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Somebody is obviously interested in a "paradigm shift", but I wonder how many MSs have read Thomas Kuhn. Personally I would rather challenge the world view where corruption is tolerated, and the race card is accepted as a "get out of jail free" card.
For a while some of us have been expressing concern about rising welfare expenditure against the background of already high tax levels, which however, for many tax payers amount to less contributed than they receive in services and benefits. That picture is worsening according to the latest figures. Covid 19 spending, energy subsidies and the latest benefits inflation uplift have added to the pressure. It is reported that France has a similar problem.
Speaking as somebody who has saved, but is not super rich, I've struggled in recent years to find a savings vehicle that returns anything even close to the rate of inflation. It then seems pretty harsh that interest on savings in ordinary bank accounts, above what is now quite a low limit, gets taxed, meaning that the rate of decline in the real value of one's savings is accelerated. Mr Bell seems to want to take this a step further by clamping down on what is already a quite limited way of shielding some savings from HMRC.
Probably, the publication source and authorship team won't appeal to many, but this report repeats what some of us have been saying for a while on these threads about per capita GDP, net fiscal impact, and pressures on infrastructure. It is hard to deny the core argument.
Just before he died, Henry Kissinger commented on the political impact of large-scale migration into Europe; he talked about the creation of new interest groups that would influence political parties and their policies. The results of the recent council elections, and how Gaza has featured so centrally in the campaigns in some areas, seem to bear that out.
Other recent news headlines say that the Labour Party is working to win back votes in Muslim communities. Some senior party sources say policy will need to change, even after the shift that already happened.. Personally I find that quite worrying. I seem to recall a discourse from years ago whereby people on the Left argued that changing demography would not greatly change existing culture and values, because integration would mean that migrants adopted the values had attracted them to the UK in the first place. Will foreign policy now be shaped increasingly by the reaction of certain "interest groups" to what is happening in far away places? Some will say that demography is destiny.
Residents living in the west of the city may have participated in the recent consultation exercise about planned road "improvements" and a cycle route from Walter Road to Sketty Road and Uplands Crescent. Like me, they may therefore be gobsmacked to hear that the Council went ahead with submitting its funding application for the (first) Walter Road phase even before the consultation was concluded. Here is a video of part of the Council deliberations when this emerged.
I've seen a few mealy-mouthed shysters in action in my time, but Stevens and Stewart take the biscuit. Peter May on the other hand exemplifies the value of an independent councillor, and illustrates why the Uplands group are streets ahead of the party hacks. Seeing Stevens doing his best to obfuscate and finally resorting to an outright fib, before then accusing May of going round in circles was something to behold. Stewart said pretty clearly that the active travel network was a Council strategy that no single ward would be allowed to overturn. To me that signals that the mindset evident in the Senedd that our masters know best, also holds sway in our Council. Who voted in these people? How wonderful it would be to have more independents.
For reference here is some information on the active travel network. No doubt it has some good aspects. but the detail in the west of the city does not look good to me.
It looks as though the establishment of the socially-liberal, socialist all-Ireland republic is further away than some imagine. Did the voters think the Irish government is getting too woke?
Have you ever seen one in person? On a whim I recently again watched High Noon, and could not help but be impressed by the youthful beauty of Grace Kelly. It brought to mind the fact that she is the only screen siren from that time, or indeed any era, that I've seen at a football match on British shores. She was only about 20 yards from where I sat albeit in a glass viewing area. David Niven was also present that day. Can anybody guess what match that was?
Three stories in the news make this an interesting question. The Home office has just added Turkey to the list of unsafe countries, thus torpedoing the UK Govt’s hope of doing an Albania-style deal there. Just today it emerged that the sex offender and Clapham attacker, Abdul Ezedi, could not be deported even after two asylum claims were rejected because Afghanistan is unsafe due to Taliban rule. Then there is Rwanda, which many are saying must be unsafe because the UK has granted asylum to a dozen or so applicants in recent years. Liberal opinion will say that all these countries are unsafe, but the question then arises of just how many countries there are that are not unsafe for some.
In fact, the refugee charities themselves have resisted the idea that there are any completely safe countries from which asylum claims cannot be made. In 2010 Donna Covey, the chief executive of the UK Refugee Council, said: "No country is safe for every person all of the time. Those with a genuine need for protection, whatever country they are from, should have the right to claim asylum in a place of safety." Applicants from almost all African and Asian countries have at one time or another been granted asylum in the UK, even though that does not mean they are all regarded as unsafe in the general sense. There are even rare examples where US citizens have been granted asylum in the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Canada, while many have applied unsuccessfully in the UK. The UNHCR opposed the 2022 UK “inadmissibility” rules that imposed a ban on asylum seekers from listed safe countries, except in “exceptional circumstances”. UNHCR accepts that this is not illegal but sees it only as a way of prioritising the strength of claims. A recent UNHCR document (Recommendations, 2023: p42) stated that: “the designation of a country as a safe country of origin does not establish, and may not under international law be deemed to establish, an absolute guarantee of safety for nationals of that country, and it may be that despite general conditions of safety, for some individuals, members of particular groups or relating to some forms of persecution, the country remains unsafe.”
So if this principle is accepted, it effectively means that anybody who presents themselves in the UK from any country in the world has a right to make an asylum claim, that if their country is designated as unsafe they will stay even if asylum is not immediately granted, and that even if the country is regarded as “generally safe” they can claim that their individual circumstances mean they should stay. Grounds can include sexual orientation, political views, religion, exposure to gang violence, and in some recent cases where return was ruled out, the non-availability of necessary healthcare in the receiving country.
I just wonder how sustainable all this is and how it fits with the intention of the original international conventions that give legal support to the current situation. I would never enter a legal agreement where in the event that other parties exercised the rights granted this required me to do things that I did not have the resources to do. But it seems that the UK and indeed many Western countries have done just that. Will there be some general move to change the rules of the game? I think there are some turbulent years ahead.
Were the larger demos really akin to family fun days? I wonder if the picketers will play the same Arabic language songs glorifying violence against jews.
Those who know better than mere voters have unveiled one more ban - glue traps for rats and mice - as part of the Agriculture (Wales) Act. It was the only thing that would work for me when I had a mouse infestation some years ago. No doubt many more legislative bans feature in the Senedd's plans. Pity we can't lay down a few mats in the corridors of power - more rats than mice there.
The man who brought new levels of political correctness to the National Museum of Wales has shown his commitment to public service by pocketing a settlement of £325,000 that includes £50K for "injured feelings".