The Politics Thread 4

[<]:^D]

this is the scum who run this country: instead of standing up to xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment, they use them as a scapegoat to explain away economic austerity and their own idealogical running down of real-spend on public servicess, and then try deport brown and black people whove been in this country their entire adult lives to get to a 100k arbitrary target. immoral waste of time, effort, money and human lives.

[Squinty]

Bloody hell, I just read that post on the previous page about the home office destroying the only remaining clerical documentation for these people.

In any normal circumstance, this would result in resignations. But as with Bojo's foreign prison fiasco, nothing will happen. They are beyond any kind of repercussions for their negligence.

[Errkal]

It shouldn't just be resignation there should be fullon legal ramifications for destroying the only records of people's citizenship!

[Cuttooth]

I'm glad the Daily Mail and Sun are giving the Windrush Generation failure front page attention. Seems like one of those things the average person would not see or appreciate the magnitude of otherwise.

The Mail yes (hypocritically so!) but both The Sun and Daily Express for some reason decided full covers of Ant McPartlin's sad face were more important this morning.

[Moggy]

To solve the Windrush crisis, why don’t we just look at the landing cards?

The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties.

A former Home Office employee said the records, stored in the basement of a government tower block, were a vital resource for case workers when they were asked to find information about someone’s arrival date in the UK from the West Indies – usually when the individual was struggling to resolve immigration status problems.

Although the home secretary, Amber Rudd, has promised to make it easier for Windrush-generation residents to regularise their status, the destruction of the database is likely to make the process harder, even with the support of the new taskforce announced this week.

The former employee (who has asked for his name not to be printed) said it was decided in 2010 to destroy the disembarkation cards, which dated back to the 1950s and 60s, when the Home Office’s Whitgift Centre in Croydon was closed and the staff were moved to another site. Employees in his department told their managers it was a bad idea, because these papers were often the last remaining record of a person’s arrival date, in the event of uncertainty or lost documents. The files were destroyed in October that year, when Theresa May was home secretary.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ex-staffer

Quoted for new page.

[Squinty]

I'm not going to rule out the suggestion that it is institutionalised racism, but I would say it's more likely the Home Office management not having a clue what they are doing. They really should have listened to their caseworkers/admin about this.

[<]:^D]

i feel its racism in the sense that
1) the West Indies people were seen as different, isolated and vulnerable, and therefore
2) their rights have been ignored and their documentation destroyed.

can you imagine this happening to a group of white people in Britain?

[Hypes]

To solve the Windrush crisis, why don’t we just look at the landing cards?

The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties.

A former Home Office employee said the records, stored in the basement of a government tower block, were a vital resource for case workers when they were asked to find information about someone’s arrival date in the UK from the West Indies – usually when the individual was struggling to resolve immigration status problems.

Although the home secretary, Amber Rudd, has promised to make it easier for Windrush-generation residents to regularise their status, the destruction of the database is likely to make the process harder, even with the support of the new taskforce announced this week.

The former employee (who has asked for his name not to be printed) said it was decided in 2010 to destroy the disembarkation cards, which dated back to the 1950s and 60s, when the Home Office’s Whitgift Centre in Croydon was closed and the staff were moved to another site. Employees in his department told their managers it was a bad idea, because these papers were often the last remaining record of a person’s arrival date, in the event of uncertainty or lost documents. The files were destroyed in October that year, when Theresa May was home secretary.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ex-staffer

As someone who works in Archives and Records Management, this is pretty outrageous that no one in senior management could see the historical, cultural or legal significance of these records. Also the idea that no archive would want them or the data protection issues were too great is laughable

[Moggy]

I'm not going to rule out the suggestion that it is institutionalised racism, but I would say it's more likely the Home Office management not having a clue what they are doing. They really should have listened to their caseworkers/admin about this.

I’d probably believe that.

But then I remember Theresa May being behind:

The “go home” vans
Blocking the automatic right of EU nationals to stay
The famous “can’t deport because of a cat”
The “100k” limit
The massive fees to apply for citizenship
The earnings limit on allowing spouses in

It’s possible she’s not a racist, but she’s definitely a banana split.

[Squinty]

i feel its racism in the sense that
1) the West Indies people were seen as different, isolated and vulnerable, and therefore
2) their rights have been ignored and their documentation destroyed.

can you imagine this happening to a group of white people in Britain?

Can't imagine it would, and that's a very fair point. The sad thing is, I would imagine there would be a lot more scrutiny if it was.

[Vermilion]

I could probably come up with a number of things that Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron did that were either decent or competent.

I don't recall the unholy coalition trinity of Cameron/Clegg/Osborne ever doing anything that was either decent or competent.

[Moggy]

I could probably come up with a number of things that Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron did that were either decent or competent.

I don't recall the unholy coalition trinity of Cameron/Clegg/Osborne ever doing anything that was either decent or competent.

Gay marriage.

[Alvin Flummux]

I could probably come up with a number of things that Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron did that were either decent or competent.

I don't recall the unholy coalition trinity of Cameron/Clegg/Osborne ever doing anything that was either decent or competent.

Gay marriage.

That was inevitable no matter who was in office, surely?

[That]

It’s possible she’s not a racist, but she’s definitely a banana split.

Definitely.

Personally I do think she is a racist. Maybe not in the overtly violent KKK way, but definitely in the 'thinks foreigners shouldn't really be here' way.

[Moggy]

I could probably come up with a number of things that Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron did that were either decent or competent.

I don't recall the unholy coalition trinity of Cameron/Clegg/Osborne ever doing anything that was either decent or competent.

Gay marriage.

That was inevitable no matter who was in office, surely?

Probably, but they were the ones who did it.

[Moggy]

It’s possible she’s not a racist, but she’s definitely a banana split.

Definitely.

Personally I do think she is a racist. Maybe not in the overtly violent KKK way, but definitely in the 'thinks foreigners shouldn't really be here' way.

Yeah, she’s a casual racist, not a NF skinhead.

[Grumpy David]

So you're saying you voted for May but not Cameron?

In 2015, I was one of the 4 million that voted UKIP.

In the Tooting by election following Sadiq Khan resigning to be London Mayor full time, I voted Conservative.

In 2017, I voted Conservative.

I lived in a safe seat for Labour in London and have recently moved to another safe seat for Labour in London. Under FPTP, my vote makes no difference so I can vote for whoever I like knowing they won't get in.

Although I do quite like my former constituency MP who is Labour. I just couldn't vote for Corbyn ever and I can't see a situation in which I would vote Labour.

[Tafdolphin]

In 2015, I was one of the 4 million that voted UKIP

[Alvin Flummux]

I could probably come up with a number of things that Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron did that were either decent or competent.

I don't recall the unholy coalition trinity of Cameron/Clegg/Osborne ever doing anything that was either decent or competent.

Gay marriage.

That was inevitable no matter who was in office, surely?

Probably, but they were the ones who did it.

How much credit do they really deserve, though, if it was an inevitability?

[Grumpy David]

In 2015, I was one of the 4 million that voted UKIP

I have no idea what this means? Some new meme I'm unaware of?