DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

not defending the responses but i know from my own experience of things that our Joel tells me that the RE syllabus is often worded quite tendentiously. at GCSE level accounting for a prejudice is not really the same as dissecting it

like yes don't pretend anti-semitism doesn't exist but "list the greatest hits of anti-semitism" is a bit weird as a question in that context

The question “plants suggestions and implies ideas that shouldn’t be instilled into students”.

honestly i just despair at this garden-of-eden knowledge is sinful bullshit.

that was a rabbi not gove btw.

Front page of the BBC site today = u-turn on charity tax, Jeremy Hunt at Leveson, Coulson charged with perjury = such a pleasing structure of interconnected disasters.

With all the other hateful stuff they're doing, the government's approach to immigration hasn't really been scrutinised enough recently. Along with demolishing the student visa sector, this has to go down as one of the most stupidly spiteful things on their agenda:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/08/immigration-rules-couples-stark-choice?CMP=twt_gu

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jun/11/david-cameron-daughter-behind-pub?newsfeed=true

hopefully the government will introduce compulsory parenting classes for these sort of dysfunctional wastrels

Didn't see that immigration thing before, that is absolutely hateful. Presumably it would fall afoul o the same "right to family life" clause of the human rights act that the Tories are trying to dismantle so they can deport foreign lag once they have done their time.

Sadly, it appears that it doesn't fall foul of the right to family life clause - it's something that was tested when they introduced the English-language requirements to get married.

I wonder if it could be interpreted as discriminatory on gender though, given the disparity in average salary between the sexes.

Vote Liberal Democrat

the immigration thing is one of those things you can't quite believe can actually happen - it almost reads like DON'T MARRY OUTSIDE OF YOUR NATION.

(UNLESS YOU'RE RICH)

Poor people, don't you dare fall in love until you can afford it. I doubt this will ever become law.

it does seem like more of a headline-grabber than a well-thought-through plan: a coded message to Express readers, that the government's looking out for them by targeting those much-discussed immigrants from the subcontinent who bring their whole families here and live off the state and don't even bother to learn the language and etc etc etc, even though in actual fact migrants to the UK aren't eligible for benefits.

otoh, brooke magnanti made an interesting point about it here

The key to what these proposals really mean is in the election pledge: Cameron promised to reduce net migration. That's not the number of migrants total, that's the difference between migrants arriving and British citizens leaving. Sorry to break it to those who think the country is "packed full" or "under siege": the government is not interested in decreasing migration per se. They'd be as happy if immigration increased, as long as loads of Britons left. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mail readers.

Attacking the family route is the easiest way to do this. If a married couple cannot settle, not only has a migrant left, so has a UK citizen. This gets net migration down twice as fast as controlling other visas. The approach is crafted to appear successful to the rightwing without producing meaningful change for anyone.

If this law existed when I met my wife, we wouldn't have been able to live here. tbh, kinda ambivalent about that.

I can't find the stats now but if I remember a significant number of people coming into the UK were coming to attend a UK university. They obviously pay full fees and aren't allowed to work more than 20 hrs or claim any bens. Stopping these 'study tourists' doesn't make any sense to me.

the problem was that people were coming in on tier 4 student visas and then... not actually studying, and working illegally. Sometimes people used forged college letters, sometimes the 'colleges' they were enrolled in were taking their student fees but not requiring attendance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/27/student-visa-failing-50000-immigration

oddly tho the govt's response to this seems not to be "closer checks on educational institutions, e.g. requiring attendance records, etc" but "reduce the number of tier 4 visas available anywhere"

that's their MO across the board, isn't it - "oh there are people committing welfare fraud, well, instead of closing the loopholes let's CLOSE DOWN THE WELFARE SYSTEM"

well, making the system work effectively would require that they train, employ and pay people to do a not-insignificant amount of work? and that's tantamount to encouraging red tape bureaucracy.

The old student visa regime was open to abuse but was much more tightly regulated than ten years ago. It's crazy that they're boasting about Q1 student visa applications being down 62% when universities and colleges are saying that the net cost to the country could be in the region of £5bn - £7bn. 62% of students weren't "bogus". They've sent out a message to legitimate students that the UK simply doesn't welcome them. The sensible thing to do would be to stop counting them as immigrants and start counting them as visitors.

Given that they're happy to significantly harm the economy by restricting student visas in pursuit of headlines, i can't imagine mere human feeling will get in their way on spouse visas.

May defended the 550,000 individual requests for data each year made by security officials as a vital tool to catch serious criminals and terrorists.

She told the Sun: "I just don't understand why some people might criticise these proposals. I have no doubt conspiracy theorists will come up with some ridiculous claims about how these measures are an infringement of freedom. But without changing the law, the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and paedophiles."

May has been going great guns in the race to overhaul Osborne as most hateful member of the Cabinet.

its a hell of a queue waiting for a head on a pike in that cabinet.

are terrorists and paedophiles not crims?

if you mean "convicted of a crime" then not necessarily in the go-go British justice system of the 21st century

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/24/housing-benefit-under-25s-welfare

fuckin ell, a couple of years ago I sent a letter to my MP about the possibly discriminatory under-25 benefit laws of the time (altruistically too late for myself as I had already spent the previous two years not being able to afford heating in winter, and had then thankfully turned 25, but I didn't receive anything in response anyway), nothing has changed, so I guess if you can get away with it you may as well run with it.

He's just trying to look like a hard man for the Tory right, he won't do it. This is more despicable: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/9351796/David-Laws-calls-for-deeper-tax-and-spending-cuts.html">David Laws calls for deeper tax and spending cuts. Dishonest lying money-grabbing little cunt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18575453

Cut benefits for the poorest people in the poorest areas aka non Tory seats.
Cut benefits for those least able to find work.
Cut benefits for poor people daring to have children.
Lose your council house if you ever manage to earn enough to live in it without claiming benefits.
etc

Will the "Liberal" Democrats ever bite back on any of this?

well 'the opposition' don't seem to give a shit so i don't see why the coalition partners would bother

The opposition gets to do what all oppositions do, mouth off in protest and fire a few zings. The liberal part of this coalition can actually prevent this shit.

the opposition in this instance seem to be so focused on placating Daily Mail Island with anti-immigration machismo that any response they've made to this latest foofaraw has been woefully negligible IMHO

decided it's too depressing for an ILX poll, but that list in full.

Benefits rates may depend on where you live
Reduce the amount of benefit paid to people over time
Expecting people on benefits to be able to read, write and count
Out-of-work benefits linked to wages rather than inflation, if wages are lower
A cap on the amount people can earn and still live in a council house
Reduce the current £20,000 housing benefit limit
Stopping the out of work being better off by having children
Consider paying some benefits "in kind" rather than in cash
Expecting parents on income support to prepare for work while children have free nursery care
Getting the physically able to do full-time community work after a period out of work
Sickness benefit claimants should take steps to improve their health

"take steps to improve their health", well shiiit i bet they wish they'd thought of that.

they should just bring back the workhouses and have done with it.

ahem debate ideas for workhouse reintroduction prior to the drafting of the next manifesto tax what tax

Sickness benefit claimants should take steps to improve their health

similar themes becoming more prevalent in workplaces now if mine's anything to go by: more stringent sickness monitoring coupled with lifestyle questions/advice along the lines of 'are you doing all you can to ensure you're healthy enough to work for us, because, you know, we have to pay you to do that.'

i for one am impressed that a Tory PM has been brave enough to suggest cutting benefits

Are there seriously Tory MPs backing Ed Balls in a fite against George Osbourne right now?

Yes. And also LOL.

Balls more valuable to the Tory part long-term than Osborne is presumably

Osborne is a walking disaster area these days

Everyone hates both of them, so yes.

Osborne is supposed to be the tactical genius of the Tory Party!

He is?

He is indeed, their master-strategist. No wonder they couldn't win the election outright.

Osborne keeps digging himself deeper on this one. By all accounts there's no Ed Balls smoking gun to be found, but he is doubling down on his insistence that it was all Balls' fault. As if that means he doesn't need to come up with any actual response for the current situation. So long as he can say "was their fault" the job is done, apparently.

It feels like a dumb self-inflicted wound of the type Osbourne excels at, the Treasury could have just tutted and gone "this is unacceptable", paid some lip-service to changing things, and sailed through the Libor crisis relatively unscathed. They must have some pretty dumb advisors right now.

No Andy Coulson!

http://i.imgur.com/wY4ty.jpg

GQ's 'Politician of the Year'.

has he really gained so much weight or is that a dodgy angle?