Priti Patel’s authoritarian Borders Bill is designed to criminalise those most desperate for our help inews.co.uk/opinion/priti-…
Here are some of the key provisions. The bill makes it an offence to "knowingly arrive in the UK without a valid entry clearance",
potentially criminalising all asylum seekers arriving via an irregular route.
It allows immigration officers to arrest people on boats when they have reached Britain’s territorial waters.
It lets immigration officers board the boat and force it return to its place of origin.
It permits authorities to sentence anyone who helps an asylum seeker reach Britain to life imprisonment, even if they received no financial payment for doing so.
It separates asylum seekers into two groups - those who arrived directly and indirectly.
The latter group, which constitutes the vast majority of asylum seekers in the UK, are subject to a sustained programme of administrative punishment, even if they are granted their refugee status.
It is a sustained assault on he right of asylum and an outright attack on some of the most desperate people on earth.
Honestly, fuck the politics with this one. On basic moral terms it is an abysmal piece of law.
The policing bill, which silences protests, passed third reading last night. In case anyone wants to remind themselves of Boris Johnson's 'libertarian instincts' independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
I'm not a libertarian. It has a simplistic assessment of the state and a naive view of the market. But libertarianism is a proud, coherent, principled tradition of political thought.
There are libertarians who still stand up for unpopular freedoms, like protest, drug legalisation and free movement. They do exist. But not in this government.
I'm starting to emotionally prepare myself for a winter lock-down.
The fact that I have to do that makes me incandescent with rage. But it would be silly not to countenance it. They've clearly learned nothing. They have no sense of caution or sense. We're behaving in a way that invites further variants.
And a quick reminder: they could soon have been in a position to responsibly lift the remaining domestic restrictions if they'd controlled the fucking border. But they didn't. And now we are where we are.
Such an inane thing to say. We all want the end of restrictions to be fast and irreversible. No-one enjoys them. But it cannot be guaranteed and claiming it can suggests you don't know what you're doing.
This confusion between hope and reality - wonder where we've seen that before - is a key feature of how the government operates and why it so consistently fucks things up.
On the subject of not-enjoyable: Masks and food. Fucking hell. I now avoid certain foods - eggs, curry etc - if I know I'll have to wear it when traveling home.
Hancock should've been sacked yesterday instead of resigning today. The prime minister has no principle, no judgement, no belief in the basic standards of public life.
And of course he leaves saying it's about his private life. Got nothing to do with your private life. It's to do with hypocrisy, inconsistency, cronyism and damaging public trust during a pandemic.
Several people on here have made the point that Johnson cannot sack people for failing to abide by basic standards, because that principle may then be used against him. I think that's spot on.