May 2015 – Page 3

Asylum

part A: A common Policy for Asylum

Today the EU has put forward plans for sharing asylum throughout Europe. This is a review of the Dublin convention of 1990, Eurodac and the Dublin regulation of 2003. Since 2009, there has been a uniform procedure throughout the EU for dealing with asylum requests. This grandly announced that it was having the last word on asylum policy- “les dernières briques de la protection internationale sont posées”, but clearly not! In practice, the 2009 directive means dealing with integration difficulties, clarifying the criteria for accepting an applicant (“membership of a social group” for instance, including gender) and establishing the rights to health-care and housing that are granted both to successful applicants and to those whose asylum status is not quite established but who have leave to remain in the host country.

Greece

The biggest issue specifically addressed on paper in 2009 was to ease the burden to the host state, but I am not sure that such has actually been achieved. Greece, for instance, continues to struggle, as in the news daily, we see the struggles of the Italian islands. The statistics, however, hide the fact that there is a big difference between the numbers of those granted asylum and those in the country requesting asylum. In Greece, for example, 625 people were granted asylum in 2012 in contrast to 22,165 given asylum in Germany. But to get a better picture, just note that in Lesbos in just a few days in 2012, 4409 people attempted to enter the territory. Of those, 2,600 were arrested in Turkey. Until 2012, 90% of immigrants entered europe through Greece. Thanos Maroukis estimated in 2012, that 390,000 people entered Greece. Of these, 625 were granted asylum. It puts the problem into perspective and it has only got worse since then.

Nomenclature

Because of the ambiguity of the language, therefore, I am not really sure how, in practice, the new proposals will happen, though I have listened to what debate was available. Many asylum seekers find their appeals rejected. Some are genuinely bogus and some are unable to provide sufficient proof to make their case. Some simply have bad advice. At what point in the process, will they be dispersed? There is what the newspapers call a “surge of migration” across the mediterranean, which places even more pressure on Italy and Greece, two of the weaker Nations, to provide care under the original Asylum directives that a migrant should be processed in the first country he or she reaches in Europe. For all their belly-aching about migration, this means that very few migrants should genuinely have been treated by the UK because, logically, anyone making it to the UK must have passed through another member state in the process. A lack of proper documentation makes it harder to deport people because it is unclear where they first made land, though in 2008, the UNHCR asked the EU not to return Iraqi asylum seekers to Greece. Clearly, this Dublin regulation’s approach to “readmission” is unfair both to the migrants and to countries like Greece. Any new plans must be better.

above frans timmmermans, below federica mogherini

The new plan is that a “mass influx” will trigger an emergency distribution system that will spread the load around the rest of Europe on a quota system basis. Again, it is not at all clear whether this will be administered by the country experiencing the “mass influx” and whether the quota distribution is of applicants on processed refugees. The new Government wants to help police the mediterranean and protect those caught up in trafficking, but it does not want to be part of the quota system.

Scotland welcomes Refugees

Humza Yousaf, however says very clearly that Scotland would welcome its share of a quota.

Theresa May & Opt Out

Theresa May however says, “We must — and will — resist calls for the mandatory relocation or resettlement of migrants across Europe.” Britain is not going to veto the proposal: it can’t. It is simply using its opt-out of something that is subject to a majority vote and likely to pass. Angela Merkel sounds more promising and she has already welcomed about 1/3 of all those seeking asylum, a total of 626,000 asylum applicants over 2014: “We and our European partners are fundamentally convinced that we must act urgently with regard to the dramatic refugee developments in the Mediterranean.” However, if the new proposals go ahead, she will be inevitably taking less asylum seekers and it is likely if the new proposals overturn Dublin 3, that Britain will no longer be able to send people back to their country of first entry. The fall out from this is that, ironically, the UK may end up accepting more immigrants than before and indeed offering greater help. Today, in fact the Royal Navy rescued 400 migrants.

Part B- refugees

There is a second part to this proposal which is a resettlement of refugees from camps outside the EU. This presumably includes people from countries like Turkey which has taken over 1.6 million Syrian refugees since the outbreak of the syrian crisis in 2011 and spent over £3 billion granting free healthcare to Syrian refugees. Some of these are in 22 government-run camps near the border but many are welcomed into the towns and cities. I remember getting my hair cut a few years’ ago in Istanbul and meeting a young lad who was sweeping the floor and was a Syrian refugee. He must have been about 12. There is a problem. Turkey does not give the Syrians official status as refugees, and instead calls them “guests”. This is both helpful in removing any stigma but it also means that there is less security and local people might begin to resent unregistered business ventures and competition. The impression given by recent Amnesty reports is that Turkey is reaching saturation-point and AFAD calls out for help. Meanwhile there are calls on the Turkish government to regularize Syrian workers so that they can pay proper tax.

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Meanwhile, today (may 13th) is the anniversary of the birth of Vesta Tilly, the lady who first made famous the character of Burlington Bertie.

More on Nigel Farage’s fake resignation

This a story is a bit like a suicide attempt- it was an appeal for help, with Farage repeating the Cleopatra stunt at the end of Shakespeare’s play where she pretends to kill herself in the belief that poor Antony will come limping over. All, as GBS, observed, a bit adolescent as indeed is Mr Farage’s stunt.

Here is the finished cartoon of the incident.

Here is an early sketch of the same picture

The Farage /UKIP resignation is interesting in many ways. Firstly, it establishes very clearly that Mr Carswell is of no consequence to the party machine, and was simply brought in- as we know by Simon wheeler who had given the party large donations after himself defecting from the Conservatives. Presumably Carswell sees himself as leader material. Carswell is his own man and as the only sitting UKIP MP, is determined it seems, to hold a moral line. That, I think, is commendable but will be difficult.

Many of the current UKIp Rankers, particularly the MEPs were parachuted into office under the personal direction of Farage, so forming his own college of cardinals and they owe their careers and present prosperity to him. Coburn is certainly one of these and no doubt was given license long ago to create as much mayhem as he could, undermining not only the SNP but also the existing UKIP branches that may not have been as Farage-focused as the leader would have wished. Coburn’s job, in otherwords, it is alleged, was to destabilise the local Scottish party. This is why he will not resign and why Farage will never apologise to Humza Yousaf no matter how often he is requested to do so.

My prediction therefore is very simple- should Farage genuinely be back in power, there will be some bubbles of resentment. There may even be a Carswell defection, but to whom? The Conservatives will not welcome him back. And Farage will probably win an early by-election gaining parliamentary credibility in the process. I may not like what he stands for but, as I have said before, I cannot fault his skills as an orator and I would be the first to applaud these. The place for such skills is certainly the House of Commons.

Other UKIP defectors, however, have warned me of the barrage of personal attacks and trumped-up charges that they have faced for speaking out. I am told darkly that UKIP has inherited, from the BNP/NF/EDF, a string of complicit police officers with power to corrupt the justice system. I am not sure this is a warning or is itself another threat.

I have been sent messages about the fate of Justin Adams, for example, the pilot whose plane crashed in 2010. This was the same plane in which Farage was travelling and which was flying a doomed banner. The whole thing ended in disaster and recrimination. Farage was in hospital and is still doing physiotherapy for a bad back, while Adams complained that the crash led to the disintegration of his marriage, and his being “incarcerated” in his elderly mother’s home. In 2011, he was convicted on 5 counts of threatening to kill Farage. Apparently, he made a telephone call to Samantha Sutton, the UKIP national secretary, claiming, “It’s just been delivered. I now have a 9mm pistol. I have got the means to do it and I will take them and then myself.” He was threatening to kill Farage and the civil aviation investigator, Martin James. Indeed, the whole story sounds a bit alarming. Later Justin Adams was found dead. It seems he had taken his own life.

Certainly, I did not expect the degree of pressure I have so far experienced or the personal attacks against my family. But it is far from clear from the story of Adams that there is some sort of Cabal or conspiracy against ex-UKIppers.

Indeed, when you look more closely, the conspiracy theories seem wrong. Mr Farage is on record at the time of the crash urging the pilot to steer clear of the village of Charlton. I am not sure who told us that but it is hugely commendable. If Adams became abusive as the investigation proceeded at snail’s pace, that is probably understandable though not prudent. People react to trauma in different ways but threatening to kill someone seems a bit excessive. I see evidence here that perhaps there was a lack of care by UKIP, but certainly not of a trumped up charge. It would be wrong to indulge paranoia.

I have also been told to look up the story of Nicole Sinclaire, an ex MEP- thrown out of the party for refusing to sit with Liga Nord/ EFD. She said that some of the group had extremist views. It certainly took her a long time to work this out! According to one report, the trigger for her defection was being called a “queer” by fellow UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom. Bloom is the man who was himself thrown out of the party for calling women “sluts” and referring to “bongo bongo land”. When challenged by journalists who showed him a newspaper article, I recall he hit one of them over the head with the said newspaper. At some point he also criticised David Cameron as “pigeon-chested; the sort of chap I used to beat up.” Bloom simply seems to be a bully, and I feel rather impressed that UKIP ditched him. But did they not suspect he was a bully in the first place?

There was a case of sexual discrimination which Sinclaire won. She said,

“During my time as an MEP I put in more than £120,000 of my salary into the cost of my work activities. It was also me who in 2010 drew the attention of the West Midlands Police to irregularities I discovered had taken place, without my knowledge, in my Ukip office.” She was arrested herself in February 2012 and accused of money-laundering and misconduct in public office. This story is more troubling, but there are parallels with the recent Atkinson story and it seems to confirm only that there is dodgyness in high places. We know that!

No doubt, if I am suddenly faced with a string of allegations, then there might be some credibility to the consipiracy theorists, but as yet, I think it best to be cautious and calm.

The Daventry Council elections

Always a bit odd when you witness a bad loser of course and there was a demonstration of such a man on saturday. His name is Ken Ritchie, a man who may have a doctorate in election analysis, called Psephology apparently. So he should have known better.

Having lost to a very nice Conservative lady called Amy, this man went on to speak for a good 5 mins giving her “advice”. He is not a councillor and I cannot see that he has so much advice to offer, frankly, but who am I to comment- I forgot his name when it came to time for me to speak. But Ken certainly came across as a bit patronizing.

At the end of the election count, the head of the Council had been invited to speak. He is Chris Millar and I do not remember if he had finished talking but Ken suddenly exploded again from one side of the room. He ranted about the fact that Chris had not stood for election that year and therefore had no right to speak. That Chris was a conservative and that this was an unprincipled bias. It was actually very shocking and sad to see someone so distressed and acting so badly in public. The Council official in charge of the election count, the returning officer pointed out that it was actually his choice and that he had personally chosen Chris as a speaker.

My picture records this moment. To the right is Wendy Randall, a lady who has done valiant work drawing attention to the plethora of dog shit around Daventry. Certainly, since her campaign started, there is less of the stuff, but it is by no means gone. I think once sprayed, it cannot be left. It still needs to be bagged and binned.

Why Farage cannot be Vicky Pollard

Vicky (Vicki?) Pollard is a tremendous creation- a whinging no-hoper, so from that point of view, it might surprise people who have read my other posts that I think the link between Farage and Pollard is wrong. Particularly as Mr Farage has now resigned without winning South Thanet, a failure for which I hope I can take some personal credit.

“no but, yeh but, what happened was- shut up. I wasn’t even supposed to be here like this… blah blah blah” Brilliant!

She blisters forth with a barrage of contradictions and bluster, some of it quite unprintable and, in fact, all beautifully cadenced.

Farage, for all his faults, is one of the best political performers in the UK today. His speeches in the Chamber of the EU alone are always worth watching on Youtube and I am sure are thrilling in real life. I love the fact that he is so confident and speaks without notes. His delivery, the content, the Chutzpah and humour are always, therefore, remarkable and it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge that. His only rhetorical rival is Boris. Just to press the point, listen to, or watch Ed Miliband who has a stream of very specific rhetorical flourishes, most of them repetitive, and that is it. He has managed a slightly better screen image of late- with some coaching, but it is nothing as extreme as the transformation wrought on Thatcher by Gordon Reece, nor indeed as effective. (Reece was a schoolboy contemporary of Norman St John Stevas at my old School Ratcliffe College) Ed remains, therefore, “nice Ed” and today watching him resign, I felt that what he really needed was a good hug. (I am not volunteering: I am not really a hugger at all) But Ed Miliband does vulnerability and that is not the diet of choice for leading British politicians today.

I can go a little further and add that on many issues, I share Mr Farage’s views. I differ significantly about immigration but I certainly recognise that the EU project, as it stands, is seriously damaged. Simply looking across to Greece, which is a country I know well confirms that Europe is no longer working properly. No country in a cohesive federation of National states should be so bullied or so shamed and punished for faults that were made years ago and with the connivance of the very countries that now seem to press for austerity. The Greek demand for reparations, incidentally, from Germany seems to me reasonable, but more reasonable would be Germany’s unconditional offer of such reparations. That way, at least the money would flow, and we would no longer be talking about debt.

When Farage tries vulnerability, however- with pleas about back-pain or, today with a reference to his plane-crash (which caused the back pain in the first place), it all seems a bit disingenuous. He is better on attack, and that is why he is no Pollard. Pollard is all stammer and alot of unprintable invective scatter-gunned at whoever might be in the Farage’s attacks have bite and bile. I should know- his people tried some of that on me!

Vicky Pollard, however, is all about vulnerability. A different type of vulnerability to Ed Miliband’s, of course. She is aggressive because she is hurt. That is not Miliband, and certainly not Farage.

I have drawn a picture of Farage as Vicky, which is below, and that is why I have given this some thought. The idea came from a tossed-off comment made on the BBC so it is not my analogy at all.

Let’s face it, a politician cannot plead for sympathy when he has lost an election. Farage tried that and he was compared on the BBC to a character from Little Britain. Well done, BBC!

However, for UKIP resignation is not about honour. It is about punishment which is why Coburn will not resign and why Farage has converted his resignation into something else. Let me offer a visual hint with refence to Cliff Richard and Greece- “Who forgot to fill the tank?”

Farage’s resignation was odd. Within minutes of resigning, he was offering to stand again for office in September. So for Farage, resignation is just a cheap holiday away from responsibility. But he remains an MEP and I have already written to him as my MEP to ask him very specific questions.

Meanwhile, the fate of the UKIP project hangs in the balance because there is no-one quite able to take the place of Farage. Suzanne Evans, who Farage recommends as interim leader, exposed herself the other night on TV as morally hollow when she failed to recognise the wealth of difference between a labour man, Sumon Hoque, dismissed for not having a proper MOT- a driving offence- and a UKIP man, Robert Blay, who has threatened to shoot a rival Sri Lankan candidate between the eyes. She pleaded, rather stupidly, that the press were over-emphasising the case of Robert Blay simply because he was a UKIPPER. If anything, they underplayed the story because of a BBC fear about political bias in the days immediately before the election.

Because of the postal votes, the system in both cases went ahead. the labour guy insisted he was still standing; I am not sure Blay has said anything and I assume both that Blay did not attend the count and that the votes were wasted. The issue is largely academic but it would have been interesting if either had come first.

In the case of Jason Zadrozny, who was arrested I think just before the campaign began, he withdrew from the election process himself. As I understand it, unless the issue was bankruptcy, criminal proceedings would not automatically bar a candidate from standing in an election and indeed Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament in 1981, the then youngest MP but a prisoner who died a month after his election. Prisoners who are serving gaol sentences of more than a year’s length are now forbidden to stand under the Representation of the People Act 1981.

My red line, however, remains: Racism, in any form, cannot be condoned, and, so far, I understand neither Humza Yousaf nor Ranil Jayawardena has received a written apology from the leader of UKIP or from anyone claiming that authority. If Mr Farage has indeed resigned, and if Evans is appointed only as a caretaker, then maybe there is now no-one left to write these letters until a new leader is elected in Septamber. Should Mr Farage don the mantle again then, I suppose these questions will remain there to haunt him. And certainly whoever succeeds to authority in UKIP would take on the responsibility of writing at least the three letters I have myself demanded of the leader. This is quite apart from the demand that Mr Coburn MEP should resign, which I suppose is his own decision now as there will be no leader with the authority to command his suspension. I still hold out hope that Farage has a heart and will take proper responsibility during the next few weeks to sort out what he has so far not bothered to do. I would genuinely like to hear that he has bothered to respond. And anyway, Paul Oakden in his interview on Radio Northampton promised that “after the election, he will get round to” answering me. Who knows!

I remain an optimist.

Another example of UKIP racism

The day before the election and another story explodes of UKIP racism. I am not hugely surprised but I am a bit shocked at the failure of other UKIP candidates to speak out against this, or indeed, as I did over Humza Yousaf, to resign. It is not enough to have this man suspended. He contaminates the brand as much as David Coburn did.

UKIP in other words is not just racist, it is aggressively so. Councillor Ranil Jayawardena is a fellow of the RSA and a Freeman of the City of London. He is a natural successor to James Arbuthnot and I imagine he will do well tomorrow.

The issue with UKIP goes deeper than the news we read today. This is a group that is thoroughly infiltrated by BNP thugs, may well retain links with the National Front, became buddies with Lega Nord, and seems to tolerate holocaust deniers. This is a party where the simple fact is misrepresented again and again- EU migrants are not an economic liability. They are NET contributors. We need to wake up to this fact. The absurd idea that underpins UKIP thinking is that the more migrants we get rid of, the more access we will have to public services. But the simple fact remains that many of these migrants contribute significantly to the upkeep of these self-same services and more than that, often staff the services. The NHS for instance would be a pitiful shell of an institution without the migrant labour force of nurses and cleaners and doctors.

At the point of writing, Farage has not spoken out and apologised to Rabil as he did not apologise to Humza. I suppose he regards this as just another joke, which is why UKIP candidates clearly feel there is licence to overstep the mark.

	Steve Friedman on Nigel Farage deal
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	timewilson on Nigel Farage deal
	Steve Friedman on Nigel Farage deal
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Month: May 2015