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Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
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Mar 13 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Wonder if the £350 will turn out psychologically counterproductive? It may set people along the path of thinking about the real cost (and how much £350 is short of that) who otherwise would have borne it without a grumble. Plus cements ongoing Tory monitoring into the process.
Case in point...
And this...
The more I think about it, the more the £350 seems like a calibrated ploy to force people to sit down with a calculator and work out the limits of their generosity. A lot of offers of help may evaporate as a result.
Imagine if you're a lawyer and you do a couple of hours work for a good friend. How awkward does it get if they say "I really must give you something for your time" and hand you a £20 gift voucher.

Suddenly instead of it being a favour, it suddenly feels like a massive discount.
And at the same time it gives the RW press infinite ammo because they can write breathless, witless articles about how much it's costing every tax payer (including the ones that hate forrins.)
Finally, it gives the Tories a chance to claim 100% credit for their genius refugee scheme.

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More from @uk_domain_names

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
Mar 12
It likely that we are much more angry about the UK visa situation for Ukrainian refugees than Ukrainians are (except the ones directly affected, of course).

Why?
- Only about 1% applied to come to the UK
- Our military and humanitarian aid is much appreciated
- Distracted by war
But even if the Ukrainians haven't noticed, other European governments and media certainly have.

So the message has spread that we are a harsh, unwelcoming place even at a time of maximum need.

The British public stand ready to be generous.

They're being stymied by the Tories.
Remember, Brexit voters represent just 37% of registered voters, and only a subset of Brexit voters will have had immigration as their top concern.

So we are making the lives of Ukrainian refugees hell and sinking our international reputation further to please a small minority.
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
Mar 10
Because the pandemic doesn't make the headlines any more, you may not realise how much the vaccination effort has slowed.

Indeed, it has almost stopped.

In the 30 days to 8 March, it delivered just:

* 244,831 first doses

* 540,513 second doses

* 863,152 booster doses

V bad.
Given that the number of new cases is rising very fast, and that the vaccine is pretty much the only defence the Tories claim to be holding onto, the paltry vaccination rate suggests we may face bigger and bigger problems as population immunity wears off.
By this point, we all know the drill.

COVID-19 is like a grim conveyor belt.

First cases rise.
Then hospitalisations rise.
Then deaths rise.

The current large rise in cases will be reflected down the road.
Read 5 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
Mar 9
Polling shows a majority of Tory voters are in favour of a more compassionate approach to Ukrainian refugees.

Please stop saying it's what they voted for. It's not. They voted for a party. That party has 5 years to do whatever it wants, unfettered by voter opinion. Not the same!
Why is it important?

Because if the UK is ever to move on from ruinous Tory rule, it will need to be by persuading Tory voters.

And the road to persuasion must begin by seeking commonalities.

A humanitarian response to the current refugee crisis is an obvious place to start.
Not "this is what you voted for", but "I know this is not what you voted for, so how do you feel about it?"
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
Mar 9
The number of Ukrainians who have fled the country has passed 2 million...

Meanwhile, the UK has extremely grudgingly admitted 760 of them.

Shameful response at odds with the whole of the rest of Europe, without exception.
It's frankly amazing it's even 760. The Devil would blanch at putting together a system as convoluted as the visa application process. And then there's this...
The sad thing is, many people here stand ready to throw open their doors in welcome too.

But the Home Office has erected a wall as high as the Hoover Dam.
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
Mar 7
Ukrainian refugees MUST fill in an application and book to visit a VAC. (No VACs open in Ukraine.)

Nearest VACs (distance from Kyiv):
Rzeszow, Poland: 700km
Warsaw, Poland: 780km
Budapest, Hungary: 1,116km
Chisinau, Moldova: 470km
Bucharest, Romania: 900km
Paris, France: 2,360km
The Home Office has stated that the maximum capacity across all VACs is 6,000 appointments/week.

There have already been over 13,500 visa applications.

50 visas have been granted.
We are the only country in the world to have a complex visa process in place for Ukrainian refugees.

Other countries have either binned their processes entirely ("just turn up") or slimmed down to the bare essentials.
Read 6 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
Mar 7
A thread about WW3...

WW3, should the world have the gravest misfortune to experience it, will be different from all previous wars.

We can't look back at WW2, and think "like that, but with cellphones".

We will never see phalanxes of thousands of tanks sweeping across Europe.
We will never experience a sky dark with thousands of planes, or hundreds of bombers levelling a single city with conventional weapons.

Why?

Simply this: modern weapons are too complex and too expensive.

Even if you retool the economy for war, you can't pump out mass numbers.
Russia has around 1,500 combat planes, the USA 2,700.

That's the equivalent of 2 weeks of aircraft production in 1944, the busiest time of WW2.

If we consider bombers, Russia has about 120 and the USA 140. Spread those across the European/Asian theatre, and it's insignificant.
Read 8 tweets

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