Be Excellent To Each Other

BBC: Labour pledges to renationalise most rail services within five years

Taking over the contracts as they expire is a good start, especially as the privately-held ones are now just on management contracts anyway. I get why they don't want to buy back the rolling stock initially but as the system develops I think the question of ownership of new trains would become pertinent as existing stock needs replacing.

Half-expecting the Tories to spoil this by handing over the current publicly run franchises (eg LNER) to their mates for 9 million year contracts, or Starmer to drop it next week "because it's settled and we need to make trains work".

That's a fairly positive development. Something that they can point to that's a clear differentiator and that *should* have a net benefit,

Now that Rwanda is “safe”, the government have started rounding up people to deport them instead of applying this to new arrivals. Many of these are asylum seekers who are cooperating fully with the system, are a good way through the application process and have started building a life here by going to college, volunteering and so on.

It’s deliberately being as inhumane as possible

Rwanda: Civil servants mount court challenge over new law

The union for senior civil servants is launching an unprecedented legal challenge to ministers' Rwanda plan. The FDA said it was intervening because it feared the scheme to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda could force officials to break the law.

The fiasco that keeps on giving.

And by rounding people up and putting them into detention centres before all of the legal issues are sorted, they’ll be wasting even more money.

If they just hired more staff to process claims quickly, then those with a good claim can become self sufficient and stop costing us to house them.
Those without a good claim can be deported and stop costing us to house them, and the thought of being turned round quickly will be a deterrent.

It's absolutely sickening.

I know it's a stunt designed to shore up the authoritarian xenophobic base who are going to Reform anyway, but using desperate people in such a way is just wrong.

Just voted (local and police).

The poll clerk made a great play of pretending to size up my youthful driving licence photo to my more modern, rugged handsome look.

Decided to vote for the person promising to cut crime for the police commissioner elections. Still annoyed that the Tories switched this (and mayoral) elections to first-past-the-post.

Asylum homelessness rises as refugees told to leave accommodation

So, here's the next problem. Once your asylum claim has been approved you are classed as a refugee and have 28 days to vacate your Home Office supplied accommodation and find somewhere else to live, as well as applying for benefits and/or a job.

More than 5,000 refugee households were classed as homeless between October and December 2023 in England, four times as many as in the same period in 2022.

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said asking people to find a job and housing within 28 days was "unrealistic" and "means destitution and homelessness is too often inevitable".

Calling for the "moving-on period" to be at least doubled, he added: "This dramatic rise in refugee homelessness is the tragic-yet-predictable consequence of a dysfunctional system that sets newly granted refugees up to fail."

Ha. Boris Johnson was turned away from his local polling station after forgetting to bring acceptable photo ID.

Chris Heaton-Harris, former chief whip under him, said: "As someone who knows Boris well, I can't say it completely surprises me... I do know that he then simply went home, got some ID, went back to the polling station and voted Conservative."

The cynical part of me thinks that he did it on purpose just so it guaranteed news coverage

I took it as typical of his sense of entitlement, rules being for other people.

But, the less I have to see, hear, or think about him, the better.

On reflection I think Dr. Z may be right, it's just the sort of stupid stunt he'd do. I bet his only regret is that there wasn't a zip wire outside the polling station he could have dangled from for a couple of hours.