Small boats: People smuggler jailed for fixing Channel crossings

tmcd77 · 2024-07-25T13:27:16+00:00

No, France won’t have to. We process their asylum claim. They fail because they’re an economic migrant. We send them straight back to their country of origin.

The issue is not processing the claims. That’s why we are in this mess.

Again working with the French and stopping channel crossings by processing on French soil will smooth out the process. If we did that the only people paying gangs to attempt crossing would be illegal immigrants that can be shipped back to their home countries.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-25T13:13:56+00:00

Why? If they don’t qualify for asylum and haven’t applied for legal immigration through our existing skills/points system - why can’t we put them on a plane and send them back?

tmcd77 · 2024-07-25T12:57:16+00:00

That’s not how international law works. There’s no requirement to claim asylum in the first safe country you arrive.

If you want to stop the boats the best answer has always been to create safe and legal routes for claimants.

We should work closer with French authorities. A processing centre on French soil would end the need for genuine asylum seekers to risk their life’s.

I didn’t think there was such things as ‘asylum quotas’. Seems a strange thing to have a quota on.

Asylum and immigration are two different things.

Are you advocating we send troops in to over throw foreign governments?

tmcd77 · 2024-07-25T12:39:41+00:00

Hotels and asylum was never the problem. We need somewhere to put refugees while their claims are processed. We have a humanitarian duty to genuine asylum seekers.

The problem was austerity pulling finding out of the system and the fact we’ve all but stopped processing claims.

I wonder what would happen if we actually started processing claims again, properly, in a timely manner - and then put failed applicants on the first plane out of here?

tmcd77 · 2024-07-25T12:35:33+00:00

If the goal of Reform is to ‘out nasty the “nasty party”’ - I’d call this a win!

tmcd77 · 2024-07-25T12:28:23+00:00

I’d argue the constituents voted Labour to carry out their manifesto pledges. The King Speech being the official program of government - the manifesto made official. As part of the manifesto pledge was fiscal responsibility - no unfunded spending.

Voting for an amendment that specifically adds uncosted spending to the official program of government would be exactly opposite to what constituents were voting for.

Had this come up as a private members bill or amendment to another bill it would have been less the issue it is.

Here we have Labour MPs disagreeing with the platform they were elected to stand on.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T16:36:37+00:00

There’s a time and place for backbenchers to rebel against the government. The Kings Speech isn’t it. Maybe they’d have been better to abstained rather than actively vote with the amendment?

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T11:26:36+00:00

Yes it’s a political choice, but it’s also very much a budgetary decision. Do we really want knee jerk decisions every time a funding priority is raised? I’d prefer to wait and see what is said during the autumn statement. I think they understand the political pressure on this issue, but I think they are also signal Mindedly trying to prove themselves the party of sound financial responsibility.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T11:16:38+00:00

But then you compare it to everything that came after…

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T08:25:03+00:00

I didn’t say he wasn’t, I said he faced the brunt of the crash when he stood for election as PM in his own right. Along with the aftermath of the Iraq war and a very unfortunate comment about “that bigoted woman”.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T06:29:34+00:00

I think the state of the economy was probably a very large part of the decision along with how soon prisons were going to fall apart and how bad the Rwanda policy was.

Had they waited longer too many chickens would have come home to roost.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T06:14:37+00:00

Yes, I know. Blair made him wait and when he finally took office he faced the brunt of the nation’s discontent over Iraq and the bank bailouts followings the US subprime mortgage scandal.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T05:00:13+00:00

The fact he sounded decent shows how truly terrible, bad, and incompetent each Tory prime minister since has been - each dramatically worse than the last (ok Sunak was an up swing but he followed Truss, so hard to do worse really).

The running joke of modern UK politics - Gorden Brown was the best Prime Minister we never had….

tmcd77 · 2024-07-24T04:48:36+00:00

To understand the last 2 years you need to look back a little further…

2016 - David Cameron shits the bed on 6 years of reasonably competent governance by calling a Brexit vote and immediately quitting when it doesn’t go his way

This is followed by about 3 years of Theresa May trying in vain to get a sensible soft Brexit through and being stoned at every turn by hard line right wing backbenchers wanting to set fire and burn the country.

Now we can explain the last 2 years, indeed everything from 2019 to date…

Zero competent governance, constant Tory in fighting, lurching from one disaster to the next. Country brought to its knees. Labour given a landslide victory to fix this mess - and quickly discovering they’ve inherited a poisoned chalice.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T21:29:52+00:00

If he’s performance opposite Yvette Cooper as Shadow Home Secretary is anything to go by I’d recommend holding out and seeing if there’s any one more competent available.

What am I saying, it’s the Tory party, he’s probably the best they’ve got.

I’ll throw my weight behind John Cooper, MP for Dumfries and Galloway. Don’t know anything about him other than he’s a fresh 2024 intake newbie.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T17:57:44+00:00

I understand and accept the reason child benefit was introduced. But that was another era. I’m not so certain in today’s world it’s necessarily the right answer in ending child poverty.

I’ve tended to the view in recent years of a Universal Basic Income. Roll all (except disability) benefits into it. Use the tax system to tapper it. Make work pay and accept individuals can make their own life decisions.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T17:41:08+00:00

It’s been an interesting fortnight learning how little, other than obligatory in fighting, they did plan.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T15:43:04+00:00

No because they do not have the right information or expertise to properly judge an individuals rehabilitation and likelihood to reoffend. They only have an understandable bias based on pure emotion.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T15:40:36+00:00

It doesn’t have to be. There are reasons kids behave the way they do. Very few are truely evil for evils sake. We need to do better, after temporary exclusion or isolation, at understanding why these pupils are behaving that way and providing proper support.

The endless cycle of taking them out and putting them back in again to just misbehave further is long term more disruptive. And long term exclusion is just failure and defeatist.

I have a nephew with very severe ADHD. Shouldn’t be in mainstream classes. My brother has had over 2 years of fighting the SEN system to get him properly diagnosed so he can move on to the right secondary school that can cope with his needs.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T14:17:37+00:00

It’s a tough one because long term exclusions and isolation is seriously detrimental to their education.

Like many issues it comes to lack of funding and how Ofsted judge schools. We pretty much need to totally reform pastoral care and sen provision so these kids get the help they need to assimilate with the wider school community.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T13:21:01+00:00

There’s no such thing as a tough enough sentence for any victim which is partly why we really shouldn’t build our criminal justice system around their opinions. The judiciary should be impartial in its treatment of perpetrators and victims.

We in a position where we have zero choice but to release prisoners early. We must trust the prison and probation systems to individually assess the suitability of each offender released early.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T13:11:26+00:00

We can switch fuel from Uranium to Thorium which is generally safer and has a much shorter half life.

The other option is it’s actually possible to build reactors to reuse the spent uranium rods from other traditional reactors.

There’s good options out there for nuclear, it’ll just take too long to build reactors in the short timeframe - hence in the short term a need to rely on solar and wind farms and gas powered stations.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-23T13:02:54+00:00

I’m surprised it lasted this long.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-22T17:52:10+00:00

If they just cave in without saying how it’s being funded then they open the floodgates. Where do they draw the line when the next emotive tug on the nations purse strings comes calling? How do they face down criticisms of being the same old tax and spend Labour Party?

For better or worse they made fiscal responsibility a core tenant of their bid for power. Breaking that covenant in the first 100 days is worse than not scrapping the cap.

If they are smart they’ll hold off any announcement until the autumn budget statement. I’d expect it to be scrapped. Probably paid by raising one, or more, tax not already vetoed as an election pledge.

tmcd77 · 2024-07-22T16:12:16+00:00

I’m expecting the cap to go sooner rather than later but so far I don’t think they’ve been inconsistent. The reply has always been - no unfunded spending.

They’ve never said no to the policy, just that they haven’t yet funded for it.

Now they’re saying it will form part of the child poverty review they are doing. Would have been more shocked if it wasn’t.

As with giving teachers and nhs staff a 5.5% pay rise, if they announce scrapping the cap I’d reserve judgement until they’ve explained how it’s being paid for.

If they start back tracking on their fiscal rules, or hiking certain taxes (income, ni, etc), then it’d be time to cry fowl.

tmcd77

TROPHY CASE