Well, after the BBC (and others) happily repeating the “interfering foreign lawyers/courts/judges” line all morning… it turns out that in four cases it was UK courts that stopped people being deported without asylum application to Rwanda, not the ECHR (I posted details of one of them in this thread yesterday).

BBC news still reporting it as if the ECHR blocked the flight, rather than put on hold the deportation of just three of the people who were supposed to be on the flight. UK court decisions were key.

Now that we’ve got rid of the troll/racist (*delete as applicable), we can talk about the real purpose of this policy. I don’t think for a second it was ever serious. They never intended to deport anyone to Rwanda, but they did want to generate headlines in the tory rags which would stoke the anti-EU, anti-woke culture war, and in that respect it’s done its job quite successfully. The only thing Johnson cares about is short term media management.

“interfering foreign lawyers/courts/judges”

everyone needs a friend like that; someone who is genuinely a friend to you but who won’t be shy to step in at the right time when you’re about to make a dick of yourself and tell you the honest truth.

If you don’t have a friend like that, get one.

it’s done its job quite successfully

Agreed. Currently trying to work out if the BBC journalists have played along today out of naivety, or “balance” (repeat any government line as if fact, even when it clearly is not, as long as a few opposition voices also get heard), or to look willing to support the government after transparent threats from ministers about future funding and independence.

Conservative MP trying to walk the line… on one side attack ECHR as per the current gov line… on the other side, leaving the ECHR is bat shit bonkers and is step towards pariah state…

Spot the difference

Jonathan Gullis' original Facebook post about the ECHR (h/t @patrickkmaguire)

…and his edited post

He was told that the Good Friday Agreement requires ECHR participation, @politicshome understands

Gullis is Brandon Lewis' PPShttps://t.co/vBpwECmz1b pic.twitter.com/QQd4C7ZVSp

— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) June 15, 2022

The ‘deterrent’ idea is clearly rubbish. It appears that unscrupulous people traffickers are telling their clientele that everything will be fine, and they are being believed. So they’ll continue to do so regardless of who ends up going to Rwanda. They’ll simply assure people that it won’t apply to them.

<Sarcastic mode on>
How does 100% unsuccessful in shipping immigrants out of the UK to Rwanda destroy the business model of the people traffickers?
<mode off>
BTW my father was a refugee so personally I hope it all fails anyway 😉
On another note the trade deals being negotiated, I do hope people realize in some cases has clauses to access to the UK employment market. So I’m guessing anyone thinking from the perspective of little island protection, better consider that there will be immigration regardless and they will be taking our jobs and such like.

JeZ

I don’t think for a second it was ever serious.

Whilst it was definitely a media exercise I am not sure it was about the culture war.
We had Farage and co stoking the headlines about the refugees and the government were looking completely incapable of doing anything.
Whilst this is highly unlikely to be effective (to be very generous) it did give some headlines and thats what counts.

The culture war aspect is more a bonus of hiding just how ineffective the approach is likely to be.

All a bit chicken an egg… Farage does little bit stoke culture wars… Johnson and his team then do something noisy to signal which side they are on… while carefully using caring and sharing language to try not to scare off people who haven’t bought into them.

We’ve got to the stage where a Government thinks this sort of policy will be popular with voters due to God knows how many years of this…

Sad thing is that they fall for it…

A summary of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights</h2>
Article 1: We are all born free. We all have our own thoughts and ideas and we should all be treated the same way.

Article 2: The rights in the UDHR belong to everyone, no matter who we are, where we’re from, or whatever we believe.

Article 3: We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.

Article 4: No one should be held as a slave, and no one has the right to treat anyone else as their slave.

Article 5: No one has the right to inflict torture, or to subject anyone else to cruel or inhuman treatment.

Article 6: We should all have the same level of legal protection whoever we are, and wherever in the world we are.

Article 7: The law is the same for everyone, and must treat us all equally.

Article 8: We should all have the right to legal support if we are treated unfairly.

Article 9: Nobody should be arrested, put in prison, or sent away from our country unless there is good reason to do so.

Article 10: Everyone accused of a crime has the right to a fair and public trial, and those that try us should be independent and not influenced by others.

Article 11: Everyone accused of a crime has the right to be considered innocent until they have fairly been proven to be guilty.

Article 12: Nobody has the right to enter our home, open our mail, or intrude on our families without good reason. We also have the right to be protected if someone tries to unfairly damage our reputation.

Article 13: We all have the right to move freely within our country, and to visit and leave other countries when we wish.

Article 14: If we are at risk of harm we have the right to go to another country to seek protection.

Article 15: We all have the right to be a citizen of a country and nobody should prevent us, without good reason, from being a citizen of another country if we wish.

Article 16: We should have the right to marry and have a family as soon as we’re legally old enough. Our ethnicity, nationality and religion should not stop us from being able to do this. Men and women have the same rights when they are married and also when they’re separated. We should never be forced to marry. The government has a responsibility to protect us and our family.

Article 17: Everyone has the right to own property, and no one has the right to take this away from us without a fair reason.

Article 18: Everyone has the freedom to think or believe what they want, including the right to religious belief. We have the right to change our beliefs or religion at any time, and the right to publicly or privately practise our chosen religion, alone or with others.

Article 19: Everyone has the right to their own opinions, and to be able to express them freely. We should have the right to share our ideas with who we want, and in whichever way we choose.

Article 20: We should all have the right to form groups and organise peaceful meetings. Nobody should be forced to belong to a group if they don’t want to.

Article 21: We all have the right to take part in our country’s political affairs either by freely choosing politicians to represent us, or by belonging to the government ourselves. Governments should be voted for by the public on a regular basis, and every person’s individual vote should be secret. Every individual vote should be worth the same.

Article 22: The society we live in should help every person develop to their best ability through access to work, involvement in cultural activity, and the right to social welfare. Every person in society should have the freedom to develop their personality with the support of the resources available in that country.

Article 23: We all have the right to employment, to be free to choose our work, and to be paid a fair salary that allows us to live and support our family. Everyone who does the same work should have the right to equal pay, without discrimination. We have the right to come together and form trade union groups to defend our interests as workers.

Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure time. There should be limits on working hours, and people should be able to take holidays with pay.

Article 25: We all have the right to enough food, clothing, housing and healthcare for ourselves and our families. We should have access to support if we are out of work, ill, elderly, disabled, widowed, or can’t earn a living for reasons outside of our control. An expectant mother and her baby should both receive extra care and support. All children should have the same rights when they are born.

Article 26: Everyone has the right to education. Primary schooling should be free. We should all be able to continue our studies as far as we wish. At school we should be helped to develop our talents, and be taught an understanding and respect for everyone’s human rights. We should also be taught to get on with others whatever their ethnicity, religion, or country they come from. Our parents have the right to choose what kind of school we go to.

Article 27: We all have the right to get involved in our community’s arts, music, literature and sciences, and the benefits they bring. If we are an artist, a musician, a writer or a scientist, our works should be protected and we should be able to benefit from them.

Article 28: We all have the right to live in a peaceful and orderly society so that these rights and freedoms can be protected, and these rights can be enjoyed in all other countries around the world.

Article 29: We have duties to the community we live in that should allow us to develop as fully as possible. The law should guarantee human rights and should allow everyone to enjoy the same mutual respect.

Article 30: No government, group or individual should act in a way that would destroy the rights and freedoms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Marina Hyde absolutely on the money again

My bit on the government’s Rwanda policy, and that most bankrupt philosophy of the age – “annoying all the right people” https://t.co/S2IfAleVcP

— Marina Hyde (@MarinaHyde) June 15, 2022

Loving her new title for Boris…

The king of Twatlantis

What was that posted earlier, a simplified version of the universal declaration of human rights for young kids?

Is it like the highway code where there is a difference when they state “must” and when they state “should”?

I am sure that the current UK government would claim that they fully comply with Article 9 of that code.

Personally I prefer the original UN declaration:

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

It’s just a shame that that nearly 75 years on Article 23 paragraph 1 is still universally ignored, especially the very last bit.

What was that posted earlier, a simplified version of the universal declaration of human rights for young kids?

Taken from Amnesty international.

Perhaps you should send them an email Ernie, im sure they’d love to get advice from an expert in this subject such as yourself.

🙄

BBC still reporting that the ECHR stopped the flight. No mention of the UK court rulings. Job jobbed… glasses will be chinked by ministers tonight.

Only one person booked on the flight got a retrieve thanks to the ECHR now it seems… the others were kept here by UK courts or the Home Office itself. BBC still framing it as a government vs ECHR battle though. Lots of quotes from Tory MPs about “meddling foreign courts”.

im sure they’d love to get advice from an expert in this subject such as yourself.

Thank you for your kind words but I fear that you exaggerate, no expertise is required to link directly to the United Nations website and their universal declaration of human rights.

But may I return the compliment by complimenting you on your debating skills which were wonderfully illustrated here:

singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/these-rail-strikes-then/page/2/#post-12426379

Very well thought out and impossible to counter.

A source close to government told @harrytlambert: “They never expected the flight to take off. The point of the exercise was to create dividing lines ahead of the next election."

Read more here:

— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) June 15, 2022

Next election may well be sooner than we are expecting, then. Something to look forward to in the autumn. Full-on race-baiting anti-EU culture war bollocks in the hope of scraping a small majority.

Doesn’t have to be an early election. Sowing the seeds years early is just as possible. Johnson has patience when it comes to political games.

It would be hard to justify calling an early general election considering the huge working majority the government currently enjoys.

I do agree that the Rwanda policy is not belief driven though. It clearly makes very little if any sense on so many levels, including economic considerations.

It has to be based primarily on calculations. IMO to placate certain sections of the party and right-wing newspaper columnists, many of whom are after Johnson’s blood, with his covid socialism etc.

Lacking any real idealogical committments Johnson has no natural power base within the party. Keeping everyone happy within the Tory Party is clearly impossible but like a true showman Johnson takes on the challenge like circus performer spinning plates – just a few tweaks now and then.

The Minister for Tackling Illegal Migration (yes, that’s apparently a real title) is presently being interviewed on channel 4 news.

Somewhere a village is missing it’s idiot

No wonder this is all such a shambles, like everything else this joke of a government sort of pretends to do

Looking at the pictures on BBC news, am I right is thinking the aircraft that was to do the flight was called Privilege?

The Minister for Tackling Illegal Migration (yes, that’s apparently a real title)

Well if there is a bizarrely named “Secretary of State for Safe and Legal Migration” then I guess it’s fairly reasonable to assume that there should be a Secretary of State for Justice and Tackling Illegal Migration, to deal with all the migration which isn’t “safe and legal”.

He came across like his title should be Minister of Trying to Find MyOwn Arse Using Both Hands

Krisnan was repeatedly doing the sideways look to camera that said ‘who the **** is this clown, and what on earth is he blathering on about?

Mind you, if you’ve got be thick enough so that the Prister or Boris aren’t going to feel threatened by you, that doesn’t give you much to work with

The upshot of the interview was that they’re going to keep on chartering planes – with OUR money – and putting a handful of migrants on, which will then not be able to take off due to legal challenges, because…. erm…. Taking back control?

Looking at the news footage of all the security, police, and given the money paid to Rwanda already, the charter costs, the legal fees etc, surely we must be well past a quarter of a billion already for last nights farce and nobody has left the country yet

Blimey, I have just seen this:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/%3Fid%3D2022-06-13a.35.0%26s%3DNationality%2Band%2BBorders%2BBill%2Bsection%253Adebate&ved=2ahUKEwjjtMucorD4AhULgFwKHZa3BL4QFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw25O4zazuUUFDjl9Rz8fuYj

Talk about knocking the nails on the head:

Stuart McDonald
Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Home Affairs)
I sincerely thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

This is not world-leading policy. If anything, this leads to the total shredding of the refugee convention. This cash-for-deportations policy is akin to state-sponsored trafficking and transportation. What is more, it is a grim political stunt being rushed out to shore up the Prime Minister again.

I love the “state-sponsored trafficking” comment, which is of course what it is – transporting vulnerable people with no concern for their well-being.

surely we must be well past a quarter of a billion already for last nights farce and nobody has left the country yet

Ah, but it establishes a principle, apparently.

Nah, plenty the see the Rwanda project as a deterrent to stop people coming here to claim asylum, as the government claims it is. Those potential voters are a minority of a minority, but the government is happy to spend a fortune, and damage the UK’s reputation, to demonstrate that they’re acting tough on their behalf… keeping people out.

Yes, this is all just about re-igniting their “base” to be OUTRAGED about asylum seekers/immigrants (really just brown foreigners), and simultaneously stoking a culture war between their voters and those damn lefties (with their laws/facts/morals). You can already see it happening – they are delighted that it’s something with the word “European” in the name that has stepped-in to prevent this.

That lorry-driver post is interesting, because it shows the extent to which the general public are completely unable to think critically when they get so fired-up about something so polarising. Fully agree that the situation in calais is terrible, and that something must be done to address. What I can’t really understand is how the poster got from there to: “we need to send ’em all to Rwanda”? Surely there are about 10,000 different options between the current situation, and what the g’ment are trying to do – most/all of which would make more sense (unless you are trying to achieve something different – as above) Also – why isn’t he directing his ire against the government who have been the architects of the current, dire situation? Wierd.

Yes, this is all just about re-igniting their “base” to be OUTRAGED about asylum seekers/immigrants (really just brown foreigners), and simultaneously stoking a culture war between their voters and those damn lefties (with their laws/facts/morals).

It’s very clear listening to (obviously un-briefed) Raab floundering on R4 this morning that Human Rights/ECHR are in the crosshairs.

Geidt has clearly thrown in the towel now the headbangers have been lined up to endorse some lashed together UK “Bill of Rights” that strangely wasn’t a talking point yesterday…

Sweepstakes on what will be omitted and/or worded a little differently?

Interesting article here from the across the pond:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-shameless-farce-of-boris-johnsons-attempt-to-send-refugees-to-rwanda?

The full @YvetteCooperMP take-down of the #Rwanda policy, is the most thorough, detailed and florid dismantling of gov't policy I've seen in many years.

Worth watching in full and sharing. Patel reduced to gurning. I won't quote from it, because every line is quotable. ~AA pic.twitter.com/Zb2AXM4soC

— Best for Britain (@BestForBritain) June 15, 2022

Wow. Perfect take down of the whole policy.

Probably should be said on another thread, but that had a tone of leadership about it.

This government is more than turning a blind eye to the political situation in Rwanda, they want to blind us to it as well…

The government asked the opinion of an expert at the Foreign Office about Rwanda. The expert told them the truth about the dangers. The government decided to go ahead with the policy anyway and now don’t want the High Court (or you) to know what the expert warned them. https://t.co/ki9zIQv7S9

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 16, 2022

Home Office goes to court to keep sections of Rwanda rights document secret https://t.co/eMahRYzwC9

— Financial Times (@FT) August 16, 2022

And so it goes on. Even with BJ on holiday the lies, secrecy, deception and inhumanity continue. My feelings are the same now as my OP – despair.

I’m not sure why this seems to be news, that ministers were aware of human rights abuses in Rwanda before making the decision. The concerns were widely reported when the policy was announced, of course they knew and didn’t care.