The Rule of Law

It's normal to think people who enter a country illegally are breaking the law. But they're not if the intention is to claim asylum. People in Northern France scheming to cross the English Channel to England and who haven't claimed asylum in France are breaking the law by being in France. The Rule of Law is one of the pillars of the European Union. So they should be deported. But they aren't, which enables them to cross the Channel legally...... Asylum seekers are entitled to 3 appeals. That's 4 cracks of the whip! It's like having a referendum, not liking the result, and having 3 more. If native Brits don't like the first decision they don't have any appeals to contest it. Justice requires balance. And that's a serious imbalance..... There's a huge backlog of immigration cases. Allowing appeals takes time, and time enables newcomers to form friendships, put down roots, and devise a means of disappearing underground if the last appeal fails. This situation is a failure of governance, incompetence and a dereliction of duty for failing to protect our borders. It has also been going on a long time.

Past Caring; Present Injustice

The coronavirus has focussed on care homes and their disjuncture with the NHS. But what is neglected in these media reports is that people have to sell their homes in order to pay for going into a care home. Which means their children are losing their expected inheritance which these parents have worked long and hard for. By contrast, the immigration industry (legal aid lawyers, Advisors, NGOs, Tribunals) is largely funded by the British taxpayer. The Government can find money to enable foreigners to occupy these islands, but it can't make care homes as free for elderly patients just as the NHS is free for all and sundry. (In fairness, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he intends to end this discrepancy.)

Moral, Morals (For "High Moral Ground" please see this blog of 29 July 2019) and Power

Dominic Raab, before deputising as Prime Minister, expressed opposition to "positive discrimination" (also called "positive action"). Mrs May criticised him in the House of Commons for calling feminists "obnoxious bigots". (BBC Radio 4 "Profile")……… It's obvious feminism and immigration are closely linked because the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act was modelled on the 1965 Race Relations Act (which applied to "nationality", not just race). And the vigorous campaign by feminists in 1979 that enables foreign men to live in the UK through marriage..... Moral: Britain's problems are self-inflicted... .. Power controls language and language controls power. Britain's power is a shadow of its former self. But... the Government's leaflet on the coronavirus (sent with a letter from the Prime Minister) uses "herself" to describe an anonymous individual instead of the usual "himself". There is more on this theme on this blog at "Language Traduces Thought" on 18 April 2017.

When is a Pillar not a Pillar?

BBC News yesterday at 6 p.m.showed thousands of young men in Calais trying to get to England. Most will, on past experience. There was no social distancing (which is imposed, quite rightly in my opinion, more strictly in France than in the UK) to prevent the spread of coronavirus. No one asked why they didn't claim asylum in France. Someone said they had done nothing illegal. But being in a country illegally is a serious crime. And if they hadn't claimed asylum in France there were there illegally. The Rule of Law is one of the three Pillars (together with Democracy and Human Rights) of the European Union. Which clearly France doesn't abide by when in comes to sans papiers wanting to go somewhere else.

What is the Great Privilege of our Times?

It is at times like this (a devastating world-wide pandemic) that an extraordinary privilege becomes apparent. This is the ability to live in two different countries (excepting the UK's 4 countries & the EU). People in transnational marriages have this privilege. Women always; men sometimes. This makes miscegenation very attractive. The UK is obsessed about equality but foreign men can live here through marriage. This rank privilege is (partly) because the Equal Opportunities Commission campaigned vigorously to defeat Mrs Thatcher's 1979 election promise to end it. Immigration was later determined by the House of Lords on 7 July 1983 to be outside the ambit of the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act. The EOC was legally required to support complaints by men as well as women, but its response to my complaint about this in 1977 was that it was outside its ambit. Nevertheless, the EOC - as stated above - spent public money campaigning hard and successfully to defeat Government policy. Public money spent to enable foreigners live in the UK....

Mrs Humphry Ward (1852-1920), "the greatest woman of her time"

When the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward died 100 years ago on 24 March 1920 she was called "the greatest woman of her time". In 1908 she founded the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. Also in 1908 she founded the Passmore Edwards Settlement for orphans in London's Tavistock Square. It is now called the Mary Ward Centre. In 1916 she went closer to the British front line than any other woman gathering material for a book that was intended to encourage the Americans to join in the War. The horrors she described probably had the opposite effect. In the 1970s I requested the Greater London Council to put up a plaque to Mrs Ward on the Mary Ward Centre. This was refused on the grounds she hadn't lived there.

The Abuse of Power

Patricia Hewitt called her part in the campaign to stop Mrs Thatcher from implementing her 1979 election promise to stop foreign men from using marriage to live in the UK her "most satisfying achievement". Her 1982 book was called "The Abuse of Power". But she herself held power in Tony Blair's Government as Equality Minister. And allowing foreign men to live in the UK through marriage gives British (and British resident) women a great privilege, because they can live in their husband's country as well as the UK. Protecting and sustaining privilege is clearly an abuse of power. Now, in addition to "equality" laws that entitle foreigners to deprive Brits of work & promotion there is the "inequality" law known as "positive action" that puts native British men last when it comes to recruitment. The BBC has adopted this unjust policy. Which is ironic because George Orwell, who worked at the BBC, famously wrote "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Modern detective dramas invariably have women in dominant roles. So messing with the classics in this way is a tyranny and an abuse of power. The latest instance, in the news, is that a minor female character in H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" is now the main character in a new BBC version. For more on this theme please see this blog of 26 July 2018 and 10 March 2019. Thanks!