I take it then that there are very few people in Brasil who 'do not exist'. Do you not, like the UK, have a massive black economy that the establishment is in complete denial about, but is responsible for the delivery of millions of cold pizzas and nasty fried chicken lumps every evening We don't have Favelas here, but we do have suspiciously large sheds in suburban back gardens.
Graham Linehan - what did the Cops think he was going to do? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1mx09l5297o One friendly Bobby could surely have dealt quietly with him, rather than five extras from Who Dares Wins
That’s the thing Lardy it’ll be easy to pull the people you suspect of being here illegally and ask for their ID card , if they can’t produce it they’re kicked out - simples
Probably the reason I got my indefinite leave to remain in double quick time. The quicker I'm registered the quicker they can hoof me out
It might surprise some to read this, but I have no sympathy for Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner. If you want to be a leading member of the UK Government, your financial affairs need to be whiter than white. If there's any grey area about whether or not you should be paying the higher rate of stamp duty, then you pay it. I don't believe the extra £40K would have been beyond her means. Once again it seems we have senior Government figures who talk about integrity, but are guilty of sleaze - intentionally or otherwise. Where then is the difference between this lot and Sunak's lot?
Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform UK I would have thought they are too woolly and liberal for her taste.
Looks like Trump has given up on his dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr9r4qr0ppo Department of Defence (the Pentagon) to be re-named the Department of War When Reform gets in, I expect the Ministry of Defence over here will be re-named the War Office (as it was known until 1964). Nothing like a bit of nostalgia to stir the Bulldog spirit...
God help us all - my family knew of his child minder apparently he was left in a park by accident as a child. Shame for all he was subsequently collected
The country won't be ready to forgive the Tories for Boris and Liz, whoever their leader is. Rachel Reeves is doing her best to make sure we never get another Labour government, Ed Davey lacks the gravitas. All Reform need to do is keep the focus on immigration and avoid close scrutiny.
One thing that might slow Reform UK a bit is if things go badly wrong for Trump towards the end of his four years. Reform has imprinted so strongly on Trump and his ways it's laughable. The Reform version of DOGE (they even call it that) has so far found no significant spending waste in the local councils it took over, despite yelling about all the £millions they were going to save. British folk may want illegal immigration sorted, but I don't think many of them want to embrace Trumpism the way that Farage obviously does. Methinks Nigel would gladly have the Orange man's baby if he was biologically able to.
A party of trained gibbons would be preferable to the circus we currently have in power. It beggars belief that anyone still thinks Labour or Tories are the way forward.
I don't think anyone does anymore. Labour only got in because they weren't the Tories. And let's not forget that the Hamas-loving Corbyn is waiting in the wings to launch his new Lefty Workers Party. I wouldn't be surprised if he calls it 'Real Labour', or something of that ilk. If he persuades 50 or 60 disgruntled Labour back-benchers to jump ship, the decent people who voted them in as Labour MP's will take to the streets. Calls would grow for a General Election. I'm not sure this Government even has two years left in it. Incredible, for a regime with a majority of 200 seats only 15 months ago. The Tories are certainly finished. Labour as we know it may also be going the same way. They have both let the British people down badly and deserve nothing better.
Me 60 years ago, the electorate doesn't like politicians to always tell the truth, and to achieve power you have to lie. Not all the time of course, but selectively. It doesn't change.
Reform UK: Rhetoric vs Reality Rhetoric: We will stop the boats within two weeks of being elected. (big cheers at the party conference & big headlines in the right wing press) Echoes of Trump, when he said he could stop Wars with a phone call, and on "day one" of his new term as President. Reality: We will stop the boats within two weeks of passing a new law giving us the legal authority to do so. (admission on the Laura Kuenssberg show one day after the rhetoric) Passing a new law: How quickly a Reform Government could get a new 'mass deportation' law through the Commons will entirely depend on the size of their majority. If they have to form a coalition (even as the senior partner) getting such a law through will probably never happen. Even if they gat an outright majority, should that be a small one then getting such a radical new law through Parliament will be almost impossible. And even with a large majority, Reform would have to get a new law through the House of Lords - where they are not represented at all. The Lords have no power to stop a new law. But there are mechanisms allowing them to scrutinise new legislation and slow its passage down. To turn a process of days into one that stretches out into months. In order to short-circuit that process of examination and revision of new legislation - established after the English Civil War nearly 400 years ago and respected by every Government since then - Reform would have to suspend or dissolve the House of Lords. Such a move would cause a constitutional crisis and likely paralyse the whole of Government. And even assuming a new 'mass deportation' law could be got past the Lords, the next obstacle would be the Courts. Legal challenges which would make the tangle Rishi Sunak got into over Rwanda for two years look like a minor spat. So, in a nutshell - to get a new law enacted in anything less than several years a new Reform UK Government would have to disable the House of Lords and the British Legal system. In effect, Nigel Farage would have to exercise the powers of a Dictator and destroy the democratic infrastructure that saw him elected as Prime Minister. Farage could evoke the Will of the People in electing him PM as the justification for bulldozing the Constitution and the Courts. Is Democracy not - after all - the ultimate authority? However, it is unlikely that Reform UK will include suspending the House of Lords and over-ruling the British Supreme Court in their Election manifesto. Both of those promises would likely put them in breach of their Parliamentary Oath of loyalty to the King. So possibly barring them from standing in a General Election at all - unless those manifesto pledges were withdrawn. In the UK we have long standing mechanisms for preventing those who would contemplate taking extreme measures likely to de-stabilise the very structure of society in our Country from gaining political power. Those mechanisms should not be associated with (or discredited by) the failure of our two main political Parties to govern wisely during the last 50 years. After the 1933 General Elections in Germany the NSDAP was the largest party in their Parliament, though without a majority compared to all the other parties combined. So to an extent the German electorate voted some democratic authority to the Nazis. But they did not give democratic authority for what happened in Germany over the next 12 years. Reality is very much more complicated than Rhetoric. Most of us recognise that in this Country I think. Simple promises that get big cheers and big headlines are promises that cannot be delivered. And if Reform UK make promises that they then cannot deliver, then how are they any different from the discredited Labour & Tory Parties?
Well I'm all out of sympathy for tube drivers. The new Government gave them everything they wanted. Surely the quid pro quo should have been a couple of years of actually going to work without a fuss. But no. They have bitten the hand that has fed them, and made the lives of commuting Londoners miserable yet again. Bring on driverless tubes. It works on the DLR and has done for decades. And what does the Mayor do? Something helpful, like say all road tolls are suspended on strike days? Of course not. He doesn't give a rat's **se about hard working Londoners just trying to pay their way in life.
