The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[ml1dch]

2 hours ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Cant be true surely ? Serving PM and all that. 

What a disaster PR wise.

Is it? Tony Blair wasn't at Prince Edward's wedding and I don't think anybody gave the tiniest toss.

On a list of "embarrassments and PR disasters of the current Conservative government", I don't think this is going scrape into the top couple of hundred. 

[Risso]

59 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Heard it on the radio if true hilarious 

It's not remotely newsworthy.  He's way down the list of succession now, and so they're not having an official list of politicians like William was required to.  So the Villa fan had the likes of Cameron and Miliband as PM and leader of the opposition.  The ginger one of questionable parentage isn't having either May or Corbyn.  And looking at what a pair of clearings in the woods they both are, who could blame him.

[Risso]

Anyway I’m a massive fan of Suits so where’s *my* invite? Or does freezing Sky+ when Rachel’s in her undies not count as a direct connection anymore?

[Xann]

They're scared of trouble.

The World's press will be there, and they won't look the other way like the BBC has been doing with sizable anti government protests.

Less senior politicians, less chance of it kicking off.

[Davkaus]

I was really hoping they'd invite Obama just to see the orange one kick off on Twitter.

[HanoiVillan]

A good column on the recent spate of 'hostile environment' victims. 

Hounding Commonwealth citizens is no accident. It’s cruelty by design

'On 4 April Prince Charles opened the Commonwealth Games in Australia’s Gold Coast with a brief reminder of the historical ties that bind. “The ancient stories told by the indigenous people of Australia remind us that, even though we may be half a world away, we are all connected,” he said. “Over the years, these Friendly Games have shown the potential of the Commonwealth to connect people of different backgrounds and nationalities.”

Five days later the Guardian published an article about Michael Braithwaite that illustrates how fragile and selective those connections are. Braithwaite, a Barbadian-born Briton who arrived here in 1961 when he was nine, was educated here, has worked here for his entire life, married here and had three British children and five British grandchildren. He had been a special needs teaching assistant at a north London primary school for over 15 years when his employers launched a “routine” immigration status check. Braithwaite, 66, assumed correctly that he was British.

But now he had to prove it, providing up to four pieces of documentary evidence to the Home Office for every year he had been here. He lost his job when the Home Office failed to issue him with the documents to verify that he was in the country legally. Trying to prove he was who he was, and who nobody ever seriously doubted he always had been, made him ill. “It made me feel like I was an alien. I almost fell apart with the stress,” he said.

Within minutes of the article about Braithwaite going online the Home Office had emailed his lawyers to say the documents had been approved. Welcome to the United Kingdom. With the exception of Northern Ireland, our existence as an island means our physical border is, for the most part, well defined. We stop and start at the water’s edge. The entry points, be they at ports or airports, are heavily fortified and highly militarised.

But our administrative borders are invisible and omnipresent, dividing communities and generations at whim and will. These borders represent not a physical space but a political one that can be reproduced without warning in places of learning and healing. At any moment almost anyone, your boss, doctor, child’s headmaster or landlord, can become a border guard – indeed they may be legally obliged to do so – and on the basis of their judgment you may be denied livelihood, family, home and health.

Incredibly, this is not a glitch in the system. It is the system. And in the words of American intellectual WEB Du Bois: “A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.” Braithwaite has become ensnared in deliberate government policy, set out by the prime minister, Theresa May, when she was home secretary, to create a “really hostile environment for illegal immigrants”. The aim was to make life in Britain so onerous for immigrants that those who could not produce the documents at any, random, point in their daily life, would find their life so difficult that they would, in the words of Mitt Romney, “self-deport”.

The policy, set out in the 2014 and 2016 immigration acts, demanded that employers, bank staff, NHS staff, private landlords and a range of other bodies (I have been asked to produce my passport in order to do a book reading at a literary festival) require evidence of people’s citizenship or immigration status. It also introduced a “deport first, appeal later” policy for thousands facing removal who face no “risk of serious irreversible harm”. This, we may assume, is how a South African woman was accused of faking an illness to avoid deportation, only to die five days later.

The acts, implemented first in the year that Ukip won the European elections and then again in the year of the Brexit referendum, were red meat to the grievances of a base that the Tories were losing. We should not be surprised that they are adversely affecting black Britons who have every right to be here, any more than we should have been surprised when there was a rise in Islamophobic attacks following Brexit – even though precious few Muslims in Britain come from elsewhere in Europe.

And so it is, 70 years after Windrush brought the symbolic arrival of postwar Caribbean migrants, Braithwaite is one of many who now struggle to justify their existence. There’s Renford McIntyre, 64, who came to Britain from Jamaica when he was 14 to join his mum, worked as a tool setter, and is now homeless and unemployed, after he was fired when he couldn’t produce papers to prove his citizenship. Or 61-year-old Paulette Wilson who used to cook for MPs in the House of Commons. She was put in Yarl’s Wood removal centre and then taken to Heathrow for deportation, before a last-minute reprieve prevented her from being sent to Jamaica, which she last visited when she was 10 and where she has no surviving relatives. Or Albert Thompson, a 63-year-old who came from Jamaica as a teenager and has lived in London for 44 years. He was evicted from his council house and has now been denied NHS treatment for his cancer unless he can stump up £54,000, all because they question his immigration status.

Caribbean diplomats have once again called for the Home Office to show compassion. “This is affecting people who came and gave a lifetime of service at a time when the UK was calling for workers and migrants,” explains the Barbados high commissioner, Guy Hewitt. “They came because they were encouraged to come here to help build post-second world war Britain and build it into the multicultural place that it is now.” But if compassion is lacking, common sense would do.

Even as citizenship tests aim to impart to newcomers the “values of toleration and fair play”, immigration laws have sent longstanding citizens, who have paid their taxes and raised their families here, to homeless shelters or deportation centres because they have not been able to provide paperwork issued more than 40 years ago when they were kids.

For, lest we forget, this is also the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech: a moment that revealed the galvanising force of populist racism. This mood bleeds effortlessly into immigration policy – the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 was passed the same year, further restricting the future right of entry for former citizens of the empire and loosening the connections about which Prince Charles waxed so lyrical. Braithwaite was one of those “charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies” to which Powell so disparagingly referred.

Arriving in 1961 (in the same year as my parents and coming from the same place) when Barbados was not yet independent, Braithwaite was effectively a British subject when he arrived and his parents would have had passports to that effect. To find himself treated in this way is not just a violation of natural justice – it is an abdication of Britain’s historical responsibility. Since he arrived before 1973, he has an automatic and permanent right to remain. He has violated no law; it is the law that is violating him.'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/13/commonwealth-citizens-harassment-british-immigration-policy

[HanoiVillan]

Government continue to take very, very seriously the plight of senior citizens they are kicking out of the country:

'Downing Street has rejected a formal diplomatic request to discuss the immigration problems being experienced by some Windrush-generation British citizens at this week’s meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government, rebuffing a request from representatives of 12 Caribbean countries for a meeting with the prime minister.

[. . .]

The refusal has given Caribbean diplomats the impression that the UK government is not taking a sufficiently serious approach to the problem that is affecting large numbers of long-term UK residents who came to Britain as children.

Some have been threatened with deportation to countries they left as children 50 years ago and have not returned to since. Others have been denied access to healthcare, lost jobs or been made homeless because they do not have sufficient paperwork to prove they have the right to be in the UK.'

They have taken the very useful step of issuing 'guidance', which is just self-justifying cant:

'Late on Friday, the Home Office issued a guidance summary of what Commonwealth-born, long-term UK residents should do if they were concerned that they did not have the necessary papers to prove their right to be in the UK.

The guidance acknowledges that problems are only now beginning to arise because of newly tightened immigration rules, and states: “Recent changes to the law mean that if you wish to work, rent property or have access to benefits and services in the UK then you will need documents to demonstrate your right to be in the UK. The government believes this is a proportionate measure to maintain effective immigration control.”'

As usual, the government's recommendation is for these pensioners, who are being kicked out of jobs and homes, and denied access to benefits, to lawyer up:

'However, there was nothing new in the guidance, and charities working with people in this situation expressed frustration that the government continued to suggest that individuals seek legal advice. That is often prohibitively expensive for people who have been told they are not permitted to work and are not eligible for benefits.'

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/15/no-10-refuses-caribbean-request-to-discuss-children-of-windrush

This situation is a national disgrace. 

 

[snowychap]

29 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

This situation is a national disgrace. 

Absolutely and Mrs May is most definitely to blame.

 

[HanoiVillan]

I promise I will stop banging on about this, but only when the government actually does something about it. If you'd like to put some faces to names:

 

[bickster]

Signed this the other day

38 Degrees - Save the Windrush Generation Petition

[HanoiVillan]

3 hours ago, bickster said:

Signed this the other day

38 Degrees - Save the Windrush Generation Petition

Thanks for linking this. There was another - doubtless well-intentioned - petition the other day, and I considered linking it but unfortunately it contained the word 'amnesty', which I thought implied these people had done something wrong, so I decided not to. Glad to see that this one doesn't make the same mistake. 

[blandy]

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Thanks for linking this. There was another - doubtless well-intentioned - petition the other day, and I considered linking it but unfortunately it contained the word 'amnesty', which I thought implied these people had done something wrong, so I decided not to. Glad to see that this one doesn't make the same mistake. 

I signed one linked by David Lammy MP from that twitter, I think that one mentioned an amnesty too, but I didn't se it as "letting people off" and as if they'd done  bad thing (which you're right, they haven't) just as a term to mean "No, they don't need to prove [anything]"

[blandy]

Blimey even JRM is slagging off the guvmint.

 

[HanoiVillan]

41 minutes ago, blandy said:

I signed one linked by David Lammy MP from that twitter, I think that one mentioned an amnesty too, but I didn't se it as "letting people off" and as if they'd done  bad thing (which you're right, they haven't) just as a term to mean "No, they don't need to prove [anything]"

I take your point, but I think the word 'amnesty' confuses that unnecessarily (in fact, David Lammy made the same point in his tweet endorsing the petition). 

Also:

Please keep in mind if/when watching this tonight that the Home Office has a 'deport first, appeal later' policy, so the concept of 'deported in error' is a nonsense on their own terms. 

[snowychap]

19 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Please keep in mind if/when watching this tonight that the Home Office has a 'deport first, appeal later' policy, so the concept of 'deported in error' is a nonsense on their own terms.

Also bear this in mind with regard to the 'settled status' stuff for citizens from the EU27.

If we are not to hear of similar stories but on a much larger scale during (and after) the application process then the Home Offiice (and the government) need to change their attitude pretty sharpish.

[dAVe80]

Already had an email from my union, with a link to a petition, and showing solidarity (more than likely the same one bicks posted). Absolutely bonkers that these people are having to go through this indignity.  

[bickster]

Amber Rudd watch:

Noakes was sat right behind Rudd at the time

 

[Chindie]

We apparently literally have a guidance sheet for people deported to Jamaica, obviously aimed at people who don't actually have a clue what life in Jamaica is like.

I mean... Try to be Jamaican? **** hell.

This government is a **** disgrace. And it's embodied in its leader.

Then again robots aren't known for their basic decency.

[PompeyVillan]

That's disgusting, 'Try to be Jamaican' is an admission that those being deported are British. 

Thing is with the Conservatives is, they'll try to get away with being complete words removed unless there is public outcry. 

[ml1dch]

6 hours ago, snowychap said:

Also bear this in mind with regard to the 'settled status' stuff for citizens from the EU27.

If we are not to hear of similar stories but on a much larger scale during (and after) the application process then the Home Offiice (and the government) need to change their attitude pretty sharpish.

It's certainly not difficult to imagine Guy Verhofstadt standing up in the European Parliament saying "how can we take these people seriously when it comes to citizens' rights when this is how they treat people"

And he'd be right.

Edited April 16, 2018 by ml1dch