Graham Johnson

Unutterably depressing that the UK remains saddled with the albatross of Brexit. More evidence that Brexit was not an event, which one side or the other *won* , but a continuing, slow rolling, never ending disaster, and a gift to our geographical enemies.

UK to announce plans to emulate stringent Danish immigration system Shabana Mahmood’s proposals draw scorn from some Labour MPs, while others want government to go further

So let me get this right. We had to leave the EU to control immigration, and we are going to control immigration by emulating the stringent immigration system of Denmark, which is a proud and happy member of the EU.

This wife talking about her husband becoming radicalised by Farage and those like him really is quite extraordinary in its heartbreaking understatement.

"He absolutely wanted it to be [a terrorist attack]. The grin on his face. He wanted an I-told-you-so."

My thoughts and prayers to all the racists trying to hold on to their bigotry in the face of inconvenient facts.

“A rushed and ill-conceived Brexit that brought further disruption, as businesses trying to trade were faced with extra costs and extra paperwork. All this meant that when the pandemic arrived our country was under-prepared, our public services weakened and our economy fragile. And we finished the pandemic with higher death rates and higher debt than our peers” Rachel Reeves MP, Chancellor

Today, the Chancellor named Brexit as one of the main reasons for expected tax rises and lower productivity.

Wasn't Brexit supposed to put £350 million a week into the economy? 🤔 One of just many lies it seems...

Osborne deserves a lot more condemnation, for not just doing austerity but doing it so cackhandedly:

1. Not borrowing to invest when borrowing costs were at essentially zero

2. Cutting spending by salami slicing every part of the public sector with no real analysis of where could take it

Also, consider the fact - obvious to anyone who's thought about it for more than 30 seconds - that most Brits of Caribbean descent's "ancestral homeland" is *not* the Caribbean, is it? There's another reason why they were there...

Reply to a post about the incident in Huntingdon from a US account: “ I cannot stress this enough to people. Carry a small canister of pepper spray and keep it accessible when you’re out in public especially trapped in a train. It’s an easy protective measure we can all take.” Reply from me: “I cannot stress enough to you that pepper spray is illegal to possess, buy, or carry in the UK under the Firearms Act 1968. I strongly recommend anyone reading does not do this under any circumstances.”

Well-meaning Americans in my mentions: kindly do not recommend extremely illegal actions that could land people in the UK with a ten year prison sentence

Almost nobody in the Cons Party or beyond it had noticed that the Shadow Home Secretary with two other frontbenchers and 5 backbenchers tabled a bill in May to deport 3 million people - stripping almost every pensioner, parent or nurse who did not take out citizenship of their right to live here

Reminder that by embracing Brexit the Conservative and Unionist party destroyed Conservatism as a domestic force and set In trail the breakup of the Union.

A political fable.

There is a more pressing issue. Ministers must ensure that the vast numbers of immigrants who arrived in the so-called Boriswave of 2020-21 are not automatically absorbed into the permanent population. They are about to cross the the five-year threshold into ILR, yet Labour continues to dither. Ms Mahmood must freeze the status of this huge cohort while a new residency regime is finalised. A million or more extra permanent residents in these islands, let in on the nod, is simply unacceptable. Finally, the home secretary must acquaint herself, and the public, with an accurate estimate of the actual number of foreign nationals living here, what taxes they pay and what services they consume. Without hard data, all the political parties are fumbling around in the dark.

The Times finds it "unacceptable" that people who came here legally in 2021 and have been living and working here since should allowed to stay.

The sad decline of a once great newspaper into ignorant xenophobia and casual racism

archive.ph/TFZY9

UK needs ‘ambitious’ EU youth migration deal, says Rachel Reeves The chancellor believes allowing young people to live and work in Britain would boost the economy and reduce the need for tax rises in the budget

The Chancellor right - the road to uk economic growth goes firmly through Europe and addressing damage Brexit has done to business. The deal we have so far shows the door is open to us to do so- join us in @labour4europe.bsky.social campaigning to do just that www.thetimes.com/article/ea32...

Refuk repeatedly argues for protection of free speech, of which the ECHR is the key protector.

Its leaders backed Brexit, which meant leaving the Dublin convention, which has led to increased small boat crossings.

They push against the very policies protecting them from things they most fear.

The biggest threat to women isn't immigrants.

It's Nigel Farage supporters.

Pentagon plans military deployment in Chicago as Trump eyes crackdown President Donald Trump said Chicago is his next likely target to crack down on urban crime. Military planning has been ongoing for weeks, officials say.

We’re 7 months in, and “Pentagon plans military deployment in Chicago” is a headline in the Washington Post. And because it’s city number three, we’re already numbing to it.

If you read this about any other democracy in the world, you’d conclude that it was well on the road to a dictatorship.

“Tabloids tell us Connolly is lovely, ordinary, caring, a great Mum. But she wasn’t punished for any of that. She was punished for telling a mob it's okay to set fire to hotels full of people she sees as lesser. That she did it between a cuppa and walking the dog, makes it more chilling, not less.”

One of the most damaging consequences of Brexit is the loss of freedom of movement. UK citizens could previously study and work in Europe indefinitely, visa-free. The mobility of UK citizens in the EU is now restricted.

Perhaps the real ‘two tier justice’ is that the foot soldiers who do the racist tweets get jail time, whilst the lieutenants in journalism who write the racist articles and the colonels as editors who spew out the incendiary headlines, and generals who own the papers, just get lots of money.

"I was Keir Starmer's political prisoner?"

"Really? And what politics got you imprisoned?"

"I publicly advocated for vulnerable people to be burned alive"

It's not the most important thing at the moment, but I'm so embarrassed for America. To have world leaders concern themselves with symbols of placation for an overgrown manchild. To have the leader of a country fighting for its life thinking about what he wears to the White House.

One odd thing that is left out of the small boats discourse is how much the problem was directly caused by Conservative policy – specifically Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

2018: 299 small boat arrivals
2019: 1,843 arrivals

Truss’s 49-day premiership: 10,523 small boat arrivals

Exactly what I'm talking about. Starmer should be hanging Farage out to dry, telling him the delays and checks are down to his Brexit.
Go after Farage. Let him defend Britons being exposed to EES and Etias.

1

That lead climbs and climbs, slowly but relentlessly…

That's Brexit!

Others have noted that this means foreign-born people are LESS likely than UK-born people to be in prison. What I want to note is that The Times is now referring to foreign-born UK citizens as ‘foreigners’. This includes Boris Johnson, Sir Mo Farah, Emma Watson, Rory Stewart and little old me.

The EU Referendum, where it all started to go wrong?

There’s an easy solution to this problem which was created by Brexit: rejoin the EU.

Number of British acts at European music festivals plummets since Brexit Fans in France, Spain, Germany and Denmark set to miss out this summer

Ah well. How sad. Never mind. The people knew what they were voting for.

If a sitting president can openly muse about arresting and disappearing someone who is likely to become mayor of the country's largest city, while also getting the funding for a massive secret police, it'd be hard to find sufficient evidence to qualify that country as a democracy.