David Cameron has sent the advertising vans out again, and has agreed to a texting campaign to encourage those immigrants with no right to stay in the UK to leave. It would seem that after sending out 58,000 messages to mobile phones around the country only 100 people complained, and only 14 people were incorrectly contacted.
It’s a measure of the changing nature of public opinion that the Conservative Party feels confident enough to start talking about repatriation of immigrants, even if it has presently limited itself to acting against those who are illegally present in the UK. The message on the side of the advertising vans, now touring cities across England, says… In the UK illegally? Go Home or Face Arrest. It’s hard to find a justification for the leftist complaints since the definition of illegality must surely include the prospect of arrest. If the advertising said… Stop Burglaring or Face Arrest… would the same usual suspects be suggesting a breach of rights?
The 58,000 text messages had a similar message, asking those who received the communication to contact the Home Office to discuss their case. The Advertising Standards Agency was asked to investigate the campaign and found it neither offensive nor irresponsible. While Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, insisted “I don’t have any problem with saying to people who are here illegally that they shouldn’t be here anymore”.
This is not some rogue policy without Prime Ministerial sanction. On the contrary political analysts consider that Cameron will now build on the support he has found for removing illegal migrants and will send unemployed Europeans home. The Sunday Telegraph floated a piece last week indicating that up to 600,000 EU migrants were unemployed in the UK. Some have criticised the reporting because it conflates those who are looking for work and those who are not, but it is reasonable to ask why any EU citizens are in the UK without at least seeking work?
EU rules allow for the free movement of workers, but they do not require the free movement of those who have no work. The UK is in fact entitled by EU law to require those who have no work to return to leave the UK after a qualifying period. The Sunday Telegraph report is a means of the Conservatives gauging public support for the policy of requiring EU migrants without work to leave the country. It is thought that this could be a soft measure, relatively easy to implement, which will be popular and will reduce the migrant population by up to 250,000 quite quickly.
The word is that the advertising lorries will continue to patrol the streets, replacing the mythical TV detector vans. Now that the Border Agency has been brought under Home Office control it seems that the existing systems for reporting suspected illegal immigrants will be improved and will be much more widely advertised. Mark Harper entirely supports the use of advertising to encourage groups of migrants to leave the UK. The word is that he is willing to use much more robust methods in the future, with David Cameron’s support, as long as the policies remain popular.
No way will he do it he’s all wind and piss.
George Osborne I presume. (13:06) Is this your first move in a bid for the top job?
🙂
A report suggests that 83% of Britons support the restriction of EU migrant’s rights.
No way,he can not drink his tea without EU permission.
Oh Lord, what a laugh.
Whenever Cameron announces that he’s going to do something – it’s a virtual guarantee that he intends to do actually the opposite. He’s merely trying to get the naive to vote for him.
“In the UK illegally? Go Home or Face Arrest.”
Wasn’t that always the case….
Hen Ass Cameron and his friend the Millipede are one and the same.
EC (07:31)
The next will be mobile billboards announcing “Burglars, stop breaking into peoples homes, or you will be arrested, which may result in imprisonment!”
The idiots running this country – and the idiots waiting in the wings to take over, are beyond parody or even satire. I’d like to think that we have reached another nadir in this point of the flux of our history. But have we? Sadly, there are unplumbed depths to which we could still sink and this lot of occupants of the Westminster Gasworks are dense enough to drag us all down to parts that none before have managed to reach. The blind and the deaf leading the deaf and the blind. And what’s worse, they have been handed the reins of power, the wherewithal – and subsidised, by the stupid, in whose numbers I include myself.
The last time disgruntled nation got so pissed off with the corruption in Parliament they burnt the place down. Turner captured the event perfectly as it occurred – some reporter, that fellow; it was only a hundred years before I was born.
It is discussed in this documentary about “Turner’s Thames”, which I viewed last night. Thought provoking – is it time for another clearout – perhaps a little less extreme? But then again …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jv255/Turners_Thames/
Don’t be put off by the sartorial appearance of Matthew Collings, he knows his subject and the photography and presentation of both the art of Turner and the live footage of the Tames is stunning, Turner’s work needs no introduction or praise from a philistine like me, but it reawakened my love for Old Father Thames who ran through my veins for a large proportion of my active life. If you haven’t already seen it, believe me, its unmissable.
Arrgh! Three lines up – ‘Thames’, of course. It will never be tamed regardless of its ever-changing custodians or the Woolwich Barrier.