NOT A GREAT DAY

On the 7^th December 2023 I posted a blog entitled Stop the Boats – A Solution which can be found at: https://fbuffnstuff.blogspot.com/2023/12/stop-boats-solution.html.

I commented jokingly:

 

 “I would have thought the best thing to stop the dinghies would be to supply safer transportation across the channel, straight to an airport, show them the Welcome to Rwanda Brochures and send them on their way with a cash bonus of £20,000 to help them get settled once they arrive. Better yet, just fly them straight from the nearest airport in France.”

 

We now have the following report from BBC News by reporter Kate Whannel, 13 March 2024:

”UK to pay failed asylum seekers to move to Rwanda under new scheme:

Failed asylum seekers are being offered up to £3000 to move to Rwanda under a new voluntary scheme. The plan, first reported by The Times, is understood to be a variation of an existing voluntary returns scheme, where failed asylum seekers receive cash to return to their home country.”

 

So where are we on the question of deterrence? The mixed signals presented by the variety of strategies to implement the Government’s Rwanda scheme are bewildering. Does anyone in the Home Office or, indeed, in the entire executive government of the United Kingdom, have any idea of what they are doing?

 

David Neal, who was serving as independent inspector of borders and immigration from March 2021 was fired from the position last month, and has yet to be replaced. His view of the department has been less than complimentary. He is quoted as saying immigration failures went to the top. The Home Office is dysfunctional and in urgent need of reform, the recently sacked independent borders inspector has told the BBC’s Today Podcast.

 

I would go further and suggest that the entire government is dysfunctional and in urgent need of reform. I do not understand what the Prime Minister is hoping will happen between now and the formal end of the current Parliament on the 17^th December 2024.  Allowing the 25 working days to prepare for the election, it must be held on the 28^th January 2025, but surely it should be held within this calendar year. To continue to drag things out as if their legislative program had any hope of long term validity is delusional in the extreme and decidedly counterproductive and injurious to the nation as a whole. This conceited, selfish self-serving clinging on to power is an embarrassment of colossal magnitude.

 

The present conservative party’s machinations over the last 13+ years have weakened and destroyed the character of the United Kingdom. They have produced a self-centred egotistical society with serious economic and cultural divisions, more prone to dishonesty and violence then ever, through their austerity measures and failure to maintain the public services essential to the well-being of a modern nation. National Health and Education have been reduced to a shambles. The damage inflicted has been so deep that any new government, no matter what their political persuasion, will have an almost impossible task of recovering and remedying the situation. I say ‘almost’ out of some vestige of hope, as I cannot be so thoroughly pessimistic.

 

The very wealthy in any country can do what they like and go where they please without any worry. There is also a comfortable middle class that, at the moment, can carry on and lead reasonable normal lives, but not without some anxiety that their security could come crashing down. The bulk of the population is struggling, although it might not appear so on the surface. That state of affairs seems to apply to most of the developed democratic nations. It is certainly the case in the United Kingdom. I may be wrong and, if so, I am willing to be corrected.

 

As to the United States I no longer have any idea. The political landscape can only be described by reference to the Grand Canyon, the divisions are so deep. The current tendency to idolise and support a psychotic demagogue, despite his overt criminality, pending convictions and overwhelming unsuitability to hold any office, is staggering. It will be an end of the great experiment of 1776 and after 248 year it will perish from the earth. What is so sad is that it will take a lot of the rest of the world’s democracies with it.

 

As you can tell I am not in a particularly happy frame of mind this morning. I will go and have a nice lunch to cheer myself up. Thankfully there is still a kitchen to escape to.