David Amess MP stabbed

[Boac]

There is a whole bunch of crimes that the British weren't known for. Setting people on fire, acid attacks and chopping people's heads off come to mind. Child sacrifice is another.

You sure about that.....?

[compo]

There is a whole bunch of crimes that the British weren't known for. Setting people on fire, acid attacks and chopping people's heads off come to mind.

Ahem

[Boac]

AK will tell you he were only holding for someone else, Compo.......................

[FD2]

Politician's words butter no parsnips.

Maybe it's time to get very serious at long last about it being a privilege to be allowed to settle in the UK.
Asylum seekers welcome if they are actually under threat in their own countries.
Economic migrants welcome if they have qualifications that will help the country.
English language lessons and a test in a say, generous 12 months.
Any criminal activity at all leads to immediate forfeiture of residency or citizenship and deportation.

The country is suffering from severe economic strain, made worse by the Covid plague and yet seems to be being led a dance by the French and starting to split at the seams. How many extra people is enough under the woke agenda of welcoming anyone who arrives? Treat people fairly and kindly - we shouldn't act otherwise - unlike many of the countries they have left. But those countries problems are not the UK's fault and they are not the UK's responsibility.

[FD2]

And another thing! Moderate social media more effectively - I think it is the worst scourge of modern times. If necessary tax it until it becomes too expensive to operate. It seems that Fakebook and its fellow travellers have become so large and powerful that they are controlling governments!

[Rwy in Sight]

The taxation part is more rational and even a tax on participants may be necessary but I feel very uncomfortable with moderating the media. As a matter of fact a form of moderation is already imposed on anti-immigrant views to some extend.The political left in the Continental Europe has seen to it

[FD2]

Agree RiS, I just can't think of Facebook and co as legitimate media. There is significant vaccine resistance here and a large portion of it is due to people reading some stupid story on Facebook about the vaccine's effects and believing it. I don't mind left or right wing papers at all - it's the choice of the readers. Agree about the political left in Europe too.

[Pontius Navigator]

Facebook is merely one of the largest SM sites for information exchange there are many licit and illicit both social, antisocial and specialist, large and small. Locally there is Nextdoor and Neighbourhood, then there are angry sites like Mumsnet or small sites like Ops Normal.

I could go on, but where do you draw the line between self-moderated moderate free speech and heavily moderated pay to speak sites?

There have always been underground channels of special interest groups from political and social to fetishist.

The unregulated Internet is just a modern, largely secure method of communication. The genie is out of the bottle.

Previous attempts at absolute media control, confiscating wireless sets, censoring mail and papers, taping telephone networks merely made things difficult but never impossible.

[tango15]

A few thoughts of my own, which may be at odds with many of the members, but it is simply a point of view.

Whilst it is undoubtedly tragic that an MP is murdered whilst performing his duties, the outpouring of grief and the mass media attention upon it seems wholly disproportionate to me. He may have been a very good consitiuency MP and and an all-round good egg, but I confess to never having heard of him before, but then there's no reason why I should have done.

Making Southend a city in his honour seems utterly ridiculous. To what end? My most recent memories of Southend were walking along the seafront one Saturday night and seeing more police vans than I have ever seen in my life. On enquiring why so many, I was told that they expected things 'to get a bit rough' later on. Not a very edifying spectacle. So, is the granting of city status to be a new government initiative whenever an unfortunate event occurs in any town througout England?

On the question of deportation, there is a lot of misunderstanding in the UK. This is far more complicated and absolutely riddled with diplomacy than people realise. I have been involved in this for reasons it would take too long to explain, but put simply, a deportation request has to be sent to the country of the passport holder. Rarely is this dealt with quickly, so the perp has to be fed and watered at Her Majesty's pleasure. If the deportation request is accepted, then arrangements are made for them to be sent home on a direct flight. Depending on the nature of the crime, they will be put on the aircraft before the other passengers, sometimes with a couple of handlers handcuffed to them, depending on how dangerous they are. We had such a case when I was working at LTN. There was a huge Polish guy who had murdered a nurse in Norfolk. Betcha never heard about that! All his papers were in order. He was brought to the aircraft in a prison van, handcuffed to two officers. He sat quietly at the back of the aircraft until the last of the passengers had boarded, then started to kick off. He was taken off the aircraft and put back in the van. A couple of weeks later, he re-appeared and the same thing happened. I was told that, in view of this, the would take him to Warsaw by road. Apparently this was an unusual course of action, but by no means unheard of. I can only imagine what the cost of this might be.

Now, this was a case where the country concerned had agreed to accept him back and incarcerate him upon arrival. My understanding is that many countries will simply not even reply to deportation requests, let alone agree to them. In that case, what do you do with a Somali or Albanian (for example), who has committed a serious crime in this country? Just put them on a plane and hope for the best? No, because the country concerned will probably not accept them and they'll be sent back on the next flight. If there is no direct flight between the two countries, eg UK and Somalia, then the issue is further complicated. Some airlines refuse to take deportees anyway, so this is why this scum then becomes our responsibility, with everything that implies.

A more effective solution might be to have a more rigorous check of these people by the British Embassy in the country from which they depart, especially since we no longer have to kowtow to the EU.

[Rwy in Sight]

Make sure their time as guests by HM government or the equivalent authorities is as unpleasant as humanly possible - harsh conditions bad food, no communications with friends and family etc. Make sure these conditions are legal for illegal immigrants and make sure you publish the news in the countries where those people come from. Denmark has some good ideas - they publish in refugees camps in Lebanon the message "don't come to Denmark" and they confiscate the money of illegal immigrants to pay for their maintenance while in the Kingdom. Back in the 90's the idea was to make the country as unwelcome as possible. Why has it changed? And make sure pro-immigration NGO are carefully scrutinized about illegal activities and their government funding slashed and diverted to the homeless people at home.

Plus make sure countries who are late at accepting back their citizens are confronted with a decreased development budget - it sounds a bit a vicious cycle but if Nigeria doesn't get any development funds from the EU or the UK they may start accepting immigrants back.

[Pontius Navigator]

tango, and that applies only to foreign born convicts and that is part of the problem with Begum, I can't remember her exact details.

[tango15]

tango, and that applies only to foreign born convicts and that is part of the problem with Begum, I can't remember her exact details.

Indeed. I think her British passport has been revoked and/or expired, hence her much-publicised dilemma. As far as I am aware, the Bangladeshis will not issue her one, although she can apply by dint of her ancestry. However, she would then need a visa to enter the UK, which would doubtless be refused. I imagine that technically, she is stateless at the moment.