this is where Priti Patel wanted to process asylum applications
vaguely reminiscent of the French penal colonies in Papillon
I suspect @johnmcternan might be right that this was inspired by Australia using Christmas Island as a detention centre...involving a rather smaller distance
“Patel allies tell Playbook that while she asked officials to see how the government could learn from other countries’ offshoring policies, following talks with former Aussie PM Tony Abbott, it was Foreign Office that came up with Ascension Island.”
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look away now if you have zero interest in employment law, because this thread is going to compare and contrast - in minute detail - the 2021 Labour New Deal For Working People and the new, rewritten version which I got hold of yesterday.....
- Labour insists this new document does not represent a "watering down" of its signature package of employment policies designed to help workers
- that's because some of the big changes were made behind closed doors at last year's "national policy forum" and so aren't new per se
but it's worth a reminder of how significantly some of the biggest New Deal pledges have shifted since the original 2021 document
remember when Boris Johnson’s distant cousin was offering to guarantee an £800,000 loan for him?
and a few weeks later he popped up on an FCDO list of four suggested candidates to be chief executive of the British Council?
and no one could explain how that happened?
we only knew any of this thanks to dogged reporting by @HarryYorke1 and @Gabriel_Pogrund at the Sunday Times
@HarryYorke1 @Gabriel_Pogrund I put some FOIs into the Foreign Office in January which they’ve finally answered after seven months of prevarication and stonewalling
(albeit heavily
and it turns out Nigel Adams, one of Boris Johnson’s closest ministerial allies, was involved in the recruitment process
the UK government is planning to eliminate import tariffs on palm oil from Malaysia, a product blamed for widespread deforestation, as the price of joining an Asia-Pacific trade deal, prompting outrage from green campaigners
Clare Oxborrow, senior sustainability analyst at Friends of the Earth, said the plans could lead to more devastating loss of forest ecosystems.
“This concession is completely at odds with the government’s commitment to curb deforestation from UK supply chains”
Compared with EU, which retains palm oil tariffs and is planning tough new rules against imports linked to deforestation, the UK has a relatively light regulatory approach, with a law that only addresses deforestation defined as illegal under local laws in producing countries
🚨 London and Edinburgh are heading for another constitutional clash as Rishi Sunak’s government prepares to thwart a controversial bottle recycling scheme in Scotland