Labour isn't Working - Thread 28

[redange]

Continued carry on with discussion.

Thank you and to pp yes me too.

Just listened to Starmer. It was like 'let me be clear' bingo. 🙄

He gave a very carefully worded non-denial to the Tim Shipman piece.
What's the point of him?

God I saw he was ‘addressing the nation’ honestly just nothing to him.

He's a puppet with zero autonomy. His masters seem satisfied with that

Find out now polling, Restore and Your Party included.

Milliband is dangerous but don't forget he has commandeered billions of pounds for his carbon capture scheme which experts say isn't actually a known entity yet
Why not spend billions on what we know and then a little for carbon capture.

Spain is sending a frigate to Cyprus . Italy apparently sending troops.

I laughed out loud.

We're sending good wishes.

Spain and everyone else in chat saying ok Keir’s having a moment we’ll send someone.

Reading earlier milliband, Raynor and Reeves ganged up against him at the cabinet meeting. Poor dear

How embarrassing.

Off to Google the Spanish word for flip-flop.

The Find out Now poll is depressing. We have 20% of people expressing a preference for a party whose Policies include legalization of all Drugs. Totally Open Borders, Housing for all Immigrants with guaranteed Benefits no limit on how much spending from the Government just keep on creating it at will.

On the other end we have Restore who quite rightly Farage described the voters as 'that lot' which given they seem to have a view that Daley Thompson and Ian Wright are not 'English' apparently and they are polling a crucial 7% . I wish on the right we could just ignore these actually 'Racist' people without fear of allowing the final destruction . The Grand Coalition of Armageddon with Zac Ed Milliband Prime Minister and Zac Polensky as Chancellor.

@ChardonnaysBeastlyCat ,😂

This is obviously a war that Starmer should have supported. It’s so morally, politically and generally right that nobody could seriously argue against it.

Starmer’s credibility, such as it was, has taken a terrible blow. Whatever he may have thought he’d gained in international diplomacy over the least 19 months - which frankly was bollocks anyway - or his delusion of being a sage statesman in a time of crisis, is now worth dog shit.

The weakest and most compromised PM we’ve ever had. Bar none.

@redange yes it worries me greatly

While this government called people racist who clearly aren't racist, the actual racists were quietly on the rise. This will be me feeling like I did when I was a little kid and the BNP were threatening to send me to a country I've never seen and know nothing about.

I was out last night and all of today - having a nice time and ignoring politics - so only just catching up.

How much do we pay asylum seekers to leave now? Do we pay them anything? I think it's £10,000 per person that's being proposed so the 40,000 is for families.

terrible idea - will increase the numbers

How much does a dinghy crossing cost? If it's less than £10k pp then that's a pretty obvious side hustle for absolutely anyone on the continent who fancies a bit of extra cash. Why do successive government underestimate the effort people are willing to go to if it benefits them

The BBC is suggesting replacing the suposedly-optional license fee with a new tax
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a97259bee4f10d0f

Strangely, they say it's so that more households contribute... except of course they want wealthier households paying more and households on benefits exempt. So not more households contributing then. Instead they expect the usual mugs to subsidise the usual takers even more, and without an opt-out.

They also want to make sure that the "tastes of those left paying the licence fee" don't dictate what the BBC produces!! No worries there: with the BBC's political bias, I'm quite sure that - just like tax spending - the interests of those actually funding it will always deliberately come last.

@strawberrybubblegum oh the BBC give me the absolute rage! This government will agree to turn it into a tax I expect.

The cost of a dinghy crossing - actually got me wondering how much it costs to be a people smuggler. I imagine most of the costs are greasing the palms of all the people who have to look the other way.

Payments to the people smugglers seem to be from £500 about £3000 I think on average. I'm definitely not an expert here.

I know someone who still volunteers at the homeless shelter in my old area. She tells me they've had a couple of guys in who were trafficked but didn't even realise they had been trafficked. They were promised work on building sites. In one case the guy did get work and he slept there but of course they left him to fend for himself when the job was done.

it's really depressing to think about the level of corruption and related issues we have now. I don't know which countries are managing to avoid this, if any.

The money that's being proposed is intended to head off ridiculous legal costs. But surely it's the legal system that needs changing. In the US I think they offer $1000. That's about the amount I thought we were paying now, but I can't find the answer.

The math doesn't work. 7k to get here across 22 miles of the English channel. £10k to go home. Who'll go for that.

Google suggests £3-£6k for the crossing - with all the existing draws of easy black market work, free accomodation, low probability of being deported... and the worst case is that you end up back where you were before with an extra £5k in your pocket. (The risks of crossing are low, and no one thinks it will happen to them. Especially strong, healthy young men with £s in their eyes).

Normal market behaviour means that this is likely to both increase demand and also allow smuggling gangs to increase the price to reflect the higher value of the crossing... which increases profit...which will result in more smuggling gangs with more dinghies.

I generally like Mahmood's ideas, and she's proposing other deterrents such as restricting to a single appeal and speeding deportation. But I think it's a mistake to increase the incentive from £3k to £10k until those deterrents are properly established. (Chances are, Labour backbench pressure will mean that the increased incentives are the only change which actually happens.)

I saw this quote on twitter, which made me cross:

‘On the matter of whether payments are a pull factor, home office source said: “Our intelligence shows people smugglers charge between £15,000 and £35,000 per illegal migrant. As a result, the pilot to pay them to leave cannot act as a pull factor because it costs more to get here in the first place.” ‘

Even if a crossing did cost upwards of £15k - which I don’t believe for a second!! - of course it will act as a pull-factor.

Either your asylum claim succeeds, or it doesn’t - and you gain £10k. Win-win situation, especially compared to being turfed out with nothing if your claim fails.

Honestly, they must think we are idiots who will believe anything they say. It makes me so angry, the constant lies. And if that’s really what their “intelligence” says, then they could save a ton of taxpayer money by sacking that team and using google instead.

Traffickers will be laughing. I can you sell you this and guess what it comes with a huge payout if it doesn’t work.

Even apart from the disagreement over the cost of the crossing... are the home office so completely ignorant of basic economics that they don't realise that a £7k reduction in cost of failure is still a pull factor?!? It wouldn't need to actually be profit to increase pull-factor (although I'm inclined to believe Google more than the home office claims on cost of crossing)

It’s basic marketing. Traffickers may as well say try before you buy. If it doesn’t work get your money back.

Traffickers have been buying back the dinghies we confiscated and auctioned off.