Tag Archives: compliant

Toxic Theresa May’s “hostile environment” is the worst scandal of recent years. She must resign or be removed

[Image: Pride’s Purge.]

As long as Theresa May remains in the government, the wrong that has been done to the Windrush Generation is not going to be corrected.

Theresa May must go. She can resign, or she can be forced out – I don’t mind which – but she cannot be allowed to stay.

The appointment of Sajid Javid – a BAME minister who Mrs May doesn’t like, let’s not forget (she demoted him when she became PM) – seems to be a token gesture: “Let’s put a second-generation migrant, son-of-a-Pakistani-bus-driver in as Home Secretary and everybody will think we’ve changed – so we won’t have to.”

And – bearing in mind it’s more than a week since the Windrush scandal broke – nothing has changed so far. Let’s consider what that means, with a summary of Mrs May’s attacks on immigrants – both legal and otherwise – courtesy of Dylan Strain on Twitter:

Not only did Mrs May allow this “abomination” to grow to such proportions that it is now a “stain on our national character” – she rewarded those who were responsible for it:

When Mrs May became unelected prime minister (remember: she became Conservative leader because her opponent stood down, and at last year’s general election she lost her party’s Parliamentary majority), she appointed Amber Rudd as Home Secretary. At the 2016 Tory conference Ms Rudd gave an address that led to her being reported to the police on a charge of making racist hate speech.

Ms Rudd wrote a letter to Mrs May in January 2017, promising to increase deportations of people the Conservative government has decided should no longer be allowed to live in the UK by 10 per cent. I cannot, in good conscience, say that this policy was directed at illegal immigrants – as the Conservatives are rather desperately trying to assert – because it has become clear that people with every right to remain in this country were targeted from the moment Mrs May became Home Secretary, never mind Ms Rudd.

(I’m not sure Natalie Rowe’s suggestion is accurate; we don’t know that this was the intention. But it is certainly what happened, and we may deduce that legal residents were targeted in order to meet the increased targets being demanded by Ms Rudd and Mrs May.)

Last week, Ms Rudd lied to a Parliamentary committee, claiming that there were no deportation targets. Then she lied to the Commons themselves, saying she had not known the targets existed – despite having set them in January last year. When her letter discussing these targets with Mrs May became public, she had no choice other than to resign.

Instead of going, Mrs May is trying to draw a line under the matter. But the fact exists that she did receive a letter from Amber Rudd discussing deportation targets.

James O’Brien discussed the implications on his LBC show:

So – as Rachael Maskell argued in Parliament, it seems Amber Rudd was the scapegoat – just one more of Mrs May’s subordinates who was sacked for carrying out her policies:

Mrs May herself has confirmed that she knew the Home Office had targets for the removal of illegal immigrants. Note the word “illegal”. She said: “When I was home secretary, yes, there were targets in terms of removing people from the country, who were here illegally.”

But she didn’t lift a finger when it became clear that people with every right to be in the UK were also being deported – and, as Dylan Strain has pointed out in his Twitter thread (above), she has known for years.

So the argument that Mrs May is in the clear because she may not have heard Amber Rudd misleading a committee, or may not have bothered about it because Ms Rudd corrected what she said the following morning, simply doesn’t add up. Ms Rudd’s correction was also a lie and Mrs May knew it, because she knew all about the targets. But she still allowed her MPs to make public displays of support for Ms Rudd, despite knowing that they were based on false information.

It implies an intention to mislead the public, from which Mrs May cannot slither away.

We should tackle the use of “illegal immigration” by Conservative MPs.

It is, indeed, a disgrace. The prime minister of the UK has known for years that legal citizens of the UK were being targeted by her “hostile environment” policy, that she and her party are still claiming was aimed at “illegal immigration”. If she had done anything at all to stop legal citizens being targeted, then they might be justified in using this excuse. She did not, so they are not.

Now we have a new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid – just another human shield for Mrs May, as Owen Jones explains:

And the “hostile environment” policy goes on – renamed the “compliant environment” by Mr Javid. Those two words mask a multitude of sinister – no, call them what they are: downright evil – meanings, as David Lammy explained:

These crimes against UK citizens are still happening, with the blessing of Theresa May’s government – and will continue happening as long as she is prime minister.

Mrs May has inflicted the policy on the country and has lied repeatedly and bare-facedly in order to keep it going. It is intolerable. She must not be allowed to get away with it. We must demand her resignation – or removal.

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He’s been Home Secretary less than a day and already Sajid Javid is messing it up

According to Larry the Cat’s Twitter account, “The cabinet stand like this because a body language expert thought it would be a laugh to see if they would.” And on his first day as Home Secretary, Sajid Javid was stupid enough to do it.

Result:

The Tory Powerstance Workout Video – Featuring Sajid Javid [Image: The Agitator].

And:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” wrote Gary Barker, “I give you your new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid and your surviving (just) Prime Minister Theresa May.”

Worse than that, he used his first appearance in the Commons, in his new role, to promise to “do right by the Windrush Generation” – and then lied to everyone.

Responding to a question from Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, on whether he would restore the protections that were taken from the Windrush migrants in the 2014 Immigration Act, he said: “No such protections have been removed. People who arrived pre-1973 – they have the absolute right to be here and that has not changed.”

Ms Abbott begs to differ. Refused the opportunity to respond in the House, she took to Twitter with this:

The Guardian report shows that a clause giving longstanding Commonwealth residents protection from enforced removal was taken off the statute book by the 2014 Act. The Home Office claims it was redundant – but who’d believe it?

Mr Javid also said that he disliked the term “hostile environment” as a description of Home Office policy relating to immigrants and would not be using the term – which shouldn’t be too hard, as the Home Office ditched it a while ago.

Instead, he said he preferred to talk about having a “compliant environment”.

Interesting word choice.

“Compliant” means “disposed to agree with others or obey rules, especially to an excessive degree; acquiescent; meeting or in accordance with rules or standards” [Boldings mine].

So Mr Javid wants to create an environment in which everybody slavishly obeys the rules he makes up – no matter what they may be.

Vile.

And what of the rules that are already in place – the really ugly, racist rules that mean thousands of people, including British citizens who have been unjustly accused of being illegal immigrants?

They remain in place. After a crippling scandal for the Tories, more innocents are being deported this week.

So the “hostile environment” is still in place, no matter what Mr Javid says.

That’s a series of lies racked up in his first Commons appearance.

Home Office employees are probably saying to each other: “Meet the new boss… Same as the old boss.”

Maybe, but as the title of the old Who song, from which that lyric is taken, states:

We won’t get fooled again.

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Michael Gove highlights his own lies; Tony Robinson is right

Left-wing propaganda piece? Sir Tony Robinson (right) with Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder Goes Forth.

Left-wing propaganda piece? Sir Tony Robinson (right) with Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder Goes Forth.

A new development has occurred in the story of Michael Gove’s attempt to rewrite the history of World War One as a glorious display of “patriotism, honour and courage”.

This blog took Gove to task after he attacked one of Britain’s best TV comedies, Blackadder Goes Forth, for perpetuating “myths” about the conflict.

Now Sir Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick in the much-loved series, has weighed in to warn Gove against attacking teachers.

He told Sky News: “It’s not that Blackadder teaches children the First World War.

“When imaginative teachers bring it in, it’s simply another teaching tool; they probably take them over to Flanders to have a look at the sights out there, have them marching around the playground, read the poems of Wilfred Owen to them. And one of the things that they’ll do is show them Blackadder.

“And I think to make this mistake, to categorise teachers who would introduce something like Blackadder as left-wing and introducing left-wing propaganda is very, very unhelpful. And I think it’s particularly unhelpful and irresponsible for a minister in charge of education.”

Sir Tony added that it was “just another example of slagging off teachers.” He said, “I don’t think that’s professional or appropriate.”

Gove appears not to have the wit to answer on his own behalf. Instead a spokesman plunged him even further in the mire with the following: “Tony Robinson is wrong. Michael wasn’t attacking teachers, he was attacking the myths perpetuated in Blackadder and elsewhere.

“Michael thinks it is important not to denigrate the patriotism, honour and courage demonstrated by ordinary British soldiers in the First World War.”

Oh really? It’s fortunate Gove’s own words are available to be examined then, isn’t it?

In his Daily Mail article on Thursday, he wrote the following: “The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh, What a Lovely War!, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.

Here’s the juicy bit: “Even to this day there are left-wing academics” – in other words, teachers – “all too happy to feed those myths.”

Case proven. Gove is a liar, and he is trying to promote the teaching of lies to children.

Still, he has a vested interest in replacing history with propaganda. Imagine what his own entry in the history books will be. Something like: “In the wake of the financial crisis, the Conservative Party tried to win electoral victory by blaming the disaster on financial mismanagement by the then-ruling Labour Party. When this, and a pledge not to interfere with the National Health Service, failed to inspire the electorate, Tory leader David Cameron seized power in a backdoor deal with the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg – a man who was to become little more than a puppet in Cameron’s hands. Once installed in Number 10, the tyrant set his lieutenants to work: Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt turned the health service over to private hands. Iain Duncan Smith made benefit claims impossible to sustain, driving thousands of claimants to destitution and death. And Michael Gove reduced the education system to a means of indoctrinating the nation’s young with pre-approved disinformation designed to make them compliant fodder for the new corporatist state.”

… and that doesn’t even begin to describe the Betrayal of Britain that started in 2010!

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