3 ms·

> His last protest was in september, it was pretty violent. 26 police officers were injured. Given the number of people involved, that is a pretty low level of

by graemep 6mo ago

> His last protest was in september, it was pretty violent. 26 police officers were injured. Given the number of people involved, that is a pretty low level of violence. > unlike palestine action where its very much illegal to do so (hence why there are >2000 arrests) Specifically the arrests were for supporting a group banned as a terrorist group. I am opposed to that law, but its important to be clear why they were arrested. > if this is a march for uniting the british realm why would he need foreigners to speak More fundamentally, visas are issued at the discretion of the government. I can think of people with far better cases for entering the country who have been refused visas - for example, academics attending conferences. I wonder how many of the people protesting about these 11 people getting visas were upset about those? > unless we pay £300k a year to send 4000 people to an african country. yes, just 4k people, not a year, total. That is just £75 a year per person. it is a LOT cheaper than keeping them in the UK. I think they get something like £50/week if not in catered accommodation. > Look, if people turn up illegally, then its fair to process them fairly and return. There is nothing wrong with that What is wrong with the current process is that it is slow and inefficient. There is also a problem with what to do with those who do not have documents as its hard to return them without evidence of where they should be returned to. It is also grossly unfair as it actually lets in a lot of people who have no real claim while a lot of people who are genuine refugees cannot get here: look at the ratio of people belonging to religious minorities vs majority from Iraq or Syria. In 2025 there were over 2k asylum claims from Sri Lankans, a safe country (the civil war is long over). There are a lot of other countries I am sceptical about but do not have the same direct knowledge of. Why not send people who are clearly from a safe country back immediately? > The biggest issue facing the UK is that we have not had a working government since 2007 I think that is optimistic. I would put the date a lot earlier!

KaiserPro 6mo ago
> That is just £75 a year per person I was of that opinion, alas it was not £300k for 4000, it was £300k _per_ person. double checking again to make sure I am not talking bollocks the spread is 100k-450k per person depending on how you calculate (ie total cost or ignoring upper bounds on people being processed) the NAO says it was expensive: https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/the-costs-of-the-uk-rwanda-partnership/ https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/the-costs-of-the-uk-rw... Migrant observatory says more expensive: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-the-uks-policy-to-send-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda/ https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries... Its was an exceedingly badly designed policy, that meant that it was illegal to process any asylum claims outside of sending people to rwanda. So the actual cost is even higher, because we had to find a fuck tonne of temporary accommodation. Even worse was that we were sending people who were granted asylum to rwanda, not people who failed. It prioritised optics over solving the problem. hence my anger. > Why not send people who are clearly from a safe country back immediately? because it was illegal to process any claims until the Rwanda scheme was up and running. At its height, there could only be 4000 people processed. My friend, I think we both want the same thing, We want fair and legal processing of migrants. We want to make sure that those in need are offered compassion and care, those that take the piss, sent packing. An entire class of commentator and politician decided that performance was more important than delivery, and we end up where we are. The _most_ annoying thing is that it drives a wedge between people who would otherwise normally agree.
- graemep 6mo ago
  Ok, £300k per person is ridiculously expensive. With regard to sending people back to safe countries immediately, I do not mean as part of the Rwanda scheme, but in general. i.e. if someone from a country that is known to be safe claims asylum why not just immediately refuse them? I agree what the vast majority of people want is a fair and efficient system. I think there are two things going on as well as the focus on optics rather than reality. One is that politicians contempt for the hoi polloi is such that they interpret any opposition to immigration as racist. The reality is that it is a lot more nuanced and most people are opposed to some immigration, not all immigration (e.g. skilled vs unskilled, legal vs illegal, etc.). The current government is very proud of having reduced immigration by reducing the number of skilled workers and students entering the country! The other thing is that it is a useful distraction from other issues and a scapegoat.
- skippyboxedhero 6mo ago
  Almost none of what you are saying is accurate. The reason it "cost" so much is because it was never used. You have confused stack with a flow. Basic error. In addition, the expectation was that it would be a deterrent because people are coming here primarily for economic reasons. The reason the government believed this to be the case is because the same thing has been tried in other countries and worked, Australia did this and now (in a turn of events that will presumably shock you) people are complaining that the cost of the deterrent is too large...because no-one tries to get there by boat anymore. We have to find temporary accommodation anyway. Rwanda changed absolutely nothing about that policy, I am not sure how anyone could think otherwise. It is enshrined in our law functionally: if someone comes here illegally, we have to house them in a hotel and then we have to provide them with a council house if their claim is successful. One of the bills, theoretically, created the legal basis to detain anyone who comes to the UK by irregular means. However, and despite the usual noisy crowd saying it was the end of democracy, there is no functional capacity within the Home Office to effectuate this...quite simply, there is isn't the administrative capacity (or, with Labour, the political will). This power exists and is completely unused. We are also unable to return people which makes indefinite detention of 300-400k people at a minimum challenging. But this act is used to detain some illegal migrants in prison in some cases. Usually this is terrorism-related but, I believe, this has also been used in the many cases of sexual assault. It was not illegal to process claims whilst the Rwanda scheme was running. One, it was never started, it was due to start after the last election if the Tories ran. Two, it did not change the status of people arriving, the Tories put substantial resources into the Home Office to reduce the backlog (one of the issues here is productivity because so many claims are accepted and there is a large industry dedicated to helping claimants, average processing time is 14 days...it is very slow). Labour policy is to create a wedge because, to be frank, reducing immigration is devastating for a party that relies so heavily on voters who feel a kinship with the vast majority of illegal migrants. In some areas, Labour majority is almost all this demographic, and almost all illegal migrants make up this same demographic. We are speeding down the path to balkanization, this happened under the last Labour government and has happened under this one. There is a long historical record here of this happening in other countries that people are determined to ignore. One of the reasons why Labour went for student visas immediately, in addition to the massive level of fraud, is because people from these countries do not vote for Labour in the UK. Leaving Pakistan off the list, when it is a country that also does not accept returns and has huge number of fraudulent student visa was very obvious (and btw, some UK unis no longer accept students from Pakistant because of the fraud...this is exceptional). That is the wedge.

by graemep 6mo ago

KaiserPro 6mo ago

> That is just £75 a year per person I was of that opinion, alas it was not £300k for 4000, it was £300k _per_ person. double checking again to make sure I am not talking bollocks the spread is 100k-450k per person depending on how you calculate (ie total cost or ignoring upper bounds on people being processed) the NAO says it was expensive: https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/the-costs-of-the-uk-rwanda-partnership/ https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/the-costs-of-the-uk-rw... Migrant observatory says more expensive: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-the-uks-policy-to-send-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda/ https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries... Its was an exceedingly badly designed policy, that meant that it was illegal to process any asylum claims outside of sending people to rwanda. So the actual cost is even higher, because we had to find a fuck tonne of temporary accommodation. Even worse was that we were sending people who were granted asylum to rwanda, not people who failed. It prioritised optics over solving the problem. hence my anger. > Why not send people who are clearly from a safe country back immediately? because it was illegal to process any claims until the Rwanda scheme was up and running. At its height, there could only be 4000 people processed. My friend, I think we both want the same thing, We want fair and legal processing of migrants. We want to make sure that those in need are offered compassion and care, those that take the piss, sent packing. An entire class of commentator and politician decided that performance was more important than delivery, and we end up where we are. The _most_ annoying thing is that it drives a wedge between people who would otherwise normally agree.

graemep 6mo ago
Ok, £300k per person is ridiculously expensive. With regard to sending people back to safe countries immediately, I do not mean as part of the Rwanda scheme, but in general. i.e. if someone from a country that is known to be safe claims asylum why not just immediately refuse them? I agree what the vast majority of people want is a fair and efficient system. I think there are two things going on as well as the focus on optics rather than reality. One is that politicians contempt for the hoi polloi is such that they interpret any opposition to immigration as racist. The reality is that it is a lot more nuanced and most people are opposed to some immigration, not all immigration (e.g. skilled vs unskilled, legal vs illegal, etc.). The current government is very proud of having reduced immigration by reducing the number of skilled workers and students entering the country! The other thing is that it is a useful distraction from other issues and a scapegoat.
skippyboxedhero 6mo ago
Almost none of what you are saying is accurate. The reason it "cost" so much is because it was never used. You have confused stack with a flow. Basic error. In addition, the expectation was that it would be a deterrent because people are coming here primarily for economic reasons. The reason the government believed this to be the case is because the same thing has been tried in other countries and worked, Australia did this and now (in a turn of events that will presumably shock you) people are complaining that the cost of the deterrent is too large...because no-one tries to get there by boat anymore. We have to find temporary accommodation anyway. Rwanda changed absolutely nothing about that policy, I am not sure how anyone could think otherwise. It is enshrined in our law functionally: if someone comes here illegally, we have to house them in a hotel and then we have to provide them with a council house if their claim is successful. One of the bills, theoretically, created the legal basis to detain anyone who comes to the UK by irregular means. However, and despite the usual noisy crowd saying it was the end of democracy, there is no functional capacity within the Home Office to effectuate this...quite simply, there is isn't the administrative capacity (or, with Labour, the political will). This power exists and is completely unused. We are also unable to return people which makes indefinite detention of 300-400k people at a minimum challenging. But this act is used to detain some illegal migrants in prison in some cases. Usually this is terrorism-related but, I believe, this has also been used in the many cases of sexual assault. It was not illegal to process claims whilst the Rwanda scheme was running. One, it was never started, it was due to start after the last election if the Tories ran. Two, it did not change the status of people arriving, the Tories put substantial resources into the Home Office to reduce the backlog (one of the issues here is productivity because so many claims are accepted and there is a large industry dedicated to helping claimants, average processing time is 14 days...it is very slow). Labour policy is to create a wedge because, to be frank, reducing immigration is devastating for a party that relies so heavily on voters who feel a kinship with the vast majority of illegal migrants. In some areas, Labour majority is almost all this demographic, and almost all illegal migrants make up this same demographic. We are speeding down the path to balkanization, this happened under the last Labour government and has happened under this one. There is a long historical record here of this happening in other countries that people are determined to ignore. One of the reasons why Labour went for student visas immediately, in addition to the massive level of fraud, is because people from these countries do not vote for Labour in the UK. Leaving Pakistan off the list, when it is a country that also does not accept returns and has huge number of fraudulent student visa was very obvious (and btw, some UK unis no longer accept students from Pakistant because of the fraud...this is exceptional). That is the wedge.