Cologne Sexual Assaults IX and David Davies Web Chat

[LumelaMme]

On New Year's Eve women in Cologne were amongst those who were sexually assaulted and robbed in mass attacks.
This is a link to the last thread which has links to all the others.

Some of us have begun a petition asking the government to uphold women's rights and freedoms:

THE PETITION _ Please sign and share
The petition

We also hope that tomorrow, Monday 8th February, David TC Davies MP will be on MN for a web chat between 1pm and 2pm - it should be a sticky on either Chat or In The News. David was one of the few MPs who has shown any interest in this whole issue and who has responded sympathetically to those of us concerned about women's rights in a changing world.

Britt a Ukrainian flying into Dublin on a legal tourist visa will not pass any further passport checks on their way to the UK. There are no passport controls between the Republic and the UK. So I really don't know what you find surprising about this. Many if not most asylum seekers arrive in the UK legally, by air, from outside the EU. Dublin regs are irrelevant in this situation.

The Dublin regulations come into play in a post Brexit world if the UK wishes to return asylum seekers to the first EU nation through which they had passed. Now, if I were concerned about immigration, one of my first questions to the leave campaigners would be - what plans do you have in place in the event that border controls are no longer enforced in Calais and the Dublin regulations are no longer relevant?

My thinking is he's not right in using the Calais problem as an excuse for the public to choose to stay in the EU. That seems like the scare tactic part.

Inkanta yet it's ok for the leave campaign to use immigration to scare people out of the EU? I'd say it's a quid pro quo. Both sides have their hands dirty.

If Farage is right, and immigration is the main reason people want to leave the EU, then it seems completely rational for the "remain" side to point out that a Brexit could have some negative consequences for border control.

Sorry I believe he said if we leave it will lead to camps being set up in Kent

"Cameron has stated today that if we vote to leave then France cannot be responsible for holding back migrants in Calais"

How low Europe including Britain has sunk. Using the complex and difficult and obnoxoius situation of calais as a pawn in negotiating massively important long-term deals which will affect generations to come. I am utterly appalled that there is a 'jungle' in the first place and that Britain and the EU have not properly dealt with it and the people traveling and living there much, much sooner. David Cameron essential argues "if you don't do as we say (i.e. vote 'in) the big scary monster is gonna come and get you". This is seriously 'primitive' politics, shameful.

Ideally the EU would be properly run not as it is "Animal Farm" style. Then we could stay in and be stronger for it but not ruled and ruined by selfish men and women. But it isn't so, German and France are self-declared heads of the EU. Remember how outrageously they have treated Greece. People in Greece did not have enough food and medicine only two years ago and suddenly they have to process and support so many migrants.

I am so disappointed with the EU. The EU commission is only pursuing their own agenda, that is centralist power for elite politicians and bureaucrats. They have no care for the ordinary man or women and their local and lived experiences. No Eu member should have ever welcomed the refugees in the way merkel did without agreement with all other eu partners, she acted like a dictator and continues to do so as it's obvious that negative press about her is censored China style.

what's the problem with enforcing our own borders within the UK Mistigri? Is it just that our own controls have been underfunded? And the navy (along with every other public service not administered by private companies).

I'm back to pro-EU after Cologne-based wobble btw, but uninformed on this point.

"yet it's ok for the leave campaign to use immigration to scare people out of the EU?"

There is a reason for this. It is the real and appalling situation of anarchic migration, which has resulted in an increase in crime and a destabilising of our region. The fear of migration is real and tangible, the problems are real. Why? Because British and European have been incompetent, the EU system as it stands is shite, the combination of which have created a horrible no-win situation.

Or is it just that Britain doesn't want responsibility for processing the migrants any more than France does, in which case we're not really in a position to complain at the French?

ALERT!

David Davies MP has started a new thread in this topic.
(Or someone calling themselves DD).

Not a webchat, just a thread on Women's safety post Cologne)

It will be a web chat - between 1pm and 2pm he should be live on the thread to answer questions put to him by posters.

It is him: I have been in direct email contact and he let me know he had started it.

I've asked MN to sticky it in On The News but maybe with some pressure they might sticky it in Active where it would get more traffic...

Link here to the David Davies MP web chat thread

Web chat should be live 1-2pm.

I have emailed

"Dear Krisztina,

I am forwarding you an email (see below) I sent to Ms Honeyball regarding her shocking comments at the FEMM group talk (see video attached). I had cc-ed UK MP Mr David Davies in my original post.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for raising concerns regarding the safety of European women in the context of uncontrolled (some might say anarchic) mass migration of men from countries where women have undoubtedly few rights. It appears that the incidence of sexual violence and harassment against girls, boys, women and even elderly women have increased due to the specific context of this population group, i.e. single males form misogynist cultures.

Please join us on our Mumsnet thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2565953-Cologne-Sexual-Assaults-IX-and-David-Davies-Web-Chat?messages=100&pg=1 (there are 8 more thread sixth 9000 or posts if you look in the In the News section www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news.

There will be a webcast with MP David Davis today between 1-2 British time.

Please note that Ms Honeyball's irresponsible comments (labelling people who wish to discuss gender-based violence in the context of migration "racist" and minimising the issue of safety for european women) are being discussed critically on these threads. I have invited Ms Honeball to join these discussion and would like to extend the invitation to you as well, should you find the time.

Your talk was brilliant! Thank you.

Also my comment from Sun 07-Feb-16 10:39:01 on the last thread was removed. I don't remember what I posted...

Oh I'm sorry I can't resist it any longer... sorry for the more avid followers of such a fast moving thread but I have to take issue with something vlad said yesterday, on the last thread "At the same time the UK is handing over power to local authorities. This weakens the unity of the UK as a nation state as disparate communities and councils will rule in their little corners without real power to affect what happens on a European level. Decentralising political power in the UK makes the EU stronger. "

The steady stripping of power - and money - away from local councils over the last 40 years is one of the things that has led us into the terrible state we are today. Lack of democracy, accountability - it starts here in Britain. Britain is not operating in the EU as Britain any more, it operates only as city-state London. It makes us weaker as a nation state. We have little manufacturing, little infrastructure, the economy outside London is collapsing, and no one in government is listening, too busy pursuing their own ideologies and not giving a monkey's about anyone else. It is lack of democracy that promotes dissatisfaction, lack of accountability that promotes disengagement. If we leave the EU, people will turn on London rule next. Scotland will leave and then the North of England will start pressuring to leave and join them. Decentralising - real decentralisation, giving power back to communities - and then coordination of matters of real public concern is the only way forward.

bungo the reality is that neither Britain nor France want to take responsibility for the people in Calais and Dunkerque, even though they both plainly do have both legal and moral responsibilities. The UK is legally responsible for any minors or dependent adults who have relatives in the UK prepared to shelter them - there was a recent court ruling on this - while France is legally responsible for the rest, unless they were previously processed in another EU State. The behaviour of both our countries has been shameful.

Legally, responsibility for processing asylum seekers falls to the country through which they entered the EU - mostly Greece (for 2015/16) arrivals and Italy (for prior arrivals), under the Dublin regulations. This system has largely collapsed under the weight of arrivals, since for fairly obvious reasons Greece has neither the capacity nor the political will to process them.

As for UK border security - well, it's pretty tight tbh. You are not in Schenghen. There are really not that many refugees making it across Europe to the UK by the land/sea route. Because the UK is an island with a relatively well-policed coastline and maritime borders, it has always been the case that most asylum seekers arrive in the UK legally, by air. This might change if the French ceased to police the border at Calais, but it is not certain that this will happen.

Ta Mistigri, that's pretty much what I thought.

Coordination and cooperation on those real public matters of concern is lacking everywhere.

bungo on the contrary, it strikes me that the existence of the camps in northern France while a disgrace is also a very good advertisement for how effective "coordination and cooperation" can be when it comes to border security.

Those camps exist largely because the French and the Belgians cooperate with British border control to keep asylum seekers out of the UK. Many French people especially those with Front National leanings think this is a shame (I'm not among them btw).

I wouldn't be swayed by the Calais argument. If it is a bilateral agreement that does France no good, we shouldn't expect that staying in the EU will keep France tied to it anyway. If it is not in France's interests, we can expect the agreement to end eventually anyway.

I imagine we have the agreement not because we are in the EU, but because both sides want trade to flow and the euro- tunnel to function. It wouldn't be great for France, if the UK slowed all that to a halt because they are checking everything with a fine toothed comb. France wouldn't want the bulk of the business to move to Hook of Holland. Being an island, we have a lot of flexibility. We are not tied to fixed road routes.

All that said, I want to cooperate with France for our mutual good, not end up in a political fight with them.

But that idea that the camps would move to the South East is silly. That would only happen if our politicians want that, or if they are incompetent.

There are endless possibilities. We could even take the Australian option.

Our politicians are incompetent. Something to be factored in.

Our fault really. We do live in a representative democracy.

Vlad:
Also my comment from Sun 07-Feb-16 10:39:01 on the last thread was removed. I don't remember what I posted...
You accused some posters of being sock puppets.
Apparently calling people xenophobes is okay, but sock puppet? OMG, NO!

fwiw, I don't think the three named are sock puppets.

I don't think most of us on this thread are xenophobes, either, but I don't usually bother reporting comments like that as I think most people reading the thread can judge for themselves.

vladimirsoftless

I like your letter thanking Krisztina for her efforts in the FEMM group talk.

Good job!

LumelaMme

Oh I sympathise with vlad (who is relatively new to these threads), as we have all experienced genuine frustration, (and I think you have too) to provocation, via 'racist' name calling etc. Can be very hard not to bite and give it back.

Oh, I know, Ink!
The number of times I have deleted entire paragraphs sentences of stuff that would have got my posts zapped or seen me ejected from MN.

The Le Touquet agreement of juxtaposted border controls between Belgium, France and the UK is not an EU-based deal. It is a separate treaty between the countries concerned.

So yes the French might, out of pique at us leaving the EU, scrap the treaty, but it does not automatically get cancelled if we leave.

I agree with 2016 that there may be some efficiency and financial gains for the Eurotunnel company of the juxtaposed borders. Eurotunnel including Eurostar has to compete against air and ferry travel (though I think it owns Sea France too). So there may be French business interests in favour of Le Touquet, I would like to know more about that.

I'm sure I've read that Marine Le Pen is against scrapping Le Touquet because she thinks it would act as a pull factor for more migrants to cross France if it's suddenly easier to get to the UK.

vladimirsoftless Mon 08-Feb-16 09:34:33

i agree with every word. Esp People in Greece did not have enough food and medicine only two years ago and suddenly they have to process and support so many migrants

and am so disappointed with the EU. The EU commission is only pursuing their own agenda, that is centralist power for elite politicians and bureaucrats. They have no care for the ordinary man or women and their local and lived experiences. No Eu member should have ever welcomed the refugees in the way merkel did without agreement with all other eu partners, she acted like a dictator and continues to do so as it's obvious that negative press about her is censored China style