Yesterday was so utterly emblematic of this ****show government; moral bankruptcy characterised by gross incompetence.
When you think the UK can’t sink any lower! Just been reading about a 4 year old Ukrainian girl denied a visa to come to the UK. She travelled to Poland, with her paternal grandmother, who has been given a visa, as she has family here. The grandmother had a letter from the girl’s parents granting her temporary custody of the child but despite this the girl was considered to be “unaccompanied” and denied a visa. She has now been returned to the war zone in Kharkiv, to her parents, who cannot travel. Her dad, presumably, is playing a part in defending his country and her mum is caring for her own, disabled mother, so cannot leave. Official guidance also states that orphan children are also not eligible for visas. FFS.
Our wonderful government’s latest jolly jape is to remove the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights, and to become only the third country ever to do so. Our predecessors are Greece, after being taken over by a military junta, and who have long since rejoined, and Russia, after invading Ukraine. A reminder of why this might not be the best idea, out of a long list of not very good ideas the Johnson cabal has inflicted on us:
I do wonder if this inflation and energy crisis will be the end of the Euro. Will the wealthier northern countries really be happy to keep interest rates low and effectively subsidise the bankrupt Southern European countries? How bad does inflation and the cost of living crisis get before people turn on each other. Interesting times ahead still
I am quite shocked about the proposed withdrawal from the ECHR and also sending refugees to Rwanda. This is the action of despots and not a supposedly democratic, Western country. I appreciate that immigration is a problem but surely the situation is resolved in investing in the countries people are fleeing from so that there is no incentive to leave. This is going to have to happen on a massive scale to be successful but I think that it would be a a far better deterrent than the Govt's current strategy which is more akin to what the Nazis were doing in the 1930s. I am shocked by this Govt. It is strange that their ideaology is far more extreme than Margaret Thatcher yet no one is really complaining. Any criticism gets brushed aside as part of the "culture war" but this really isn;tthe case.Our Govt is jus morally bankrupt. Why aren't people protesting in the streets like they did in the 1980s?
I actually feel it is likely that the Rwanda scheme was intended to fail and has been created to give the gov an excuse to leave the ECHR. Should Starmer actually end up being PM he would have the easiest route to success ever, just undo basically every Johnson policy and the country immediately becomes more satisfactory. Of course I would hope for much more than that….
Problem is he will likely only have a very short period of time to undo years of Johnson policies and over a decade of Tory ones - unless he pushes through PR as a urgent priority
Have to like the timing: Johnson survives a confidence motion, and 10 days later his ethics advisor effectively states that advising Boris Johnson on ethics is somewhat akin to advising a tiger on the benefits of veganism.
Protest is difficult now, because it's illegal if it's annoying or disruptive... And I'm surprised that you're shocked Ian because every move made by this government has been of a similar vein. Its not about ideology like it was in Thatcher's day, it's about control and profit by a bunch of gangsters
Correct, interest rates are normally raised to lower inflation. The problem is, the EU can’t raise rates because of the debt crisis of the poorer countries. The choice is either really bad inflation in Germany/richer EU countries or defaults on the poor countries. They have to try and thread the needle between those two scenarios and its going to be extremely difficult
The ECB announced that it's raising rates -- in July and September -- last week. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/business/ecb-interest-rate-increase.html
Having watched the government trying to force a fight with the RMT, and bad mouthing train drivers for already earning high wages, it was interesting to see this post.