Off Topic Politics Thread

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StJabbo1 said:
John Crace on the rise of Katie culturally-coherent Lam rising member of the tory harridans club who, tipped as a future party leader, has been condemned for saying large numbers of legally settled families must be deported. I bet she shags on a flag.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...o-outdo-robert-jenrick-on-the-nastiness-scale
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I see like Farage and Tice, she's envisioning an ICE-like state police, how is that going to be funded? Farage wants 600k out, needs a huge workforce, detention camps, natty uniforms, boot polish, drones, eclectic batons etc $$$$!!. Obviously they can't contemplate risking contracting out such big flagship stuff.
 
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BackFromBeyond said:
Good point, they really seem to believe this ILR rug-pull targets individuals, or maybe they just don't care about families being broken up.

"That includes anyone from the EU. Don’t think you get a free ride. Even if you married a Brit... She also wants anybody legally here earning less than £38,700 to jog on. That’s most nurses working in the NHS. Spongers all of them... So she is also open to raising taxes for the lowest paid." John Crace.

Back in Thatcher's day she could lower taxes for the middle class and slice of a bit of the state pie (material inducement) and offer it back to Ayn-Randian private citizens. Even if you disagreed with it, there was a transactional element: "vote for us, get this." Now there's no meat on the bone for them to try and bribe voters with, other than red meat policies, "we will - literally - hurt them" rather than "we will help you."

Furthermore the amount of money has ILR generated for the state, they have already jumped through hoops, (non-refuges) 75% of them paying absorbent fees at every stage to built lives, careers, families here legally over years. Over the 5 five years until citizenship is granted, IRL has costs an applicant £11,500. In 2023-24, the Home Office received £2.6 billion from all visa and citizenship fees.

https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys...it-from-skilled-worker-visas-in-a-year-but-w/
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Good points well made and these are people that bring value to society. Lost on those that believe in the righteous rhetoric.
 
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saintlyhero said:
262 prisoners have been released in error in the last year - oopsie daisy
Staggering statistic
One person has been suspended in this investigation which suggests one person has the power to release a prisoner without any serious checks and balances.
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Which points to a systemic failure, years of underfunding won't have helped.
 
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StJabbo1 said:
Which points to a systemic failure, years of underfunding won't have helped.
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Crazy that there are cases of twice as many prisoners in Victorian(!) prisons then what they were designed for.

A number of the release errors were from the "mass release" last September, due to the inherited systemic overcrowding of prisons. The HMPPS believes the rise is linked to changes in the law, implementation of new policy and the early release scheme which Labour introduced in September 2024, which temporarily reduced the proportion of sentences some prisoners must serve from 50% to 40%.

Apparently the prison service has improved "data quality," which has helped identify more "released in errors incidents", while including errors reported after the end of the reporting period - seems a strangeways to do things - just do it by year! Increases in errors were already seen - compared with previous years - with the introduction of these measures in 2023.
 
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StJabbo1 said:
John Crace on the rise of Katie culturally-coherent Lam rising member of the tory harridans club who, tipped as a future party leader, has been condemned for saying large numbers of legally settled families must be deported. I bet she shags on a flag.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...o-outdo-robert-jenrick-on-the-nastiness-scale
Click to expand...

She's a nasty piece of work but what people might not see is that she is a massive threat to Jenrick because she is genuinely nasty and not the fake that Jenrick is! Jenrick is jumping on a bandwagon ad far from the far right "leader" that he presents himself as whereas she seems to be the real deal and worryingly so! Jenrick is an opportunist of the worst kind but she is a full on bad egg!
 
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BackFromBeyond said:
Good point, they really seem to believe this ILR rug-pull targets individuals, or maybe they just don't care about families being broken up.

"That includes anyone from the EU. Don’t think you get a free ride. Even if you married a Brit... She also wants anybody legally here earning less than £38,700 to jog on. That’s most nurses working in the NHS. Spongers all of them... she is also open to raising taxes for the lowest paid." John Crace.

Back in Thatcher's day she could lower taxes for the middle class and slice of a bit of the state pie (material inducement) and offer it back to Ayn-Randian private citizens. Even if you disagreed with it, there was a transactional element: "vote for us, get this." Now there's no meat on the bone for them to try and bribe voters with, other than these red meat policies, "we will hurt them more" rather than "we will help you."

Furthermore the amount of money has ILR generated for the state, they have already jumped through hoops, (non-refugees) 75% of them paying absorbent fees at every stage to build lives, careers, families in the UK legally. Over the 5 five years until citizenship is granted, IRL has costs an applicant £11,500. In 2023-24, the Home Office received £2.6 billion from all visa and citizenship fees.

https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys...it-from-skilled-worker-visas-in-a-year-but-w/
Click to expand...
Not disagreeing with your post. good points there ;) But that does not apply to EU settled status. That cost nothing. My wife still has a Portuguese passport. She is proud Portuguese but at the same time "fully integrated." She loves the UK and enjoys the best of both worlds, living in a "great country" where she is free to enjoy Brit or occasional aspects of Portuguese or African culture within the UK, something that cannot be said in Portugal (or probably other countries in Europe) where communities do not mix much socially and racism is much higher!

Katy Lam will get nowhere near the top in the Tories. They appease Jenrick because they know he is a fake. She would end up further right than anyone in the Tories and further right than Farage. Its a vote loser pure and simple. As much as people want to believe the country is over run with racists there are nowhere near enough to get a Tory party with her (or her policies) into any kind of contention!
 
saintlyhero said:
262 prisoners have been released in error in the last year - oopsie daisy
Staggering statistic
One person has been suspended in this investigation which suggests one person has the power to release a prisoner without any serious checks and balances.
Click to expand...
Fall guy! "Someone must resign" Doesn't matter who but someone and now...blah blah.
 
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BackFromBeyond said:
Crazy that there are cases of twice as many prisoners in Victorian(!) prisons then what they were designed for.

A number of the release errors were from the "mass release" last September, due to the inherited systemic overcrowding of prisons. The HMPPS believes the rise is linked to changes in the law, implementation of new policy and the early release scheme which Labour introduced in September 2024, which temporarily reduced the proportion of sentences some prisoners must serve from 50% to 40%.

Apparently the prison service has improved "data quality," which has helped identify more "released in errors incidents", while including errors reported after the end of the reporting period - seems a strangeways to do things - just do it by year! Increases in errors were already seen - compared with previous years - with the introduction of these measures in 2023.
Click to expand...

Somewhat interesting to read the prison stats(anything to take mind off the football, which is the real crime)

Stats I read from justice dept started in 2002 with the population at 71k which rose steadily year on year till about 2012 where it hit 86k and then remained at round that figure until small reductions in 2018 82k and 2020 79k
The population then rose back up again from 2020 up to the current 87k in 2025.
Prisoners on remand has risen by a similar number since 2020, which points to the courts struggling to deal with backlog created from COVID.

UK population has raised from 59m in 2002 to 68m in 2025, meaning the prison population has risen roughly inline with overall increase in population
 
ImpSaint said:
Rather than underfunding I would suggest it is years (decades) of outsourcing meaning the funds supplied do not get spent where they should but the shareholders are happy!
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The "years of underfunding" comment is a lame attempt to put some of the blame on the last government. As much as the prison service, like many public organisations, is probably under funded these accidental releases can't be put down to that.

"In the year ending March 2023, 81 prisoners were released in error. The following year it rose to 115, and then last year it reached an astonishing 262 incidents."

No accidental releases are excusable but that huge rise coincides with the governments determination to lock up as many of the rioters as they could. Spaces had to be found so existing prisoners had to be released in a short space of time. In any case what does it matter if a few rapists are released by mistake? As long as they could bang up those who used offensive language it's worth it.
 
Not confirmed by anyone in government yet but there are hints that Starmer is going to announce an £85 fine charge for anyone unable to produce their digital ID when requested! That's 4.5m in the country without smartphones at risk of fines if they don't get themselves a smartphone and its continued associated costs! A high proportion of those are elderly!

This would be on top of already announcing you will need a digital ID to be able to work in this country! No idea if this means people already working here or what but he is turning into a crazed authoritarian on this issue!
 
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saintlyhero said:
Somewhat interesting to read the prison stats(anything to take mind off the football, which is the real crime)

Stats I read from justice dept started in 2002 with the population at 71k which rose steadily year on year till about 2012 where it hit 86k and then remained at round that figure until small reductions in 2018 82k and 2020 79k
The population then rose back up again from 2020 up to the current 87k in 2025.
Prisoners on remand has risen by a similar number since 2020, which points to the courts struggling to deal with backlog created from COVID.

UK population has raised from 59m in 2002 to 68m in 2025, meaning the prison population has risen roughly inline with overall increase in population
Click to expand...


haha what could be more of a slamming indictment, on the trials of SFC, than a post match analysis... of the UK criminal justice system!

but... good find, these stats point to why there's pressure on the system. The mid 2010's plateauing - still a system under strain - then the continuation of a downhill trajectory partially due Covid. We could perhaps look at average sentence length increases (certainly favoured by the Tories) over this time too. Recall rates which are mainly due to licence breaches - rather than new crimes - are up year on year too if I... recall. The remand population rising alongside total population recently and there's multiple pressures hitting simultaneously!!
 
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ImpSaint said:
Not disagreeing with your post. good points there ;) But that does not apply to EU settled status. That cost nothing. My wife still has a Portuguese passport. She is proud Portuguese but at the same time "fully integrated." She loves the UK and enjoys the best of both worlds, living in a "great country" where she is free to enjoy Brit or occasional aspects of Portuguese or African culture within the UK, something that cannot be said in Portugal (or probably other countries in Europe) where communities do not mix much socially and racism is much higher!

Katy Lam will get nowhere near the top in the Tories. They appease Jenrick because they know he is a fake. She would end up further right than anyone in the Tories and further right than Farage. Its a vote loser pure and simple. As much as people want to believe the country is over run with racists there are nowhere near enough to get a Tory party with her (or her policies) into any kind of contention!
Click to expand...


(Posted at HT - This is more damning than Will Still OUT)

"They appease Jenrick because they know he is a fake. She would end up further right than anyone in the Tories and further right than Farage. Its a vote loser pure and simple. As much as people want to believe the country is over run with racists there are nowhere near enough to get a Tory party with her (or her policies) into any kind of contention!"

We should be cautious forecasting how policy can develop its own momentum... even when electorally stupid; particularly a party going through factional warfare or existential crises. Reading Crace's cartoon of this headbanger, this is actually Tory Party policy. Rather than purely Lam's rhetoric it's legislative text, threatening legislative text drafted by Chris Philp. Unbeknown to James Cleverly who was grilled over it, protesting it wasn't.

But you're likely right, not enough are going to bite on the red meat, and it is likely the Tory's funeral with polices like this. Starmer bizarrely tried - still feels insane to say this - you can't out Reform Reform!
 
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BackFromBeyond said:
haha what could be more of a slamming indictment, on the trials of SFC, than a post match analysis... of the UK criminal justice system!

but... good find, these stats point to why there's pressure on the system. The mid 2010's plateauing - still a system under strain - then the continuation of a downhill trajectory partially due Covid. We could perhaps look at average sentence length increases (certainly favoured by the Tories) over this time too. Recall rates which are mainly due to licence breaches - rather than new crimes - are up year on year too if I... recall. The remand population rising alongside total population recently and there's multiple pressures hitting simultaneously!!
Click to expand...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1100628/prison-sentence-length-in-england-and-wales-over-time/

Not an official source, but numbers seem to mirror the gov website

2002 average sentence 12.4 months
This then started to creep up since 2009(Tory gov) to a full 50% increase by 2019 - 18.6 months
This peaked in 2023 at 21 months

These are the sentences lengths issued by the courts and not served, but you can see the rationale to decrease the mandatory period to 40%

In 2009 the reoffending rate was at 31% and had dropped ever so slightly to 27% by 2019.
Keeping people in for longer, gave them less chance to reoffend.
Re-offending dropped to 24% in 2021, but this is no doubt linked to the increase in remand prisoners

Recalls have gone up around 40% from 2024 to 2025, which is why the early release scheme failed to reduce the overall prison population
I’ve struggled to find these statistics as a year on year
 
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They caught the dude in the end then.
Stories of him walking around lost in his prison tracksuit and eye witnesses saying he was looking lost outside the prison gates for 90 minutes before prison staff nudged him in the direction of the train station.
I try to steer clear of conspiracy theories, but this fees like a bit of sabotage for this to happen to such a high profile prisoner, even if the “mistake” is not isolated.
 
saintlyhero said:
They caught the dude in the end then.
Stories of him walking around lost in his prison tracksuit and eye witnesses saying he was looking lost outside the prison gates for 90 minutes before prison staff nudged him in the direction of the train station.
I try to steer clear of conspiracy theories, but this fees like a bit of sabotage for this to happen to such a high profile prisoner, even if the “mistake” is not isolated.
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Not one for conspiracy either, as a political ploy it's equally crude and cunning. Something nudges me rather than towards a train, but in the ideological direction of a certain recidivist fascist, who knows inside inside and out.
 
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BackFromBeyond said:
haha what could be more of a slamming indictment, on the trials of SFC, than a post match analysis... of the UK criminal justice system!

but... good find, these stats point to why there's pressure on the system. The mid 2010's plateauing - still a system under strain - then the continuation of a downhill trajectory partially due Covid. We could perhaps look at average sentence length increases (certainly favoured by the Tories) over this time too. Recall rates which are mainly due to licence breaches - rather than new crimes - are up year on year too if I... recall. The remand population rising alongside total population recently and there's multiple pressures hitting simultaneously!!
Click to expand...

Wasn't Kenneth Clarke justice secretary in that era and favouring less jail terms? He wanted much more community service for lesser crimes.
 
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