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!

So, I take it you all think the additional jobs in Sunderland are not a good idea. I can only assume that you would prefer the UK to fail so you can gloat.

It would have been better to have had those jobs without the need to bung Nissan millions of £ to stay in the UK. Those jobs are being paid for with our taxes, not with company investment.

And they come nowhere near offsetting all the jobs lost as a result ot Brexit. We're still running at a net loss.

No possibility of problems here at all. Oh no, not at all

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/26/brexit-eu-women-jobs-uk-settled-status

I was posting about the registration of EU nationals which I don't think is cruel or unfair. I never mentioned Windrush.

No, of course you didn't. But a Home Office which can bugger it up for people who were already British citizens could certainly do the same for non British citizens.

Well, despite all the predictions, Labour with Kim Leadbeater holds the Batley and Spen by-election. Admittedly with a piss poor majority, but a win is a win. I gather it was a dirty, nasty campaign.

And at least it means that Johnson and cronies can't crow.

I'm very pleased it's made Johnson look un-smug. But Labour are still lost to me.

Perhaps Johnson going there to campaign had the same effect as when he shows his face in Scotland and the Opposition parties gain a few supporters?

That's always the comeback, the accusation thrown at remainers and anyone voicing concerns over our current government alike...that we'd be happy for the country to fail, that we don't love England not sure that this accusation applies to the other parts of the United Kingdom.

It's an odd and an emotional comeback to legitimate concerns about sweeping mismanagement of the British economy, about a lack of ministerial competence, and about a marked lack of accountability at our highest levels.

Never mind concerns over apparent corruption at worst and efforts to undermine those institutions designed to hold the government to account along with nepotism/cronyism at best. Somehow to want a competent and relatively honest government is unpatriotic

Anyhow, I'm glad that Kim Leadbetter won, though worry for her safety, because it feels like a win over hurtful, divisive and cruel politics.

DrBlackbird I so agree with everything you've said and you've put it so well. It really is 'my country, right or wrong', isn't it? If it's unpatriotic to call out lying, cronyism, authoritarianism and incompetence then fuck it, I'll be unpatriotic and proud of it.

It was so amusing to see Kay Burley on Sky pressing the Tory spokesperson Amanda Milling on the by election and Hancock effect. She grilled her on Johnson's statement last Friday that the matter was closed. Milling of course trotted out the party line that by Saturday we had a new Health Secretary - backing up Johnson's evasion. He called it wrong - he got away with it with Cummings, but he didn't with Hancock. He'd probably get more respect if he did admit to getting it wrong.

Considering that the Tories were supposed to be about 6% ahead of Labour, this is not a good result for them.

Prettybird, the woman from the Guardian must have applied for her passport in her birth name, changed her name on marriage, and not changed her passport. So, that's the Government's fault is it?
How are they supposed to know this?
The Guardian is a left wing rag paper that is really scraping the barrel for things to criticise the Government. A bit like this thread, really.

Peregrina, this is a good by-election result for the Tories. Labour now have a wager thin majority.

Labour now have a wager thin majority.

This is true. Hopefully by the time of the next GE, Brexit will have begun to bite economically so that majority can be increased. And with any luck there will be more Tory losses like the one in Chesham and Amersham.

You are making excuses yellowspanner which you probably know. Both on the settled status question, which I am pretty sure you know zero about, and on the Tory 'win' in Batley and Spen. They lost, you know, we have a FPTP system which the Tories are very fond of, so a win by one vote would be good enough.The Tories were supposedly well ahead and were virtually cracking out the champagne until early this morning. Was it the Hancock effect which finally cost them? Making the rules and blatantly flouting them yourself? Or was it Johnson saying the matter was closed and then trying to pretend that he was responsible for getting rid of Hancock, because the party line is now that he was replaced by the Saturday.

For the Tories this election 'win' (which they haven't) very much sounds like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Ideally we can hope that George Galloway stfu's as well. But who knows, he might have siphoned off some potential Tory votes.

@yellowspanner

Peregrina, this is a good by-election result for the Tories. Labour now have a wager thin majority.

Lol! Losing is now a "good" result!? ok Boris.

The Tories had a huge majority at Chesham, didn't help them.

I think folk are starting to see that the Tories handling of Covid isn't quite what Bojo has written on the tin.

Two current things in particular, there appears to be no vaccine dividend and the schools debacle.

This site" scraping the barrel", more like pointing out the b-ng obvious.

You just know that if the Tories had pulled off a win in Batley and Spen even by one vote, they would have been screaming in triumph from the rooftops. But they lost.

I must admit it made my day to wake up to see the result.

I must admit it made my day to wake up to see the result.

Mine too, I was convinced the Tories were going to take it.

"I must admit it made my day to wake up to see the result."

Yes , Good for Kim Leadbetter despite the odious Galloway doing his best to scupper her chances.

yellowspanner
Exegesis of that Guardian article follows, as I can quite see that your opinion of the newspaper may preclude close reading:

Not all countries do things the same way.
In France, a woman retains her birth name in the eyes of official administrative bodies throughout her life, whether or not she takes her husband or successive husbands' surname(s) on marriage. Take Jeanne, who was born Jeanne Dupont and then married Philippe Moreau. For census, etc., purposes, her name is Jeanne Dupont épouse Moreau.
The married name is added, often in a separate column on official papers, but the birth name is used first on passports, ID cards, etc. It's not a question of people being guilty of "changing their name but not changing their passport" - if you ask for your French passport to be changed to include your married name, it will be added in second place, after your birth name.

If you create software that only reads the first surname, as is the case here, it won't read her married name.

If a French woman moved to the UK, chose not to apply for a UK passport but to carry on using and renewing her French one (something that was entirely legal while the UK was in the EU and that many people probably did because French passports are far cheaper than UK ones) and then applied for settled status, she will have submitted her French passport as requested, in good faith.

The fact that the UK's settled status applications system is not set up to deal with this type of fairly basic issue regarding married women's surnames shows that it is - call me all the names you wish - not fit for purpose.

Refusing to extend the deadline when some EU member states have done just that in acknowledgement of the difficulties UK citizens abroad may face preparing their application is an interesting example of the type of bureaucratic rigidity some are inclined to accuse the EU of showing towards the UK. With a hint of something else thrown in.

You obviously didn't read the article properly : Let me help you

She had been granted settled status in 2019 but despite applying in her married name, her digital record was issued in her birth name, which is listed first in her passport. [.....] Although passports issued by a number of EU countries show the birth and married name of the holder, only the former shows up in the machine-readable zone of the page. As a result, it is this name that is being used to process EUSS applications.

It was an anomaly in the UK system, which demonstrates the shortcomings of a digital only system. It's supposedly been corrected, but some of the early applicants may only find out when there is a problem.

If you bother reading further, you'll see that even if you do follow the Home Office guidelines to register a change in name, then there can still be problems - and again, because it is a digital only system, that could have major financial and practical consequences

I also note the Home Office's arrogant attitude to addressing the problem is to get other countries to change the way that they issue passports.

So I repeat: No possibility of problems here at all. Oh no, not at all

But maybe I should add in "unless you believe that the Home Office never makes mistakes and if you encounter problems, they must be your fault " but I'm not that insensitive, naive or gullible

Thanks Auld for explaining my point even more clearly

@Peregrina

Ideally we can hope that George Galloway stfu's as well. But who knows, he might have siphoned off some potential Tory votes.

George Galloway will never, ever stfu. It is not in his nature.

To be fair he is a talented orator - whatever else he may be. He did take a lot of votes in Batley - 8k compared to lead 2 parties approx 13k each. Thank goodness he didn't manage to hand it to the Tories though.

I'm struck by the low-key media coverage of the Batley result. If it had gone the other way there'd be shrieking and tub thumping all over the place. 300-odd votes eh? It doesn't take much to change the narrative.

The Tory vote dropped by 2% and the Labour vote by 6%. I am not claiming the Tories won, of course they didn't but their vote held up reasonably well.

I didn't realise that it was the British Government's fault that the French passports retain birth names on passports. Silly me.
Auld, you have no idea whether or not I have good knowledge of the registration system, so stop making assumptions about me.

Yes, thanks Auld - I knew about the French system, but you have explained it in full.

But this is all of a piece with Windrush descendants, already British being told that they need to 'regularise' their situation.