEV last time out so probably the last 'mega gain' set
They look like the types who spend all day on Facebook raging about the world.
28, 28, 29, 30, 28, 27, 30, 30, 25
It's not impossible that Reform support has been at a steady 28% throughout, that the 30% was a score towards the high end of the confidence interval, and 25% a bit of an outlier on the low side.
It's really very hard to say, and even a change in share of 5pp from one poll to the next isn't definitely indicative of a change in opinion.
It is, however, consistent with the overall decline in the Reform share picked up by the graph on the Wikipedia page though. That decline is now nearly 6pp. It suggests a serious problem for Reform, though the large gains they are likely to make in May will paper over the cracks for a bit.
I reckon any boost will be short lived. There will be some horror candidates elected. There'll be plenty of flouncing as people don't get the portfolio they were expecting/promised. Ther ewon't be sving to be made - just cuts.
In short, they will look like what they replaced.
It’s the same bloke isn’t it using ageing software?
Greenland, insulting the British war dead, now Iran and Farage goes along like a nodding dog.
People think a Reform will be like a Trump presidency and they ain’t keen on that.
However, SFAICS this is not in an act of parliament itself, and, of course if it were it could be changed because it can't bind its successors. So it can't be so codified.
The Supreme Court suffers no such fetter. In particular it is not bound by its previous decisions, so that authority (which does exist) saying that acts of parliament are supreme can be overturned.
A remaining bit of the 'good chaps theory of government' is this: Both parliament and the supreme court have the final determination of legal things - parliament obeys the SC, and the SC obeys parliament, or as Ukridge once put it 'The cats eat the rats and the rats eat the cats'.
This works fine for just as long as some degree of good chappery prevails. If it doesn't you discover why we have an army and a monarchy.
The depths to which these people will go continues to amaze and appal.
The first steps to strip British citizens of their nationality were taken .... *checks notes* .... oh yes, by a Labour government led by Tony Blair some thirty years go, as I pointed out here - https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/12/09/where-the-slippery-slope-leads/ - some 5 years ago.
China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn't that beat fighting??? BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!! President DJT
Compared to Labour the change is from 31-21 to 25-18. So a Reform +10 advantage is down to +7.
It's a point of evidence in favour of the "Badenoch has steadied the ship" thesis.
I’d think certainly for the Scottish and Welsh elections it would have some resonance .
Hopefully members who live in Scotland or Wales will keep the site updated on what sort of election leaflets they’re getting .
We can ask why Brown invested in 2 carriers that simply are not fit for purpose
The debate is around Lord Robertson's report that targets Starmer and Reeves
If it happens this fast there is an outside new possibility: That the Tories creep ahead of Reform in the polling, even if only just, and can then stop being Reformlite junior partner to Reform and look like an alternative to a left of centre government. I don't think Kemi can make that transition. She ain't a stateswoman, and we live in serious times. Hunt, Stride or Hat maybe. But they need to find a male or female Carney from central casting who is also a genius with charisma. Don't bet the farm.
Tories third on 69 MPs just ahead of Greens on 68 and Labour 5th just behind them on 67
https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
The whole current US administration are treasonous scum .
QEII went along with Johnson's prorogation, which was an abuse of process intended to defy the will of Parliament.
It suggests that the royal family are not willing to risk their position by doing anything controversial to defend democratic norms. I have no confidence that they would do anything to inhibit "bad chaps" subverting the system.
The extent and nature of the physical contact between Trump and Xi when they meet is, however, not something that needs to be speculated upon.
If we don’t want a British Trump then abolish asylum. It’s that simple
Without a judicial precedent on prorogation it would have been dangerous for the Queen to side with the liberal Remoaner elite over a PM heading for a landslide general election victory.
Now of course King Charles III would have to follow the SC precedent and refuse to allow any prorogation of Parliament but there was no such precedent for his mother to follow.
Most dictators now head republics anyway
Now that chimes with the vast majority, but wiser heads know Trump is a passing nightmare and set against 250 years of friendship with deep commitments on defence, security and trade, it is in the country's interest to use the royals for soft diplomacy
On this Starmer is right
The problem labour have is that it is one of their own attacking the present government on welfare spending and not defence spending
For a while I thought Labour might have the same issue but Donald has fixed that by insulting our PM every day.
@TheScreamingEagles any insights on Starmer and Badenoch from the focus groups?
Furthermore, I must have missed Fraser's fury at Sunak making big political decisions that benefitted companies like Moderna that were within his own investment portfolio. These were placed in a 'blind trust' at the beginning of his premiership, but how blind can something be if you know you're up to the hilt in shares of something already?
Turns out he was just prescient, and ahead of everyone else
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/apr/15/bbc-cut-jobs-downsize-matt-brittin-tim-davie
In this rare instance the problem goes back to the Thatcher government.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/03/30/they-shall-have-wars-and-pay-for-their-presumption/
Gonna be a toss up when he finally gets completely bored with losing to Iran whether to go for Cuba or Greenland.
White House is sending @VP Vance to Iowa on April 30 to campaign for Republican US Rep. @ZachNunn, who's in one of the most competitive battleground districts in the US, @olivialarinaldi reports.
https://x.com/magyarpeterMP/status/2044345463814431184
This is what he says:
"I have arrived at the Sándor Palace to meet the President of Hungary.
"@DrTamasSulyok is unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation. He is unfit to serve as the guardian of legality. He is not fit to serve as a moral authority or a role model.
"Following the formation of the new government, Tamás Sulyok must leave office immediately."
Can't argue with that.
But the misleading rhetoric that is spouted is that those seeking asylum are being put up in 4* hotels, in luxury, that they get so many benefits, etc. That's what is enraging people, and that's what is a lie.
Modern life is little different
Burn the heretics
https://x.com/aimendean/status/2044345568496144688
TL:DR: You lot in Europe, Macron and Starmer, are united on Moscow being the enemy to be defeated at all costs, but now try to lecture us in the Middle East about making “peace” with Iran and their four decades of terror in the region.
(He isn’t that polite).
We haven't even sent troops to Ukraine.
In some ways we should want this - aspirational people trying to come to the UK to get a better life. Look at America for hundreds of years - born of people with the get up and go attitude to building a new life in a new country. And we do need people - our demographics are worsening.
But for many people the issue is WHO is coming. The cultural challenges of people coming from non-Christian, non-Western backgrounds, often with different views to that espoused by the majority of the host nation. You may wish to call it racism. Others will say its not. But too often people in this country feel that they don't have a say, as 'all politicians are the same' and nothing every really changes. And then you get Brexit, and now Reform.
What Starmer and Macron are saying to the GCC about Iran, is not a million miles away from what JD Vance is saying to Starmer and Macron about Russia.
Fidesz Castro!
Given that the incumbent in the White House is not popular, the boundaries have not changed and that the district contains most of Des Moines, I would think that Iowa 3rd will be among the easier Democrat pickups in November, even without a visit from VP Vance to boost their chances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQRKL4BxrEM
Whilst the headline refers to men, I didn't find that the most striking finding. Very left wing, pro communist, nihilistic and unremittingly bleak. More young white women think Britain is a racist country than non-white women do. The radicalism does seem to skew towards the upper social classes.
A while back there was a report that lambasted Australia for creaming off the “non-problematic immigrants” with their exacting standards.
Which told a story, I think. About the report writers.
Although one might point out that, prior to the US attacks on Iran, it hadn't actually attacked any of its Gulf neighbours. So the analogy isn't perfect.
I would also point out that defeating Iran and Russia -given how close their are- should be bound together in the minds of governments. And I think Macron and Starmer would be willing to go down that route. I'm less convinced about the US administration, who seems bizarrely determined to back Russia in Ukraine.
Tony Diver
@Tony_Diver
EXC
The Iran war could stop Labour reaching its housebuilding target, officials believe.
Rachel Reeves is planning emergency bill relief for energy intensive firms - but concrete manufacturers and steel are among the hardest hit.
The cost of construction is about to spike.
Tony Diver
@Tony_Diver
·
1h
The Telegraph has seen a leaked memo given to ministers ahead of yesterday's Cabinet meeting, showing which firms will be worst hit.
They include steel, concrete, glass, paper and ceramic producers, all in the red zone. Hospitality, food and drink are rated amber.
https://x.com/Tony_Diver/status/2044394823638040822
Magyar is being pretty forthright about what he thinks of him .
No doubt these wasters will get a cracking pay off and pension.
Abolish the license fee.
https://x.com/skynews/status/2044411774934421775?s=46&t=d8CnRhyZJ-m4vy0k55W8XQ
It’s, in general:
1. A total lack of cultural behavioural standards, especially with regard to sexual behaviour.
2. That people are claiming asylum when they are actually economic refugees. They’re not under threat, in fact many travel back ‘home’ regularly.
3. That most of them are either arrivals from France (a safe country) on small boats, or overstayers on student visas.
4. That they are a burden on the State, not financial contributors to the country.
5. That the “establishment” appears to think that the situation is wonderful and there should be more of it.
Church, church hall, registry office, private residence, that space you can rent under the Globe, gardens of a stately home. In so far as I can remember.
Yet I’ve not seen that suggestion anywhere in the past six weeks, and dare I say I’m closer to both conflicts than most on here!
As with Starmer, it’s pandering to their own domestic antisemite base.
Fifteen or so people on my son's wage equates to one Fiona Bruce or one Chris Mason or one Laura Kuennsberg. Get rid of those three and I have just saved the BBC well over a million pounds a year. No one would miss them.
If it was an Arab led mission there would be far more chance of faster regime change so it would have a plausible chance of success unlike Trumps one.
They should be nurturing ‘talent’, not holding onto it for decades like Fiona, Chris, Laura, and Huw Edwards.
I reckon I could cut the BBC headline budget by 10% per year without anyone noticing for five years. Which is just as well, because they’re losing licence fees at an astonishing rate at the moment.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/116408742801619405
Likewise poaching Amanda Holden, Alan Carr and Bradley Walsh from ITV can't have been cheap.
Talent shows with the prize being a BBC newsreader, talking head, sports commentator etc at a sizeable salary. But a fraction of the current rates.
This would cut nepotism, drive engagement and create programs that millions would watch.