The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
Team GB managed to come second in the Olympics medal table…
I was absolutely delighted - 10%
I was quietly pleased, despite myself - 40%
Not bothered either way - 28%
Bah humbug! - 8%
Oh, I didn't know that - 3%
What's "the Olympics"? - 8%
Other, please specify - 3%
I am relieved about that, as I was "quietly pleased" but was worried that I was in a tiny minority.
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The French have come up with another cunning plan for getting their own back on us for voting Brexit.
From the BBC:
Migrants in Calais seeking asylum in the UK should be allowed to lodge their claim in France, the president of the region has told the BBC.
Xavier Bertrand said people living in the camp known as the Jungle should be able to apply at a "hotspot" in France rather than waiting to reach Britain…
The Home Office said "those in need of protection should seek asylum in the first safe country they enter". Mr Bertrand said under his plan anyone rejected by the UK would then be deported directly to their country of origin.
Sounds like a great idea to me; we can just reject all such applications out of hand and then it's the French's job to deport them. No doubt the 'refugees' will be able to work out this logic for themselves, so none will be daft enough to apply for asylum in the UK, thus preserving the status quo ante.
So that's this week Fun Online Poll, is this a good idea or a bad idea?
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Monday, 29 August 2016
Fun Online Polls: Team GB & applying for asylum in the UK while still in France
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14 comments:
You don't know our British bureaucrats very well, do you?
It's a good idea because we could reject them out of hand, it's a bad idea because we wouldn't.
F, they can accept them whether they are over here or still in France, that makes no difference, does it?
It can take weeks, or even months, to determine each application for asylum. In the meantime, the applicants would have to be fed, housed and clothed, all at British expense. Then there will be the repeated appeals from ambulance chasing shysters (all on legal aid). A possibly better way would be to ask why applications for asylum weren't made in the first safe country the migrants came to and asylum in the UK will not be considered unless they returned to that country and made UK asylum applications from there. It can't be that hard finding someone to spend 40 hours a week on a Greek island saying "No" in several middle eastern languages.
Hang on, this is bizarre. These "asylum seekers" are in France. What makes France so much less a safe country than the UK? From what are they "in need of protection". If they can't make a case for needing to be specifically in the UK, as opposed to a need not to be in whichever dangerous/corrupt/despotic/wartorn country they come from, then they can seek asylum in France.
Far from "getting their own back on us for voting Brexit", aren't the Frogs doing us a favour on this one?
Mind you the work of processing those "seeking asylum" is one of the few things that a central organisation like the EU could do better than the individual countries concerned, sort them centrally and spread the genuine ones out amongst the members but does it happen that way?
The popular conception that a lot of Europeans are trying to punish us for voting Brexit is probably correct.It makes more sense than the idea that they will forgive us everything because they like us so much or desparately want our trade despite our implied threat to deport their citizens.There is a fluffy-headed aspect to a lot of Brexiteers.
"The popular conception that a lot of Europeans are trying to punish us for voting Brexit is probably correct."
I think it would be more correct to replace "a lot of Europeans" with "the French". The German attitude seems to be "come back, we love you" and everyone else's attitude seems to be "Meh".
B, agreed on "one of the few things that a central organisation like the EU could do better than the individual countries"
All European countries (EU or not) would do well to club together, police the north African/Arab/Turkish coast, turn back who they can and all pay for temporary camps in Greece or Italy, process asylum claims there on an agreed basis and then each country takes its fair share of those who are not promptly sent back whence they came.
DBC, as B says, it's mainly the French. There's nothing like historic enmity for some vague historical reason with no justification in the modern world. The Froggies should just accept that we beat Napoleon and bailed them out in two World Wars etc :-)
Its no time for this rosy view of British history.I don't think the de Gaulle generation were that impressed by Britain getting well beaten up by Hitler and being bailed out by the Americans who swiped all this country's imperial preference markets in return.The sanctimonious posturing by Brits who very mysteriously stopped being bombed at the start of Barbarossa and the invasion of Russia would get on anybody's nerves.
As ill-disposed Europeans probably see it we have Brexited an equal and laboriously constructed Free Trade Area and are threatening to deport people who have a legal right of residence amidst constant intimidation and now murder.
I was vaguely pro_Brexit (voting for Bob Crowe's No 2 EU)until Nigel
hijacked the movement with anti-immigrant bullshit.
People on here who approved of the bullshit are going to have put up with a lot of counter-bullshit from European political leaders looking
for bullshitter votes.
"Its no time for this rosy view of British history.I don't think the de Gaulle generation were that impressed by Britain getting well beaten up by Hitler"
when they themselves had put up such a good fight and hadn't collaborated with the enemy or anything like that. I'm sure they made out that having to hand over half their country in return for having a puppet government in the other half was somehow the fault of the English.
"The sanctimonious posturing by Brits who very mysteriously stopped being bombed at the start of Barbarossa and the invasion of Russia"
Quite apart from the fact that Russia and Germany were allies, right up to the point where Germany treacherously invaded Russia, a point you always gloss over when you are on one of your "perfidious Albion" rants, what could we have done to help Russia in the way of attacking Germany that we were not already doing? I suppose next you will be denying that thousands of British sailors died protecting the Arctic convoys of shipments to Russia or that the Russians recognised this and gave all the survivors a gold (real gold, too) medal when they got their gold back out of the Aberdeen (and made them "Heros of the Soviet Union"). If we hated the Russians so much, why the hell did we lose a ship and hundreds of lives trying to give them their gold back?
@B It doesn't do to be too sure about events during the war which was the milieu of Orwell's Ministry of Truth in London where armies of people were engaged in rewriting history.The version of events we now cling to like a comfort blanket is an elaborate construct; it does not include the Ottawa Accords or the Ottawa Imperial Conference in 1932 where Neville Chamberlain set up his father's Imperial Free Trade Area which even existing records show that the Americans wanted rid of.
People I met ( cockney Jewish Communists) during the 1975 Referendum campaign saw the war as an American pretext to dismantle this Imperial Free Trade Area and other European arrangements and (replace it with the World trade arrangements we have now).
I have no idea whether any of this is true but it has made me suspicious of the gallant little Britain aided by their steadfast American friends story.Too clear cut by half.
Well, I can vouch for the "medals to the survivors of the Arctic convoys" story from personal acquaintance. Mind you, if it wasn't for that, I might never have heard of it. I doubt it made the mainstream media. Thus it is very likely that 1) the Arctic convoys took place, 2) the Russians were grateful for the help*, 3) the Aberdeen was carrying Russian gold, 4)it was sunk and 5) the Russians got some of that gold back.
*Apparently, the common sentiment amongst the ancient mariners in receipt of the medal was "A damn sight more thanks than I ever got from the British government". They also got a slap-up meal at the Russian embassy with as much alcohol as they wanted after the presentation.
@B Not much doubt about the Russian Arctic convoy (Ushakov medal )awards in London which the Russians obviously took very seriously indeed. The official announcement and invitations are still up on the Net under the impressive banner of the "The Embassy of the Russian Federation to the United Kingdom of Great Britain..."
An example of something diplomatic that has left a trace.
That something as significant as the British Empire Economic Conference of 1932 (see Wikipedia) has been erased from the diplomatic record, despite it also being our break with the Gold Standard and an engagement with Keynesianism is first order Orwellian. The Wikipedia comment "The United States were annoyed by the implementation of the Imperial Preference as it affected them economically" seems some kind of masterful understatement.
A different roll of the dice might have seen the UK fight a more limited war and come out with all its Commonwealth Preference markets intact.
The award of Arctic convoy medals is very much on the record see the announcement of the awards on the website of the Embassy of the Russian Federation to the United Kingdom.
The British Empire Economic Conference of 1932 is on Wikipedia but is now entirely absent from any political discussion about how the world trade system got to be so American-dominated. This Wikipedia comment is probably a clue: "The United States were annoyed by the implementation of Imperial Preference as it affected them economically"
Not the same medal. I must have heard the story about 1990, from a colleague whose uncle? had got the medal. All the medals on the embassy website date from 2014 and later, although I was glad to see that HMG had been shamed into handing out their own medal in 2012. So it looks like it was all hushed up, as I suspected. (mind you my memory is not 100% accurate, it was HMS Edinburgh, not HMS Aberdeen).
If these medals were awarded back in the 90's (and why make up such an unlikely story?) then there's a cracking story waiting to be uncovered.
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