Westministers: The Lords Strike Back

[RedToothBrush]

This needs no fanfare or lengthy post. Just this:

The Lords are demanding amendments unilateral protection for EU citizens.

Labour was split 358 for an amendment to 256 against.

This is after Amber Rudd had tried to reassure the Lords by writing a letter assuring peers that EU citizens would be treated with the utmost respect.

Utmost respect = an amendment to guarantee unilateral support.

Today is a good day. It should have been done in the first place.

yeah, that's why a student from New Zealand happening to be studying here at the time of the referendum could vote and I couldn't after living here and paying tax for over two decades...

Yep, a relative who has lived most of his adult life in Commonwealth countries but happened to be on a short term contract in the UK for 9 months or so had a vote. He's now gone back home and has no intention of returning. Meanwhile a dozen friends who have been working and contributing to this country for up to 20 years, and until the Referendum, weren't planning to go anywhere, had no say.

Commonwealth citizens living here were allowed the vote. It did also mean that EU citizens from Malta and Cyprus could vote.

Still it went well for Mrs Thatcher, not as if any one's going to 'stab Mrs May in the back'.

Not yet. Mrs T was riding high in 1987. By 1990 the knives were being sharpened.

Great British writer and son of an immigrant( bit like Shakespeare was)
who writes so well about racism in Britain.
Immigrants have been transformed into a terrible fiction, according to the writer Hanif Kureishi, resembling impossible-to-kill zombies in a video game who "will invade, colonise and contaminate, a figure we can never quite digest or vomit".
www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/30/hanif-kureishi-immigrants-debate-fiction-european-elections

Why peregrina when you have worked here for so long and did not plan to go anywhere had you not applied for citizenship. I am sure you would have got it years ago and it would have meant you could vote?

That's what I meant Peregrina Michael Gove may be returning to cabinet soon, Boris Johnson has unfinished business and Banks' new party will be launched on March 15th, I'm guessing.

Commonwealth citizens living here were allowed the vote. It did also mean that EU citizens from Malta and Cyprus could vote
I'm shocked by this, and EU resident British citizens who were entitled to vote didn't all get to?

It seems unreasonable that citizens of Malta and Cyprus could vote. I would have expected some kind of thresold on commonwealth citizens voting... like living her for 5 years or something.

That is shocking.

Shashi Tharoor gave a really interesting interview on Channel 4 news on the significant challenges of expecting trade deals with a country whose economy was decimated by English colonialism.

He also made good points on the fact that English colonialism is not taught in English schools and that currently Indian students are encountering significant immigration problems studying and working here.

indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/shashi-tharoor-book-an-era-of-darkness-british-colonialism-in-india-3741446/

woman a bit of a side issue, but interesting, about Hanif Kureishi being the son of immigrants. I was talking with a friend about how our bilingual/trilingual children, children of immigrants who speak another language at home, usually grow up to be really good at English. My children certainly love language and words and make connections between the languages spoken at home and school, it's certainly their best subject at school and they really excel. My friend was telling me how their child is now studying English Lit at university and wants to be a writer, and loves the shared history of her European languages. Fascinating, as I'm really interested in bilingualism.

Yes I don't really know where the trade deal went after he mentioned visas

Misti I said I was talking about EU attitudes to immigration only from other EU countries, not MENA immigration.

I've been coming to Germany (& Sweden) for various jobs since the late 1980s and I haven't heard any resentment expressed about EU workers - or Indian, Korean, Chinese.

BUT
We should be honest that there is real xenophobia about MENA immigration / refugees, because of the conduct of a minority.
That's both in the Uk and EU
Shamelessly whipped up by usual suspects: the Fail, Murdoch, Putin, Trump, the alt right, all the nasty shits

Germany is being attacked by Russian bots posting fake reports of rapes & terror attacks by Muslims.
I don't know if France is experiencing the same, as your elections heat up too ?

Farage's notorious "Breaking Point" poster wasn't a long line of white Europeans; it was of brown-skinned people.

Many Brexiters - and Trumpers - when talking about immigration, will start on Cologne, Rotherham, Sweden and claiming Merkel in particular, Remainers & the EU in general, are surrendering Europe to these dangerous hordes who apparently want to destroy us.

When we point out that Brexit won't affect MENA immigration, they then say it does, because the Uk will leave the ECHR. Well, May apparently plans this .

fullfact.org/europe/who-can-vote-eu-referendum/

I do very much think you are right on this bigchoc

I blame Merkel for that

I don't like farage, but she was an idiot with her random open invitation to all.

Great to see the new thread.

Oh I thought you had all disappeared!

Thanks for the thread Red

Now I need to catch up....

jaws5 absolutely on bilingualism. So many stunning African and Indian writers schooled in English literature put many native English speakers to shame. Govey pulled all non English writers from the English Literature curriculum including my fave Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (Purple Hibiscus).

BCF do you think that's what will happen to MENA immigration too? It won't be a brain drain it'll be a de capitation.

Can I just add, belatedly, as a migrant from a Commonwealth country, that (speaking only for myself of course) I'm not grateful for faux-concern regarding the UK's alleged poor treatment of Commonwealth vs European Union nations.

Reportedly the EU will find it easier to make a trade deal with India now that the Uk is going, because the Uk was blocking the increased immigration that India wanted.

India is also one of the countries who told May that they want more immigration in exchange for a bilateral trade deal post-Brexit.

The UK doesn't get on as well with its ex-colonies as some posters may think.
Germany for example trades more successfully with most of them. Maybe less history between them, or just producing high quality products the customer wants to buy.

sorry, do you mean than Farage's racist poster was Merkel's fault? in the same way that HoL's decision yesterday could be responsible for the actions of racists?

I hope we leave the echr.

I think we need to have our own legislation, which enshrines rights, but will be a little bit more reasonable about which rights and when. Nobody is arguing that people should not have human rights.

We should be honest that there is real xenophobia about MENA immigration

I agree with your point, but I think that xenophobia can just as easily be turned on any "out group" given the circumstances. Skin colour and religious dress are helpful to racists because they are an easy way of identifying targets, but fundamentally there's nothing to stop that prejudice being turned on other groups even if they have no obvious distinguishing features. (That's why the use of a foreign language in public has become an important signifier of difference in modern Britain.)

I guess my point is that racists are generally most racist about people with dark skins, but once you have got people embracing the general concept of racism it is relatively easy to extend that "sphere of prejudice" towards other groups. That it hasn't yet happened to British migrants in Europe doesn't mean that it can't happen.

Why when you have worked here for so long and did not plan to go anywhere had you not applied for citizenship. I am sure you would have got it years ago and it would have meant you could vote?

The reason for me not to take the British citizenship is simply because I didn't feel British nor did I have the intention of becoming as British as possible.
My intention (and what I have always done) is to be assimilated as much as possible. To be integrated I the British society.
However, saying that inanted to become British would have meant the clear decision from my side to 'deny' in some ways who I am and my own history/heritage to replace (or to give it a very big part) to being British.
This is not and has never been how I feel.
I personally feel like a citizen of the world after having lived in several countries all my life. The fact that I have spent as much time of my life in the uk as in my home country (plus nearly a similar much in other places) doesn't mean I have become British. It more means that I am even more a citizen of the world (or a citizen of nowhere).

And YY that bit of paper would have allowed me to vote.

But I have more respect for what it mean to take on a citizenship (aka it's not just a piece of paper as I have been told before) than to take it just for that.