🔥 This court ruling is historical! Not only does it ban LGBTI discrimination, but for the first time it issues a ruling based on Art 2 of the Treaties, that lays down the values on which the European Union is based. A big step for the European Union as a community of values
From today, for thousands of couples and families staying together in the UK just got even more expensive.
Visa fees are rising again — quietly wrecking lives.
We know that around 60–70% of many visa fees are profit
This is not cost recovery, it is excessive charging at the expense of families💔
"Under a 10-20 year system, a worker would spend a decade or more in which their entire immigration status — and [thus] their family’s home, their children’s schooling, their right to remain — depends on maintaining the goodwill of a single employer. That is a structurally coercive relationship."
Please read this, understand what the govt is doing & take action. Labour's immigration proposals swap integration for segregation, introduce a Dubai-style Kafala system of coercive employer control & drive low-income families into poverty. They're an abomination.
open.substack.com/pub/wewanted...
This principle of "abuse"
- discriminates against all Afghan women on their national group characteristics, not as individuals
- does not accept that a genuine fear of persecution under the convention should count as a genuine fear of persecution, if you were already in Britain as a student
No office will allow smoking, because of the risk of being sued over secondary smoke.
No shops or transport networks: same reasons.
No bar or restaurant would allow it, because 80% of customers hate it, and would stop going.
So who does this help?
Nobody.
Performative bullshit. Again.
I totally agree. It is absolutely evil and it still is not enough to make my Reform supporting brother vote Labour. I know this because I was visiting him the week Shabana Mahmood unveiled all this crap and I asked him this question. He did say he loved the new policies, though.
I’m a rejoiner they have lost and it is now about far more than their EU policy. I will never vote for a party whose cruel and futile Reform-adjacent immigration policies stop me moving back to the UK with my German partner or prevent young Afghan women from studying in the UK.
This is where the government seeking to appease people who hate it ends up. It's so monumentally stupid.
Pitching development against defence is utterly short-sighted; we will not make Britain safer by making the rest of the world less secure.
Labour's hostile attacks on migrants not only deny some safety, they deny people a future. Chevening Scholars are meant to be future world leaders. Labour's policies have never been about creating a "fairer system". They just want to prove that they can be nastier than the last government.
The UK is refusing to extend the grace period on home fees for UK citizens who grew up in the EEA when it expires at the end of 2027. Winning that original grace period took 3 years and was like pulling teeth. But if the EU can wrangle this concession that will be great for UK citizens in the EU.
There are other reasons for the UK government not to award or continue Palantir contracts but this statement of intent by its CEO must surely be decisive?
Two of these panellists lost to the Greens after young voters did exactly the opposite of what this panel claims
One of the 'helping out other teams' things I did in Sudan was being on the interview panel for potential Chevening scholars. All incredibly impressive people that worked really hard to get to that point. To be on the cusp of a huge opportunity and then have it snatched away... Unconscionable.
Absolutely right
Again, as with Guardian article, Mahmood's reliance on false/deliberately misleading claims about her "earned settlement" proposals suggests that she knows she can't defend them on the merits, in principle or in practice.
The "immediate access" to social housing is particularly bad misinformation - it's a scarce resource that many people would like but can't access. They're all too ready to believe that immigrants skip the queue. In reality of course they get access only to the housing register, like everyone else.
"would otherwise receive immediate access to welfare and social housing" is BS.
Correct: "after 5 years working in a care home, would be eligible to apply for welfare and social housing on the same basis as the rest of us."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Deliberately misleading/disingenous.
It is already hard enough to contemplate returning to the UK with non-UK or Irish family members because of the minimum income requirement which so many of us could not easily meet. I may have a British passport but with a German husband I am effectively exiled now. But at least I have a vote again.
We can see the consequences of the lies told by the US and UK about Iraq in 2003 set out in The Guardian article about how EU intelligence agencies and ministers didn’t believe US and UK warnings of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine because of those lies. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
An economically, politically and morally bankrupt strategy.
Bad for individuals, bad for families, bad for businesses, bad for public services, bad for integration and cohesion.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
“We cannot say that the United States’ actions are against international law, but we condemn Iran’s retaliatory actions as against international law,” is neither a coherent nor a compelling position.
The acts of defiance can be big or small. Painting over a bigoted piece of graffiti. Running a youth club for refugees in an area that mostly loathes them. Wearing a rainbow flag in an anti-queer neighbourhood.
These acts all accumulate towards something better, I have seen that in action.
Really concerned to hear the Defence Secretary refuse to rule out UK's involvement in future strikes on Iran.
Iraq lessons must be learned.
Further escalation in the Middle East makes us all less safe.
Starmer must rule out UK involvement immediately.
Speaking as a private EU citizen, I am beyond embarrassed that our leaders and representatives criticise Iran while staying silent on the US and Israel. Values are supposed to be universal and if the EU has a point it has to be to defend universal values. That’s my EU.
Yes, anyone moving back to the UK with a foreign spouse in future will be affected by these proposals too. They gave family visas a 5 year discount but still applied every other change to them.
The settlement reforms will generate chaos and cruelty if applied in draft form to those already here.
Few people around govt understand the
extraordinary complexity of this new seven/eight track route to settlement, nor why these reforms likely to leave many legal migratnts undocumented after 2030
This looks like an unintentional consequence: that many women will never qualify. I expect the govt to drop the idea that high earners get settlement in 3 years while their dependents wait 10-15 years. But the proposals have deliberate consequences that are hard to fix
www.ft.com/content/ca14...
