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jje1000 said:
The UK is a political mess! Not sure how they will refloat this wreck.
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There's a 7 month gap in posting in this thread and you came along to say the above, seemingly out of nowhere, with no media link and no elaboration.

What brought that on?
 
Northern Light said:
There's a 7 month gap in posting in this thread and you came along to say the above, seemingly out of nowhere, with no media link and no elaboration.

What brought that on?
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- Continued austerity 2.0
- An inept Westminister that continues to make unforced errors and burn through whatever legitimacy it has left
- Useless king that pales as a beacon of nationalism compared to his mother
- Continued mass migration/unsustainably changing demographics, and declining services/national morale
- Stagnant, financialized economy that show little change,
- Atrophied military despite new spending
- Loss of Chagos Islands through a pointless deal that ultimately benefits China (due to Mauritius’s debt to it, and its geopolitical interests) and not even its indigenous inhabitants
- Potential to now lose Parthenon marbles through needless policy changes
- Giving up control of Gibaltar border to a hostile Spain and the EU, a deal which was rushed through hush-hush.

And this is just scratching the surface. I wouldn’t be surprised if the future of the Falklands re-emerges as a question within the end of the decade.
 
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jje1000 said:
- Continued austerity 2.0
- An inept Westminister that continues to make unforced errors and burn through whatever legitimacy it has left
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Sure.

jje1000 said:
- Useless king that pales as a beacon of nationalism compared to his mother
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I'm unexcited by the monarchy regardless of who occupies the throne.

jje1000 said:
- Continued mass migration/unsustainably changing demographics, and declining services/national morale
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Wasn't there a white paper on immigration just a month ago..........?

jje1000 said:
- Stagnant, financialized economy that show little change,
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Agreed.

jje1000 said:
- Atrophied military despite new spending
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Agreed.

jje1000 said:
- Loss of Chagos Islands through a pointless deal that ultimately benefits China (due to Mauritius’s debt to it, and its geopolitical interests) and not even its indigenous inhabitants
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Albeit at a cost, The UK/US operation has a 100-year lease on the Island w/the Diego Garcia base on it. I'm not sure that I see a strategic loss here in the near term. But I'll grant I don't see much upside either.

jje1000 said:
- Giving up control of Gibaltar border to a hostile Spain and the EU, a deal which was rushed through hush-hush.
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I thought the deal was for joint control of the border, with authorities from the UK/Spain both being present?
 
I would have opted for it sucks being trans in the UK as one good example of it being a mess in the last seven months…
 
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1749940947120.png


Another stumbling block is the fact the UK freezes the UK State Pensions of people living in Canada (but not in US). Canada (and Australia) have been fighting this for decades/
 
Quite a turn of events since the doors were last thrown open:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1943294319667953817
It is not working

Scrap the asylum system—and build something better​

Rich countries need to separate asylum from labour migration​

The rules for refugees arose haphazardly. The un Refugee Convention of 1951 applied only to Europe, and aimed to stop fugitives from Stalin being sent back to face his fury. It declared that anyone forced to flee by a “well-founded fear” of persecution must have sanctuary, and must not be returned to face peril (the principle of “non-refoulement”). In 1967 the treaty was extended to the rest of the world.

Most countries have signed it. Yet dwindling numbers honour it. China admits fewer refugees than tiny Lesotho and sends North Koreans home to face the gulag. President Donald Trump has ended asylum in America for nearly everyone except white South Africans, and plans to spend more on deporting irregular migrants than other countries spend on defence. Western attitudes are hardening. In Europe the views of social democrats and right-wing populists are converging.

The system is not working. Designed for post-war Europe, it cannot cope with a world of proliferating conflict, cheap travel and huge wage disparities. Roughly 900m people would like to migrate permanently. Since it is almost impossible for a citizen of a poor country to move legally to a rich one, many move without permission. In the past two decades many have discovered that asylum offers a back door. Instead of crossing a border stealthily, as in the past, they walk up to a border guard and request asylum, knowing that the claim will take years to adjudicate and, in the meantime, they can melt into thwork. Votersnd find work.

Voters are right to think the system has been gamed. Most asylum claims in the European Union are now rejected outright. Fear of border chaos has fuelled the rise of populism, from Brexit to Donald Trump, and poisoned the debate about legal migration. To create a system that offers safety for those who need it but also a reasonable flow of labour migration, policymakers need to separate one from the other.

Around 123m people have been displaced by conflict, disaster or persecution, three times more than in 2010, partly because wars are lasting longer. All these people have a right to seek safety. But “safety” need not mean access to a rich country’s labour market. Indeed, resettlement in rich countries will never be more than a tiny part of the solution. In 2023 oecd countries received 2.7m claims for asylum—a record number, but a pinprick compared with the size of the problem.

The most pragmatic approach would be to offer more refugees sanctuary close to home. Typically, this means in the first safe country or regional bloc where they set foot. Refugees who travel shorter distances are more likely one day to return home. They are also more likely to be welcomed by their hosts, who tend to be culturally close to them and to be aware that they are seeking the first available refuge from a calamity. This is why Europeans have largely welcomed Ukrainians, Turks have been generous to Syrians and Chadians to Sudanese.

Looking after refugees closer to home is often much cheaper. The un refugee agency spends less than $1 a day on each refugee in Chad. Given limited budgets, rich countries would help far more people by funding refugee agencies properly—which they currently do not—than by housing refugees in first-world hostels or paying armies of lawyers to argue over their cases. They should also assist the host countries generously, and encourage them to let refugees support themselves by working, as an increasing number do.

Compassionate Westerners may feel an urge to help the refugees they see arriving on their shores. But if the journey is long, arduous and costly, the ones who complete it will usually not be the most desperate, but male, healthy and relatively well-off. Fugitives from Syria’s war who made it to next-door Turkey were a broad cross-section of Syrians; those who reached Europe were 15 times more likely to have college degrees. When Germany opened its doors to Syrians in 2015-16, it inspired 1m refugees who had already found safety in Turkey to move to Europe in pursuit of higher wages. Many went on to lead productive lives, but it is not obvious why they deserved priority over the legions of other, sometimes better-qualified people who would have relished the same opportunity.

Voters have made clear they want to choose whom to let in—and this does not mean everyone who shows up and claims asylum. If rich countries want to stem such arrivals, they need to change the incentives. Migrants who trek from a safe country to a richer one should not be considered for asylum. Those who arrive should be sent to a third country for processing. If governments want to host refugees from far-off places, they can select them at source, where the un already registers them as they flee from war zones.

Some courts will say this violates the principle of non-refoulement. But it need not if the third country is safe. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, wants to send asylum-seekers to have their cases heard in Albania, which qualifies. South Sudan, where Mr Trump wants to dump illicit migrants, does not. Deals can be done to win the co-operation of third-country governments, especially if rich countries act together, as the eu is starting to. Once it becomes clear that arriving uninvited confers no advantage, the numbers doing so will plummet.

The politics of the possible​

That should restore order at the frontier, and so create political space for a calmer discussion of labour migration. Rich countries would benefit from more foreign brains. Many also want young hands to work on farms and in care homes, as Ms Meloni proposes. An orderly influx of talent would make both host countries and the migrants themselves more prosperous.

Dealing with the backlog of previous irregular arrivals would still be hard. Mr Trump’s policy of mass deportation is both cruel and expensive. Far better to let those who have put down roots stay, while securing the border and changing the incentives for future arrivals. If liberals do not build a better system, populists will build a worse one.
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10 years ago, in a more prosperous yet more naive Europe:
1752197960730.png
 
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The Starmer government's ''Online Safety Act'' has attracted a lot of controversy. It will require users to verify age to access certain website, including porn sites. However, it also gives the UK government ability to censor certain sites and ban them as well, and the announcement of a possible ban on Wikipedia, pending a lawsuit from Wikipedia against the UK government over censorship and needing the age ID, is proving very controversial. In addition, there is talk that following a surge in VPN usage following the talk of a potential Wikipedia ban, that VPNs could get banned in the UK as well.

Access Restricted

www.telegraph.co.uk

www.birminghammail.co.uk

UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets

Labour could ban the use of Virtual Private Networks after use skyrocketed in recent days.
www.birminghammail.co.uk www.birminghammail.co.uk
 
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thettctransitfanatic said:
Starmer government also wants to ban VPNs now or is in the process of doing so after millions signed up for them following a possible Wikipedia ban
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Can you please start providing citations for your statements? You keep posting stuff that other people might want to share, but never any links to it.
 
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