“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

I and my wife have just been through the 5-year pathway. In total has cost us something like £10,000+ I think. The initial income requirement was for the British spouse (me) only, though they call it "household" - and it increases for each child you have, so was nearly 27,000 for us. We were able to offset some of this because my mother gifted us some money. It was a very stressful five (more than six actually) years, I have moved around the world since 2003 and never had a nightmare like this before, the sheer amount of paperwork and opaque decision making.

The whole system seems to be predicated on "everyone loves us and wants to move here, we will do everything in our power to keep out the riff-raff" when in reality it's a shithole and everyone correctly hates us.

yeah the household income vs. UK citizen only income thing *seems* to be simpler if you're both outside the UK, in which case they're happy to look at household income. almost like the bar ends up being lower for a couple moving from overseas than for someone in the UK bringing a partner in. difficult to see an ideological reason for this difference, other than opacity and ambiguity has a net chilling effect on migration.

yeah, this does not surprise me, and makes me thankful for the groove me and bh had in 1990 when finland was not yet a full member of the EU.
she had an interview in helsinki,
i had an interview in leeds (with an ex Led Zep roadie !),
and a few photos etc,
and boom, she was allowed in on a 6 month marriage visa,
during which we got married of course (32nd anniverary yesterday).

no doubt such a thing would be totally impossible in this day and age, which is truly sad.

i had no job, and nor did she.
we lived off savings, and got crappy jobs sharpish to pay rent etc.
not once did we hit the benefits system,
but i dont think this makes any difference now ?

I was walking home from work last week and a guy walking towards me stopped and asked if I was a british citizen. I said I was and he told me that he was an Iranian asylum seeker and he wanted me to know that the UK was shit and all the people from around the world ( he mentioned india, pakistan and syria) who wanted to move here were shit too. he seemed amiable enough and asked me what I thought of what he said. I just said good luck. he was coming from the direction of brook house in gatwick which probably more than justifies his statement tbf.

supposedly the income requirement also doesn't apply if you're a parent or eligible for disability benefits (ha!) AND you can prove you won't rely on public funds. looking at the docs now, and how someone with low income *proves* that is beyond me.

in retrospect we did it all wrong, I quit my job three months before moving to the UK and brought my wife with me on a tourist visa, assuming incorrectly that there was a way to convert it, then she had to go back to China with our younger son for what ended up being six months. As a Chinese person applying from China you don't go through the home office, you deal entirely with this evil incompetent company called VFS instead, and they are extremely unfriendly.

oof. i'm following this stuff because 3/4 of us are dual citizens of the UK and US and things in the US could ... you know, go one way or the other re: fascism etc. 1/4 of us has no income though.

just as an example of what VFS is like, after the application has gone in this is the only way you can get an update on your application:

you phone a premium rate phone number, the operator then takes a credit card number from you so they can charge you an additional £7 per minute for the call. After giving them the card details you have a five minute call where they look up your info and tell you "your application is currently being processed by the embassy" - and that's it.

this was all a lot easier 20 years ago. not sure if there even was an income requirement then, I was on £20k when B moved here. she came over on a fiancee visa, we got married here, she had to go back to the US to apply for further? leave to remain, then that was it for a few years then indefinite leave to remain, I don't think it cost more than a few hundred quid. never had to pay some bullshit NHS surcharge either.

if we had these rules then I'm not sure we could've done it. sickening

there have been a series of incremental increases in how shit it is to go through, but the big one was around 2012 and conducted by Ms T May

the goal is here is certainly not to offset the public funds spent on the average person. it's to ensure only rich[*] people move the UK.

It's simpler than that, it's to appeal to bigots and racists and embarrass the Labour Party.

My way in was a freelance visa! Which was a feature of FATCHER’S BRITAIN, oddly enough. I was lucky enough to get a column for a US music magazine to strengthen my application but once I was in London I could freelance for any UK business. I had already done BUNAC as a student for a six-month work permit (and NI number) and took it in three-month chunks, the latter of which had me writing for NME (which got me my column but also had me watching Thatcher get booted in a TV room at Kings Reach Tower with Steven Wells, yay). Basically, as long as you could stick four years without recourse to public funds, they’d rubber-stamp your visa renewal until you got ILR. Cost? Free.

No fucking way I could’ve come here as a 22yo skint graduate today.

It's simpler than that, it's to appeal to bigots and racists and embarrass the Labour Party.

― Free Ass Ange (Tom D.), Wednesday, 6 December 2023 21:12 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am bracing myself for Labour to announce that they think it's a good plan, but the tories aren't doing it quickly / efficiently enough.

these people are absolutely obsessed with putting undocumented people on planes. it’s like what they do to relax. and if they can’t do it, they’ll quit

I must say the Tory Right has some impressive standard bearers, first Suella Braverman and now this weaselly little crook.

a news conference just for this, just to keep telling us how tough the new legislation is?

If I'm understanding Sunak right, what use is a good piece of boot-stamping-on-a-human-face legislation if it can't pass or is blocked in the courts? This is why slightly softer boot stamping is low-key actually the hardest boot stamping of all, because it will actually happen, so, vote Tory

UK Prime Minister
@10DowningStreet
We are a reasonable country, but our patience has now run out.

Our Parliament is sovereign, and it should be able to make decisions that cannot be undone in our courts.

That’s what this emergency legislation delivers.

Our 'constitution' is being torn up today. Cool cool

Well, it's worked for Netanyahu so far.

Luckily the finest political journalists in the world will be explaining exactly what Sunak's doing in here and what it implies for civil rights

We are a reasonable country

Just normal, innocent country.

Our Parliament is sovereign, and it should be able to make decisions that cannot be undone in our courts.

So you're saying you didn't have to leave the EU.

they fuggin love deporting people to Rwanda sooooo much they will PAY to do it! it’s honestly a bit fetishistic. is this findom??

msm coverage feels pretty entrenched in a 'shrug well gotta get those numbers down somehow no need to question that' way for Labour to solemnly nod along with

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-67679180?

A boy and a girl who had a fascination with violence and torture have been found guilty of murdering teenager Brianna Ghey. https://t.co/K8lquXbFZL

— BBC North West (@BBCNWT) December 20, 2023

and now we can all forget about it and all those public figures who've stoked transphobic hate can continue stoking transphobic hate

🚨 The Irish government has confirmed plans to pursue an interstate case against the United Kingdom at the European Court of Human Rights, over its controversial laws effectively blocking any future prosecutions for Troubles offences

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 20, 2023

UK responds: Irish position “on dealing with legacy issues is inconsistent and hard to reconcile with its own record. At no time since 1998 has there been any concerted or sustained attempt on the part of the Irish state to pursue a criminal investigation” https://t.co/gQENVQiYxJ

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 20, 2023

It's grim up north and that's how we intend to keep it...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/20/disbelief-at-plan-to-fix-london-potholes-as-part-of-network-north-project

come on let's be fair here, they did send a few sacks of instant tarmac to Chickenley

sorry I meant "a few thousand" but that would be utter utopianism!

where else are we supposed to dig up gravel for us tea?

nice to see the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland bringing back the "nuke Dublin" years

I keep having mad dreams about moving to Ireland and everyone there hates me because I'm British. It has replaced my previous recurring nightmare of being responsible for a float of money in a bookie cash register and wandering off while an unruly mob helps themselves to it!

Shane McGowan seemed pretty popular, despite the London accent.

My brother before he moved to Dubai spent a few years in Dublin and all the family there fucking loved him because he's gregarious and likes to buy in rounds in the pubs and is better at chatting shit than me. I've always been treated well when I've visited there, but lack my brother's star quality!

talking of Shane MacGowan and also that ilx celebrity sightings thread, I knew this would happen eventually, but after living here for 2 years I went into a pub on Monday to find one of the 2 other customers in there was Julie Burchill. Who has of course written an article for the Spectator slagging off Shane MacGowan, surprising nobody.

She promptly left while we were at the bar. Could probably smell the woke off me or something.

I'd love it if it wasn't assumed that all white working class people are automatically all racists. Which was one of the thrusts of JB's article, Shane MacGowan was from a middle class family, not like real working class Irish diaspora like Morrissey or John Lydon where the racism is assumed and fine. I had this argument with this woman I work with who is posh as fuck when she read Lydon's autobiography and said well he's working class so of course he has these opinions and I said isn't that pretty fucking patronising to all the working class people who aren't racists? That did shut her up tbh. I was extremely unsurprised to find out at our xmas party last week that she's a terf.

See the 'polite' middle classes writing in The Guardian that Transphobia didn't have much to do with Brianna Ghey's murder.

It's basically not been mentioned anywhere.

Junior Doctors strike again

'Doctors in training as I prefer to call them walked out of our negotiations'

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins spoke to #BBCBreakfast about the 72 hour junior doctors strike in Englandhttps://t.co/YKYqO83Xrp pic.twitter.com/PDCwoRRDaI

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) December 21, 2023

Is there some 4d chess reason why Atkins thinks it's a good idea to unnecessarily antagonise striking doctors, or is this just the Conservatives figuring that they're already doomed so there's no reason to bother hiding their petulance and bitterness?

some "you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more" kind of thing

Starmer, “I will restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on cronyism: this ends now.”

... talk about a hostage to fortune.

It's like a wink to the audience. That audience being the journos desperate to place him in power.

It’s handing those journos a stick to beat him with

Countdown to first Bernie Ecclestone-esque revelation starts here

lol yess this is leadership

Starmer says Labour will ‘meet fire with fire’ if Tories resort to dirty tactics during election

I'm old enough to remember his leadership election where he dogwhistled his opponent over her Irish Catholic background and refused to disclose his right-wing donors until the vote was finished. Gosh, I'm shocked he knows how to go low.