And speaking of mean spirited and wrong… October 4, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Amber Rudd has announced major new restrictions on overseas students, including two-tier visa rules affecting poorer quality universities and courses, a crackdown on work visas and the introduction of a £140m “controlling migration fund”.
And:
Rudd said the Home Office would shortly consult on the new student immigration system and on tightening the resident labour market test that companies have to pass before recruiting employees from overseas, as part of the drive to reduce net migration – which currently stands at 327,000 – to “sustainable levels”.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Good grief. And once they deal with the foreigners, closer attention surely will be paid to the so-called natives. They must be dreaming of exit controls and work-quotas for the population. “…jobs that British people *must* do. Report to be informed of your duties.” Travail, famille, patrie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
+1 And what also troubles me is the way this language is now mainstreamed.
LikeLike
Travail, famille, patrie. What kind of gibberish is that? Speak the Queen’s English, man! Bloody foreigners! Next thing you’ll be wanting us to join the Common Market.
LikeLike
“Report to be informed of your duties.”
Arbeit macht frei – (translates into any language)
Question: If you turn an entire island nation into a sweat-shop/labour camp, does it feel like a labour camp?
(by the way, this toxic soup of reprehensible rhetoric is wending its way through various strands of Scottish discourse these days, but tourism and fees from foreign students are a considerable source of inward capital so that the rhetoric might not be as effective – hopefully)
LikeLike
But seriously. The Tories have gone stark raving bonkers. I said on here a while back that I’d stumbled on the clár for a Tory party conference of the seventies in a café in Roscarbery West Cork of all places. It was full of stark raving bonkers motions like build a fence with mines and stuff on the border. I just thought this is the stuff from the looney stark raving bonkers rank and file who were given a chance to let off steam at their conferences – but that slightly more sensible and rational voices would keep command of the party.
It seems now that the bonkers crowd are in control.
A work colleague buys the London Times and the Daily Telegraph every day. I get to have a look now and again. This confirms to me that they – the Tories and some other Brits too – have gone completely bonkers.
The only consolation for us is that they won’t take the vote or the right to work away from us over there – because they look on us as misguided souls who exited the UK over some silly misunderstanding but will return to Queen and country some day soon. There’ll always be a welcome for us on the mainland, along with lots of other good chappies from the Commonwealth.
LikeLike
There is something in what you say. It is indicative of an untrammelled Tory party.
LikeLike
But not to worry, eh, Joe? 😉
LikeLike
Don’t worry, be happy. Here’s a video I made.
LikeLike
http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/10/04/photo-jeremy-hunt-tory-party-conference-saying-everyone-thinks/
Perfect!
LikeLike
That gave me a good laugh!
LikeLike
harbingers of things to come in Brexiting England and Wales.
Let’s hope Scotland and Northern Ireland escape the trap of the UK’s democratic deficit.
LikeLike
The effect of Rudd and fox’s pronouncements are more invidious; my inclination this morning is to pack up and leave this hole as soon as I can and I’m sure many feel the same. Even if, as Joe says, we paddies will be the exception, I’d rather not be that kind of exception…
LikeLike
Rudd wants to bar migrants from jobs ‘Britons’ could do; we have a pretty relaxed dress code here, but I think animal skins and woad might be pushing it…..
LikeLike
Are people discussing this on coffee breaks in England right now? Or is it a topic to avoid for fear of argument?
LikeLike
People are, though it’s mostly immigrants talking amongst themselves (ourselves). I’ve had relatively few conversations on it with English people, and none with non-politically active ones.
LikeLike
Thanks Michael, interesting to hear.
LikeLike
Same here. With English people I’ve had a few of the ‘they don’t mean you’ attempts at reassurance.
LikeLike
Just that, and the complacency from management, at my university at least, is shocking. They can understand the financial threat from lower student recruitment and no EU funding, but they don’t get the idea that people might be forced to leave the country, or will leave because they don’t want to be here.
Universities are in a similar position to the NHS, though there has not been an announcement that foreign academics will be replaced by natives in the next decade or so: if the EU, and other foreign, staff leave or stop coming, there are not enough `homegrown’ people with doctorates to fill the gap.
University `leaders’ (which is what they call themselves) just do not get it.
LikeLike
” there are not enough `homegrown’ people with doctorates to fill the gap.”
There are not enough people with doctorates period at our place, even before there are gaps. And, without doing a full audit, everyone I know here who is from outside the UK has a PhD whereas the majority of the UK staff don’t. It’s still rather shocking to me how underqualified a lot of HE staff in the new universities are.
LikeLike
This latest attack on academics will be noted in the history books as the point where open racism became Fascism:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/07/lse-brexit-non-uk-experts-foreign-academics
LikeLike
Just spotted that in the middle of a meeting. Unbelievable.
LikeLike
And are the LSE rolling over?
LikeLike
They clearly rolled over if they did actually send the emails as claimed (and there seems no reason to believe they didn’t). The quote from their statement is not very encouraging either:
LikeLike
BTW, petty point, but didn’t Boris Johnson have another passport until quite recently?
LikeLike
Stark raving bonkers.
LikeLike
The university ‘sector’ isn’t going to be happy with this, surely. Don’t overseas students bring in the money?
LikeLike
Yep. And immigrants make the curries and drive the cabs and clean the offices and make the billion dollar trades and score the Premier League goals and on and on and on.
Surely they’re not going to destroy the relatively successful (on their terms) British economy in this tidal wave of reaction?
LikeLike
More or less, but the way things are going, it looks as if fees for UK students will be unrestricted in a few years, so university managements will get all the cash they want from the student loans of the locals.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Universities are indeed very worried. We get reassuring emails all the time, which makes me think they are worried!
LikeLike
We get reassuring emails saying we can still apply for EU funds and the student loans are okay for now.
The one about immigration went to a list called `eu-staff-members-non-uk’, which reassured nobody at all. As one Spanish colleague said to me: `it’s like saying that when the round-ups start, we know where to find you.’
But they’ll be printing a list of us soon.
LikeLike
They’re not even bothering to reassure at my place *shudder*
LikeLike
Just been to a meeting of my university Senate. The Vice-Chancellor rejected the view that there is a climate of open racism, even after hearing about Rudd’s proposal to make employers say how many of their staff are foreign.
LikeLike
There basically seems to be a rule in polite society, ‘unless the person saying these things left school at the age of 15, has a Union Jack tattoo and short-cut hair, and speaks ungramatically, it can’t POSSIBLY be racist’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
But there is a little list going around anyhow – companies are going to have to publish the number of unwashed garlic-chomping furriners that they employ. (!?)
Does a furriner with dual citizenship count as a half?
You couldn’t make this up.
Will registrars be forced to count the number of ‘mixed’ marriages?
LikeLike
https://www.ft.com/content/9f4f58c4-8ad1-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731
LikeLike
And also:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37561035
LikeLike
That should be her name, Amber ‘Don’t call me racist’ Rudd… Well, let’s be clear the Tories have grabbed the opportunity with both hands haven’t they? These measures, the derogation from ECHR which Ed points to, etc, etc. A genuinely reactionary moment.
LikeLike
“Does a furriner with dual citizenship count as a half?” oops, I hadn’t thought of that! Maybe I should get one of those blue passports with crowns and lions on it when they come out!
LikeLike
“We will never again let activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue/harass the bravest of the brave … Britain’s Armed Forces”
LikeLike
I’ve seen a few people on Twitter talk about May going down the Trump road, but this is from the playbook of Alvaro Uribe and Binyamin Netanyahu. Utterly depraved and sinister, an open declaration of intent to commit war crimes with impunity.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lefty lawyers .
LikeLike
It is like that
LikeLike
I see too that the UK Dept of Education has requested that schools collect information for all children on the country of their birth and their nationality.
LikeLike
If someone had said to me six months ago that this was going to happen in the UK in 2016 I’d have been disbelieving. I still am disbelieving, but this is the governing party and many of these measures are going to happen, whether in attenuated form or not.
LikeLike
I always thought it rather Orwellian of Orwell to pretend he was writing fiction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Surely Rex Warner is a better analogy? May sees the BAF as an unaccountable elite who can mistreat civilians with impunity- just like the Airmen in Warner’s “The Aerdrome”.
LikeLike
A far-right Tory administration was always a possibility (given that the crazies were already there, and getting encouragement from their batshit brethern in the US, Australia etc.).
LikeLike
+1. Though it’s crept in neatly hasn’t it?
LikeLike
The resistance begins.
LikeLiked by 2 people
AT the time of the referendum, I told of Irish people on the ground in England who confirmed to me that Brexit was based entirely on racism.We are now seeing the outworkings of this and anyone claiming there was a left wing aspect to the leave voteare deluding themselves.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In a way May placing the issue of immigration front and centre as the primary concern does tend to back up that view. And not just May. I can’t recall another Tory conference in years where immigration had such a high profile. Even the fact that cabinet ministers are flying balloons, so to speak, on this and are allowed to, reactionary, sub-fascist balloons, and there’s the clear expectation that this will resonate with a considerable tranche of voters suggests that the Tories believe that there’s a constituency out there which will be attracted to them by this, outside of the constituency they already have.
LikeLike
My own experience travelling to the Uk was similar, but I have had an ongoing debate (v. polite since he’s on my wifes side) with an Irish relative who has been arguing a strong left wing opportunity to Brexit a la Tony Coughlan.
I think there was a left wing argument – but the reality of the vote was always going to give strength to racists and xenophobes. I was over in Surrey last weekend – it was noticeable the number of flags of st george flying in a very well to do part of the country.
LikeLike
Well let’s hope some advantages for the left in LB can be found out of the current mess – I’m more than somewhat sceptical but ever hopeful.
LikeLike
So now we have a clear position for Merkel – I think she was hoping for a second-referendum-like solution that would keep the UK in the EU. That’s been ruled out, so her usual vagueness has been replaced with a harder line, partly directed against the AfD and the FN, and partly to ensure that the the UK is seen to pay the price for an immigration-based exit.
Germany will not negotiate before the invocation of Article 50 and access to EU markets will be dependent on the right of EU citizens to live and work in Little Britain.
Hard Brexit is what their going to get, whatever the Brexiters and their fellow-travelers on the left like to believe.
With all the issues that implies for Irish/LB borders, Irish living in LB, Irish that have paid into UK state pensions, social security, etc. etc.
LikeLike
I think this is unwinnable in the very long run for the Tories and May is setting herself up to fail, and badly. The city, business, the universities and the culture and media sector won’t stand for a ‘Brits first’ policy, and, in the case of the first, if Brexit itself doesn’t drive the banks and funds out, a policy like this will – big capital totally believes in free movement of labour, at least for themselves. So, after all the laws are passed, and all the grandstanding done, three- five years from now, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to the immigration figures and there’ll still be loads of non-UK citizens working all across the economy – givnign UKIP an opening (if they last that long – and if they don’t what will replace them?) OR – it will work and the economy/ education system/ health service will collapse.
LikeLike
And when people who have been led to see the foreigner as an alien in the native body, and think that May is going to sort the problem out, realise they’ve been had, then what?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just on UKIP – how will they survive after brexit financially? They have 24 MEPs and only one MP – so post Brexit they will lose all of the staffer and funding that goes with this.
The somewhat surreal reality of UKIP is they are entirely dependent on Britain being in Europe for their existence as a political party.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great question, small wonder they’re in chaos
LikeLike
And I see Woolfe was punched do seriously at the EP at a UKIP mtng he’s in hospital. Jesus Christ, if it talks like a sub fascist org, and walks like a…
LikeLike
Answer: They seem intent on finishing each other off.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of anthropoids.
LikeLike
There are presumably Tory remainers who are uneasy at this stage; where are they gonna go?
Lib Dems?
LikeLike
Perhaps but in a broader climate of anti immigrant rehetoric which of course all this is I wonder how easy it us for people to put their heads above the parapet. Corbyn had a good response yesterday, I suspect he may now be gkad he campaigned for remain.
LikeLike
Applications for Irish passports from UK residents still going up. Given the above though, is it wise for UK residents to identify themselves as Irish?
The wife keeps asking me to get her an Irish passport but I keep saying that while Liverpool is near enough Irish it is not recognised formally as part of the Irish Replublic and her ancestors seem to have been Norwegian (pesky Vikings!). If we flee to the old sod I’m sure you’ll take her in.
Anyway, best if one of us has the new – old style, blue cardboardy cover UK passport (I can have one as well, but surely one between two will be sufficient?) that I’m sure will be introduced to satisfy all those who voted Brexit because they hated the red EU style ones and wanted a REAL passport back without any of that euro stuff on it!
Seriously, it is scary. The Tories may be coming out with this crap to gain support and not really believe it themselves but they are stoking the fires.
LikeLike
People who don’t know fire burns are playing with fire.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is the Norwegian option possible? Best of both worlds, in terms of personal insurance.
LikeLike
Don’t think so, the Tory right won’t allow freedom of movement
LikeLike
I meant a Norwegian passport :-).
I think the time for the Norwegian option re Brexit is over.
LikeLike
Sorry, yeah!
LikeLike
Norway veto’d that option, quite promptly after the results too.
LikeLike
Meanwhile the UKIP story gets better
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/06/ukip-leadership-favourite-steven-woolfe-collapses-in-european-parliament
Was going to put this in ‘sighns of hope’ but no need to sink to their level, I guess
LikeLike
The thought occurs that Europhobia has played a similar role in British politics over the last 30 years to that played by the abortion debates in America. In both cases, the mainstream right played to the gallery by professing their belief in policies they would never have to pursue.
In the US, there has been republican rule for more than half of the time since Roe vs Wade, and AFAIK all Rep presidents in that time have professed to be pro-life, and yet abortion rights still stand. In that instance the right has been largely protected from their own rhetoric by the supreme court. Similarly membership of the EU served as an excuse for years as to why such abominations as immigration, human rights and employment laws were allowed in the UK. Politicians could indulge in a little dog whistling from time-to-time without having to acknowledge how their own professed policies were in fact nonsensical.
They are still blowing those dog whistles, and they can do so for another few years, but the truth is they have put the dogs in control and soon they are going to have to either disown their own policies, or support them in the face of disaster.
Similarly, I wonder how horrified much of the US right would be to actually win this election, secure a supreme court majority and have to stand over the dismantling of abortion rights.
LikeLike
And they’re not sure what they’ll do about Paddy:
http://www.thejournal.ie/irish-in-uk-3012274-Oct2016/?utm_source=twitter_self
LikeLike
Nationality would, I think, be based on having a passport as opposed to being entitled to one? I think it would have to be, because in many cases nationality is only determined when you apply for a passport.
Of course, on that metric,all those in NI who have an Irish, and not a UK passport, will count as foreign workers, and will have to registered. I’d really like the job of putting that list together in a NI workplace…
LikeLike
I always thought the Handmaids Tale, at least the part where the misogynistic society takes over almost over night was overdone but these developments are happening appallingly quickly.
LikeLike
“While many at home in Ireland and elsewhere have watched agog as Donald Trump made race a central feature of next month’s US presidential election, a similar process has been at play in the UK.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/tory-move-to-flush-out-firms-with-too-many-foreign-workers-smacks-of-populism-1.2818199
Well, at least Britain won’t have to put up with crooked vegetables any more.
LikeLike
“Labour is socialist again. The Conservatives are One Nation. The Lib Dems are back to transporting their MPs around in a taxi. We are leaving the wretched EU.
At this moment, the world feels as though it is at peace and better ordered than it has for years. Ignore the panic and the hysteria of people who are frightened that they might lose a little power. All is calm tonight in Hundred Acre Wood.”
Tim Stanley in The Telegraph
LikeLike