The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[chrisp65]

Anyway, Dem, it feels like it could feel a bit like a pile on and I don’t want that. So I’ll park it up for a while. Always interesting. 

The reason you get so many responses is because you come over as genuine and not just trolling. So good on ya!

 

 

[StefanAVFC]

There is freedom is have an opinion, but there is also the freedom to use facts to definitively prove that this opinion is wrong. We are objectively a safe country by every statistical measure. You can live in a less safe area of a safe country, and feel unsafe.

We are also statistically a 'big' country. You can feel we aren't, but we are. 

[HanoiVillan]

This is moral cowardice

 

[Xann]

Where do you live @Demitri_C

Are there kids fighting over a patch or something?

I'd move, if I was living in fear?

[HanoiVillan]

Probably worth a compare and contrast:

He just went ahead and said it . . . and the world didn't cave in.

[chrisp65]

Worth comparing the anger at their £36 per week with the, nothingness, generated by the news the expenses bill last year for the House of Lords was £23 Million

There were 100 ‘Lords’ that between them made no known contribution and did not speak in any debates, other than they claimed over a m,illion in expenses between them.

I know the two are not comparable, I know it’s not a fair comparison. I just want, in the name of balance, BBC and Sky reporters shouting at them from a boat on the Thames. Or on the back of an open back truck, following their car through the streets of London. Live.

 

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

 

We are also statistically a 'big' country. You can feel we aren't, but we are. 

Paging @bickster

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Paging @bickster

That's Poland getting invaded

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Dem, you are arguing against statistical facts.

It’s not an opinion that the UK is relatively safe compared with almost all other countries, its fact gathered and worked out by the Office of National Statistics. There are less murders now, per million of the population, than there were 20 years ago, roughly the same number as 40 years ago. 

It might be more dangerous specifically where you live, than in Devon or Aberystwyth, but it is palin truth that the UK is comparatively safe.

You take out domestic violence (80 women murdered by their partner or ex partner last year) and there were less than 600 murders in a population of nearly 70 million. You’ve got more chance of winning the lottery.

It might not ‘feel’ safe, it might be that you live in a hot spot. But I’ve been walking around at night for half a century and the number of times I’ve been murdered is very very low. That doesn’t mean there is no murder. It means I mustn’t confuse my personal experience with statistical fact.

But thats my point i dont feel safe in this country. I appreciate there are rural towns that are safe but the main cities for me in the uk are not safe despite what the data suggests. I know initially said murders but there is all kinds of other crime such as burglaries, muggings. Also don't forget people stabber but surviving. Is suspect the numbers of crime woukd be alot higher if we include that too!.

Im glad you have a safe area though thats great.  But as i have lived in london all my life i can tell you its a very rough place to live alot worse than brum and its only got worse. Is that influencing why i feel like that. Maybe.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Probably worth a compare and contrast:

He just went ahead and said it . . . and the world didn't cave in.

The only thing with that is that there's a line of thinking that Farron's comment "..people are crossing the channel seeking refuge" isn't really true. They've already got that refuge (or entitlement to asylum as applicable) once they get to the EU haven't they?

What they're doing is (understandably) choosing to try and get to the UK because they perceive the UK to be a better place for them - perhaps they have relatives here, or family friends, or they speak the language or they've heard it's better than France or....

It's fair enough - I'd do the same - have a preference for one nation over others were I seeking refuge from a shattered homeland (God forbid).

But it is worth saying that these poor souls have [theoretical] safety and they have the EU's "protection" which is essentially the same as ours, while they're in France etc. Their conditions in these makeshift camps and so on are awful, and they're often/mostly treated largely as pests or worse by whichever town or council or local population they wait around, before attempting to smuggle themselves onto a UK bound Lorry or dingy.

I mean they cross the med by dingy, get to Italy, find themselves in grubby camps there, Italy is happy for them to move on to France or Germany....Germany happy for them to move on to ...France happy for them to move on to...

No nation "wants" them, although Germany and Sweden and a few others have taken good numbers of them, to their credit.

Even if the European nations could agree (which they can't) to accept a proportion each, many of the refuges would still want to swap nations.

It's going to become a much larger issue as climate change makes places less habitable and wars start over water or precious minerals or land or...

Still, there's Brexit England, with our Insel Affen populace forging a bold new path all on our own in an ever more intertwined world. For a donation of just 160 grand would your wife like to play tennis with a fat word removed and we can sort out your residency situation?

[Demitri_C]

2 hours ago, Xann said:

Where do you live @Demitri_C

Are there kids fighting over a patch or something?

I'd move, if I was living in fear?

I am mate thankfully just in process of buying a house in Hertfordshire.  Cant wait to move!

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Anyway, Dem, it feels like it could feel a bit like a pile on and I don’t want that. So I’ll park it up for a while. Always interesting. 

The reason you get so many responses is because you come over as genuine and not just trolling. So good on ya!

 

 

Thanks i might not always be right but one thing ill.never do is troll. Ill try explaining my reasoning and rational (sometimes not very well) but some of my views might come across right wing but im certainly not im more a central kind of guy

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

What they're doing is (understandably) choosing to try and get to the UK because they perceive the UK to be a better place for them - perhaps they have relatives here, or family friends, or they speak the language or they've heard it's better than France or....

I had heard from someone who worked at a shelter for asylum seekers in Brussels that the number one destination for the majority of them to get to was the UK and the reason wasn’t because of language or benefits or the weather () but because the UK was one of the most relaxed countries when it came to keeping track of people. Unlike the majority of the EU countries there are no ID cards or population registration so once people get to the UK they are able to just disappear.

I remember Blair’s government trying to implement a European style population register and ID cards but it was rejected at the time. 

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

The only thing with that is that there's a line of thinking that Farron's comment "..people are crossing the channel seeking refuge" isn't really true. They've already got that refuge (or entitlement to asylum as applicable) once they get to the EU haven't they?

That's not the point of seeking refuge or claiming asylum.

The whole 'France/Germany/Greece/Italy is/are safe' thing is besides the point.

[snowychap]

3 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I had heard from someone who worked at a shelter for asylum seekers in Brussels that the number one destination for the majority of them to get to was the UK

You mean the most popular destination for the people in that particular shelter in Brussels?

That probably oughtn't to be too much of a surprise given that one would assume they've only got three choices in mind once there - Belgium, France & England (i.e. they've gone past Germany, Italy, Austria, and missed out most of France, too, if they've come from the Middle East or Africa).

In terms of asylum applications in the EU, I think the UK was fifth on the list in 2019 with just under 45k - Germany had 165k, France 129k and Spain 118k.

 

[HanoiVillan]

9 minutes ago, snowychap said:

That's not the point of seeking refuge or claiming asylum.

The whole 'France/Germany/Greece/Italy is/are safe' thing is besides the point.

I also meant to point out that, that there is no obligation in international law for refugees to settle in the first place they reach, whatever the Dublin regulation says, and both the UNHCR and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles have repeatedly criticised EU law as breaking the European Convention on Human Rights on this issue.

[LondonLax]

1 minute ago, snowychap said:

You mean the most popular destination for the people in that particular shelter in Brussels?

That probably oughtn't to be too much of a surprise given that one would assume they've only got three choices in mind once there - Belgium, France & England (i.e. they've gone past Germany, Italy, Austria, and missed out most of France, too, if they've come from the Middle East or Africa).

In terms of asylum applications in the EU, I think the UK was fifth on the list in 2019 with just under 45k - Germany had 165k, France 129k and Spain 118k.

 

Sure, but I did find it interesting. I had also wondered why a lot of people go to great lengths, and considerable danger, to get from an already safe and prosperous European country across to the UK and it was said that that was a draw, even for the French speakers in the shelter (the language would have been my main guess).

[snowychap]

Just now, HanoiVillan said:

I also meant to point out that, that there is no obligation in international law for refugees to settle in the first place they reach, whatever the Dublin regulation says, and both the UNHCR and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles have repeatedly criticised EU law as breaking the European Convention on Human Rights on this issue.

There's a piece below that Steve Peers linked to suggesting that it's a good assessment of things:

Dinghies in the Channel – Illegal entrants and immigration offences

Quote

The Dublin III Regulation

The Dublin III Regulation is an EU regulation that determines how asylum claims are to be allocated among the EU’s member states. It will continue to apply to the UK until the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. Contrary to what is often claimed, the regulation does not require refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they enter. In fact, it imposes no obligations on refugees at all. It does create a hierarchy of factors which are to be taken into account when deciding in which member state an asylum claim should be processed. The factors towards the top of the hierarchy have to do with the refugee’s family connections. If and only if there are no other factors pointing towards a particular member state, the first member state entered by the refugee should be the one responsible for dealing with the claim for asylum.

 

[snowychap]

1 minute ago, LondonLax said:

Sure, but I did find it interesting. I had also wondered why a lot of people go to great lengths, and considerable danger, to get from an already safe and prosperous European country across to the UK and it was said that that was a draw, even for the French speakers in the shelter (the language would have been my main guess).

I could well see that it may be a draw - especially if one has fled an authoritarian country where issues with the State and with ID production, checking of documents and the persecution that may go hand in hand with this could have been a problem.

Obviously, there are many other potential factors.

I think Colin Yeo on twitter linked to a report that was done a few years ago in to the factors that drove this particular type of migration. I'll have a look for it.

[Davkaus]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I also meant to point out that, that there is no obligation in international law for refugees to settle in the first place they reach, whatever the Dublin regulation says, and both the UNHCR and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles have repeatedly criticised EU law as breaking the European Convention on Human Rights on this issue.

They don't have a legal obligation, but you can surely see how it leads to people having a somewhat reduced level of sympathy? Because it's not "these are people desperately fleeing persecution" anymore, it's "people who've fled persecution, but decided they'd quite like to live in the UK, thank you very much".

I don't resent it too much. Ultimately, we're one of the hardest to reach EU nations so we'd get very few asylum seekers directly, and I think we should do our fair share to help, but it gives me a bit of sympathy for people who aren't asylum seekers who can't get a visa to work here, but these guys just float on in from France and we have to take them. I'd prefer us taking in a quota of refugees regardless of where they currently are rather than effectively rewarding those who sneak in.