Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days… » Bloggerheads (UK) – Private Eye magazine (and why I don’t read it anymore) – it's also why I don't read it anymore. » ID cards scheme will still apply to non EU nationals » In the loop: How Twitter transformed political reporting – One [...]
Fourteen year-old Wells Botomani on life at the hands of the UK’s immigration services… The nights are the worst in Yarl’s Wood. Doors being banged and sometimes people crying. You always think they may be coming to your door. This fear lives in me, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. I [...]
At 11.36 this morning the mother of an 8-month old baby made a desperate plea for help on her mobile. ‘I told them please don’t send me and my baby in the van for nine hours, she is too young, I asked them to speak to my lawyer. But she just told me, “Look either [...]
Children will no longer be held at the Dungavel immigration removal centre after the Scottish government appealed for the practice to end. Some good news? The ‘progressive’ alliance acting early on a coalition commitment? As ever with these things, it pays to read a little further… They are now due to be moved to the [...]
The trouble is, you can spend so much of your time worrying about the theoretical horrors of a Tory government that you forget the practical horrors of a New Labour one. Complicity in torture. Chemical weapons in Iraq. The children of refugees developing post-traumatic stress disorder in internment camps. Women who clean the Chancellor of [...]
So, away from the sub-CBeebies condescension of New Labour’s manifesto cartoons, what do we have? It won’t bother enough (or indeed many at all) to make any difference whatsoever but one of the chapters in the New Labour manifesto for the 2010 General Election is entitled ‘Crime and immigration’. They put crime and immigration under [...]
It’s Twitter! It’s Now! It’s young, it’s thrusting, it’s a new way for voters to communicate with politicians in a general election campaign. In the last couple of days, the hip hop and happening New Labour party have asked people to submit questions to Gordon Brown via Twitter. The idea was you appended the hashtags [...]
‘The government takes this matter extremely seriously‘, said the Foreign Secretary yesterday afternoon. He wasn’t talking about assassination as a tool of state (don’t be daft), but rather the ‘intolerable’ misuse of British passports by the Israeli secret service. We’re still waiting to hear what David Miliband thinks about murder. The mild reaction of the [...]
So the news that Tory peer and millionaire sugar daddy Lord Ashcroft has announced he is ‘non-domiciled’ in the UK for tax is playing out in all the squalid fashion you would expect. It basically boils down to: ‘BREAKING NEWS: We’re both as disgusting and craven as each other when it comes to sheltering tax [...]
Some of the testimonies of the survivors of the Child Migrant Programme, which sent ‘poor children for a “better life” to countries like Canada and Australia from the 1920s to 1960s’, and for which the Prime Minister today apologised, are harrowing… There was this woman, just shouting, shouting at my sister to get up. She [...]
Away from the calamity and misery Blair’s government visited upon brown people, have you seen the misery and calamity his successor’s is visiting upon brown people? How about… A group of women being held at Yarl’s Wood immigration centre are refusing food for a fifth day in protest over the length of detention and being [...]
One is a fat, wonkey-eyed loser with repugnant attitudes towards immigration, and the other is the leader of the British National Party. One has his thugs break down foreigners’ doors at dawn, and the other is the leader of the British National Party. One has his thugs intern foreigners and their children, and the other [...]
Meanwhile, back in 1968… Within two weeks, Enoch Powell was to make his notorious “rivers of blood” speech in Birmingham. But by then the Labour government had already done more to catalyse racial prejudice than Powell’s rhetoric ever could. In fact, as Callaghan’s biographer, Kenneth Morgan, points out: “From Callaghan’s point of view, Powell’s antics [...]
Look, this MPs’ expenses cataclysm is a side show. While we’re hurling rotten fruit at the government they’re carrying on doing their job and rounding up the real bastards. All I can say is thank Christ these public menaces had their doors kicked in at dawn and were dragged to a detention centre: A woman [...]
Another display of governmental humanity at Yarl’s Wood… The UK Border Agency wants to build a detention unit to house 500 single men at Yarl’s Wood and says it will be built to prison standards. Built to prison standards? In case anybody needed reminding, refugees aren’t criminals. Treating them as such pleases who, exactly?
Let’s have another example of Gordon Brown’s much heralded ‘fairness’ shall we? This is from the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC)… *** Dear All, We are writing to you to ask for your help and support. We may have previously contacted you concerning a little boy – child M and his family. We have [...]
What I twittered today… 17:16 Fresh Yoghurt: Twittering tinyurl.com/brrftf # 10:20 Fresh Yoghurt: Post Office privatisation: lets go round again tinyurl.com/c6c37k # 11:11 Anybody else having a psychotic episode because Gmail is down? # 11:14 Fresh Yoghurt: Anybody seen David Davis? tinyurl.com/ak8mez # 11:25 Wow. Aaronovitch is a disgrace this morning… tinyurl.com/arngyf # 11:49 Il [...]
From the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns… *** Assia Souhalia her husband Athmane nationals of Algeria and their UK born daughter Nouha, residents of Brighton were ‘Snatched’ from their home yesterday morning and are currently detained in Yarl’s Wood IRC. They are due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Tuesday 17th February on [...]
Mr Miliband regrets: The idea of a “war on terror” is a “mistake”, putting too much emphasis on military force, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said. Brave words coming, as they do, five days before George Bush steps down and from a man who’s been at the centre of a government guilty of unprecedented assaults [...]
We’ve just got a puppy. Lovely little fella he is. Before we got him we sat our eight year-old down and had a long talk about how a puppy would change our lives and how much hard work and dedication would be needed. Now we have the puppy that’s been forgotten. Cuddling the puppy is [...]
Stalinesque! Even though Damian Green isn’t in a labour camp. Zimbabwe! Even though Damian Green isn’t making a break for a friendly neighbouring country and doesn’t have a fractured skull. Councillor Bob says it for me: If it is wrong for the police to enter Damien Green’s house and…. shock, horror, take away his computer, [...]
Not wishing to distract from all the dancing in the street caused by the Chancellor’s rescue plan, here’s another example of New Labour generosity that you might have missed. Twins: Ziyad and Bahabga Zighem aged 6 years 3 months, Rahima 4 years and 4 months, Hani 3 years and 6 months, and Zinedine 2 years [...]
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy a brief but hearty laugh at the news that the BNP’s membership list has been leaked online*. This morning some of the people on that list will be experiencing the same feeling as the anti-fascist campaigners that the BNP like to photograph and out [...]
Are sociopaths over-represented amongst our elected representatives, do you think? Or do the numbers of the coldly misanthropic in their ranks reflect the numbers that walk amongst us mere proles? It’s a worrying thought either way. I’m fascinated by political attempts at ‘I feel your pain’. Look at Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s reaction to the [...]
Ever since New Labour surrendered the formulation of its immigration policy to the malevolent vagaries of a succession of right-wing tabloid editors, that policy has been distinguished by a petty, disturbing vindictiveness. Almost as if a delight was being taken in pouring further misfortune on the unfortunate. There’s the dawn raid, adding that extra frisson [...]
