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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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Oddly Crimea is the best hope of a stable long-term relationship between Russia and Ukraine. Now it is clear there will at least be a rump-Ukraine, geography dictates that it will threaten both of the links between Russia and Crimea -- not to mention the water supply of Crimea. This gives Ukraine considerable leverage.

Not that I am optimistic. Ukraine previously had two pressure points against Russia -- the Russian oil pipelines running through its territory and the Russian-speaking minority in the east -- and managed to turn both into weaknesses.
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Mick Harper
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I live in the weirdest country

Seven hundred asylum-seekers crossed the Channel on one day this week.... Last November, French police quoted a price of £5000 charged by smugglers for individuals to cross the Channel. Now asylum-seekers and non-governmental organisations say the price has dropped to between £500 and a thousand for a place in the boat. Guardian

Just to be accurate, not seven hundred asylum-seekers, seven hundred young males who apparently found it worthwhile to set out from their country of origin spending vastly more sums crossing deserts, Mediterranean seas and so forth in order to reach Calais, prepared to give someone£5000 for a trip across. Do we want people who are so unentrepreneurial that they don't know they can buy their own boat for that?

Unless that's what they're doing and it accounts for prices dropping like a stone. The sort of entrepreneur I'm looking for is someone who uses his five grand to buy a boat then charges ten others five grand and sends them across while he stays safe in France.

Damnit, that means the French are getting all the entrepreneurial types.
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Mick Harper
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Migrants trapped on tiny island between Greece and Turkey CBSnews

I may be wrong but I believe this is the first time in history where two countries have been in dispute over territory, both claiming it belongs to the other! So let us sum up the situation

1. There are a hundred Syrians
2. They pay people smugglers to get them across Turkey
3. The EU pays Turkey billions of euros every year not to allow this
4. They reach an island in a river on the border between Turkey and the EU
5. The EU courts have ruled that Greece must take them
6. Greece has refused
7. The migrants have started dying (or anyway Channel 4 News was reporting that one daughter had died and another daughter needed hospital treatment for a scorpion bite)
8. They will eventually be let into Greece
9. Greece has every incentive to allow them to move on into the EU where no country wants them but all will have to cope with them as best they can
10. Liberals in all EU countries think this is wonderful.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
I live in the weirdest country

Seven hundred asylum-seekers crossed the Channel on one day this week.... Last November, French police quoted a price of £5000 charged by smugglers for individuals to cross the Channel. Now asylum-seekers and non-governmental organisations say the price has dropped to between £500 and a thousand for a place in the boat. Guardian

Just to be accurate, not seven hundred asylum-seekers, seven hundred young males who apparently found it worthwhile to set out from their country of origin spending vastly more sums crossing deserts, Mediterranean seas and so forth in order to reach Calais, prepared to give someone£5000 for a trip across. Do we want people who are so unentrepreneurial that they don't know they can buy their own boat for that?

Unless that's what they're doing and it accounts for prices dropping like a stone. The sort of entrepreneur I'm looking for is someone who uses his five grand to buy a boat then charges ten others five grand and sends them across while he stays safe in France.

Damnit, that means the French are getting all the entrepreneurial types.


Aha, so the Rwanda plan means the crossing price drops, (you could possibly end up in Rwanda...). The new lower crossing price is much more affordable so keeps the numbers going upwards. I hope these poorer migrants will thank Priti for this excellent new low cost crossing opportunity.

You can't beat the market. No?
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Mick Harper
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What market? The big drawback to the cross-Channel pedalo route is that it's highly visible. Once Rwanda Migrant Airlines is up and flying, there won't be a single taker.

That's what the liberal OMG-Not-Rwanda brigade never fathom. There won't be anybody going there. If anybody is threatened with it, they will simply say, "Oh, I'd prefer going back to my country of origin, thanks very much, and here are the travel documents that I've been hiding all this time to prevent anyone finding out that I'm over eighteen, not a refugee and not an asylum-seeker. See you next time."

What the OMG-No-Migrants brigade never fathom is that that just means they will all be arriving unseen. By what means is yet to be established but it will be by some route, that I can assure them. What nobody ever fathoms is that migrants arriving unseen and then disappearing unseen into the maw of the Black Economy is nothing for anybody to worry about. Out of sight, out of mind, out of Daily Mail banner headlines.

Apart from the low-paid who will be slightly lower-paid than if there were not regular inward migration, but they're never unionised so we don't have to worry about them. They don't have picket lines for Labour MP's not to appear on. OMG-Not-Rwanda people in general are never low-paid but they do use the services of a lot of low-paid people. They are not aware of this -- they are totally uninterested in sordid profit motives -- they're much dafter than that.
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Mick Harper
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We're not just neighbours, we're family and I will never ever let our family be split up. Liz McTruss in Perth.

Has she thought this one through? Does she mean we are doomed to live in the same house together forever? Maybe the kids can go agly but they have to come back for Christmas every year. Without fail. Or else. Is a battered spouse (or just a fed up one) not allowed a divorce, Liz, or are we going to be a bit Protestant about it? When will politicians remember that tub-thumping is a dangerous game unless you are preaching to tubbies who live on deep fried Mars bars at our expense.

Yes, you guessed it. The mandarins have told the pols there's nothing left in the kitty and for chrissake get the Scots to leave as quickly as possible. "Me and Rishi can go up there if that'll help."
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Wile E. Coyote


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Emily lumped in her Edinburgh TV lecture, the Beeb's decision to apologise for their Dominic Cummings broke the rules edition (fronted by Emily before she left the Corp), with Trump, Brexit, stuff from Australia et al into a type of it's all a "global populist right wing" plot subverting press freedom, democtratic norms and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zA2HCCT2WU

The problem with all this is that for every Tory spin doctor complaining, there is a Labour one, for every Tory "sympathiser" appointed to the board of governors, there is a Labour one, for every undemocratic "prorogation of parliament by a Johnson", there is a "prorogation of by a Trudeaux". For every "Trump conspiracy", "there is a Hilary".

The personal is political.....or should that be.... the political is personal.
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Mick Harper
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I'm waiting for 'the migrant issue' to switch from right to left as everyone slowly realises who actually benefits/loses from cheap labour. There was an interesting straw in the wind when Newsnight/Chanel4News/Al-Jazeera -- one of the liberal-or-else outlets -- sent a crack team of newshounds to comb the sand dunes of the Picardy littoral. They found a crack team of flics who had finally learned how to stop the flood at source. You stick a knife into the boat. "Stand down the Border Force armed cruisers, number one."

Nobody was bothering with more than a cursory reference to 'people fleeing oppression, seeking a better future for their children' because it is now mostly Albanians. Albanian gangs in Britain apparently need constant refreshing as they make their dough and go home to somewhere civilised to enjoy the fruits of crime.

I was surprised to hear that 'fifty per cent' of those intercepted are eventually granted asylum status. I'd love to be a fly on the wall. "And then what did they hit you with. Make a note of that, Griselda, the EU are considering them for entry, so will want to know." And that's just the Picardy police.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
I'm waiting for 'the migrant issue' to switch from right to left as everyone slowly realises who actually benefits/loses from cheap labour.


That is the high achieving children (the so-called second generation) of those migrants who have arrived and taken lower paid jobs.
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Mick Harper
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Depends. Yes, if they are Indo-Europeans (which embraces Iranians and Afghanis). No, if they are Nigerians, Somalis or Syrians. Well, maybe Syrians. If only we could get racists into the Asylum Tribunals we'd be sitting pretty. And don't forget we've just had a blessed tranche of a hundred thousand Hong Kong Chinese, with a few million more waiting in the wings. Come on, President Ji, do your worst. Please. We can't live off Ugandan Asians for ever.
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Grant



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The history of immigration shows that if the immigrant comes from a society which has achieved something, we will benefit in some way, even if it’s hard to calculate whether it’s worth the social problems. Better food - step forward Chinese and Indians. Good business sense. Step forward Chinese and some Indians. Sharp thinking skills. Step forward the Jews and some Chinese.

The countries which never achieved anything on their own have been a bloody disaster. Step forward the sub Saharan Africans. They haven’t even improved our football team, and we had to look in our own Gypsy community to find a world class boxer
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Wile E. Coyote


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Priti has just come up with a new plan to deal with Asylum Seekers which is to send them to provincial towns or cities. That is presumably if they can't be sent to Rwanda, or maybe it is in relation to the 37,000 already occupying hotels.


"Hello this is Kat Jelly from Borders."

"Hi Kat, this is Harvey Craftbeer from Grafton council. We are the council that cares. How can we help you this fine day?"

"That's great, Harvey, we have a proposal for you, we want to place 1000 asylum seekers in Grafton."

"Wow, that is great news Kat, I will just get you redirected to the Assistant Director of Housing."

"Sorry, Harvey, I have waited an hour to speak to you, you are the Chief Executive, and it is you we need to talk to."

"Really? OK, Kat, I hear what you say. This could be sensitive, it will need to get political approval. Not easy in Grafton, we are a hung council."

"Sorry, Harvey, this is now a government instruction, so doesn't require approval."

"Really, that is fantastic, Kat. This is so exciting, and we would normally love to, but there have been a lot of racial tensions in the area of late. The Thai food place had a particularly nasty break-in the other night, not to mention the guy with a beard who was called a Paki."

"Hi, Harvey, that is very distressing but you describe yourself in your Town of Culture bid as 'a prosperous, diverse, multi-cultural town, with a proud record of welcoming refugees from across the world'."

"Which of course we are, Kat, we wouldn't want to lose all that by acting without first consulting the existing community. Have you thought about Toilsgate just down the Motorway?."
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Mick Harper
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Grant wrote:
The history of immigration shows that if the immigrant comes from a society which has achieved something, we will benefit in some way, even if it’s hard to calculate whether it’s worth the social problems.

This is indeed true but we have to take care not to judge things too materially. As I tap these words out my flat (literally) shakes as large mobile sound systems pass ten yards away. Yes, it's the Notting Hill Carnival. Tomorrow they will sit for half an hour at a time and I will fear for my plaster. Now it is fair to say that West Indian migrants have made only a marginal economic contribution and have provided more than their fair share of societal problems, yet do we honestly regret their general contribution to the gaiety of (this) nation?

and Grant gratuitously wrote:
They haven’t even improved our football team, and we had to look in our own Gypsy community to find a world class boxer

They have provided more than one heavyweight world champion. I speak as someone whose father treated the last white heavyweight would-be world champion, Henry Cooper. (Another true story, it's getting to be a tiresome habit.)
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Mick Harper
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Anyone who falls for the propaganda being pumped out by the Ukrainians and their western lackeys about Russian-speakers in Ukraine wanting to be Ukrainian should take note of Estonia where the local Russian minority, gazing across the Narva from prosperous go-ahead Estonia to stuck-in-the-mud impoverished Russia, gather in such numbers round the T-34 Red Army memorial in the town square, that the authorities have been forced to remove it.

Give me an S, give me an H, give me an A, give me a B, B, Y...
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Wile E. Coyote


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The new Secretary of State for Health Therese Coffey has announced a £50 million war chest for bed blocking which is good news as, after her paper giving an "expectation" that you can get a GP appointment within two weeks of contact, our hospitals are going to need a lot of extra beds.

Nice to see joined up thinking. Well done.
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