diable rouge

Bring back commas!...

Bit of research, the poll was carried out before the Rwanda deal was announced. Here's a graph showing the steady decline of immigration being a concern for voters...

The Rwanda deal hasn't kicked in yet so I'm not sure it's had any impact on people's thoughts about immigration. I think immigration has actually gone up since the EU ref, with EU immigration being replaced by Non-EU immigration, but that never makes the front pages of the right-wing papers, when previously it did because it was a convenient stick with which to hit the EU with. A lot of the channel crossings are asylum seekers not immigrants, and they only make up about 6% of all immigration. It's just that they are far more visible and as Cat rightly says, the Gov wants to be seen to be doing something. The Gov is basically the school bully picking on the weakest in the class. The Gov could've of course create safe legal routes with processing centres here in the UK, or even in France as they have offered to do so, but that would be far too sensible and wouldn't make the headlines...

''But....it may be successful in two other areas....1) winning votes from anti-immigration voters, with headlines showing the govt is 'doing something' '' A Mail on Sunday poll put immigration in 11th place as to what were voters main concerns...

hammerman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Angelina Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Didn?t Australia put something like this in > place, > > which dramatically reduced the number of > > immigrants attempting to enter Australia > > Yes they did and now the UK are doing the same. The UK isn't doing the same as Australia. Australia has an 'offshore-processing' system, and if asylum seekers are granted asylum I presume they can return to Australia legally. The UK is deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. That's it. Nothing else is happening. There's no processing system in Rwanda to see if they can apply for asylum in the UK. All they can do is claim asylum in Rwanda, or more likely, make their way back to Europe. I read somewhere over the weekend that as part of this deal with Rwanda the UK will be receiving a limited number of other asylum seekers that Rwanda doesn't want. So, here we are, a supposed modern liberal democracy that now trades in 'human cargo'. It's like a form of modern-day slavery where humans are treated as commodities to be exchanged and bartered with. Utterly shameful...

Sun's out, beers in the cooler, time to chill...

At the last election I knew a few established Tory voters who didn't want to vote for Johnson but equally couldn't vote for Corbyn. Has that now changed with Starmer? Interesting thoughts on Starmer from ex-Tory MP Nick Boles... First, the bleeding obvious, he?s not exactly charismatic or exciting. But he was dealt the worst hand imaginable - the Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit and the meltdown in Scotland - and he has played it remarkably well. He has broken the grip of the far left on the party machine and policy process. He has repudiated the anti-semites in the Labour movement and won the cautious respect of the Jewish community for doing so. He has steered a fine line between broad support for the government during an unprecedented crisis (Covid) and forensic opposition of the worst examples of incompetence, waste and delay. He exposed the PM?s hypocrisy and duplicity over the Downing St parties but shrewdly waited until the police had issued the PM and the Chancellor with fixed penalty notices before calling for their resignation. He has been forthright in his support for Ukraine?s resistance against Putin?s aggression and used it to reaffirm traditional Labour values of patriotism and and the just use of military force in the defence of democracy and freedom. He has manoeuvred his most impressive MPs into the most important jobs and, after a bumpy start, found a way to harness the prodigious political talents of his deputy. Finally he has engineered a clever accommodation with the Liberal Democrats which should ensure that both parties can enjoy some of the benefits of an electoral pact while avoiding its undoubted risks and costs. I?d call that a pretty impressive scorecard. He?s not a political wizard. Not an Obama, a Clinton or a Blair. But I reckon he?ll be Prime Minister after the next election and deserve to be.

What is clear though is that to the extent there are conservative gains the government will see this as validation of their positioning, so emboldening them on the party fines position, giving them a pass on the new horrific policy of selling refugees to Rwanda are two that particularly stick out. This. Anyone who thinks that if the Tories do well in the locals, that Johnson then won't laud it as vindication of him and his policies, is away with the fairies...

I've enjoyed watching West Ham's progress, the Hammers fans might even one day forget about the Boleyn. On that subject, I miss the West Ham bantz on this thread, is there nothing that will bring them back?...

''So much like the Nazis, that something almost identical was attempted by Israel a few years back?'' I don't get this line of reasoning at all, it's like saying a victim of racism can't then later go onto to act in a racist way themselves. Due to it's history, it would obviously be insensitive to call Israel actual Nazi's, but if it had a policy that mirrored a policy the Nazi's used, then that parallel needs to be drawn, likewise with the UK. And it isn't hyperbole to suggest such a parallel exists, this from Sir Richard Evans, Professor Emeritus of History at Cambridge... ''I'm not the only historian of modern Germany to find that the UK government scheme to deport asylum seekers to a tropical part of Africa irresistibly reminds them of the failed Nazi scheme to deport Jews to Madagascar.'' Leaving aside the shameful inhumanity of what is essentially a deportation scheme, it's good to highlight Israel's use of a similar policy because it ultimately failed. This from journalist Mathew Thompson... Between 2014 and 2017, Israel is estimated to have deported around 4,000 asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda. Nearly every single one of them left. Many were smuggled back towards Europe, facing capture by militias, Islamic State, and a perilous crossing of the Med. Commenting on the policy in 2017, the UN Refugee Agency said it was "concerned that these persons have not found adequate safety or a durable solution to their plight." It also said it was only aware of nine people who had stayed in Rwanda. Nine In 2018, Israeli newspaper @haaretzcom tracked down six of those who had stayed, and wrote that: "All six live a meager existence in Kigali, struggling to survive." Is this "building a new life in a dynamic country" as Johnson has just said? Indeed, one of the deportees Haaretz spoke to had been living on the street for two months. That is not to say it is definitely the fate that awaits people deported from Britain. But the UK must surely be alive to the dangers. The final warning from Israel's experience is that after a significant public backlash, and legal intervention from the Supreme Court, the scheme fell apart. The Gov will know all about Israel's policy and why it failed, yet they are still prepared to shame 'Global Britain' on the world stage just to deflect from the domestic mess of their own making. And judging by the Mail's front page, Johnson has already laid the ground for the eventual narrative to his Brexit base that he would've got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky 'left wing lawyers'...

Easter Bunny Week 30 fixtures... Saturday 16th April Tottenham Hotspur v Brighton & Hove Albion Manchester United v Norwich City Southampton v Arsenal Watford v Brentford Sunday 17th April Newcastle United v Leicester City West Ham United v Burnley Tuesday 19th April Liverpool v Manchester United Wednesday 20th April Chelsea v Arsenal Everton v Leicester City Newcastle United v Crystal Palace Manchester City v Brighton & Hove Albion Thursday 21st April Burnley v Southampton

A desperate PM and Gov doing desperate things shocker. Don't be surprised if Article 16 is triggered in order to throw some red meat at the Brexit base...

Leaders of rebel slave armies don't have time to socialise...

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It's like the magic Roundabout. If only. Zebedee knew when to fook off...

''Stratton resigned because they were parties. Everyone knows they were parties.'' Worth remembering that Stratton didn't even attend the Christmas party alluded to in that video, and therefore broke no rules. Instead she resigned because of jokey references she made that there might have been a party (we were still talking about a party in the singular), which Johnson then later stood up in Parliament and feigned 'disgust' at what he had seen in the video, knowing full well he had attended several parties himself...

If No. 10 has been briefing against Sunak, then Sunak may be thinking about resigning just to put the heat on Johnson. He's already moved his family out of No 11 so could've well been thinking along those lines before this blew up today. There's still more fines to come, then the Sue Gray report. I still think a lot of the Tory MPs will only act and try and get rid of Johnson if they feel their own seats are at risk. With the Tory party it's always been about holding onto power and who is best positioned to do that. Once they feel Johnson is an electoral liability, only then will they act, the local elections could be the catalyst..

PM says he attended "brief gathering" in Cabinet room for birthday "lasting for less than 10 minutes". Where in the rules did it say you can hold a social gathering as long as it was brief and less than 10 minutes? Where in the rules did it say you could visit a dying relative/friend in hospital as long as it was brief and less than 10 minutes? Where in the rules did it say you could attend the funeral of said dying relative/friend as long as it was brief and less than 10 minutes? And so on. They're laughing at us...

There's going to be lots of takes on this over the coming hours/days, this is Robert Peston's latest and he's right to highlight why it's important that it should matter in a functioning democracy... The police have today concluded that the PM, the Chancellor and the PM?s wife all attended illegal parties, that breached Covid laws written by the PM. This is most serious for Boris Johnson of the three of them, because it was he who told MPs on 8 December that he had been ?repeatedly assured? there were no parties and that no Covid rules were broken. He now has the challenge of his life to prove that he did not wilfully and knowingly mislead MPs - because if he did deliberately mislead MPs then he has no choice but to resign under the code of conduct for ministers, which he signed off and approved in keeping with normal practice on becoming prime minister. This is perhaps the most important test of the robustness and efficacy of the checks and balances in the British constitution of my lifetime. If Tory MPs unthinkingly keep him in office without a proper and public assessment of how parliament was misled, because that is what suits them, and if they blithely ignore the Ministerial Code, then the charge will stick that this or any party with a big majority is simply an elected dictatorship, and the constitution means little or nothing. This is not just a slippery slope. It is the bottom of the slope.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!... *Switches on Sky News...*

Week 29 points... Week 29 table...

Parliament has got Hansard. The EDF has got ianr...:)

Thanks for the correction Ian, passed a couple of weeks ago, didn't spot it in the news at the time but I guess Ukraine has rightly dominated the headlines...

If the questions were the same, it wouldn't be long before the questions had been passed on to all and sundry :) 5 years is the maximum term a Gov can serve, it can still call an election before then if it so wishes subject to conditions in the Fixed Term Parliament Act...

I'm with Bulb and they sent an email confirming when the meter readings were submitted, do you have something similar?...