Politics 2024/25 General Election Voting Intention (2022)

[DaGaffer]

Yeah, but it's being increasingly used to disrupt peaceful protest groups.

And in terms of actual harm - it's theft. The crime the police guidance says "don't turn up".

I guess we could embed undercover officers dressed as protestors to stop this? Maybe get a few of the protestors pregnant whilst we're at it?

It's a lot of expense to police protest groups for crime we don't care about if it wasn't for the fact it's linked to protest...

I actually have no frame of reference about how expensive this kind of thing is to police (relative to other police work); since they pretty much gave themselves away, I suspect not actually that much. And that's also part of the problem; if the police didn't pursue it and then were shown to have known but not acted, they'd be getting a kicking for that instead.

 

[Scouse]

There's nothing in the article that said they've given themselves up - no mention of how tgey've coordinated or organised - so the assumption that they're discissing criminal actions in public on social media is a big assumption here...

 

[DaGaffer]

UK to pay France another £660m to curb Channel crossings

Three-year deal includes funding for a riot squad to ‘disperse’ people trying to board small boats

www.theguardian.com

£660 million. The French must be laughing their arses off.

 

[Scouse]

UK to pay France another £660m to curb Channel crossings

Three-year deal includes funding for a riot squad to ‘disperse’ people trying to board small boats

www.theguardian.com

£660 million. The French must be laughing their arses off.

That's what occured to me.

I wonder if this is really a payment for something else?

But if they're really employing 1100 people we could pay for enough people to cover the entire south coast with binoculars, and some boats, and they could grab small boats before they land and dump 'em back on the beach in france. You'd need less than 100 people to cover the entire south coast if we had one every 10k.

You could pay for a nice hut too, to protect 'em when it rains. And they could offer tourism advice.

Six hundred and sixty million quid!!!

 

[DaGaffer]

That's what occured to me.

I wonder if this is really a payment for something else?

But if they're really employing 1100 people we could pay for enough people to cover the entire south coast with binoculars, and some boats, and they could grab small boats before they land and dump 'em back on the beach in france. You'd need less than 100 people to cover the entire south coast if we had one every 10k.

You could pay for a nice hut too, to protect 'em when it rains. And they could offer tourism advice.

Six hundred and sixty million quid!!!

I read up a bit more on it last night; the "performance" of the French is based on the number of boats they stop from leaving and arrests of traffickers, but there's no actual penalties or incentives in the payments, and of course the actual numbers of crossings don't seem to have been dented (the French might argue "it could be worse without us" I suppose). Then the costs of asylum accommodation and processing is in the billions (£3bn plus a year), so in very simplistic terms the £660M might seem like a good deal, but it's the kind of money that you could spend on a drone screen and coast guard intercepts all the way along the French coast if you really wanted to stop migrants.

 

[Scouse]

I like guys in sheds with extra tourism duties rather than noisy dystopian drones, but we're aligned

 

[Gwadien]

Doesn't this apply to all public expenditure though?

How the fuck is everything always so ridiculously expensive?

 

[DaGaffer]

Doesn't this apply to all public expenditure though?

How the fuck is everything always so ridiculously expensive?

File under "it's complicated". Putting 30,000 asylum seekers in hotels is a big part of it, but the optics of building camps (or modern day prison hulks) doesn't play well. Of course if you wanted to be radical in your thinking; process the asylum seekers really fast, but introduce some kind of workfare for their first couple of years in the country so they're paying their way immediately.

 

[Gwadien]

File under "it's complicated". Putting 30,000 asylum seekers in hotels is a big part of it, but the optics of building camps (or modern day prison hulks) doesn't play well. Of course if you wanted to be radical in your thinking; process the asylum seekers really fast, but introduce some kind of workfare for their first couple of years in the country so they're paying their way immediately.

Yeah, but even then, they're paying over the odds.

There's plenty of shit hole hotels that are struggling across the country, to suggest that they should get well over the odds because they're closing the door to non existent customers is complete bollocks.

It's like school trusts and their CEOs (yes I'm going on about this again) that get half a million a year in pay to get put over a barrel and slapped around for everything.

Like my last place - we were lucky to have a premises guy that was a tradie and knew what he was talking about and knew what he was doing - he had loads of contractors in for tender for a new building that ranged from £250k - £1m. Or that they rented out their 3g pitch to a guy who then 'worked' full time sub-letting that to football clubs etc and the school is given a pat on the back by the government because 'they're making money' rather than giving it for free/cheap for local football clubs and stuff, like we used to.

I just think 'it's complicated' is code for there's too much interest (particularly from the private sector) to keep the gravy train going so any notion of ending it is getting shut down immediately.

Meanwhile our public sector is on its knees and political parties are going to have to increase taxation, but for what purpose?

I mean even if we did build prison camps, it'd still cost us pfft a couple of billion for a few tents.

I just see it as the path to the death of the West, but so long as I'malrightjack.