Scottie - 陈德睿

每天不一样

[max tempers @maxtempers]

It's actually wonderful reading how this happened from the fallout afterwards. A rare example of "you can just do things" in action in a modern Western democracy.

- No coalition partner campaigned on the changes beforehand
- No public consultation
- No impact assessment
- Rushed through in 24 hours under urgency
- Quashed all pending claims
- The government engaged in “organised subterfuge”
- "Officials who knew the changes were imminent continued to negotiate in bad faith with parties involved in the 33 pay claims in order to keep the policy under wraps, so it could be presented as a fait accompli"
- Saved NZ$13bn. For context, this is nearly half the annual NZ health budget and double the defence budget. So even though the left opposed it, it's very difficult to undo without earmarking a giant amount of money.

[Metropolitan Police @metpoliceuk]

“Apprehending violent and dangerous criminals is a full contact and messy task which may appear shocking to observers with little experience of policing in the real world.”

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley writes to Zack Polanski.

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

This is the point I keep making. Natural England are legally mandated to only care about the fish, not Putin, power cuts, bankrupt businesses etc. We have eliminated any concept of ‘trade-offs’, at vast expense.

[max tempers @maxtempers]

The largest supermarket in Britain, that operates on razor-thin margins, is about to be crushed for the crime of paying different jobs different salaries, while our legislature shrugs.

How dare they suggest that “so-called market rates” can exist in Soviet Britain.

[Ashley Truluck CB CBE @Truluck_Wilts]

Here she is again - no notes, no sitting on the fence - just wow!

[Sam Bowman @s8mb]

@jamiegreeneUK This is a very sad thing to post. There’s no shame in your circumstances, but to think that they give you moral standing reveals a very small and unambitious view of the world.

[Ameer Kotecha @Ameer_Kotecha]

Lord Hermer said the falsely accused soldiers could never claim to have “made a real difference to people’s lives”, unlike the lawyers who had pursued the case for a decade.

Words fail me

[West End Girl @BucketsOf_Rain]

I honestly don't understand how the Hermer stuff doesn't just bring down him but the entire government. Persecuting your own soldiers, your own war heroes, and being proud of that when you know they're innocent. These people genuinely are our enemies. It's not an exaggeration

[Adam Thierer @AdamThierer]

truly one of the most amazing developments in trans-Atlantic tech policy over the past 20 years is the way that Europe set out to regulate US tech giants into the ground, but only made them more dominant as a result.

This Economist headline really says it.

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

This week, the BBC uncovered that migrants are pretending to be gay, or inventing stories of abuse, in order to cheat our immigration system.

And lawyers are being paid thousands of pounds to help them tell these lies. They should be struck off, and prosecuted.

But the problem of people lying in order to seek asylum here runs much deeper.

Last year, just over half – 52% – of asylum seekers arrived in the UK through illegal entry routes, usually on small boats crossing the Channel.

In fact, since 2018, nearly everybody who’s entered the country illegally via small boat – 95% – has gone on to claim asylum.

When those people arrive here, unsurprisingly, they often have no documentation whatsoever. They often can’t prove who they are, or where they’re from. They might claim to be from a country which is more dangerous than their real home country, in order to make their asylum claim more sympathetic.

They might also lie about their age, since our asylum system is more generous to children under the age of 18.

This can lead to completely ridiculous outcomes. There are scientific tests that we can use to work out a person’s real age – such as by testing their hair, or teeth. The previous Government tried to make these tests mandatory, but after winning the election, the Labour Party scrapped those tests altogether.

In March, an immigration judge ruled that a Sudanese migrant was a child – despite the fact that he had a beard and wrinkles, and despite the fact that assessors concluded that he was likely to be between 23 and 25 years old.

Instead of conducting a proper scientific assessment, the judge referred to the fact that the man’s Facebook account claimed that he was born in 2008.

When this kind of evidence is being accepted by judges, some people are obviously going to exploit the system. The people coming here illegally have already demonstrated that they are willing to break the rules, by entering illegally in the first place. It’s not hard to imagine that they might also be willing to lie about their nationality, or their age, to be able to stay.

The other 48 percent of asylum seekers arrive here legally, with a legitimate visa, and then later claim asylum.

We tend to know a little bit more about those people, but there’s still huge scope for fraud here too.

For example, somebody might work with a business in the UK to lie about their expected income, in order to get a work visa. They might lie about what qualifications they have, in order to get a study visa.

Once they’re here, they can then apply for asylum.

And once again, if somebody is travelling to the UK with the explicit intention of seeking asylum here, they have every incentive to lie.

Because once they seek asylum, they simply need to say that they consider themselves destitute and they’ll be put up in taxpayer-funded accommodation, and receive a weekly cash allowance. If their initial claim is unsuccessful, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to appeal again and again – meaning that they can stay in the UK for months or years at a time.

And even if their claim is finally rejected, they might not be removed.

So why wouldn’t people take the chance, and lie, in order to stay in the UK?

And the incentives to lie don’t stop there. At the moment, our system allows people to claim asylum for a whole host of reasons. Many of the claims that people make in order to get asylum here are almost impossible to prove properly.

For example, the BBC’s report found that some migrants are falsely claiming to be gay.

If somebody from, say, Pakistan really were gay, it’s true that they might face violence or persecution at home. This is contemptible.

But it��s incredibly difficult to prove somebody’s sexual orientation. People can argue that they were hiding their sexuality for fear of persecution, which can explain away the lack of evidence. If they need to, people can pretend to be in a relationship while their asylum claim is being processed – and there are a whole bunch of lawyers willing to help people fabricate evidence in order to ‘prove’ that they really are gay.

Another common claim is that people belong to a persecuted religious minority. Christians in Afghanistan, for example, might expect to be persecuted by the Taliban.

But how can somebody prove that they’re really, in their heart of hearts, a Christian? Again, they might say that they’ve hidden their faith in order to avoid persecution. They might say that they’ve converted since arriving in the UK, and that it would now be dangerous to return home. They might go to church once a week now they’re here in Britain. But if they are doing so fraudulently, how can we know?

In a similar vein, people often pretend to belong to a persecuted political group. They’ll often arrive in the UK and suddenly start making social media posts, or attending protests, in support of that group. How can we know that they were at all interested in this cause before?

When so many of the available grounds for asylum rely on claims that can never be definitively, objectively proven or disproven, people are obviously going to try to cheat the system.

The result is that people get to break into the country illegally, or come here on false pretences, and stay. Billions of pounds of taxpayer money is spent on housing and supporting these people. Far too often, these people pose a risk to the British public, particularly to women and children.

There are plenty of things that we can do to make it harder for people to cheat our immigration system.

We can, and should, bring back scientific age assessments, to stop people from lying about their age.

We can, and should, strike off and prosecute the dodgy lawyers who are helping people to cheat the system.

We can, and should, tighten the rules about what grounds people can use to seek asylum in the UK.

We must stop people who arrive here illegally from ever getting asylum. People who have shown contempt for our borders are incredibly likely to try everything that they possibly can to stay here. We should not expect them to behave in good faith.

And we must leave the ECHR, so that when people have their claims rejected, they can be removed – either to their home country, or to a safe third country.

The BBC’s report is shocking, but not surprising. As things stand, our migration system provides every incentive for people to lie in order to stay here. We cannot keep letting people cheat the system.

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

The thing many people are missing is that Olly Robbins’ entire career illustrates how the idea of the neutral Civil Service is fading. He was very clearly a player in Brexit, not just a neutral official obeying his masters - and was brought back under Labour because of it

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

This isn’t a policy. It’s a national IQ test.

[Adam Wren @aswren]

Freedom of speech is *sacrosanct*

[Replies turned off, post about combatting “disinformation”]

[Richard Williams @williams_rje]

The case against SAS Soldier B was funded by legal aid and presented, sequentially for judgement to three separate and independent courts.

Each ruled that he acted lawfully, and the second two ruled that the use of legal aid (taxpayer money) was wasteful and unjustified.

This isn’t a system seeking ‘truth’ or ‘justice’.

It is vexatious, state-sponsored persecution of ageing veterans that fought as skilled, highly trained soldiers to defeat violent, domestic terrorists in an armed insurrection; and in the service of their country.

“Persecution by Lawfare” of those that acted lawfully, and at great risk to themselves, to protect the citizens of the UK against those that seek to kill them.

The @UKLabour defence double whammy: hurt those that served, underfund those that are serving… it’s quite the policy cocktail…

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Ronald Reagan

[Benjamin Butterworth @benjaminbutter]

You will struggle to find a better example of the market working than British supermarkets. Although prices up recently, food is cheaper and better quality than most western countries. That’s exactly who deserves performance related pay.

There are 101 examples of exploitative CEO pay out there that should change, but that’s not what these ideologues care about. They just don’t like wealth.

[LBC @LBC]

‘I don’t want to be on benefits… but work just isn’t worth it anymore.’

Caller Sarah tells @JHansonradio how claiming welfare has left her 'stuck without a way out'.

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

The BBC going so big on this industrial-scale fraud feels like a turning point.

[Dr Lawrence Newport @lawrencenewport]

Think this is an exception?

Nope.

Great Ormond Street Hospital expansion was objected to on similar grounds.

These people will drag the country into poverty, decay and - in these cases quite directly - death.

[Vinnie Sullivan @VinnieSull1van]

Until I explain myself, people are often curious as to why one of my all-time favourite Britons is Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859).

You see, not only did he work on the Thames Tunnel (connecting Wapping and Rotherhithe), which was the first subaqueous tunnel in the world, designed by his father Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, but he is also responsible for (among other things) the Great Western Railway (GWR), developing pioneering steamships like the SS Great Britain, and creating iconic structures such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Royal Albert Bridge.

So efficient were his railways that the entire country had to synchronise their clocks because travel had finally become reliable.

I am leaving out a great deal of his achievements, which I speak about more on my tours @PubHistoryTours. Not only have we built upon his ideas, but we're still using his original bridges and tunnels as I type.

I could talk of what he's done at length, but instead, I'll point out that unlike most people who simply have blue plaques or articles, Isambards legend lives on in real time as we still use his creations to this very day.

He doesn't just exist in a book or website, but in our very footsteps and train journeys.

If you need to understand how important he was to not only Britain but the world, then remember there's evidence of his achievements within your everyday life as it will be for those after us.

As I said, I could say more, but hopefully, this post will prompt you to watch a few documentaries and check a few facts along the way.

Thank you for reading, and take care. ⏳️