organization:conservative party

  • Brexit Is for Boys – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/19/brexit-is-for-boys-boris-johnson-jeremy-hunt-michael-gove-tories


    Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, and Rory Stewart participate in a televised Conservative Party leadership debate on June 18 in London.
    JEFF OVERS/BBC VIA GETTY IMAGES

    Since 2016, the campaign to leave the European Union has been led primarily by men. The remaining candidates for prime minister are all male—and they’re not talking about the grave consequences of Brexit for women.
    […]
    Without European courts and standards, it is not hard to imagine the next government of Brexiteers, in their zeal to cut red tape, trimming protections for women through deregulation. Already a minister in the department in charge of Brexit, Martin Callanan, has suggested that the U.K. “scrap” such protections, including the pregnant workers’ directive, because they are “barriers to actually employing people.”

    There are also logistical problems. One collateral loss of Brexit could be the European Protection Order, which ensures that restraining orders apply across EU member states—allowing, for instance, a British woman who moves to Germany to be protected from an abusive partner there. Another is EU funding to British women’s civil society groups, including those that work to combat domestic violence. What is more, a projected 28,000 caregivers who hail from EU member states will no longer be able to work in the U.K., which means some British women will likely have to leave their jobs to look after aging relatives, according to the Department of Health. Most of all, the EU withdrawal process is a time-and resource-sucking distraction, which has stalled policymaking on issues concerning women as it has in nearly every other legislative area.

  • Sajid Javid calls for ’full force of law’ against Extinction Rebellion protesters | Environment | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/18/sajid-javid-calls-for-full-force-of-law-against-extinction-rebellion-pr

    Sajid Javid has called on police to use the “full force of the law” against Extinction Rebellion protesters causing disruption in London to draw attention to the issue of climate change.

    The home secretary, who is positioning himself for a run at the Conservative party leadership, made a series of tweets condemning “any protesters who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law”.

    He called on the police to “take a firm stance” against protesters who were “significantly disrupting the lives of others”.

  • A British Palestinian MP seeks recognition for Palestine in the home of the Balfour Declaration – Middle East Monitor
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190318-a-british-palestinian-mp-seeks-recognition-for-palestine

    Britain’s first Member of Parliament of Palestinian descent is preparing for a historic debate on Friday to have the government give official recognition to the state of Palestine in what she says is probably the “most personal and poignant” piece of legislation she has submitted since arriving in Westminster.

    Rising political star Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat, sent shock waves through the ranks of the Conservative Party when she overturned a 10,000 majority at the 2017 General Election to take Oxford West and Abingdon which was previously regarded as a safe Tory seat. Now she’s making more waves with the second reading of her Private Members Bill this week to have Palestine recognised by Britain as a state.

    (...)

    Moran’s mother, Randa, is a Palestinian Christian from Jerusalem and the MP still has family living in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her British father’s diplomatic career took the family all over the world. She speaks four languages as well as English — French, Arabic, Spanish and Greek — and is not the only one in her family to enjoy a high profile. Her great-grandfather, Wasif Jawhariyyeh, was a celebrated writer who wrote extensive memoirs about Palestinian life under Ottoman and British rule, before fleeing Palestine after the State of Israel was created.

  • ’Hitler just wanted to make Germany great,’ Candace Owens of Trump-aligned TPUSA says in London / Boing Boing
    https://boingboing.net/2019/02/08/candace-owens-hitler-just-w.html

    Well alrighty then.

    Candace Owens of Turning Point USA, speaking in London: "But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize.”

    Here is video of Candace Owens’ full answer on nationalism and Hitler pic.twitter.com/NfBvoH8vQg

    — John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) February 8, 2019

    Candace Owens is the mouthpiece of Turning Point USA, a political action group closely aligned with Donald Trump and supported by his MAGA fans.

    Days After Its Disastrous British Launch, Turning Point Has Already Lost One Of Its Star Recruits
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/pro-trump-turning-point-loses-star-activists

    This week, Turning Point announced the opening of its British offshoot with a flashy digital media campaign fronted by several youthful Westminster figures, including the Guido Fawkes writer Tom Harwood and Darren Grimes, the Brexit campaigner fined £20,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaking spending rules during the EU referendum campaign.

    With a provocative pitch about liberating universities from the left, the launch attracted widespread publicity. Several prominent politicians on the British right endorsed the group, including Nigel Farage, Priti Patel, and Jacob Rees-Mogg. But there was also pushback: Labour MP David Lammy tweeted that Tories who were endorsing Turning Point were openly promoting “hard right, xenophobic bile”. Conservative party headquarters sent an instruction to its members “not to work with them in any capacity”.

    #extrême_droite #Royaume_Uni #USA

  • My Ready Meal Is None Of Your Business
    by Jack Monroe

    Tonight, scrolling through Twitter, I came across a frankly audacious message sent from the ‘Bath Conservatives’ account, that had tagged me in. Unfortunately this is not an account dedicated to the frugal recycling of your dirty wash water, more’s the pity, but the haphazard and misfiring musings from the anonymous social media person for the Bath branch of the Conservative Party. You might have heard of them. They’re the ones in Government right now, and have been for around eight years now.
    These Conservatives decided, in their wisdom, to uphold me as an example of someone who could cook well on a meagre budget. Put like that, you may wonder why I exploded in cold fury.
    (...)
    The premise of the tweet from the Conservative Association was that parents who do not cook beautiful, bountiful meals from scratch are lazy, uneducated, unskilled and dysfunctional. Allow me to piss all over that particularly poisonous bonfire once and for all.
    (...)

    https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/17/my-ready-meal-is-none-of-your-business

  • Pro-Russian Harmony tipped to be Latvia’s largest party following election | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/07/pro-russian-harmony-tipped-to-be-latvias-largest-party-following-electi

    The pro-Kremlin Harmony party looked set to hold the balance of power in Latvia, following a general election on Saturday, with an exit poll showing it topping the vote ahead of liberals.

    A public TV exit poll showed Harmony had a 19.4% vote share, while the liberal pro-EU, pro-Nato For Development was in second place with 13.4%, ahead of the rightwing National Alliance on 12.6%.

    Populists, who could help Harmony form a coalition, followed closely behind. The New Conservative party was on 12.4% and KPV LV showed 11.5%.

    The Greens and Farmers Union of the prime minister, Māris Kučinskis, managed 9.7%.

    #lettonie #élections

  • In Britain, Even Children Are Feeling the Effects of Austerity
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/world/europe/uk-austerity-child-poverty.html?partner=msft_msn

    The Conservative Party leaders who pushed through the austerity program dispute that it is the cause of rising child poverty, or that child poverty is increasing. They argue that a new system that bundles most payments into one, known as universal credit, is an improvement.

    The new system is “infinitely better than what it replaced,” said Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative former cabinet minister who oversaw the changes. “The process of stepping into work is easier.”

    That rationale is being questioned. Though unemployment has been more than halved under the Conservatives, the overall child poverty rate has risen. And roughly two-thirds of poor children have at least one parent who works, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said.

    “We tell ourselves completely the wrong story about poverty in the U.K.,” Ms. Garnham said. “The government likes to focus attention on workless families, but there’s hardly any left. That’s a problem of the past.”

    #austérité #pauvreté #travailleurs #pauvres #Grande_Bretagne

  • The Islamic fundamentalist Jeremy Corbyn should be ashamed of himself – if only he’d behaved more like Margaret Thatcher | The Independent
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-islam-jewish-antisemitism-israel-labour-party-margaret-

    Un peu d’humour (anglais) ne fait jamais de mal en politique.

    It gets worse and worse for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. There’s a rumour that photos have emerged of a courgette grown on his allotment which is a similar shape to a rocket propeller used by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

    This comes on top of revelations that he has a beard, much like Palestinian terrorists, and his constituency is Islington, which starts with IS, or Islamic State. As a vegetarian he doesn’t eat pork, his friend John McDonnell’s initials are JM – that stands for Jihadist Muslim – and he travels on underground trains, that are under the ground, just like the basements in which Isis make their little films.

    The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and various others have also published a photo of him folding his thumb while holding up his fingers, in a way they describe as a salute to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. That settles it. If you don’t constantly check the shape of your thumb to make sure it’s not folded in a way similar to the way it’s folded by Muslim groups in Egypt, you might as well strap Semtex to your chest and get a bus to Syria.

    Thankfully there are some brave journalists who discovered the truth: that Corbyn laid a wreath in Tunisia at a memorial for civilians who were bombed, but also buried in that cemetery are the “Munich terrorists”. It turned out that the terrorists are not buried there at all, as they’re buried in Libya, but you can’t expect those journalists to get bogged down in insignificant details like that.

    We’ve all turned up for a funeral to be told we’re in the wrong country. “I’m afraid the service for your Uncle Derek is in Eltham Crematorium,” we’re told, “and you’ve come to Argentina.” It doesn’t make any difference to the overall story.

    Because there are Palestinian leaders who may have been terrorists in that cemetery. And when you attend a memorial service, you are clearly commemorating everyone in the cemetery, and the fact that you’ve probably never heard of most of them is no excuse.
    Corbyn takes on Margaret Thatcher over homelessness in Parliament in 1990

    If it’s possible to bring comfort to all those shocked by this outrage, it may be worth recalling that one of the first scandals about Corbyn after he became leader was that he wasn’t dressed smartly enough when he laid a wreath at the Cenotaph, which was an insult to our war dead. He’s just as scruffy in the pictures from Tunisia, so perhaps what he’s actually doing is insulting the terrorists, by laying a wreath near them while his coat is rumpled.

    I suppose it may just be possible that the wreath he laid at an event organised to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985 was actually put there to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985.

    But it’s much more likely that secretly, Jeremy Corbyn supports Palestinian terrorists who murder athletes. You may think that if you hold such an unusual point of view, it might have slipped out in conversation here and there. But the fact he’s never said or done anything to suggest he backs the brutal murder of civilians only shows how clever he is at hiding his true thoughts.

    This must be why he’s always been a keen supporter of causes beloved by Islamic jihadists, such as gay rights. For example, Jeremy Corbyn was a passionate opponent of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 law that banned the mention of homosexuality in schools. He supported every gay rights campaign at a time when it was considered extremist to do so. And the way he managed to be an extremist Islamic fundamentalist and an extremist gay rights fanatic at the same time only shows how dangerous he is.

    One person who appears especially upset by all this is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s always distressing when someone that sensitive gets dragged into an issue.

    Sadly he’s going to be even more aghast when he reads about another event in which wreaths were laid for terrorists. Because a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, in which 91 people died, mostly civilians and 28 of them British. This was carried out by the Irgun, an Israeli terror gang, and one man, who by coincidence was also called Benjamin Netanyahu, declared the bombing was “a legitimate act with a military target”.
    The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn
    He called Hezbollah and Hamas ‘friends’
    ‘Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy’
    He is ‘haunted’ by the legacy of his ‘evil’ great-great-grandfather
    Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about ‘pigeon bombs’ in Parliament

    When Benjamin Netanyahu hears about this other Benjamin Netanyahu he’ll be furious.

    The Labour MPs who pine for Tony Blair are even more enraged, and you have to sympathise. Because when Blair supported murderers, such as Gaddafi and Asad, he did it while they were still alive, which is much more acceptable.

    So you can see why Conservative politicians and newspapers are so disgusted. If you subjected the Conservative Party to a similar level of scrutiny, you’d find nothing comparable. There might be the odd link to torturers, such as their ex-leader Margaret Thatcher describing General Pinochet, who herded opponents into a football stadium and had them shot, as a close and dear friend. Or supporting apartheid because “Nelson Mandela is a terrorist”. But she was only being polite.

    We can only guess what the next revelation will be. My guess is “Corbyn supported snakes against iguanas in Attenborough’s film. Footage has emerged of the Labour leader speaking alongside a snake, and praising his efforts to catch the iguana and poison and swallow him. One iguana said he was ‘shocked and horrified’ at the story, told in this 340-page special edition, and one anti-Corbyn Labour MP said, ‘I don’t know anything about this whatsoever, which is why I call on Mr Corbyn to do the decent thing and kill himself.’”

    #Jeremy_Corbin #Fake_news #Calomnies #Violence

  • The Islamic fundamentalist Jeremy Corbyn should be ashamed of himself – if only he’d behaved more like Margaret Thatcher | The Independent
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-islam-jewish-antisemitism-israel-labour-party-margaret-

    It gets worse and worse for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. There’s a rumour that photos have emerged of a courgette grown on his allotment which is a similar shape to a rocket propeller used by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

    This comes on top of revelations that he has a beard, much like Palestinian terrorists, and his constituency is Islington, which starts with IS, or Islamic State. As a vegetarian he doesn’t eat pork, his friend John McDonnell’s initials are JM – that stands for Jihadist Muslim – and he travels on underground trains, that are under the ground, just like the basements in which Isis make their little films.

    The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and various others have also published a photo of him folding his thumb while holding up his fingers, in a way they describe as a salute to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. That settles it. If you don’t constantly check the shape of your thumb to make sure it’s not folded in a way similar to the way it’s folded by Muslim groups in Egypt, you might as well strap Semtex to your chest and get a bus to Syria.

    Thankfully there are some brave journalists who discovered the truth: that Corbyn laid a wreath in Tunisia at a memorial for civilians who were bombed, but also buried in that cemetery are the “Munich terrorists”. It turned out that the terrorists are not buried there at all, as they’re buried in Libya, but you can’t expect those journalists to get bogged down in insignificant details like that.

    We’ve all turned up for a funeral to be told we’re in the wrong country. “I’m afraid the service for your Uncle Derek is in Eltham Crematorium,” we’re told, “and you’ve come to Argentina.” It doesn’t make any difference to the overall story.

    Because there are Palestinian leaders who may have been terrorists in that cemetery. And when you attend a memorial service, you are clearly commemorating everyone in the cemetery, and the fact that you’ve probably never heard of most of them is no excuse.
    Corbyn takes on Margaret Thatcher over homelessness in Parliament in 1990

    If it’s possible to bring comfort to all those shocked by this outrage, it may be worth recalling that one of the first scandals about Corbyn after he became leader was that he wasn’t dressed smartly enough when he laid a wreath at the Cenotaph, which was an insult to our war dead. He’s just as scruffy in the pictures from Tunisia, so perhaps what he’s actually doing is insulting the terrorists, by laying a wreath near them while his coat is rumpled.
    British Expats: Discover How the UK Pension Refor…Abbey Wealth
    Propriétaire en Occitanie ? N’acheter pas vos …Eco-Astuce.com
    Prostate : ces 5 actifs améliorent drastiquement vos…Laboratoire Cell’innov

    by Taboola
    Sponsored Links

    I suppose it may just be possible that the wreath he laid at an event organised to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985 was actually put there to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985.

    But it’s much more likely that secretly, Jeremy Corbyn supports Palestinian terrorists who murder athletes. You may think that if you hold such an unusual point of view, it might have slipped out in conversation here and there. But the fact he’s never said or done anything to suggest he backs the brutal murder of civilians only shows how clever he is at hiding his true thoughts.

    This must be why he’s always been a keen supporter of causes beloved by Islamic jihadists, such as gay rights. For example, Jeremy Corbyn was a passionate opponent of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 law that banned the mention of homosexuality in schools. He supported every gay rights campaign at a time when it was considered extremist to do so. And the way he managed to be an extremist Islamic fundamentalist and an extremist gay rights fanatic at the same time only shows how dangerous he is.

    One person who appears especially upset by all this is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s always distressing when someone that sensitive gets dragged into an issue.

    Sadly he’s going to be even more aghast when he reads about another event in which wreaths were laid for terrorists. Because a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, in which 91 people died, mostly civilians and 28 of them British. This was carried out by the Irgun, an Israeli terror gang, and one man, who by coincidence was also called Benjamin Netanyahu, declared the bombing was “a legitimate act with a military target”.
    The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn
    He called Hezbollah and Hamas ‘friends’
    ‘Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy’
    He is ‘haunted’ by the legacy of his ‘evil’ great-great-grandfather
    Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about ‘pigeon bombs’ in Parliament

    When Benjamin Netanyahu hears about this other Benjamin Netanyahu he’ll be furious.

    The Labour MPs who pine for Tony Blair are even more enraged, and you have to sympathise. Because when Blair supported murderers, such as Gaddafi and Asad, he did it while they were still alive, which is much more acceptable.

    So you can see why Conservative politicians and newspapers are so disgusted. If you subjected the Conservative Party to a similar level of scrutiny, you’d find nothing comparable. There might be the odd link to torturers, such as their ex-leader Margaret Thatcher describing General Pinochet, who herded opponents into a football stadium and had them shot, as a close and dear friend. Or supporting apartheid because “Nelson Mandela is a terrorist”. But she was only being polite.

    We can only guess what the next revelation will be. My guess is “Corbyn supported snakes against iguanas in Attenborough’s film. Footage has emerged of the Labour leader speaking alongside a snake, and praising his efforts to catch the iguana and poison and swallow him. One iguana said he was ‘shocked and horrified’ at the story, told in this 340-page special edition, and one anti-Corbyn Labour MP said, ‘I don’t know anything about this whatsoever, which is why I call on Mr Corbyn to do the decent thing and kill himself.’”

  • In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/world/europe/uk-austerity-poverty.html


    #austérité #pauvreté

    Britain’s Big Squeeze
    In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything

    After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.

    Raised in the Liverpool neighborhood of Croxteth, Emma Wilde has lost the welfare benefits she depended on to support herself and her two children.CreditAndrea Bruce for The New York Times

    By Peter S. Goodman

    May 28, 2018

    PRESCOT, England — A walk through this modest town in the northwest of England amounts to a tour of the casualties of Britain’s age of austerity.

    The old library building has been sold and refashioned into a glass-fronted luxury home. The leisure center has been razed, eliminating the public swimming pool. The local museum has receded into town history. The police station has been shuttered.

    Now, as the local government desperately seeks to turn assets into cash, Browns Field, a lush park in the center of town, may be doomed, too. At a meeting in November, the council included it on a list of 17 parks to sell to developers.

    “Everybody uses this park,” says Jackie Lewis, who raised two children in a red brick house a block away. “This is probably our last piece of community space. It’s been one after the other. You just end up despondent.”

    In the eight years since London began sharply curtailing support for local governments, the borough of Knowsley, a bedroom community of Liverpool, has seen its budget cut roughly in half. Liverpool itself has suffered a nearly two-thirds cut in funding from the national government — its largest source of discretionary revenue. Communities in much of Britain have seen similar losses.

    For a nation with a storied history of public largess, the protracted campaign of budget cutting, started in 2010 by a government led by the Conservative Party, has delivered a monumental shift in British life. A wave of austerity has yielded a country that has grown accustomed to living with less, even as many measures of social well-being — crime rates, opioid addiction, infant mortality, childhood poverty and homelessness — point to a deteriorating quality of life.

    When Ms. Lewis and her husband bought their home a quarter-century ago, Prescot had a comforting village feel. Now, core government relief programs are being cut and public facilities eliminated, adding pressure to public services like police and fire departments, just as they, too, grapple with diminished funding.

    By 2020, reductions already set in motion will produce cuts to British social welfare programs exceeding $36 billion a year compared with a decade earlier, or more than $900 annually for every working-age person in the country, according to a report from the Center for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University. In Liverpool, the losses will reach $1,200 a year per working-age person, the study says.

    “The government has created destitution,” says Barry Kushner, a Labour Party councilman in Liverpool and the cabinet member for children’s services. “Austerity has had nothing to do with economics. It was about getting out from under welfare. It’s about politics abandoning vulnerable people.”

    Conservative Party leaders say that austerity has been driven by nothing more grandiose than arithmetic.

    “It’s the ideology of two plus two equals four,” says Daniel Finkelstein, a Conservative member of the upper chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords, and a columnist for The Times of London. “It wasn’t driven by a desire to reduce spending on public services. It was driven by the fact that we had a vast deficit problem, and the debt was going to keep growing.”

    Whatever the operative thinking, austerity’s manifestations are palpable and omnipresent. It has refashioned British society, making it less like the rest of Western Europe, with its generous social safety nets and egalitarian ethos, and more like the United States, where millions lack health care and job loss can set off a precipitous plunge in fortunes.

    Much as the United States took the Great Depression of the 1930s as impetus to construct a national pension system while eventually delivering health care for the elderly and the poor, Britain reacted to the trauma of World War II by forging its own welfare state. The United States has steadily reduced benefits since the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Britain rolled back its programs in the same era, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. Still, its safety net remained robust by world standards.

    Then came the global financial panic of 2008 — the most crippling economic downturn since the Great Depression. Britain’s turn from its welfare state in the face of yawning budget deficits is a conspicuous indicator that the world has been refashioned by the crisis.

    As the global economy now negotiates a wrenching transition — with itinerant jobs replacing full-time positions and robots substituting for human labor — Britain’s experience provokes doubts about the durability of the traditional welfare model. As Western-style capitalism confronts profound questions about economic justice, vulnerable people appear to be growing more so.

    Conservative Party leaders initially sold budget cuts as a virtue, ushering in what they called the Big Society. Diminish the role of a bloated government bureaucracy, they contended, and grass-roots organizations, charities and private companies would step to the fore, reviving communities and delivering public services more efficiently.

    To a degree, a spirit of voluntarism materialized. At public libraries, volunteers now outnumber paid staff. In struggling communities, residents have formed food banks while distributing hand-me-down school uniforms. But to many in Britain, this is akin to setting your house on fire and then reveling in the community spirit as neighbors come running to help extinguish the blaze.

    Most view the Big Society as another piece of political sloganeering — long since ditched by the Conservatives — that served as justification for an austerity program that has advanced the refashioning unleashed in the 1980s by Mrs. Thatcher.

    “We are making cuts that I think Margaret Thatcher, back in the 1980s, could only have dreamt of,” Greg Barker said in a speech in 2011, when he was a Conservative member of Parliament.

    A backlash ensued, with public recognition that budget cuts came with tax relief for corporations, and that the extensive ranks of the wealthy were little disturbed.

    Britain hasn’t endured austerity to the same degree as Greece, where cutbacks were swift and draconian. Instead, British austerity has been a slow bleed, though the cumulative toll has been substantial.

    Local governments have suffered a roughly one-fifth plunge in revenue since 2010, after adding taxes they collect, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.

    Nationally, spending on police forces has dropped 17 percent since 2010, while the number of police officers has dropped 14 percent, according to an analysis by the Institute for Government. Spending on road maintenance has shrunk more than one-fourth, while support for libraries has fallen nearly a third.

    The national court system has eliminated nearly a third of its staff. Spending on prisons has plunged more than a fifth, with violent assaults on prison guards more than doubling. The number of elderly people receiving government-furnished care that enables them to remain in their homes has fallen by roughly a quarter.

    In an alternate reality, this nasty stretch of history might now be ending. Austerity measures were imposed in the name of eliminating budget deficits, and last year Britain finally produced a modest budget surplus.

    But the reality at hand is dominated by worries that Britain’s pending departure from the European Union — Brexit, as it is known — will depress growth for years to come. Though every major economy on earth has been expanding lately, Britain’s barely grew during the first three months of 2018. The unemployment rate sits just above 4 percent — its lowest level since 1975 — yet most wages remain lower than a decade ago, after accounting for rising prices.

    In the blue-collar reaches of northern England, in places like Liverpool, modern history tends to be told in the cadence of lamentation, as the story of one indignity after another. In these communities, Mrs. Thatcher’s name is an epithet, and austerity is the latest villain: London bankers concocted a financial crisis, multiplying their wealth through reckless gambling; then London politicians used budget deficits as an excuse to cut spending on the poor while handing tax cuts to corporations. Robin Hood, reversed.

    “It’s clearly an attack on our class,” says Dave Kelly, a retired bricklayer in the town of Kirkby, on the outskirts of Liverpool, where many factories sit empty, broken monuments to another age. “It’s an attack on who we are. The whole fabric of society is breaking down.”

    As much as any city, Liverpool has seen sweeping changes in its economic fortunes.

    In the 17th century, the city enriched itself on human misery. Local shipping companies sent vessels to West Africa, transporting slaves to the American colonies and returning bearing the fruits of bondage — cotton and tobacco, principally.

    The cotton fed the mills of Manchester nearby, yielding textiles destined for multiple continents. By the late 19th century, Liverpool’s port had become the gateway to the British Empire, its status underscored by the shipping company headquarters lining the River Mersey.

    By the next century — through the Great Depression and the German bombardment of World War II — Liverpool had descended into seemingly terminal decline. Its hard luck, blue-collar station was central to the identity of its most famous export, the Beatles, whose star power seemed enhanced by the fact such talent could emerge from such a place.

    Today, more than a quarter of Liverpool’s roughly 460,000 residents are officially poor, making austerity traumatic: Public institutions charged with aiding vulnerable people are themselves straining from cutbacks.

    Over the past eight years, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, which serves greater Liverpool, has closed five fire stations while cutting the force to 620 firefighters from about 1,000.

    “I’ve had to preside over the systematic dismantling of the system,” says the fire chief, Dan Stephens.

    His department recently analyzed the 83 deaths that occurred in accidental house fires from 2007 to 2017. The majority of the victims — 51 people — lived alone and were alone at the time of the deadly fire. Nineteen of those 51 were in need of some form of home care.

    The loss of home care — a casualty of austerity — has meant that more older people are being left alone unattended.

    Virtually every public agency now struggles to do more with less while attending to additional problems once handled by some other outfit whose budget is also in tatters.

    Chief Stephens said people losing cash benefits are falling behind on their electric bills and losing service, resorting to candles for light — a major fire risk.

    The city has cut mental health services, so fewer staff members are visiting people prone to hoarding newspapers, for instance, leaving veritable bonfires piling up behind doors, unseen.

    “There are knock-on effects all the way through the system,” says Chief Stephens, who recently announced plans to resign and move to Australia.

    The National Health Service has supposedly been spared from budget cuts. But spending has been frozen in many areas, resulting in cuts per patient. At public hospitals, people have grown resigned to waiting for hours for emergency care, and weeks for referrals to specialists.

    “I think the government wants to run it down so the whole thing crumbles and they don’t have to worry about it anymore,” says Kenneth Buckle, a retired postal worker who has been waiting three months for a referral for a double knee replacement. “Everything takes forever now.”

    At Fulwood Green Medical Center in Liverpool, Dr. Simon Bowers, a general practitioner, points to austerity as an aggravating factor in the flow of stress-related maladies he encounters — high blood pressure, heart problems, sleeplessness, anxiety.

    He argues that the cuts, and the deterioration of the National Health Service, represent a renouncement of Britain’s historical debts. He rattles off the lowlights — the slave trave, colonial barbarity.

    “We as a country said, ‘We have been cruel. Let’s be nice now and look after everyone,’” Dr. Bowers says. “The N.H.S. has everyone’s back. It doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are. It’s written into the psyche of this country.”

    “Austerity isn’t a necessity,” he continued. “It’s a political choice, to move Britain in a different way. I can’t see a rationale beyond further enriching the rich while making the lives of the poor more miserable.”

    Wealthy Britons remain among the world’s most comfortable people, enjoying lavish homes, private medical care, top-notch schools and restaurants run by chefs from Paris and Tokyo. The poor, the elderly, the disabled and the jobless are increasingly prone to Kafka-esque tangles with the bureaucracy to keep public support.

    For Emma Wilde, a 31-year-old single mother, the misadventure began with an inscrutable piece of correspondence.

    Raised in the Liverpool neighborhood of Croxteth, Ms. Wilde has depended on welfare benefits to support herself and her two children. Her father, a retired window washer, is disabled. She has been taking care of him full time, relying on a so-called caregiver’s allowance, which amounts to about $85 a week, and income support reaching about $145 a month.

    The letter put this money in jeopardy.

    Sent by a private firm contracted to manage part of the government’s welfare programs, it informed Ms. Wilde that she was being investigated for fraud, accused of living with a partner — a development she is obliged to have reported.

    Ms. Wilde lives only with her children, she insists. But while the investigation proceeds, her benefits are suspended.

    Eight weeks after the money ceased, Ms. Wilde’s electricity was shut off for nonpayment. During the late winter, she and her children went to bed before 7 p.m. to save on heat. She has swallowed her pride and visited a food bank at a local church, bringing home bread and hamburger patties.

    “I felt a bit ashamed, like I had done something wrong, ” Ms. Wilde says. “But then you’ve got to feed the kids.”

    She has been corresponding with the Department for Work and Pensions, mailing bank statements to try to prove her limited income and to restore her funds.

    The experience has given her a perverse sense of community. At the local center where she brings her children for free meals, she has met people who lost their unemployment benefits after their bus was late and they missed an appointment with a caseworker. She and her friends exchange tips on where to secure hand-me-down clothes.

    “Everyone is in the same situation now,” Ms. Wilde says. “You just don’t have enough to live on.”

    From its inception, austerity carried a whiff of moral righteousness, as if those who delivered it were sober-minded grown-ups. Belt tightening was sold as a shared undertaking, an unpleasant yet unavoidable reckoning with dangerous budget deficits.

    “The truth is that the country was living beyond its means,” the then-chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, declared in outlining his budget to Parliament in 2010. “Today, we have paid the debts of a failed past, and laid the foundations for a more prosperous future.”

    “Prosperity for all,” he added.

    Eight years later, housing subsidies have been restricted, along with tax credits for poor families. The government has frozen unemployment and disability benefits even as costs of food and other necessities have climbed. Over the last five years, the government has begun transitioning to so-called Universal Credit, giving those who receive benefits lump sum payments in place of funds from individual programs. Many have lost support for weeks or months while their cases have shifted to the new system.

    All of which is unfortunate yet inescapable, assert Conservative lawmakers. The government was borrowing roughly one-fourth of what it was spending. To put off cuts was to risk turning Britain into the next Greece.

    “The hard left has never been very clear about what their alternative to the program was,” says Neil O’Brien, a Conservative lawmaker who was previously a Treasury adviser to Mr. Osborne. “Presumably, it would be some enormous increase in taxation, but they are a bit shy about what that would mean.”

    He rejects the notion that austerity is a means of class warfare, noting that wealthy people have been hit with higher taxes on investment and expanded fees when buying luxury properties.

    Britain spends roughly the same portion of its national income on public spending today as it did a decade ago, said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

    But those dependent on state support express a sense that the system has been rigged to discard them.

    Glendys Perry, 61, was born with cerebral palsy, making it difficult for her to walk. For three decades, she answered the phones at an auto parts company. After she lost that job in 2010, she lived on a disability check.

    Last summer, a letter came, summoning her to “an assessment.” The first question dispatched any notion that this was a sincere exploration.

    “How long have you had cerebral palsy?” (From birth.) “Will it get better?” (No.)

    In fact, her bones were weakening, and she fell often. Her hands were not quick enough to catch her body, resulting in bruises to her face.

    The man handling the assessment seemed uninterested.

    “Can you walk from here to there?” he asked her.

    He dropped a pen on the floor and commanded her to pick it up — a test of her dexterity.

    “How did you come here?” he asked her.

    “By bus,” she replied.

    Can you make a cup of tea? Can you get dressed?

    “I thought, ‘I’m physically disabled,’” she says. “‘Not mentally.’”

    When the letter came informing her that she was no longer entitled to her disability payment — that she had been deemed fit for work — she was not surprised.

    “They want you to be off of benefits,” she says. “I think they were just ticking boxes.”

    The political architecture of Britain insulates those imposing austerity from the wrath of those on the receiving end. London makes the aggregate cuts, while leaving to local politicians the messy work of allocating the pain.

    Spend a morning with the aggrieved residents of Prescot and one hears scant mention of London, or even austerity. People train their fury on the Knowsley Council, and especially on the man who was until recently its leader, Andy Moorhead. They accuse him of hastily concocting plans to sell Browns Field without community consultation.

    Mr. Moorhead, 62, seems an unlikely figure for the role of austerity villain. A career member of the Labour Party, he has the everyday bearing of a genial denizen of the corner pub.

    “I didn’t become a politician to take things off of people,” he says. “But you’ve got the reality to deal with.”

    The reality is that London is phasing out grants to local governments, forcing councils to live on housing and business taxes.

    “Austerity is here to stay,” says Jonathan Davies, director of the Center for Urban Research on Austerity at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. “What we might now see over the next two years is a wave of bankruptcies, like Detroit.”

    Indeed, the council of Northamptonshire, in the center of England, recently became the first local government in nearly two decades to meet that fate.

    Knowsley expects to spend $192 million in the next budget year, Mr. Moorhead says, with 60 percent of that absorbed by care for the elderly and services for children with health and developmental needs. An additional 18 percent will be spent on services the council must provide by law, such as garbage collection and highway maintenance.

    To Mr. Moorhead, the equation ends with the imperative to sell valuable land, yielding an endowment to protect remaining parks and services.

    “We’ve got to pursue development,” Mr. Moorhead says. “Locally, I’m the bad guy.”

    The real malefactors are the same as ever, he says.

    He points at a picture of Mrs. Thatcher on the wall behind him. He vents about London bankers, who left his people to clean up their mess.

    “No one should be doing this,” he says. “Not in the fifth-wealthiest country in the whole world. Sacking people, making people redundant, reducing our services for the vulnerable in our society. It’s the worst job in the world.”

    Now, it is someone else’s job. In early May, the local Labour Party ousted Mr. Moorhead as council leader amid mounting anger over the planned sale of parks.

  • Brexit: “One United Kingdom” Except for Northern Ireland – Random Public Journal
    https://randompublicjournal.com/2017/12/04/brexit-one-united-kingdom-except-for-northern-ireland

    The exception that the north of Ireland is about to be given shows that the UK has now begun the process of disintegration. Now is the time for Scotland to get cracking with another referendum.

    “Because we voted in the referendum as one United Kingdom,” said Theresa May to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, “we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, and we will leave the European Union as one United Kingdom. There is no opt-out from Brexit.” Shortly after her disastrous general election in June Mrs May dipped deep into the public coffers to buy support from Northern Ireland’s extremist Democratic Unionist Party, presumably to deliver her “one United Kingdom” Brexit. Two months on from that conference and she has sold the DUP down the river and offered the first exception to her rule.

    At long last the unionists in the north of Ireland have experienced first-hand what the rest of Ireland has known for well over a century; if England doesn’t buy you, it will sell you. Theresa May’s present inconsistency is entirely consistent with how London operates. The British government is the political head of the English state and it will always act in its own interests regardless of the thoughts and requirements of any other nation of the “United Kingdom.”

    • Revealed: Theresa May knew of Priti Patel secret meeting but she was told to hide it | The London Economic
      https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/world-news/revealed-theresa-may-knew-priti-patel-secret-meeting-told-hide/08/11

      The Jewish Chronicle just revealed that Number 10 WAS aware of Priti Patel’s extra meeting with an Israeli minister – but she was told to keep them quiet.

      As Priti Patel aborts an official visit to Uganda to return to the UK in a growing crisis over secret meetings with Israeli ministers and plans to divert foreign aid to Israeli Defence Force administered projects, this latest revelation raises serious questions about Theresa May’s actions.

    • Priti Patel, ministre embarrassante pour Teresa May | Euronews
      http://fr.euronews.com/2017/11/08/priti-patel-ministre-embarrassante-pour-teresa-may

      Les ennuis continuent pour Teresa May qui pourrait perdre un nouveau membre de son gouvernement. Priti Pattel, la secrétaire d’Etat britannique au Développement international pourrait démissionner. En cause : des rencontres secrètes avec des dirigeants israéliens. Objectif recherché selon elle : financer l’assistance humanitaire apportée à des blessés syriens dans le Golan. Dans son mea culpa, elle aurait omis de dire que cette aide impliquerait de financer l’armée israélienne, dont Londres ne reconnaît pas l’occupation partielle par Israël. Si la Première ministre l’a simplement réprimandée, la presse britannique, elle réclame sa tête.

      #Royaume_uni

    • What the Priti Patel scandal tells us about the dark operations of UK’s powerful Israel lobby
      http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2017-11-12/priti-patel-uk-israel-lobby
      www.jonathan-cook.net/images/default/jc_fb.jpg

      Another window on Israel’s meddling opened briefly last week. The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, took to Twitter to relay a damning comment from an unnamed “senior” member of Ms Patel’s party. In a clear reference to Israel, the source observed: “The entire apparatus has turned a blind eye to a corrupt relationship that allows a country to buy access”.

      A short time later, presumably under pressure, Ms Kuenssberg deleted the tweet. The BBC has not reported the comment elsewhere and the senior Conservative has not dared go public. Such, it seems, is the intimidating and corrupting influence of the lobby.

      [...]

      Rarely identified or held to account, the lobby has entrenched its power.

      That is under threat, however. Social media and Palestinians with camera phones have exposed a global audience to systematic abuses by the Israeli army the western media largely ignored. For the first time, Israel supporters sound evasive and dissembling.

      Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strident efforts in the US Congress through 2014 and 2015 to prevent a nuclear accord with Iran dragged the lobby even farther out of the shadows.

      The Israel lobby’s dirty tricks in the UK were exposed earlier this year too. An Al Jazeera TV documentary showed Conservative party officials colluding with the Israeli embassy to “take down” Alan Duncan, a foreign office minister who supports the Palestinian cause.

      It is noteworthy that Ms Patel’s downfall came about because of social media. Israeli officials like police minister Gilad Erdan were so unused to scrutiny or accountability themselves that they happily tweeted photos with Ms Patel. Mr Erdan is a key player in the lobby, running a “smear unit” to target overseas critics of Israel.

      [...]

      There is growing hysteria about foreign interference in US and European politics. Is it not time for western states to show as much concern about the malign influence of Israel’s lobbyists as they do about Russian hackers?

  • Sex without consent is not sex | Zoe Williams | Opinion | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/06/sex-consent-desire-sexual-harassment-equality-women

    “When you become an MP, you don’t stop being a member of the human race,” wrote Andrew Bridgen in the Sunday Times. The Conservative MP reported his colleague Dan Poulter to the whips’ office – over sexual harassment concerns – seven years ago, only to encounter first hand their now infamous disinclination to do anything about such allegations, beyond putting them on a spreadsheet.
    Conservative party investigates MP Dan Poulter over harassment allegations
    Read more

    Brigden’s conscience is as clear as anybody’s: it takes guts to be the MP who thinks, when three separate women refuse to use the same lift as a colleague, that might signal some problem beyond a lapse in professionalism. Yet I expected his sentence to continue: “… just because you’ve been elected to parliament, you don’t suddenly become Benny Hill, the only protection for passing female bodies from your hands being how fast they can run in their silly shoes; you don’t get a pass to look at porn while you’re at work; or end a lunch trying to get off with someone. It may be a very special job, but it’s still a job, it’s not a cape of impunity.”

    #sexe #sexualité #consentement #sexisme

  • 2012: Tory Prime Minister David Cameron declares war on “Safety Culture” / Boing Boing
    http://boingboing.net/2017/06/17/tort-reform-astroturf.html

    The Conservative Party — and free market ideologues — have waged a long war on “safety culture,” insisting it was a nonsensical, incoherent regulation that acted as a drag on every business except no-win/no-fee lawyers, who exploited these rules to victimise poor corporations with punishing lawsuits.

    The reality is that the alleged health-and-safety-gone-mad overreach was almost always an urban legend, a rule that didn’t exist and never existed (though it might be cited by a puny martinet of a middle-manager as a way to force their underlings to do their bidding). In their brilliant, beautifully written and beautifully researched 2014 book, In the Interests of Safety, Tracey Brown and Michael Hanlon from Sense about Science showed how tabloids, petty bosses and bureaucrats, and credulous members of the public invented the excesses of “Safety Culture” — while actual health and safety pros soberly and cautiously put forward the rules that stopped us all from dying of food poisoning, defective cars, or in terrible blazes in firetrap buildings.

    London fire: just last year, Tory landlord-MPs rejected Labour’s tenant safety law / Boing Boing
    https://boingboing.net/2017/06/14/voting-their-interests.html

    The death-toll on London’s Grenfell Tower fire continues to mount, it’s worth remembering that there are no “natural disasters,” only human disasters, created by people who weigh different interests in the balance and create policies based on the way the scales come up.

    So it was that a year ago, a group of Tory MPs largely composed of commercial landlords voted down Labour’s amendment to the Housing and Planning Bill that would have required landlords to make their properties safe and “fit for human habitation.”

    • Struggling UK universities warn staff of possible job cuts

      Deteriorating balance sheets and political uncertainty blamed for redundancy threats.

      Universities are warning staff to prepare for redundancies in the new year as a result of deteriorating balance sheets and lowered forecasts for student recruitment, coupled with the uncertainty of Brexit and sudden shifts in government policy.

      In recent days more than half a dozen universities have told staff there could be job cuts in 2019, including members of the research-intensive Russell Group such as Cardiff University, while others are privately bracing for cuts later in the year.

      Universities are in the midst of reporting their financial results for 2017-18 and are monitoring student applications coming in for next year. Several have been alarmed by the projections they are seeing before a 15 January deadline for undergraduates.

      Insiders say universities are more likely to cut staff because of a number of other threats in the next 12 months, including the potential effect on international students of a no-deal Brexit, as well as cuts to tuition fees in England as a result of a review of funding ordered by Theresa May that will report early next year.

      “Knee-jerk cuts to staff will harm universities’ ability to deliver high-quality teaching and research and provide the support students need. Staff are already overstretched and asking those who remain to do even more is not a sustainable strategy,” said Matt Waddup, head of policy for the University and College Union (UCU).

      “Students repeatedly say they want greater investment in their staff as a top priority, yet the proportion of expenditure spent on staff has fallen. Cutting staff will send out entirely the wrong signal to potential students. Axing educators is obscene at any time, let alone during the current uncertainty when we need our universities firing on all cylinders.”
      Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
      Read more

      Among the group of universities that have gone public, the University of Reading told staff in an email on Monday evening that a voluntary redundancy scheme was being drawn up and would open in January.

      “I want to emphasise that voluntary redundancies are only one tool available to us,” wrote Prof Robert Van de Noort, the acting vice-chancellor, suggesting that staff should consider early retirement, reduced hours or changes to contracts to help to avoid compulsory redundancies.

      Reading’s accounts, published a few days ago, reveal that the university made a £20m loss for the financial year, including a £27m loss on its subsidiary in Malaysia. Reading’s balance sheet was brought into the black only by £36m of pension “remeasurements”.

      Van de Noort told staff: “There is no doubt that the year ahead will be difficult at times, but I am confident that as a university community we can address these difficulties and remain a leader in teaching and research in the UK and globally.”

      Despite Reading’s deficit, the previous vice-chancellor, Sir David Bell, saw his total pay rise by £10,000 to £329,000. Bell announced his departure this year and is now vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland.

      At Cardiff, the vice-chancellor, Colin Riordan, has also written to staff telling them they will be offered voluntary redundancy from January. The university has said compulsory staff cuts “cannot be ruled out”.

      In a joint statement the Cardiff University branches of the Unite, Unison and UCU unions said: “We are astonished that Cardiff University staff are facing their third voluntary severance scheme in six years, and we are very worried that the vice-chancellor still refuses to rule out further compulsory redundancies.”

      At the University of Gloucestershire, based in Cheltenham, unions say they have been advised of more than 100 job cuts and other redundancies as a result of what the university called a “rebalancing” in challenging conditions.

      “There is a demographic fall in the number of 18-year-olds in the population, which is affecting demand for higher education, the level of tuition fees universities are permitted to charge home undergraduate students is capped by the government, and there is increasing competition for recruitment,” the university said.

      “At the same time, we are facing large increases in some of our costs, particularly external increases in what we are required to spend on staff pensions. The combined effect of these factors is that, in common with many other universities, our costs are rising faster than our income. That is not a situation we can allow to continue.”

      In Scotland, union members at Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh begin voting on Wednesday on strike action over the possibility of 40 job cuts – about 10% of its staff – although the university says it hopes to meet the number through voluntary redundancies.

      Other universities considering redundancies include Birkbeck, University of London and Bangor University in Wales.

      The university financial reporting season also reveals that some universities continue to thrive. The University of Oxford said its income topped £1.5bn for the first time in 2017-18, with an overall surplus of £150m.

      Oxford’s investments grew by £286m, which was £68m more than the previous year, while the Oxford University Press contributed a further £205m.

      The financial statements suggest the public controversy over vice-chancellors’ high rates of pay has had some effect, with many leading universities showing little or no growth in pay for their leaders.

      At the University of Manchester, where revenue topped £1bn for the first time, the total earnings of the vice-chancellor, Nancy Rothwell, fell from £306,000 to £276,000 owing to lower pension contributions.

      https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/11/struggling-uk-universities-warn-staff-of-possible-job-cuts

    • Bitter sweet citizenship: how European families in the UK cope with Brexit

      About 80,000 EU nationals have applied for British citizenship since the UK voted to leave the European Union. The decision has rarely been easy. On the contrary, it has often been perceived as “forced” or as an attempt to “take back control” of life amid the Brexit uncertainty, a new research has revealed.

      The contrasting feelings were highlighted in a study by “EU families and Eurochildren in Brexiting Britain”, a project by the University of Birmingham in cooperation with civil rights group the3million, Migrant Voice, and immigration barrister Colin Yeo.

      Researchers interviewed 103 families in the UK in which at least one of the partners is a non-British EU national. They wanted to understand how Brexit is impacting the decisions they make about their legal status.

      The study shows that while many are applying for naturalization, many more are still uncertain and “considering their options.” Better off and educated EU nationals from Western European countries are the most resistant to the idea of becoming British citizens as a solution to Brexit. This is especially true for Germans, “who feel like they somehow betray the European ideal in doing so,” says the report.

      Others, particularly from Eastern Europe, take a more pragmatic approach. Those who apply often do it to protect their children. But instead of being seen as “the culmination of a path to integration”, naturalisation often generates “feelings of un-belonging and of disintegration”.

      Lead author Nando Sigona, deputy director of the Institute of Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham, discusses the research findings with Europe Street News.

      Why a research on families rather than individuals?

      We focused on families in which at least one of the partners is a non-British EU national because Brexit has legal implications for their rights and social implications for their choices. We wanted to explore the dilemmas these families face. For example, in a mix family ‘going back home’ is a complex issue: if you are a Polish-German couple who has met in the UK and speak English as main language, where is home? Probably in the UK.

      We also thought about their children, the next generation. Even pro-migration groups have been very utilitarian in their approach to European migrants. They say they are needed because they work hard, they are young and they contribute to the economy. I personally hate this narrative because I do not like to have a price tag on my head. And for children the situation is even more complicated: they are not productive, they use schools and services, and yet they are in the UK as legitimate residents. According to Migration Observatory, there are more than 900,000 children of EU parents (Ireland excluded) in the UK. How will British society look like in 20 or 30 years, when these children will be adult? What will be the impact of the way they have been treated? These are the questions we wanted to examine.

      Is this why the project refers to ‘Eurochildren’?

      Yes, but let’s not forget that in these families there are British nationals too. We could have called the project “British families with European heritage” and probably we would have got more attention from politicians who have a responsibility towards their citizens, those they do not treat as “others”.

      We usually refer to the 3.8 million EU nationals in the UK, according to the latest Eurostat data. But, as you say, many of them have British partners and children. How many people are really impacted by Brexit?

      It is almost impossible to know because of the way official data are collected. In case of dual nationality, the Office for National Statistics prioritises the British one so people disappear from the statistics on EU nationals. Our research also looked at the census data of the past 40 years, with children of earlier migrants now registered as British. The legacy of EU’s free movement in the UK is much larger that what people think.

      This means that no one knows how many people might or might not be protected by the withdrawal agreement – if there is one – or by the “settled status” scheme.

      The situation is so complicated. Within the same family different members may have different rights. The problem with European families is also that, when they moved to the UK, this was not part of the deal. Their legal status was not something they had to worry about. The government is now ignoring or underestimating this situation by imposing a retroactive bureaucratic monstrosity like the “settled status”. The risk is that many will be left out. The only solution would be to turn the process into a registration rather than an application, and to leave it open. Some people will be inevitably left out, but at least they won’t become unlawful.

      Based on your interviews, what has changed for these families since the Brexit vote?

      Most people feel unsettled because they failed to see Brexit coming. They did not think a majority would vote against the EU and they were not prepared for it. Secondly, they feel forced to consider their options and to make important decisions such as applying for British citizenship or leaving. The configuration of the family, for example whether or not the partners are from the same EU country, can make a difference for their opportunities. There is also a sense of being forced to define themselves. Previously mix families could reconcile their identities under a European umbrella, but Brexit is changing that. However, it is important to acknowledge that people have different feelings about the situation and to not monopolise their voices.

      Are the responses you received uniform across the UK?

      There are places where people feel more secure. London feels safer, respondents said, as a majority voted to stay in the EU, the environment does not feel hostile and there are long standing EU communities. In Scotland, the positive narrative coming from the government helped too. In contrast, people in areas with a strong leave vote felt very isolated. Outside big cities, where immigration is a fairly new phenomenon, Polish and Eastern Europeans in particular did not have established communities and social networks to support them in this hostile transition.

      Many of the people we interviewed were reflecting on neighbours and family members who voted for Brexit. It felt very personal. We heard of families avoiding Christmas meals and, in the most tragic situations, splitting up because the additional tension brought by Brexit pushed them beyond the tipping point. We have also seen tensions between parents and children, for example children asking parents not to speak their mother tongue in public or parents not speaking with their children in the native language because they do not feel safe. The Home Office and migration policies do not consider the reverberations within families of big geopolitical shifts.

      What is the approach of these families to naturalisation?

      Part of our respondents showed a lot of resistance to naturalisation. Especially those with higher social stardards do not want to be forced into it. Some who never felt the urge to become British eventually applied. Among the people who did so, there were often feelings of anger and frustration but this was seen as a strategy to secure the future of children, a sort of parental duty.

      A number of people said they have lost trust in the British government, they are sceptical about the settled status and they think naturalization is the safest option. Others want to retain the right to move freely in and out of the country: becoming British for them does not necessarily mean wanting to stay but keeping all options open for themselves and their children. A minority also said they want to be able to vote. But there are large groups who are not applying. Some cannot because their countries do not allow dual citizenship. The cost attached to the process is also a factor. There are strict eligibility criteria and the test is not easy. Citizenship is not a right: it is something you have to earn, pay for and deserve.

      What do you think of Michael Gove’s proposal to grant citizenship for free to EU nationals, if he becomes the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister?

      Great, but I’d feel uncomfortable if this applies only to Europeans. Fees are unfair for everyone and the government makes a large profit from them. Fees should be cut and the process simplified in general, especially for children. It would guarantee their future status and it would be good for the country.

      Are there groups of EU nationals applying more than others?

      Central and Eastern Europeans started to apply for British citizenship early, before the EU referendum. They were already victim of the hostile environment and they felt negatively targeted by populist media, so they tried to secure their rights earlier on. Free movement is also fairly recent for them [the country joined the EU in 2004].

      For French, Spanish, Italian and German nationals there has been a 250-300% increase in applications since the referendum, but this is mostly because few were applying before June 2016. Before the Brexit vote they felt their position in Britain was fully secured.

      Who is not applying?

      There are people who cannot apply because they do not have regular jobs, they are from minorities, for example the Roma, they struggle with the procedure or cannot afford it. We heard of parents who had to prioritize which one of their children could apply for naturalisation, as they could not afford to pay for all. There were people at the margins before Brexit and they will be even more so when they will lose the protections of EU law.

      How do children feel about these changes?

      It depends on the age. Children up to 3 years old are usually shielded by their parents. The 5-6 years old are aware that something is going on and ask questions. Teenagers are aware and sometimes join the conversation, for example participating in demonstrations. Maybe they are more conflicted about family decisions. But kids are the ones normalising the situation trying to be like others.

      Is the European identity of these families at risk?

      Not necessarily. For the first time in Britain we see large numbers of European flags. In a sense, the European identity has become a topic of conversation. For many British citizens and policy makers the EU has only just been an economic project, but now it is a political one and this can further develop. The European heritage is not going to disappear. If anything, some of the people we interviewed started teaching their language to the kids or sending them to language schools. What is clear is that the EU is a topic we will have to confront for years to come. The issue of belonging will have repercussions that can go in many directions, depending on how things will settle. One of the challenges of this research is precisely that it is happening while event are unfolding.

      https://europestreet.news/bitter-sweet-citizenship-how-european-families-in-the-uk-cope-with-br

  • Muslim baroness decries ’loophole’ that allows UK Jews to join IDF | The Times of Israel
    By Jenni Frazer March 30, 2017
    http://www.timesofisrael.com/muslim-baroness-decries-loophole-that-allows-uk-jews-to-join-idf

    LONDON — A once-prominent British politician has come under fire by Jewish and Conservative leaders for likening British citizens in the Israel Defense Forces to Muslims who join paramilitary and terrorist groups.

    Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who resigned from the government in 2014 after calling its policy towards Israel “morally indefensible,” made the new inflammatory statement in a March 29 interview with Middle East Eye (MEE) ahead of the launch of her new book, “The Enemy Within.”

    Before she stepped down, Warsi was chairman of the Conservative Party and Foreign Office minister, which made her the highest-achieving Muslim politician in the country.

    In the interview this week with MEE, Warsi complained of a “loophole designed to protect Israel” and said that “the only reason we allow the loophole to exist is because of the IDF, because we are not brave enough to say if you hold British citizenship, you make a choice. You fight for our state only.”

    In the interview with MEE, Warsi said that she asked the Foreign Office about distinctions between state and non-state militaries. Those who joined paramilitary groups, Warsi claimed, were prosecuted upon their return to Britain. She felt the same laws should apply to those who fought for state armies such as Israel’s.

    “If you go out there and fight for any group, you will be subject to prosecution when you get back. If you go out and fight for Assad, I presume, under our law, that is okay. That can’t be right,” said Warsi.

    Public debate, she believed, focused “exclusively on demanding loyalty from British Muslims.”

    “The same rule should apply to all,” she said. “Let’s shut down this loophole. If you don’t fight for Britain, you do not fight.”(...)

    ““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
    UK citizens who fight in Israeli army should be prosecuted, Baroness Warsi says

    Britons can currently join the IDF through the ’Mahal’ program

    Shehab Khan | 9 hours ago
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-citizens-fight-israeli-army-idf-mahal-prosecuted-baroness-sayeeda-

  • Tony Blair heads new pro-European Union movement - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/26/blai-n26.html

    Hélas, #Tony_Blair bouge encore.

    Tony Blair heads new pro-European Union movement
    By Chris Marsden
    26 November 2016

    The outlines of a post-Brexit referendum political realignment in Britain are becoming clearer, centred on efforts to forge a cross-party alliance of pro-European Union (EU) forces.

    The efforts of its leading proponents to advance themselves as a “progressive” alternative to the pro-Brexit forces, dominated by the right wing of the Conservative Party, are exposed to devastating effect by the leading role being played by former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

    Last weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Blair was “positioning himself to play a pivotal role in shaping Britain’s Brexit deal” and had described Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as “a nutter” and Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May as “a lightweight.” On Monday, Blair confirmed that he was forming a new organisation dedicated to opposing “resurgent populism” and returning politics to the “centre-ground.”

  • Sarkozy loses conservative #primaries won by Fillon, ending bid for re-election
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/201116/sarkozy-loses-conservative-primaries-won-fillon-ending-bid-re-election

    Nicolas Sarkozy now faces the political wilderness. © Reuters Nicolas Sarkozy was ejected into the political wilderness on Sunday after he was eliminated from his conservative party’s first-round primary elections to decide its candidate for the 2017 presidential elections in #France. His former prime minister François Fillon emerged the clear leader of the first-round vote on Sunday, trailed in second place by veteran Gaullist conservative and one-time prime minister Alain Juppé. Both Fillon and Juppé will now move on to the knock-out second round of voting next weekend. Former French president Sarkozy, whose 2007-2012 term of office ended with his election defeat to the socialist François Hollande, is now tipped to leave active politics, as he faces the conclusions of a series of (...)

    #2017_French_presidential_elections #Les_Républicains

  • “Can All The Migrants From The Countries We Invaded Go Away Now Please” – Waterford Whispers News
    http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2016/10/06/can-all-the-migrants-from-the-countries-we-invaded-go-away-no

    RITISH Prime Minister Theresa May has kindly asked for all the foreign migrants currently living in the United Kingdom to kindly ‘pick up their shit and leave’ at their earliest convenience.

    In what has been hailed as her toughest address yet, the Conservative party leader listed out a torrent of Eurorail and airport departure timetables, in a bid to help those who ‘may not have left yet’.

    “There’s a couple of planes headed to India at 6pm,” she pointed out, sifting through pages of printed out timetables, “The Euro tunnel would probably be your best bet though as it’s cheaper. Plus, you’ll be on mainland Europe within the hour and can easily just grab another train to wherever the hell it is you’re going. Please leave the keys of your homes under the matt or wheelie bin, I’m sure we’ll find them”.

    This latest request comes just days after Mrs. May proposed UK companies to compile a ‘name-and-shame’ list of all their foreign employees, in the hope that it will force their hand into hiring British passport holders.

    Closing her speech, the 60-year-old then turned to the country’s 6 million Irish workers, confirming that they too will have to look elsewhere for work, despite having similar skintone and hair colour.

  • Lien trouvé à travers un groupe (sur un réseau social, celui que l’on ne doit pas nommer) “European group for study social of deviance and social control”.

    "Below is a link to the recent speech by UK Justice Secretary Liz Truss at the Conservative Party Conference, 4th October 2016. Quite frankly it is appalling. Its the same old, same old “making prisons work” rhetoric that has been with UK politicians (in recent times) since 1997 and an idea with a 200 year record of abject failure. For Truss, the priorities are on identifying prison officers as victims of prisoner violence and the importance of protecting prison officer safety (but no mention of prison officer violence or prisoner safety, or the truly terrible reality that in the last year we have the highest rate of self inflicted deaths ever recorded in England and Wales); more prison officers who are from the armed forces (an idea from the ’hard labour’ Victorian times that failed then and no mention of the lareg number of ex-servicemen prisoners) about ’the human costs of prisons’ purely in terms of victims of crime (prisoners should be made better people in prison in the interests of law abiding others); that prisons are places of potential reform if managed correctly (and yet no mention of the vast evidence from 200 and more years that ’reformed prisons’ have never achieved this. "

    CCHQ Press — TRUSS: PRISONS: PLACES OF SAFETY AND REFORM
    http://press.conservatives.com/post/151334597895/truss-prisons-places-of-safety-and-reform

    Elizabeth Truss, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, speaking today at Conservative Party Conference at The ICC, Birmingham said:

    (Check against delivery)

    Fellow Conservatives,

    On August 17 a female prison governor was called to the segregation unit to deal with a situation that was getting out of hand.

    An offender, serving ten years for GBH and wounding with intent, was told he was not being moved out of segregation.

    The prisoner reacted violently - punching the woman in the face.

    It took four prison officers to restrain the attacker. They were all injured.

    The governor suffered bruising so severe she had to be taken to hospital.

    The next day she was back in work.

    That’s just one story of everyday life for our prison staff. And what people they are.

    I came into politics because I care about our public services, I want to change things and I want to reform the way our country works for the better.

    I’m proud to be appointed Justice Secretary in charge of the most far-reaching reforms of our prisons in a generation.

  • Qatar’s Christian crusaders
    http://al-bab.com/blog/2016/08/qatar-christian-crusaders

    Over the last decade Qatar has been working quietly with socially-conservative elements in the west to promote “traditional” ideas of family life. In doing so it has readily joined forces with Mormons and the more reactionary parts of the Roman Catholic church. It has also helped fund a right-wing think tank set up by a former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.

    (...)

    In 2005, Sheikha Moza established the innocuous-sounding Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development (later known as the Doha International Family Institute, or Difi for short). The man appointed to run it as executive director was Richard Wilkins, an American Mormon who had previously worked internationally in opposing liberal social policies.