While there may not be any direct racial motivation, the law that made landlords, employers and the health service take on the role of border guards is at fault here. It's led to cases like the bloke trying to crowdfund his cancer treatment after the NHS denied they were responsible because he didn't have the right papers.
It's funny that things like building checks that stop tower blocks being fitted with flammable cladding are "needless red tape" to the likes of Cameron and Eric Pickles, but making employers demand paperwork isn't.
Either the govt didn't think about the impact on black Britons or it didn't care. Neither make them look very good except to a small minority of Enoch Powell fans. The fact that Theresa May had to be forced into meeting Caribbean Heads of Government this week is terrible. It's quite possible to end up being racist just by not paying attention to your actions and this has effectively been implementing a key National Front policy without thinking. Shameful.
I'm glad they've responded to pressure and are going to fix it. Let's hope it happens quickly.
The wringing of hands and mealy mouthed apologies by the government are solely due to the fact that their rancid policy has been called out. Are they sorry ? Certainly that they havn’t got away with it and that’s all.
This is a disgusting admission of outright prejudice and frankly Rudd should be handed a sword. She’s either incompetent or despicable.
The political undercurrent in this country at present is very worrying. I’m no fan of Corbyn but if the Labour Party do have the slightest chance to replace this current morally bankrupt Tory government then he gets my vote on that basis alone and that’s despite Labours appalling stance on Brexit.
The wringing of hands and mealy mouthed apologies by the government are solely due to the fact that their rancid policy has been called out. Are they sorry ? Certainly that they havn’t got away with it and that’s all.
This is a disgusting admission of outright prejudice and frankly Rudd should be handed a sword. She’s either incompetent or despicable.
The political undercurrent in this country at present is very worrying. I’m no fan of Corbyn but if the Labour Party do have the slightest chance to replace this current morally bankrupt Tory government then he gets my vote on that basis alone and that’s despite Labours appalling stance on Brexit.
Problem is for me I find corbyn’s stance on just about everything foreign affair related (including brexit) absolutely appalling.
So I have the choice to vote Lib Dem or not vote/spoil... Jesus what a choice
SHG has it. There are glaring problems with Corbyn's Labour, but compared to these Tories he is the right choice. The Tories are creating the 'end of days' world where everything spirals out of control, and the richest of them slither away to the shores when it happens, at least Corbyn offers hope where the Tories offer hate.
Our self serving, parasitical politicians of all colours (an ironic term in the circumstances) do not have the nous and empathy from their prosperous, insular Westminster bubble to realise that plenty of working class people cannot afford to go on foreign holidays and thus have never forked out nearly £100 for a passport. It doesn't make them bad people despite the Remain dominated political elite sneering that some Leave voters have never left the UK and are therefore narrow minded. The thought that actually these people cannot afford to leave the UK for a holiday simply does not occur to red, blue, yellow and green pigs with their snouts in the trough.
The Windrush generation came to the UK originally to carry out relatively menial and by definition low paid jobs so many will be in this category.
I trust Ms Rudd will be as assiduous in preventing would be terrorists returning from Syria as she is in persecuting elderly pensioners who have paid their way throughout their working lives.
The wringing of hands and mealy mouthed apologies by the government are solely due to the fact that their rancid policy has been called out. Are they sorry ? Certainly that they havn’t got away with it and that’s all.
This is a disgusting admission of outright prejudice and frankly Rudd should be handed a sword. She’s either incompetent or despicable.
The political undercurrent in this country at present is very worrying. I’m no fan of Corbyn but if the Labour Party do have the slightest chance to replace this current morally bankrupt Tory government then he gets my vote on that basis alone and that’s despite Labours appalling stance on Brexit.
Problem is for me I find corbyn’s stance on just about everything foreign affair related (including brexit) absolutely appalling.
So I have the choice to vote Lib Dem or not vote/spoil... Jesus what a choice
Brexit for me is without doubt the elephant in the room on every level of political discussion. Labours stance for me is cowardly, hypocritical and wrong. As the most important thing in the political court right now and into the future I feel helpless in finding somewhere to cast my vote where I see any glimmer of Brexit hope.
If it’s at all possible and I’m not sure it is. Leaving Brexit aside for other political issues of which there are many I think the next general election comes down to a straight choice.
Vote Tory and get another term of destructive and divisive policies where those less fortunate are the collateral damage for the prosperous elite. A party where it’s hard to find a cabinet minister without tarnish or with a single scruple worth having or vote Labour and for all its problems and concerns where at least I’m sure you get what you see. A party wanting at least to be doing the right things and to redress the balance so heavily weighted in favour of the haves under this current moribund shower of shite.
Such a pity that it’s just a straightforward choice about political morality.
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
The people at the centre of this current scandal and that’s exactly what it is don’t need work permits like the Aussies and Kiwis you mention. These people came here a generation ago at our request and have forged lives, families and careers to the benefit of this country. They are British despite what Amber Rudd and her incompetent Home Office say.
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
The people at the centre of this current scandal and that’s exactly what it is don’t need work permits like the Aussies and Kiwis you mention. These people came here a generation ago at our request and have forged lives, families and careers to the benefit of this country. They are British despite what Amber Rudd and her incompetent Home Office say.
I know all of that. So why were Aussies, etc brought up at all other than to obfuscate or mislead?
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
The people at the centre of this current scandal and that’s exactly what it is don’t need work permits like the Aussies and Kiwis you mention. These people came here a generation ago at our request and have forged lives, families and careers to the benefit of this country. They are British despite what Amber Rudd and her incompetent Home Office say.
I know all of that. So why were Aussies, etc brought up at all other than to obfuscate or mislead?
It’s got nothing at all to do with the “Windrush” issue. We as a country need skills, innovation, labour and enterprise from people’s all over the world and have done for centuries and will need going forward. If it’s a work permit issue then that’s fine. This particular nasty and actually quite sinister Windrush scandal is made by Theresa May when Home Secretary and continued under the Hapless Rudd.
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
The people at the centre of this current scandal and that’s exactly what it is don’t need work permits like the Aussies and Kiwis you mention. These people came here a generation ago at our request and have forged lives, families and careers to the benefit of this country. They are British despite what Amber Rudd and her incompetent Home Office say.
I know all of that. So why were Aussies, etc brought up at all other than to obfuscate or mislead?
It’s got nothing at all to do with the “Windrush” issue. We as a country need skills, innovation, labour and enterprise from people’s all over the world and have done for centuries and will need going forward. If it’s a work permit issue then that’s fine. This particular nasty and actually quite sinister Windrush scandal is made by Theresa May when Home Secretary and continued under the Hapless Rudd.
Yes, I know all of that too. But I'm really not quite so sure that the allegations made on here of some sinister racist Tory plot are at all accurate or indeed even plausible. The matter is much more likely to be one of incompetence by civil servants, ministerial advisers and ministers at the Home Office. Blend in the fact that no civil servant working at the Home Office would still be in possession of any corporate memory at all regarding what steps were (not) taken back in the day. (In the current climate of massive databases and vast numbers of applications for this and that, who'd have thought there would be any people living in the UK without some form of official record - not me that's for sure.)
Without any consideration of past actions (of lack thereof) taken by the Home Office regarding ensuring that all "Windrush" children had appropriate documentation, it makes sense, does it not, to put in place measures to ensure that everyone has the appropriate paperwork*? Otherwise prospective migrants need do nothing but flush their passport down the toilet as soon as they get here on a tourist visa in order to ensure their continued stay in this country.
The lacuna is that some (how many, I know not) children got here legitimately but without paperwork and never thought or had any need to obtain any. They are now unfortunately mingled with the on-going hard-line (and seemingly demanded by the country) approach to immigration generally and no one had the wit to untangle them from this mess. That is dumb all over but relatively easy to understand.
And it's very clear that the Government cocked up (again). But, in my opinion, that is just a symptom of their all-round vacuousness and general lack of nous rather than any indication that May/Rudd and their cohorts are somehow evil racist masterminds. Anyone with half a single brain cell in Government would have realised this would all kick off. And whether a closet racist or not, would have knocked it on the head in short order with a view to protecting what little is left of their reputation and self-respect: where is the Tory Party's equivalent of Alastair Campbell when they need one?
Anyway, all this led me to look at various stats about political parties. While I'm not sure it helped much, it turns out there are 43 (openly) LGBT MPs. 19 Labour 19 Conservative and five SNP. Of the 52 MPs from ethnic minorities, 32 are Labour, 19 Conservatives and one Libdem. (No SNP representation you'll notice.) My initial reaction is that that's sort of what you'd guess: Labour being much better than the Conservatives at this sort of thing. But then I thought, well isn't it the done thing that MPs tend to live in their constituency? Is it not the case that ethnic minorities tend to live in urban areas? Aren't urban areas Labour's heartland? Is it surprising then that Labour has a higher proportion of ethnic minority MPs?
If all that's true, perhaps the Tories are doing rather well in that regard? Of their 19 ethnic minority representatives only two could be considered to be representing urban areas (Reading West and Gillingham) plus perhaps Bromsgrove but I don't know enough about that place to say. Otherwise, they are all well and truly planted in the shires/home counties which is probably quite an achievement really. And makes it difficult to claim with any degree of accuracy that all Tories are unreconstructed racists.
* Regarding paperwork, is this the right place to bring up the UK Border Act 2007 which introduced the requirement for non-EU nationals living in the UK to have a biometric residence permit? Or the Borders, Citizenship & Immigration Act 2009 which scraped the five-year rule and thus the right to remain which at a stroke would have obviated the whole current brouhaha? (The first was under the auspices of John Reid, the second Jacqui Smith, both Labour Party Home Secretaries, of course.) I leave readers to consider whether they too were racist scumbags.
There's a number of good points being made by a few people on here, I liked Len Glover's post. Personally, and this is just my opinion, nothing to back it up, I do believe there are elements in the tory party that are inherently racist. I'm not saying this is the case here, but I do think that the old establishment and its outdated views are alive and well behind closed doors
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
So are you defending the governments actions that led to this situation or are you attacking another persons attempt to define it?
I'm attempting to suggest that neither the country of origin nor the race of those affected by this balls-up has anything much to do with the matter other than as an historical fact. To suggest that things would have been different if the people concerned had instead been white Australians is worrying though. People generally have been treated badly and stupidly since time immemorial. Take, for example, the deeply flawed child migration policy of the UK Government (which, interestingly, overlapped time-wise with the "Windrush" generation). Could we say they were treated appallingly because they were white?
When Theresa May was Home Secretary the piece of legislation that is at the centre of this sorry mess was passed, minus a clause that would have provided protection to the very people at the heart of this scandal. Now by all accounts she was warned that this very situation would occur but she batted away the warnings by saying that protection was already in place under other legislation.
Now there are only two possibilities here. Incompetence or how shall I say it, an agenda.
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
So are you defending the governments actions that led to this situation or are you attacking another persons attempt to define it?
I'm attempting to suggest that neither the country of origin nor the race of those affected by this balls-up has anything much to do with the matter other than as an historical fact. To suggest that things would have been different if the people concerned had instead been white Australians is worrying though. People generally have been treated badly and stupidly since time immemorial. Take, for example, the deeply flawed child migration policy of the UK Government (which, interestingly, overlapped time-wise with the "Windrush" generation). Could we say they were treated appallingly because they were white?
Are you referring to the moving of children to Australia that has recently been in the news or is there something else?
If you are then I would say that it was a classic case of Victorian style middle/upper class do-gooding. As in problem identified and a solution found with no attempt to talk to the recipients and find out what they wanted, then when it all started going wrong the people who complained were ignored as they were from the lower classes.
I think it was a definite case of class-ism and would have affected black people in disproportionate numbers had there been a significant black British population at the time.
There's a number of good points being made by a few people on here, I liked Len Glover's post. Personally, and this is just my opinion, nothing to back it up, I do believe there are elements in the tory party that are inherently racist. I'm not saying this is the case here, but I do think that the old establishment and its outdated views are alive and well behind closed doors
When Boris Johnson describes African people as 'picanninies with watermelon smiles' the door is slightly ajar wouldn't you say?
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
So are you defending the governments actions that led to this situation or are you attacking another persons attempt to define it?
I'm attempting to suggest that neither the country of origin nor the race of those affected by this balls-up has anything much to do with the matter other than as an historical fact. To suggest that things would have been different if the people concerned had instead been white Australians is worrying though. People generally have been treated badly and stupidly since time immemorial. Take, for example, the deeply flawed child migration policy of the UK Government (which, interestingly, overlapped time-wise with the "Windrush" generation). Could we say they were treated appallingly because they were white?
I am speaking from a vague memory here, but I seem to remember that during those times when the UK were sending children to Australia, Australia had an immigration policy that excluded black people. They had a 'white Australia' policy that ended in 1973. So yes the children were treated appallingly, and the main reason they were white was because of the racist immigration policy that Australia had then, and it is a legacy they have to live with and come to terms with now.
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
So are you defending the governments actions that led to this situation or are you attacking another persons attempt to define it?
I'm attempting to suggest that neither the country of origin nor the race of those affected by this balls-up has anything much to do with the matter other than as an historical fact. To suggest that things would have been different if the people concerned had instead been white Australians is worrying though. People generally have been treated badly and stupidly since time immemorial. Take, for example, the deeply flawed child migration policy of the UK Government (which, interestingly, overlapped time-wise with the "Windrush" generation). Could we say they were treated appallingly because they were white?
Are you referring to the moving of children to Australia that has recently been in the news or is there something else?
If you are then I would say that it was a classic case of Victorian style middle/upper class do-gooding. As in problem identified and a solution found with no attempt to talk to the recipients and find out what they wanted, then when it all started going wrong the people who complained were ignored as they were from the lower classes.
I think it was a definite case of class-ism and would have affected black people in disproportionate numbers had there been a significant black British population at the time.
There's a number of good points being made by a few people on here, I liked Len Glover's post. Personally, and this is just my opinion, nothing to back it up, I do believe there are elements in the tory party that are inherently racist.
When you say racist do you mean like Diane Abbott sort of racist ?
If Theresa May is racist I don't understand why she is ashen faced and apologising to one and all today, whilst greatly embarrassed.
It's a complete and utter cock up and hopefully will now be sorted.
I feel for the people that have been caught up in this farce and hopefully it will be speedily resolved.
NB I believe the cry of racism when it is not warranted has in some part led to the situation where we are today, with the rise of the right wings across europe.
If the middle ground were allowed to speak honestly without being called out as racists, you wouldn't have seen the support for the right rising. Gordon Brown, that lady is a bigot, springs to mind.
All the cases that they currently know about should be sorted in 5 minutes tops tomorrow and no later- that is how you say sorry - actions speak louder than words.
All the cases that they currently know about should be sorted in 5 minutes tops tomorrow and no later- that is how you say sorry - actions speak louder than words.
I think a call for living in the real world and not some fantasy is necessary here. Everything will not be resolved by 9.05am tomorrow, as much as I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it so.
You'd make a great civil servant. They have all the files and the backgrounds so it can be sorted quickly with somebody having the authority to sort it.
You'd make a great civil servant. They have all the files and the backgrounds so it can be sorted quickly with somebody having the authority to sort it.
Sorted quickly hopefully. 5 minutes no. If something is said/passed at 9.03 am tomorrow, will it all be sorted ? No it won't, there will still be a number of individuals who will not be aware, will not have been contacted in 3 minutes and still be distressed and require plenty of assistance. A bit of maturity is required in this debate.
Well 5 minutes wasn't meant for you to get a stopwatch out. And I did specify cases they knew about. These will be cases where they have all the info but the individual cant supply documentation because they never had it. That hurdle can be removed and common sense can be applied, Common sense was popular once!
Well 5 minutes wasn't meant for you to get a stopwatch out. And I did specify cases they knew about. These will be cases where they have all the info but the individual cant supply documentation because they never had it. That hurdle can be removed and common sense can be applied, Common sense was popular once!
Agreed, common sense will prevail and let's hope it is all sorted as a matter of urgency.
When Theresa May was Home Secretary the piece of legislation that is at the centre of this sorry mess was passed, minus a clause that would have provided protection to the very people at the heart of this scandal. Now by all accounts she was warned that this very situation would occur but she batted away the warnings by saying that protection was already in place under other legislation.
Now there are only two possibilities here. Incompetence or how shall I say it, an agenda.
My gut feeling is for both.
When May was Home Secretary she also prosecuted a narrative around overseas students overstaying their visas. It transpires this was based upon bogus data. Her estimate of tens of thousands per year turned out to be rubbish.
Like this Windrush scandal it's all dog whistle designed by May, Timothy and Fiona to outflank UKIP who were a political threat at that time. The Tories have now swallowed UKIP whole. This is yet another reason for the likes of Heseltine and Clarke to stick the knife in!
This will run and run and ideally go deep. Saw a comment in the FT to this effect on the lead story and it has secured 95 recommends (they don't do likes!).
Right now there is no third way, no Macron and that will not emerge for a while. So respected journals such as the FT have a choice - and they appear to be moving away from the Blue party every day.
If Theresa May is racist I don't understand why she is ashen faced and apologising to one and all today, whilst greatly embarrassed.
It's a complete and utter cock up and hopefully will now be sorted.
I feel for the people that have been caught up in this farce and hopefully it will be speedily resolved.
NB I believe the cry of racism when it is not warranted has in some part led to the situation where we are today, with the rise of the right wings across europe.
If the middle ground were allowed to speak honestly without being called out as racists, you wouldn't have seen the support for the right rising. Gordon Brown, that lady is a bigot, springs to mind.
I don't think Theresa May set out to be racist, but this is a good example of institutional racism. The policy of asking everyone for ID whenever they rent a property or get a job looks fine on paper. (Although the Tories did have a no ID cards approach in their manifesto, which I'd support, but it becomes a bit pointless when you need a passport even if you never go abroad). However, in practice, it means that the people who get challenged are the ones who look like they might be from abroad. A second generation Polish or Turkish migrant is not going to get the same attention as someone from the Caribbean or Africa. As part of any policy making, issues like this should have been considered. If they were, they weren't considered very well. I'd add that Theresa May has been quite vocal about the UK being a hostile environment for migrants. This has consequences, which again were fairly obvious to anyone who thought about them, one of which will be to make life awkward for people who were not the original target. Another of which is going to be to make EU negotiators tougher on the rights of EU-citizens in Britain post-Brexit, because they'll have seen how the UK government treats British people who don't have the right papers. I'd be more inclined to believe that she didn't intend this to be the case if she hadn't resisted looking at the policy again and again and had to be bounced into meeting the Caribbean leaders.
Comments
It's funny that things like building checks that stop tower blocks being fitted with flammable cladding are "needless red tape" to the likes of Cameron and Eric Pickles, but making employers demand paperwork isn't.
Either the govt didn't think about the impact on black Britons or it didn't care. Neither make them look very good except to a small minority of Enoch Powell fans. The fact that Theresa May had to be forced into meeting Caribbean Heads of Government this week is terrible. It's quite possible to end up being racist just by not paying attention to your actions and this has effectively been implementing a key National Front policy without thinking. Shameful.
I'm glad they've responded to pressure and are going to fix it. Let's hope it happens quickly.
This is a disgusting admission of outright prejudice and frankly Rudd should be handed a sword. She’s either incompetent or despicable.
The political undercurrent in this country at present is very worrying. I’m no fan of Corbyn but if the Labour Party do have the slightest chance to replace this current morally bankrupt Tory government then he gets my vote on that basis alone and that’s despite Labours appalling stance on Brexit.
So I have the choice to vote Lib Dem or not vote/spoil... Jesus what a choice
There are glaring problems with Corbyn's Labour, but compared to these Tories he is the right choice. The Tories are creating the 'end of days' world where everything spirals out of control, and the richest of them slither away to the shores when it happens, at least Corbyn offers hope where the Tories offer hate.
The Windrush generation came to the UK originally to carry out relatively menial and by definition low paid jobs so many will be in this category.
I trust Ms Rudd will be as assiduous in preventing would be terrorists returning from Syria as she is in persecuting elderly pensioners who have paid their way throughout their working lives.
Thought not.
If it’s at all possible and I’m not sure it is. Leaving Brexit aside for other political issues of which there are many I think the next general election comes down to a straight choice.
Vote Tory and get another term of destructive and divisive policies where those less fortunate are the collateral damage for the prosperous elite. A party where it’s hard to find a cabinet minister without tarnish or with a single scruple worth having or vote Labour and for all its problems and concerns where at least I’m sure you get what you see. A party wanting at least to be doing the right things and to redress the balance so heavily weighted in favour of the haves under this current moribund shower of shite.
Such a pity that it’s just a straightforward choice about political morality.
abc.net.au/news/2017-09-28/is-it-time-for-the-uk-to-reconsider-australian-worker-visas/8879480
Glad to see you were betting someone else's nelly because you'd have lost it.
Why let, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good story guaranteed to get people frothing at the mouth?
Without any consideration of past actions (of lack thereof) taken by the Home Office regarding ensuring that all "Windrush" children had appropriate documentation, it makes sense, does it not, to put in place measures to ensure that everyone has the appropriate paperwork*? Otherwise prospective migrants need do nothing but flush their passport down the toilet as soon as they get here on a tourist visa in order to ensure their continued stay in this country.
The lacuna is that some (how many, I know not) children got here legitimately but without paperwork and never thought or had any need to obtain any. They are now unfortunately mingled with the on-going hard-line (and seemingly demanded by the country) approach to immigration generally and no one had the wit to untangle them from this mess. That is dumb all over but relatively easy to understand.
And it's very clear that the Government cocked up (again). But, in my opinion, that is just a symptom of their all-round vacuousness and general lack of nous rather than any indication that May/Rudd and their cohorts are somehow evil racist masterminds. Anyone with half a single brain cell in Government would have realised this would all kick off. And whether a closet racist or not, would have knocked it on the head in short order with a view to protecting what little is left of their reputation and self-respect: where is the Tory Party's equivalent of Alastair Campbell when they need one?
Anyway, all this led me to look at various stats about political parties. While I'm not sure it helped much, it turns out there are 43 (openly) LGBT MPs. 19 Labour 19 Conservative and five SNP. Of the 52 MPs from ethnic minorities, 32 are Labour, 19 Conservatives and one Libdem. (No SNP representation you'll notice.) My initial reaction is that that's sort of what you'd guess: Labour being much better than the Conservatives at this sort of thing. But then I thought, well isn't it the done thing that MPs tend to live in their constituency? Is it not the case that ethnic minorities tend to live in urban areas? Aren't urban areas Labour's heartland? Is it surprising then that Labour has a higher proportion of ethnic minority MPs?
If all that's true, perhaps the Tories are doing rather well in that regard? Of their 19 ethnic minority representatives only two could be considered to be representing urban areas (Reading West and Gillingham) plus perhaps Bromsgrove but I don't know enough about that place to say. Otherwise, they are all well and truly planted in the shires/home counties which is probably quite an achievement really. And makes it difficult to claim with any degree of accuracy that all Tories are unreconstructed racists.
* Regarding paperwork, is this the right place to bring up the UK Border Act 2007 which introduced the requirement for non-EU nationals living in the UK to have a biometric residence permit? Or the Borders, Citizenship & Immigration Act 2009 which scraped the five-year rule and thus the right to remain which at a stroke would have obviated the whole current brouhaha? (The first was under the auspices of John Reid, the second Jacqui Smith, both Labour Party Home Secretaries, of course.) I leave readers to consider whether they too were racist scumbags.
Now there are only two possibilities here. Incompetence or how shall I say it, an agenda.
My gut feeling is for both.
If you are then I would say that it was a classic case of Victorian style middle/upper class do-gooding. As in problem identified and a solution found with no attempt to talk to the recipients and find out what they wanted, then when it all started going wrong the people who complained were ignored as they were from the lower classes.
I think it was a definite case of class-ism and would have affected black people in disproportionate numbers had there been a significant black British population at the time.
If Theresa May is racist I don't understand why she is ashen faced and apologising to one and all today, whilst greatly embarrassed.
It's a complete and utter cock up and hopefully will now be sorted.
I feel for the people that have been caught up in this farce and hopefully it will be speedily resolved.
NB I believe the cry of racism when it is not warranted has in some part led to the situation where we are today, with the rise of the right wings across europe.
If the middle ground were allowed to speak honestly without being called out as racists, you wouldn't have seen the support for the right rising. Gordon Brown, that lady is a bigot, springs to mind.
Everything will not be resolved by 9.05am tomorrow, as much as I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it so.
If something is said/passed at 9.03 am tomorrow, will it all be sorted ?
No it won't, there will still be a number of individuals who will not be aware, will not have been contacted in 3 minutes and still be distressed and require plenty of assistance.
A bit of maturity is required in this debate.
Like this Windrush scandal it's all dog whistle designed by May, Timothy and Fiona to outflank UKIP who were a political threat at that time. The Tories have now swallowed UKIP whole. This is yet another reason for the likes of Heseltine and Clarke to stick the knife in!
This will run and run and ideally go deep. Saw a comment in the FT to this effect on the lead story and it has secured 95 recommends (they don't do likes!).
Right now there is no third way, no Macron and that will not emerge for a while. So respected journals such as the FT have a choice - and they appear to be moving away from the Blue party every day.
Polish or Turkish migrant is not going to get the same attention as someone from the Caribbean or Africa. As part of any policy making, issues like this should have been considered. If they were, they weren't considered very well.
I'd add that Theresa May has been quite vocal about the UK being a hostile environment for migrants. This has consequences, which again were fairly obvious to anyone who thought about them, one of which will be to make life awkward for people who were not the original target. Another of which is going to be to make EU negotiators tougher on the rights of EU-citizens in Britain post-Brexit, because they'll have seen how the UK government treats British people who don't have the right papers.
I'd be more inclined to believe that she didn't intend this to be the case if she hadn't resisted looking at the policy again and again and had to be bounced into meeting the Caribbean leaders.
Where's the alternative 'How do Labour..........change' thread gone, had a great post for that