Tag Archives: country

Why would the UK give asylum to refugees from Rwanda if that country is safe?

Rishi Sunak – stop the boats: is he trying to trick us, claiming it is safe to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda while GRANTING asylum to people from that country who are endangered by the regime there?

The Tory government’s argument that Rwanda is a safe country to which the UK can send “illegal” migrants has been called into question after it was revealed that the Home Office gave asylum in this country to refugees from there.

While Rishi Sunak and a succession of Home Secretaries have been arguing in court and Parliament that Rwanda is a safe place to send asylum-seekers, they were also giving four Rwandans refugee status in the UK.

The in-private finding that their fears of persecution were “well-founded” undermines public claims that the country is safe; if people indigenous to that country are in danger there, how can foreign nationals be safe?

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The revelation, after an investigation by The Observer and Led By Donkeys, raises fresh questions about UK police ahead of this week’s debate in the House of Lords of the Rwanda Bill that claims Rwanda is “unequivocally” safe.

The investigation has also seen details of a dossier compiled by a western intelligence agency that accused Rwanda of orchestrating a dirty tricks campaign to smear and undermine critics including those based in the UK. It is further claimed that a London PR firm set up social media accounts to target a British author, but the company has denied this.

One of the Rwandans was granted asylum by the Home Office on 12 October, the day after the government concluded a case in the supreme court arguing the country was safe.

The refugee was a supporter of an opposition party led by Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who is campaigning for justice for colleagues who have been killed or disappeared. The Rwandan also witnessed alleged atrocities committed by president Paul Kagame’s forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

He and his wife were granted asylum with the Home Office stating in a letter: “We accept that you have a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore cannot return to your country Rwanda, and we have recognised that you are a refugee under the 1951 Refugee Convention.”

The refugee, who still fears for his safety, said: “Britain should stop pretending this is a safe place. Find some other excuse for sending people to Rwanda but don’t say it’s because the place is ‘safe’, because that’s just insulting to people like me.”

More information is available in the Observer article (link below).

Will it be enough to foil the Tory government’s attempt to say Rwanda is safe? Probably not, due to the huge Tory majority in the House of Commons.

But it may be enough to persuade voters – during an election year – that we have a government that says one thing in public and does another in private. And we don’t want liars and hypocrites like that.

Source: Revealed: UK granted asylum to Rwandan refugees while arguing country was safe | Migration | The Guardian


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Rishi Sunak wins Rwanda vote despite threat of Tory rebellions – but who cares?

Rishi Sunak and his priorities: he appears to be apologising for getting them all wrong; if only that were true!

Rishi Sunak has won a Commons vote on his controversial policy to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda – but the crucial element to notice is not the way he’s crowing about it; instead it is the response of others.

Here’s an example. Note that it doesn’t help Sunak’s cause that he lies about what his Rwanda Bill is supposed to do:

Here’s a fairly accurate summary of what actually happened:

And here’s one with a little more depth, courtesy of the ever-reliable Peter Stefanovic:

Would you like to know what happened in the debate?

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Let’s start with this:

Here’s what I suspect was the more prevalent Tory behaviour – apparent racism from one Nick Fletcher, representing the Don Valley:

According to this drone, failures in local council services and the NHS are entirely due to illegal immigration. In fact, services are falling apart because his party has withdrawn funding. This is scapegoating of the meanest kind.

In contrast, Labour’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy provided an excellent analysis – only to have it undermined by objections to a single word that some honourable members found distasteful:

The entire Bill is distasteful but they objected to that one word in a dissenting speech. If you are in the UK, it tells you everything you need to know about your government.

Of course the Bill still has a way to go yet, before it becomes law. The House of Lords will not debate it until the New Year – and some are salivating in anticipation:

Finally, the commentariat are having a field day:

This Writer’s opinion is that, once passed, this law will become a millstone around Rishi Sunak’s neck. Even if he succeeds in sending people to Rwanda, they won’t be enough to placate the racist anti-immigration crowd in his own party, and it won’t deter more people from crossing the Channel.

It will simply show that he was lying about the influence of foreign courts on what’s happening in the UK.

He would, indeed, be better-off calling a general election and putting himself out of our misery.


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Is the UK really the world’s fifth-richest country if its poorest people are destitute?

Wasn’t it Jeremy Corbyn who said the best way to gauge a nation’s wealth isn’t to measure the fortunes of the richest but to check on the well-being of the poorest?

By the former standard, the UK is in fact among the top three countries; by the latter, it is doing very badly indeed. By contrast, Norway is higher than us from the top percentile to the bottom.

If you’re in the UK and have the average income, then by comparison with average incomes across the world, this is only the 12th richest country.

Sadly, this information has been made available only in a newspaper that is aimed at and read by the very wealthy; they get the facts. The rest of us get propaganda from the BBC and the mass media moguls.

You are being conned every which way.

Here’s the video clip that inspired the above:

Bear it in mind:

If you’re in hardship now, you’d be better-off in Slovenia.

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Duff Sunday Times investigation has everyone thinking we need a new leader. Who should it be? [POLL]

Gove: apparently he’s Rupert Murdoch’s choice of replacement for a disgraced Boris Johnson. This is hardly surprising as he’s a former Murdoch employee and would almost certainly be in the newspaper magnate’s pocket.

It’s a stupid premise for a leadership challenge but people seem to be getting behind it (because they’re easily-led) so let’s do the same.

The claim is that Boris Johnson should not be the prime minister of the UK because he missed a few meetings that happened to take place in Cabinet Office Briefing Room ‘A’.

He wasn’t required to attend them. It would have been advisable for him to accept the advice that came from them, but it seems that he may have been given bad advice by those who did attend. And it is likely that he ignored any advice that didn’t fit his narrow-minded plans.

In fairness, also, he seems to have spent less time actually being the prime minister than he did campaigning to be Tory leader. First he was on summer recess, then he called an unlawful prorogation that was reversed by the courts, then Parliament was dissolved for an election, then it was Christmas, then he ran away from dealing with the floods, and then he had the coronavirus (we’re told). It’s an appalling record and he should be booted out of Downing Street for that alone.

The problem here is that a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch appears to be angling for a Murdoch man to be prime minister instead of Johnson: Michael Gove.

But why can’t we widen up the debate a bit?

The Tories have done a downright cruddy job of governing since the general election. They left thousands upon thousands to fend for themselves in the floods and they condemned millions to catch the coronavirus. They have failed in their duty of care for the UK’s people.

So perhaps we should have another election? Bring in a Labour leader, perhaps? Keir Starmer, anybody?

Alternatively, considering the way Starmer is turning out, perhaps we should turn the clock back and ask Jeremy Corbyn to come in (although he’d have to be supported by people who aren’t trying to backstab him at every opportunity).

Which would you prefer?

[polldaddy poll=10539913]

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Lord Sugar got precious about his pledge to emigrate if Corbyn becomes PM – and got what he deserved

Sugar: He’s not feeling too sweet right now (I went with the cartoonised image because he’s acting like a cartoon character, of course).

What do you say to a guy who received a peerage thanks to a Labour prime minister, and then vowed to leave the country if another Labour leader gets to become PM?

Lord Sugar found out over the last few days – and wasn’t very happy about it.

Here’s the tweet that set him off:

https://twitter.com/Redlabour2016/status/1073270116551401474

This Writer’s first instinct, on watching the clip, was that Sugar had bought into all the nonsense about Mr Corbyn, the Labour Party under him, and anti-Semitism (for the record, anti-Semitism in Labour was low when Mr Corbyn became leader and has diminished since; it is far more prevalent in right-wing parties like the Conservatives). But it seems I need not have worried as his words imply he was suggesting the economy would fall off a cliff.

And that’s odd – hasn’t he noticed what’s happening anyway, due to eight years of Tory failure – and Theresa May’s Brexit?

Lord Sugar spotted the Red Labour tweet and responded – and this is where the story really starts:

Jealous? Anti-enterprise? Anarchist? Losers?

How does he know what these people have achieved?

As for his tax bill – yes, very large, but does he not understand that many, many other citizens of the UK have been held back from reaching the higher pay grades that would make a higher tax bill possible, because of the repressive political philosophy championed by the Conservatives, which is about making the poor poorer and keeping all the privilege for those who already have it?

Is it any wonder the Twittersphere yelled at him? Check out these responses:

If anyone complains about the spelling in the next one, you need to get a sense of perspective:

https://twitter.com/mevrouwbee/status/1073526185236283397

All good points, I’m sure you’ll agree. And only a few (there are many, many more such tweets) descend to Lord Sugar’s level.

The chances are he won’t leave, of course.

The guys who make such threats are always determined that we’ll do worse without them – and they’d never follow through on those threats in case we don’t.

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Explained: The EU vote that could set corporations above countries. But do you care?

150711apathy

Note: This article is aimed at people whose response to TTIP (and other serious issues) is to ignore it and hope it will go away. If you are not one of these people, please share this article with someone who is.

Details have emerged about the vote in the European Parliament on the secret EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that will affect UK citizens so harshly – but which gathered very little interest from any of you last week.

The European Parliament voted by a majority of 436 to 241, effectively to allow the deal to go ahead – ignoring repeated and widespread protest from their own constituents, according to Lee Williams in The Independent.

TTIP is about reducing and removing regulations that hamper trade – but protect the public and the environment. Once it is in place, you can expect to eat growth hormones in your beef that have been linked to cancer, your cosmetics will be filled with formerly-banned chemicals, GM foods (copyrighted by the firms that created them) will be forced onto your plate and pesticides will be filled with endocrine disruptors that can cause cancerous tumours, birth defects and other developmental disorders.

Critics have pointed out that the deal would lock privatisation into the UK’s National Health Service, meaning your treatment for any of the disorders created by these profitable enterprises would vary in effectiveness, depending on where you live. Once the deal is signed, there will be no way to ensure that we all receive a high standard of care; no UK government minister has any duty to provide it.

Are you interested now? Or is it still not worth worrying your pretty little head about it?

Fortunately for you, many other people have been working hard on your behalf. Unfortunately, your representatives in the European Union are doing all they can to silence this dissent. But that’s nothing to do with you either, one supposes.

The European Commission’s public consultation on one of the most controversial parts of TTIP – the Investor-State Dispute Settlement section that would allow corporations to sue nation states if legislation was passed that might restrict profits – received a resounding no from a staggering 97 per cent of respondents – but this was ignored.

A European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP currently stands at over 2,300,000 signatures, but has been dismissed as “illegitimate” by the unelected European Commission.

If the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is included in the deal, there will be nothing you can do to prevent fracking or phase out nuclear power. Look at the Australian court case on limiting cigarette advertising for a current example.

Lots of you say you oppose fracking. Why aren’t you interested in this?

And commentators say the vote was rigged by some creative procedural changes from EU President Martin Schulz, meaning nobody voted on a plan to cut ISDS from the deal altogether, while a watered-down ISDS scheme won MEPs’ approval.

What happened on Wednesday was proof that democracy has no power in the European Union and big business trumps the rights of citizens.

But you’re not bothered, are you?

Tell you what – you go back to watching Coronation Street, Britain’s Got Talent, or the media anaesthetic of your choice. Enjoy a game of Criminal Case.

Leave the heavy lifting to those of us who actually care about our health, the environment and democracy. There aren’t enough of us but obviously you’re more interested in other things.

Just remember, when the deal is in place and there’s nothing you can do:

You had a chance to stop it.

But you couldn’t be bothered.

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Searching for silver linings in the Euro election’s purple cloud

No cause for celebration: This man is now the leader of the largest British political organisation in the European Parliament.

No cause for celebration: This man is now the leader of the largest British political organisation in the European Parliament.

Could the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership be sunk off the coast of a new, anti-federalist Europe?

It seems like a natural consequence of the election victories enjoyed by Eurosceptic and far-right parties across the continent – and one of the few reasons to be optimistic about the result.

We don’t have all the information yet, so it is impossible to be sure, but it does seem likely that people who won popular support by emphasising national sovereignty against that of the EU will be against a trade agreement that suppresses nations’ rights to make their own laws, and puts multinational corporations above countries.

Unfortunately UKIP, the British Eurosceptic party that has won 23 seats (so far), seems more likely to support the agreement that would force British workers into lowest-common-denominator working conditions and pay deals, in a betrayal of the populist promises it made to get elected.

Nigel Farage’s campaign took a leaf out of the Conservative Party’s book by hiding some of UKIP’s most unpalatable plans from the electorate; now that he has what he wants, will we see UKIP working to ensure, for example, that National Health Service privatisation is locked into British law? That would require support for TTIP.

If Farage’s party doesn’t support the controversial plan, they’ll probably stay away from the vote (as they do in most matters; UKIP has one of the worst attendance records in the European Parliament).

Of course the European Parliament doesn’t work the same way as the UK Parliament; UKIP may have won the most seats but this does not automatically hand it power – 23 UK seats is only one-third of those available, not a majority, and it will have to join a larger grouping in order to make its voice heard.

UKIP’s choices over the next few days and weeks will be crucial, as they will allow us to form opinions about how the party’s victory will affect life here in the UK.

The Eurosceptic party’s victory – the first time in more than 100 years that an election has been won by someone other than Labour or the Conservatives – means the other British political parties have more soul-searching to do.

Labour came second, defying right-wing pundits on the BBC and elsewhere who were hoping to see “weird” Ed Miliband suffer. But his lead over the Tories is just 1.5 per cent – hardly a ringing endorsement.

Clearly the British people were not convinced by his offer and Labour must revise its position on Europe or prepare to lose the next general election.

A good starting-place for the Party of the Workers would be a promise to halt the flow of migrant workers from EU countries with weaker economies by pushing for a change to the rule allowing free movement between countries – ensuring that this only happens between states that have comparable economies.

This would put an end to the economic opportunism that has caused the perceived flood of migrants from the poorer countries of eastern Europe, and make it possible for British people to get better jobs, offering more working hours – and negotiate for higher pay.

It isn’t rocket science, but Labour has failed to grasp this concept. One has to wonder why. Maybe Labour is still a bit too fond of Conservative-style neoliberalism. Is that it, Ed?

Labour’s problems are nothing compared with those of the Conservative Party. David Cameron wagered that his promise of an in/out referendum on the EU, to take place in 2017, would win him the next UK general election – but this result has shown that the British people don’t believe a word of it.

Rather than be held to ransom by an over-privileged nob, they have turned to an untried party of even more hard-line right-wingers who would probably create worse problems for working Britons than even the Tories, if they were ever elected into office in Westminster.

That is the message David Cameron has to swallow today: We don’t believe him. We don’t trust him. We don’t want him.

Yet his party seems unrepentant. Prominent members have already rejected calls to strengthen the referendum offer, for example.

The loss will make Cameron more likely to seek a deal with UKIP – and one is already in the offing, if we are to believe the denials coming from other leading Tories. This would be to UKIP’s disadvantage as Farage only needs to look at Nick Clegg to see what will happen.

Clegg should be a broken man. Not only have the Liberal Democrats haemorrhaged local councillors, but now he also has to face up to the fact that he has lost all but one of his party’s MEPs.

The BBC said the survival of Catherine Bearder in the South East region prevented a “humiliating wipe-out” – but isn’t the loss of no less than nine MEPs humiliating enough?

Clegg is already facing calls for his resignation amid claims that nobody wants to listen to him any more. This means the turnabout from “I agree with Nick” in 2010 is now complete. Anyone considering going into coalition with the Conservatives (Farage) should pay close attention. The British voter hates traitors.

There is one more matter arising from this result; a fact that you are not likely to hear on the mainstream media, but one that seems increasingly important, considering the demise of the Liberal Democrats.

The Green Party was fourth-placed in this election. Its 1,244,475 (so far) voters mean it had two-sevenths of UKIP’s support, while the Conservative Party – the party in power here in the UK – had only three times as many supporters.

Expect Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas to capitalise on this for all they’re worth.

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