Britain's soft touch approach to illegal migrants is now way beyond parody
BRITAIN'S soft touch approach to illegal migrants is now way beyond parody.
In a bitter irony for taxpayers, asylum-seekers who came here on small boats are now being offered the chance to hire cut-price dinghies.
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Rotherham Council's barmy idea of fairness means its leisure card scheme for watersports, badminton, swimming and gym sessions is cheaper for migrants than locals.
This, of course, is the same local authority that repeatedly failed to protect hundreds of vulnerable young girls from Pakistani grooming gangs in its pursuit of political correctness.
Meanwhile, the Home Office will today launch a major operation to boot out foreign criminals.
Deporting them immediately using agreements with 23 other countries sounds great in theory.
But only a minority of foreign offenders will qualify for the proposed deport now, appeal later scheme.
The rest will gleefully make hay with human rights laws in the courts.
Until the ECHR is reformed — or Britain quits entirely — plans like this will only have limited effect.
A woke too far
WHO would want to be a copper pounding the streets at the mercy of bizarre orders from out of touch top brass?
The Coventry cop sent by bosses to warn a man how to behave ahead of an anti-migrant hotel protest surely spoke for many fellow officers when he described his mission as 'a load of bs'.
Many voters feel the same way about police leaders' obsession with policing speech. It's a colossal waste of time and public money.
Three top hotels yards from Bournemouth beach being used as migrant accommodation sparking fury from tourists & locals
The same collective woke mind virus led to Merton Council in South London banning the term 'mum and dad'.
How do they dream this stuff up?
Voters are increasingly sick of these bizarre diktats which have nothing to do with real life.
Losing bet
WHY don't the Left realise how damaging a gambling tax would be?
It would be a disaster for hard- working voters.
It''s a tax on jobs, since it will clobber firms who employ tens of thousands of people.
And it will whack horse racing and other sports which rely on gambling for support.
Left-wing MPs claim it is necessary to help pay to end the two-child benefit cap.
It's the road to national ruin.
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Times
16 minutes ago
- Times
The worst foreign criminals must still serve jail time
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, visits HMP Bedford. She has said foreign criminals will be deported from the moment they are sentenced JOE GIDDENS/PA I t is Nigel Farage's world and Westminster is just living in it. As the summer parliamentary recess wears on, it is increasingly apparent that there is only one party setting the agenda. The Reform UK leader's weekly press conferences on crime may be lacking when it comes to policy substance, but they have captured the attention of all of his rivals. Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, the two most prominent Conservative spokespeople, have followed in Mr Farage's wake by adopting similarly tough rhetoric on the dangers that some asylum seekers are posing to societal cohesion. Yet it is the Starmer government that appears most enraptured by Mr Farage and his grip on the electorate. In its latest effort to thwart the rise of Reform, ministers have set out plans to ensure foreign criminals cannot delay deportation by appeal. Under the new initiative, which has been termed 'deport now, appeal later', convicted criminals from 23 countries will be instantly deported.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Labour can't let this Thames Water torture run on
There'd be no politics without juicy questions. So, how about this one: would it be better for Sir Keir Starmer & co to plunge Thames Water into the special administration regime (Sar) now? Or postpone that treat until just before the next election? Maybe that sounds hypothetical. But it's still the sort of puzzler that should be bubbling up in ministers' minds, despite the rescue deal being advanced by Thames's senior creditors. Yes, the A-class crew with £13 billion of the £16 billion senior debt are trying to put together a takeover that avoids all need for a Sar. And they say they are making progress over a fix for a business drowning in £17.7 billion of net debts and regulatory gearing of 84.4 per cent, rather more than the 'notional' 60 per cent favoured by Ofwat, the hapless regulator being axed after the Cunliffe review. 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Neither look ideal owners for a business that its present boss Chris Weston says 'will take at least a decade' to fix. Thames was duffed up last month by MPs on the environment committee, with its chairman, Alistair Carmichael, pointing to a lack of 'transparency' over the bid process and telling Montague: 'It is certainly not clear to me just in whose interests you are all working.' Montague defended himself, saying that KKR's bid was 'by far the strongest'; that it had demanded 'exclusivity', despite Ofwat's reservations over having one bidder; and that, since KKR pulled out, the creditors were 'making reasonable progress with their proposition'. Yet, there's plenty in this process that's odd. Despite granting KKR exclusivity, Thames also agreed to pay for all its due diligence, not typical in bids. Once it had walked out, too, Thames gave that research and a 290-page KKR report to the creditors. What happened next? Well, one of the losing bidders — CKI Infrastructure — is said to have told Montague that with KKR out of the frame it wanted back in for its own offer. It also asked to see KKR's due diligence. Montague's response? To tell CKI to talk to the creditors, with him admitting to MPs that 'we facilitated meetings'. The creditors span 100-plus institutions but a committee of 15 is leading their bid. They include the two hedge funds, plus Apollo, Pimco, Royal Bank of Canada and Assured Guaranty. CKI, which owns UK gas and electricity distribution networks as well as Northumbrian Water, is said to have met the two hedge funds, Apollo and Pimco. Their response to its plan to put in a bid? Well, apparently, to tell CKI to get lost, only in far fruitier language. The creditors deny that they dropped any F-bombs. 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The creditors would also say that, with all debt holders given a pro-rata chance to participate in new equity, no hedge fund would hold a stake as big as 10 per cent. And a new board, under chairman Mike McTighe, would ensure orderly sell-downs of equity. The creditors also hope for a deal by the end of next month. The Treasury is keen to avoid a Sar, too, given that it would add to Rachel Reeves's problems. But the regime exists for a reason. Better to take the pain now and impose a buzzcut on the squealing creditors than let them string everyone along, not least Thames's 16 million customers, with a self-serving deal. Cut the debt via a Sar and there are credible long-term owners waiting in the wings, not least CKI. The government does have a choice. It needs to tell the creditors that if there's no workable deal by October, it's pulling the plug. Better a Sar than endless water torture. Orsted becalmed Life had stopped being a breeze for Orsted long before Donald Trump took power. 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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
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James Cook Scotland editor • @BBCJamesCook BBC Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts. True to its title, the book has Scotland's former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health. So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned? Transgender controversy After more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw final months in office marred by rows about trans issues. It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of "rancour and division". Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have "hit the pause button" to try to reach consensus. "With hindsight, I wish I had," she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification. Spindrift Isla Bryson was jailed in 2023 after being convicted of rape Sturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson. It was, writes Sturgeon, a development "that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people". As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson. "When confronted with the question 'Is Isla Bryson a woman?' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she writes. "Because I failed to answer 'yes', plain and simple... I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for. "In football parlance, I lost the dressing room." Speaking to ITV News on Monday Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist "probably forfeits the right" to identify as a woman. JK Rowling JK Rowling posted a selfie of herself wearing a T-shirt describing Sturgeon as a "destroyer of women's rights" The former first minister also criticises her highest profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women's rights". "It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm," she writes. Sturgeon adds that "it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety". Rowling has been approached for comment. Her relationship with Alex Salmond Sturgeon's mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences. Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government's handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff. Sturgeon lambasts Salmond's claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required "criminal collusion" with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors. "He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy," she writes, adding: "He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all". The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond's allies. The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69. The independence referendum Nicola Sturgeon recalls a "totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism" as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014. It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to "create a brighter future for generations to come". The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting. "It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill," she writes. PA Media Sturgeon claims Alex Salmond showed little interest in the "detail" of the independence white paper A key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence. At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in "utter despair" and "overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility". "I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack," she writes. Sturgeon says Salmond "showed little interest in the detail" of the document and she was "incandescent" when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it. "He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne," she writes. Operation Branchform Sturgeon describes her "utter disbelief" and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023. "With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified." In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she "had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel". Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform "the worst day" of her life. She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement. The couple announced they were separating earlier this year. Getty Images Sturgeon described her house as looking like a murder scene Leading Scotland during the pandemic ForSturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes "a torrent of emotion". Leading Scotland through Covid was "almost indescribably" hard and "took a heavy toll, physically and mentally", writes the former first minister. She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she "came perilously close to a breakdown". "For the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink," she writes. PA Media Nicola Sturgeon appeared visibly upset when giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry Misogyny and sexism Scathing comments about the inappropriate behaviour of men are scattered throughout the book. "Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism so endemic that I didn't always recognize it as such," Sturgeon writes on the very first page. One grim story, from the first term of the Scottish Parliament which ran from 1999 to 2003, stands out. Sturgeon says a male MSP from a rival party taunted her with the nickname "gnasher" as he spread a false rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex. "On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the Parliament office complex," she writes. She said it was only years later, after #MeToo, that she realised this had been "bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place". Her personal life PA Media Parts of the memoir are deeply personal. Nicola Sturgeon says she may have appeared to be a confident and combative leader but underneath she is a "painfully shy" introvert who has "always struggled to believe in herself." She writes in detail about the "excruciating pain" and heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at the age of 40. "Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn't pregnant," she says. Sturgeon touches on the end of her marriage, saying "I love him" but the strain of the past couple of years" was "impossible to bear." She also writes about her experience of the menopause, explaining that "one of my deepest anxieties was that I would suddenly forget my words midway through an answer" at First Minister's Question Time. "My heart would race whenever I was on my feet in the Chamber which was debilitating and stressful," she says. And she addresses "wild stories" about her having a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat by saying the rumours were rooted in homophobia. "The nature of the insult was water off a duck's back," she writes. "Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters." What the future holds PA Media Sturgeon loves books and has often appeared at literary events such as Aye Write in Glasgow Nicola Sturgeon has a few regrets. These include pushing hard for a second independence referendum immediately after the UK voted — against Scotland's wishes — to leave the EUn, and branding the 2024 general election as a "de facto referendum" on independence. But now, she says, she is "excited about the next phase" of her life which she jokingly refers to as her "delayed adolescence". "I might live outside of Scotland for a period," Sturgeon writes. "Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes I can't breathe freely in Scotland," she tells the BBC's Newscast podcast. "This may shock many people to hear," she continues, "but I love London." She is also considering writing a novel. Nicola Sturgeon concludes her memoir by saying she believes Scotland will be independent within 20 years, insisting she will never stop fighting for that outcome and adding: "That, after all, is what my life has been about."
