Here in Ghana people are stunned by the announcement that a bond of £3,000 will have to be submitted by visa applicants to the UK, redeemable on return.
It is unpleasant for a nation to be singled out as comprised of particularly untrustworthy individuals against whom special measures are needed. Theresa May appears quite deliberately to be singling out countries whose citizens are normally black or brown – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ghana and Nigeria. They are all citizens with extremely close ties to the UK. For example, all of those countries supplied large numbers of men to British armed forces in two World Wars; with little resulting gratitude.
The true level of Britain’s regard for the Commonwealth is disclosed in all its arrogance; citizenship of the Commonwealth countries with the longest link to the UK will become a positive disadvantage in visa application. Israeli settlers living in Occupied Palestine on the West Bank, incidentally, will still be allowed to enter the UK without any visa at all, despite membership of neither Commonwealth nor EU. Paradoxical, isn’t it?
The measure shows the arrogant British disdain for these countries – of which India pre-eminently but also Ghana are fast growing and important trading partners. Undoubtedly Ghana will retaliate with measures which hurt British businesses; many of my good friends are senior Ghanaian politicians, and they are all furious. The rhetoric the British employ about transformation from colonial status to a modern partnership of equals is exposed for the tissue of lies it has always been. This is a straightforward racist measure, aimed at securing the racist vote to the Tories.
Not does it make any sense. If you are intending to enter the UK under false pretences, and have the intent illegally to settle and start a new life there, then £3,000 is scarcely a deterrent given the substantial economic gains you intend to make over the long period you intend to stay. It will rather seem a good investment; people will find the money. The people it will deter are those who never intended to overstay. The extra cash upfront, to the businessman for a business trip, for the student coming to study, for the tourist will drive them to go elsewhere, to the UK’s net loss.
More cruelly it will deter decent middle class people from coming to see grandchildren in the holidays, from going to the niece’s wedding, from going to graduation. Those things will become the prerogative of the wealthy, those with plenty of cash to spare.
This does nothing to deter illegal immigration. It merely demonstrates populist racism, demonstrates contempt for some of the UK’s best-disposed friends, and demonstrates that the government thinks the right to travel is only for the rich. It is contemptible.
I have a happy vision of several people who commonly insult each other on this board ensconced together in a pub and laughing uproariously. Cheeky monkeys 😉
Did you look up PFI yet, Jemand?
@ Villager :
“Hotter than July” !! Precious!!!!! 🙂
Alpha plus for that one!
@Jives. 1 19pm
“…its so much more efficient to bomb them to smithereens in their own lands?”
Not only pissed off but also off-piste again.
Surely it is simply an issue of how we frame the action of dropping high explosives and depleted uranium to save lives and improve everything in far off dictatorships.
Think not of bombs but of “seeds of democracy” and voila, the issue is suddenly resolved!
Is there a collective noun for trolls?
And anyway once those nasty dictators start thinking about alternative currencies, domestic oil revenues, greening deserts and the like, the next thing you know they’ll be independent of the western sphere of influence. Perish the thought.
Our leaders have difficult decisions to make and sometimes they have to be cruel to be kind. It doesn’t help them when you criticise everything they do.
“Villager’s amourous (sic) ….
How about the 4th July, such fitting special day (sic) for all global lovers of freedom and democracy via the barrel of a gun, I’m sure people will come.”
Never-a-mind sounds like you’re a bit lonely and need to come. 🙂 Sure you’re on the right website here?
Btw, just a tip (pun intended), under new regulations (which expressly include failed-foreign-petty-politicians) in case you don’t sort out your English, you may not be entitled to your benefits.
GET TO WORK!
FJ. 7 02pm
It’s trolls.
On topic.
Reginald D. hunter on racism (1 06mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg6CTFwOalc
Unusual to find words like these from one of the stenographers– to-power.
The British – supine to the last when it comes to America – are of course silent.
It’s Alex Thomson on Channel 4 News’ Snowmail who engages in the usual derisory descriptions of Edward Snowden….fugitive…mole…
‘Anger grows over claims NSA bugged EU offices
Astonishing language being fired off by senior European politicians at the USA tonight – not least by the Germans. ‘Abhorrent’, ‘disgusting’, ‘treating us like the enemy’, ‘Cold War tactics’, ‘like the Stasi’ are just some of the accusations being levelled at Washington if it is proven they have indeed been spying on EU offices. Well – they pretty much seem to have been spying on everyone and everything else – if the tip-offs by the still-stranded Mr Snowden are reliable.
US and EU reaction appears to confirm that the leaks from the fugitive intelligence officer to Der Spiegel magazine are indeed reliable, with the documents to back them up, according to the magazine. The resulting language is the like of which we have not seen being traded across the Atlantic in many a long year.
The British – supine to the last when it comes to America – are of course silent. Not so the Germans and others. Not so at all.
For now US President Barack Obama – who has been caught out as a devotee of interfering with people’s communications up to and including diplomats and journalists before now – seems to think the only game in town is apprehending Mr Snowden.
Pretty soon he is going to have to deal with what the mole has leaked, rather than the simple (and as yet quite ineffective) manhunt for the leaker. Jane Dodge has been digging.’
ex Medialens
Kibo, consider my last post to you on the UN thread (good omen) as an olive branch. Please understand, my essential quarrel was not with you (by definition) personally but with the lack of attention to the issue in moderation, given the rapidly deteriorating situation at the time on the blog overall. In the spirit of Technicolour’s comment above i’d be quite happy to share a bowl of noohdles with you sometime.
Jenny from the Bloc;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/30/jennifer-lopez-performance-turkmenistan
‘Trollers’ Mary – ‘Fishing’ for interpersonal conflict and shock-value controversy by those predisposed to antagonism.
Well said Mark. Free speech has it’s limits in the US. You can’t falsely yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater.
June; I saw this morning that Der Spiegel was specifically targeted. This is no Benghazi kerfluffle.
totally off topic
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/children-with-three-parents-allowed-to-adapt-larkin-poem-2013062874271
(sorry)
“Did you look up PFI yet, Jemand?”
No, sorry. I’m busy having an interesting conversation with my cat.
Can you look it up and get back to me with the gist of it?
Thanks.
Ah, Jemand, and I was trying to take your comments as though they were being made by someone who was worth responding too, and/or knew what they were on about. Please accept my apologies. In all seriousness, I do realise that cats are more fun than facts 🙂
You misunderstand Technicolour. What I mean is that conversing with my cat is more informative and interesting than engaging with you. I thought you would have understood that.
On the whole; the more shit… Sorry for the unflavourable language. We consume the mor vat we pay to the government.
Of which come’s back in health care.
On the whole! It is all equatable.
Education would reasonanly suffice but with no restraint on idiocracy.
The shit stick’s continiously.
As usual the weak and unfortunate fall behind ad hominem.
In case anyone is puzzling over the posts from Technicolour and Villager (both at 17h17), they are referring to a post of mine of a little earlier, which questioned a couple of elements in an O/T post by Mary/April Showers/Flaming June, namely (1) that 22 million Egyptians had signed a petition against President Morsi and (2) that Morsi was an American stooge.
I asked for the source of the claim about the 22 million, signatories and also asked Mary whether there was any potential Egyptian leader wholm she would not accuse of being an American stooge.
Needless to say, that post of mine was soon deleted.
It is beginning to look as if Mary (and Doug Scorgie, who was also briefly alluded to in my post) are rapidly becoming protected species.
****************
La vita è bella, life is good (I post, you might be offended, he/she/it censors…)
er, naturally, but the issue you had was, you said, about a system “that promises quality and then delivers excuses because of financial problems.”
equally naturally, i presumed you’d have some kind of idea about what engendered the ‘financial problems’ – or be interested in their causes.
hey, we can’t all be aware of stuff. cats are great; enjoy.
sorry; above to Jemand. habbakuk yep, would also like to see source for that 22 million.
Noted Mark. 🙂
Technicolour Yes. Man has now become Creator. There has hardly been any comment in depth on what is being proposed and no thought of what the repercussions and future consequences might be.
Heard that Agent Cameron is being accompanied by a party of 30 British business heads on his visit to Kazakhstan. Bet there is some representation of arms manufacture amongst them. Shades of previous visits to other cruel dictatorships like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Land transit rights are being sought for getting our junk out of Afghanistan. I think Craig told us that Hammond has already done a deal with Karimov for the same.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/30/us-kazakhstan-britain-cameron-idUSBRE95T08S20130630http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/30/us-kazakhstan-britain-cameron-idUSBRE95T08S20130630
well, there we are, a quick search for the 22 million petition and here:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/22-million-sign-anti-morsi-petition-egypt-opposition.aspx?pageID=238&nID=49706&NewsCatID=352
and here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/anti-morsi-petition_n_3521595.html
‘claims’ you note. but if anyone has taken any interest in Egypt after the flash-bangs of excited temporary reporting a while back, significant numbers are not surprising.
@ Technicolour
“equally naturally, i presumed you’d have some kind of idea about what engendered the ‘financial problems’ – or be interested in their causes.”
______________
On the assumption that what is meant are the financial problems of the NHS, then the answer is simple : it is the problem of unlimited demand for a product or service which is free at the point of delivery to the consumer or user.
(And, btw, re-assigning govt expenditure tends merely to shift the problem to other areas where there is similar unlimited (and expanding) demand for same (eg, social security).
(And before someone says “defence”, look up the figures for govt expenditure on the NHS, social security, pensions and defence, pls)
“it is the problem of unlimited demand for a product or service which is free at the point of delivery to the consumer or user.”
Habbakuk, my dear, I wish I thought that, but I have read too many facts, Many of them from the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8877412/NHS-among-best-health-care-systems-in-the-world.html
That was our model.
Jon, since i’ve read Habby’s protest, will you delete this provocation also:
“Flaming June
30 Jun, 2013 – 7:02 pm
Is there a collective noun for trolls?”
Actually my TRUE view is that there is now a risk that the pendulum will swing the other way — too much snipping, whereas it may logically be the case that water might find its own balance.
If Habby’s tone is respectful, why protect any species. Learning to ignore certain people or even have a civil laugh at their expense, is part of life! In the end people can only reach the nirvana that all posters and non-posters aspire to, by dissolving the self, the ego. Plenty of opportunity here in a relatively safe virtual environment.
“”A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN
hello, Villager, how interesting compared to nhs funding racism etc – and this has what to do with anything but yourself, precisely?