King Charles comes to town

King Charles came to town yesterday (or rather the city). My son was at school, but my daughter, being at the Sixth Form College, saw him as she waited in the centre and he passed by her. She, and her friends, waved at the snipers who were in town as well.  She wore a burger king crown and waved a flag. I found all this out when I had sent a text on the family group chat asking if she had been with the banner crowd or had been using the megaphone.

 

Many do not like the King, but I admire his views on Climate Change and also the deportation of refugees which he has has to remain silent in now he is our monarch. I do wish he had spoken out about the racist double standards his daughter-in-law had been subjected to however.

Issues about racism and refugees were in the news today thanks to a tweet by Gary Liniker. I think that a better choice of words would have made things clearer, but there is no doubt that the language used about asylum seekers is designed to incite hatred and has resulted in lots of the electorate blaming them for many issues in our nation.

In PMQs, the government reminded us how many refugees were taken in from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. But the fact remains that many crossing the channel to get to the UK, have no safe and legal route to get here. It would be easy to process applications in France rather than housing asylum seekers in hotels in the UK, and once there is a decent safe and legal route, then we can deport those crossing the channel. Instead many are now blaming this issue for the way the government have underfunded the NHS (and other public services).

Needless to say, issues of asylum and refugees were brought up in PMQs, the government who has failed to deport failed asylum seekers has been stating that it is Labour that are in favour of open borders. One thing that many Labour supporters will not like, will be the way that when this is sorted out when Labour come to power, deportations will take place.

Smokers are patriots

Smokers are patriots.  They are risking their lives to keep the tax bills of non-smokers down.

There is help for people to stop smoking, but for people to access that, they must want to stop smoking.  And let us face it, it is an addiction and many smokers do not see themselves as having a problem. 

Being a refugee is not a crime

I have heard plans that our government intends to crack down on those crossing the channel in boats.

Let me remind people that I am also in favour of this and deporting those crossing the channel to Rwanda. But only once we have an asylum system that works and that involves decent safe and legal routes to come here to claim asylum

The sad fact is that, as seen in the video, we do not have safe and legal routes for them to come.  

I suspect that the government is allowing a backlog of asylum applications to build up so that it can claim that the system is being swamped and that the action that is needed is to ignore claims and deport asylum seekers.  Yes, they are to process certain applicants quickly, and so long as this is done in a fair manner, that is a good idea. 

But let us look at how thousands of Afghans who helped British forces remain stranded by by inaction by our government and many journalists who face persecution are also being left as well. Last month, only 22 Afghans had been resettled in UK under a ‘pathway’ to help vulnerable refugees and many who have fled to Pakistan face injustice there. 

I am proud of how we welcomed Ukrainian refugees to our nation, many of whom were in safe nations outside Ukraine.  I am ashamed how we are not doing this for others. 

Edit - another video has been published showing that there is no safe and legal route for many asylum seekers to get to our nation.  

Young and Beautiful

We had our son’s birthday weekend this weekend. We could not do it next weekend as I will be working then. So yesterday was a day walking and shopping and enjoying decent food. We started with a posh breakfast, went shopping, did more shopping, ate market food, did more shopping and after a period of rest, had an amazing Spanish meal. This morning we had another posh but spicy breakfast and are now at home getting ready for the week to come. For me, this is ironing, for the kids it is homework, though my son has claimed that he is to tidy his room, something that has been happening for the last week or so.

On to Arsenal. Yesterday we saw loads of despondent Arsenal fans so I feared the worst. The family made sure I knew the score before we went for dinner as otherwise, I may have been in a sad mood. Watching the highlights on Match Of The Day, I think that we were lucky not to have been three goals down. It was great to win, but we need to defend better. What I am surprised by is that we have the joint second best defence in the league, along with Chelski and The Team That Rhymes With City. We are still top of the league, but with our defence the way it is, can that last?

Sue Gray and bias in the Partygate report

The right have complained that the Sue Gray report into the parties that Boris Johnson had is biased.  Personally, I think that she was too kind to him.  This has come about as she is to leave the civil service to take up a job with Labour.  

There was a great interview on Radio Four on the Today programme.  Basically, she made no allegations and had not attended any of the parties.  There also is an interim parliamentary report which appears to be worse for Boris Johnson, stating that there is evidence that he knowingly misled MP's over PartyGate. Which means that there is no reason to run the investigation again, even though Boris Johnson has pleaded innocence.  

Boris Johnson lied about the parties he attended.  And from what I can gather, only one person, a woman who had not attended a party, has lost their job over this.  

That absent ring of protection around nursing homes

Matt Hancock has had his private WhatsApp messages released despite an NDA agreement by Isabel Oakeshott, the partner of Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK, a party which has campaigned against the lockdown's that saved so many lives.

I learned this thanks to Twitter and while I do think that a person should not be judged on who they are in a relationship with most of the time, I would have to disclose such a relationship in my Wednesday job.

After PMQ's the capacity issues that were faced were raised by the Conservatives in urgent questions.  To put it simply, there was not enough capacity to test all those entering nursing homes and the priority was to test as many as could be tested as they left hospitals.  Sadly, this was not enough as some were not tested and of those who were, results came too late to stop infections spreading.  

What was not asked was why we did not have enough testing capacity (the reason is NHS cuts before the pandemic) and why the lessons of Exercise Alice and Exercise Cygnus were ignored.  

If anyone needs a reminder of how funeral homes were overwhelmed, this is the words of a lady in the US who runs one.

PMQs and answering the question

Quick post on PMQs, I will post on the nightmare that is Matt Hancock later this week if possible.  It was good to see Rishi Sunak getting taken to task on not answering a question.  It is a shame that this has not happened on the other occasions questions have not been answered.  

While Starmer has asked searching questions, this performance today was not good for headlines and soundbites, his questions being detailed, but not short and to the point, like the answers the Sunak gives (even though inaccurate).