Westminstenders: Put Your Faith In The Home Office

[pointythings]

Because there doesn't seem to be a new thread yet. I'm no RTB or any of you other experts, but these threads need to keep going.

Give me a couple weeks and I'll be able to post cat placemarks!

It's anecdotal of course but I think quite revealing of the ties between both countries, and of the literal shared history: Macron has British ancestry and Johnson French ancestry, both well documented. Yet here we are, as ever, tearing each other apart... plus ça change...

A trade deal formulated over dinner which no doubt included alcohol!

So have the farmers now be sold out?
I had only been thinking last night that Truss hadn't managed to get her trade deal in before the end of the G7 - obviously I thought too soon.

@HarrietPierce

A trade deal formulated over dinner which no doubt included alcohol!

Yes I was a bit wtf? about the reporting on this. Since when have trade deals been made by prime ministers over dinner? Has Liz Truss been sidelined?

Truly it’s amateur hour in Global Britain.

The trade deal with Australia was not "formulated" over dinner. The deal was worked on by Liz Truss. It was simply "agreed" over dinner, which is entirely different.
And I love Boris' joke about the wine and the French sea power. 😀😀😀

Yes a joke which is unfunny, puerile and xenophobic.. Hilarious, he clearly knows his audience.

Johnson and Morrison dined on Welsh lamb, Scottish smoked salmon and Australian wine while finalising the agreement, the BBC reported.

We can kiss the first of those goodbye as far as the ordinary person is concerned. No doubt Downing Street and the Restaurants in the Houses of Parliament will want to make sure they have a supply.

Will there be anyone that Johnson doesn't sell out?

We really need to get Mark Rutte to sit down with Boris Johnson and remind him of the Raid on the Medway in 1667, since Boris likes naval jokes so much. Only the Dutch Prime Minister wouldn't do something so childish and pathetic.

Yes a joke which is unfunny, puerile and xenophobic.. Hilarious, he clearly knows his audience.

Personally, I find it embarrassing that this person represents us on the world stage.

"Personally, I find it embarrassing that this person represents us on the world stage."
Other world leaders have got the measure of Johnson now. "Little England" is an international embarrassment.

"And I love Boris' joke about the wine and the French sea power."

Chortle xenophobic chortle.

Being on the teacher side of the Sen process is completely different from being on the parent side of the process and there are horrendous consequences for some parents and children. Sometimes with the threat of the child being deported from the family (taken into care) because the parent doesn't present well due to their disability, or colour of their skin, (ex teacher and seen the dismissal of parents and some racism in staff rooms and bad mouthing of children I knew from another setting, Infront of me, a supply teacher,) or their child has the misfortune to have a couple of conditions. I've seen reports of drs recording the wrong information, of social services losing the information in their own records, of assuming undiagnosed autistic parents are harming their children as they are "presenting" as having fii when actually they don't and are just autistic. Schools assuming it is a parenting problem when it is a disability problem, schools not meeting the needs of disabled children and causing them to go mute for several months, then blaming the parents saying they can't handle the child when there is the inevitable daily meltdown. School saying the child doesn't have autism (a communication disability) or pain because the child does not communicate that they are having difficulties. ( What with having a communication disability and all) I've read of parent of children with HSD/hEDS getting accused of child abuse as the child dislocates/ subluxes and bruises easily. Parents are accused of trying to make the child have the same problem as the parent .. in heritable conditions that are passed on 50% probability and manifest worst in females. (Hsd)

Academic studies (peer reviewed published) state that if a person has HSD/heads they are more likely to be autistic, asthmatic, allergic, rheumatic, have stomach and bowel issues, have issues with continence, and several other conditions. Guess which are the red flag issues for fii... Autism, allergies, Ehlers Danlos and asthma...

Some parents have only had the accusations of fii lifted when they have gone on to get their diagnosis of autism a process that takes up to three years and possibly quite a bit longer. I have read article after article and many posts on the Sen board and spoken to lots of parents in RL.

You should not be so quick to dismiss the difficulties of getting an ehcp from a teacher's perspective if you have not seen the trauma some families go through to get diagnoses and support risking their child being taken into care etc. Some have had their children taken into care.

So yeah, I'm with hateisnot good on that one.

Farming Today

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000wyvl

Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary on the Aus trade deal. Not at all impressed.

In the Learning Support Dept I worked in we moved heaven and earth to
support any child who needed a statement or EHCP. Unfortunately the legal responsibility was down to the decision makers at the LEA and funding.

I could not but help wonder if there was another meat producing country with a population the same size as Australia, but not made up of White colonials, would there have been the same rush to do a deal?

"You should not be so quick to dismiss the difficulties of getting an ehcp from a teacher's perspective"

No teacher I know ever would.

Harriet - this does not seem to relate to Brexit, or Covid being used as a cover for Brexit.

I can well believe that parents have difficulty getting support for their children with special needs, so this is not to decry what you are saying.

Peregrina why do you talk about "White colonials". We are doing a deal with India.
Stop being racist.

Have fallen off the threads, as work is crazy here. Prettybird tagged me, so I've popped back in.

BJ's "joke" will merely have confirmed what an unfunny boor he is. He was nominally head of UK diplomacy for a while, FGS.

My poor students here who are hoping to go to the UK for the very final year of Erasmus exchanges are facing a shitstorm of expensive visa applications and English language tests (bear in mind these are students studying for a degree in English or who have an UG degree in English and are beginning PG study in English, whom we have selected for mobility on the basis of exam results and an interview in English - and that on the other side an increasing number of unis are saying their students don't have the level of French needed to follow even 1st year classes here and are wondering why we don't teach history, law, psychology, etc. in English).
One student has spent 200e she could ill afford on a language test, only for the university to refuse it because, although it's listed on gov.uk as accepted for entrance to the UK, it's not approved by that particular university (which, as a "trusted provider" is free to make up its own rules on this rather than follow Priti's - what could possibly go wrong?).

While I'm moaning, I have done my first "attestation" for a family member to come here, for non-tourism purposes. I provided (original & photocopy):
my ID
proof of home ownership
utilities bill
30e fee
his passport details, address, dob, place of birth, exact dates of stay (see below for the fun part)

I filled in a very posh, watermarked, fraudproof form (only available at the mairie, not online, and you can't take a blank one away), with much of the above info plus size of home, number of rooms, state of the property, whether I agreed to insure him, etc. I'm "lucky" because our mayor pops in quite regularly, so I'll probably only have to wait a week to get it back once he's signed it. Some people wait a month.
Once it's signed, I then have to post it to the person travelling here so they can show it at the border. Original, not scanned, obv.
Current time for post between France and the UK: 10-14 days. So we had hours of fun trying to work out exact dates, but the person will have to book travel based on our hypothesis of when the form would reach him. You need a lot of forward planning.
Not sure what happens in emergencies.

The best part is that no one can tell me whether UK travellers really need one of these or whether, as they don't need a visa, they don't. But since it says on the gov.uk website that they do and I couldn't get hold of the French embassy in London, it seemed prudent to get one.

Still, it was worth it to trash the culture, steel, fishing, smoked salmon and whisky industries and teach those shenaniganny foreigners a lesson.

You know exactly what I mean; although you would like to dress my comments up as racism. Which is rich coming from all but about 1% of Brexiters.

The Brexiters are trying to big up the Anglosphere, which was Canada, Australia and NZ - The countries that when we had an Empire they gave Dominion status too, but funnily enough, since you are so keen on India, India was not given Dominion status - and it's very easy to find choice racist remarks about what the English Establishment thought of the Indians.

Johnson as you well know was trying to steal a march on the EU with a trade deal with India - he failed, but in the process by not putting India on the red list, helped to import the latest variant of Covid. Funny that! Although I grant that Johnson himself does not seem racist towards citizens of the Indian sub contintent - his last ex-wife was half Indian - the one he has just tried to pretend that he wasn't really married to.

Then of course, we have just seen him try to cosy up to Biden - with limited results. Another country of the Anglosphere, although he did hit the nail on the head when he said he didn't like the term Special Relationship, because it made the UK seem needy - spot on there.

But would the Brexiters have found those remarks about French sea power half as funny if they had been made by Corbyn, Ed Miliband or Blair? Or would they have thought them as puerile as they were?

Peregrina Tue 15-Jun-21 10:17:22
"Harriet - this does not seem to relate to Brexit, or Covid being used as a cover for Brexit.

I can well believe that parents have difficulty getting support for their children with special needs, so this is not to decry what you are saying."

Sorry Peregrina but Black Eyed Susan was obviously referring to a post on this forum when Hate was kind of comparing the difficulties of a person getting the right documentation to stay in the country with the difficulties of getting an EHCP for a child. Although the former is indeed very important, I just said I didn't think it could be compared to a young person being deported from the only country he/she has ever known.

I don't think we can blame the EU for difficulties in getting an EHCP - just our own Government for their shitty provision. But how you treat the weakest or less fortunate of your citizens shows what sort of country you are.

The latter rather than former!

Yes a joke which is unfunny, puerile and xenophobic.. Hilarious, he clearly knows his audience.

This is why he won the Tory candidacy as their leader, why he won the last election (acknowledging the FPTP limitations) and why teflon man is seemingly never tarnished by any of the incompetencies, crises, or scandals of his government. Because he knows - and plays to - his audience. He seems like someone who'd be good fun over a drink 🙄

There feels to be no end in sight in being held hostage by this archaic voting system (and right wing hold over MSM) along with the Tories actively seeking to reinforce their power wherever possible.

Eventually Labour is going to have to come up with an inspirational and politically astute leader.