Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

I am so glad everybody feels so much better by the recent successes in Welfare and of course recent successes in Europe.

Pity the same could not be said for the economy, NHS, education, social cohesion, Law and order, and protection of civil rights. That investigations into paedophilia and others social care problems are not being smothered.


But I like strong government, especially when members of the governing party suggest discussions and investigations are being being covered up by its own party's elite.

Roll on Rochester and That Strange-fellow's comment afterwards!

What makes me laugh Fred is that the right wing press themselves have been showing in the last few days EU immigrants come here for jobs and that they contribute more to the treasuries coffers than they take out.

Again smoke and mirrors from Camoron and IDS tonight.

It wont stop the free movement of labour from the EU to this country one jot.

And the ruling only covers EU countries.

The biggest problem non EU immigrants isnt even touched upon by the court ruling.

Spot on gf!

employed immigrants contribute more than their share, in particular those that do not send 90% of their money home

the problem we have been having in recent years, is the huge influx of general scallywags, indigents, those with no qualifications whatsoever, and extended families
in other words, we have shown no sensible discrimination in favour of those who have something to offer from day 1

Arranged marriages and like do you mean Cyners?, if yes Im 100% with you.

ps, just sent you e-mail.

Yes.

People arriving with wife and two kids are on £500 a week from the word go.

There is no incentive to work, because unless they really are well trained, they wont earn that sort of money.

Lets see what dave has in mind, cos it looks like a big let-off for him, and just in the nick of time.

I doubt it Max people are fed up with what we have now, thats enough and I doubt itl make any difference at all despite the blustering of Camoron.

People want to come here for our standard of living, a european act wont stop them when they are so desperate.

I think the benefits system, very generous by anybodies standards, is a big draw.

Why would you come to blighty if there is no money/benefits/housing on offer?

As for the jobs thing, employers who take the piss, ie starbucks, pret a manger etc should have a quiet talking to....(with menaces)

MaxK
That only applies to asylum seekers. Other immigrants from non EU countries are mainly illegal and shouldn't get any benefits. The UK like most countries takes asylum seekers. We are nowhere the highest asylum destination as a percentage of our population. The same applies to foreigners in general.

The problem Labour have is the electorate does not(rightly so) trust them with the economy, they are clueless and if Labour get back in two of the protagonists of the last disastrous Labour government are free to wreck havock again.
Immigration, NHS and education are extremely important in their own right, but without a flourishing economy everything goes down the pan.
2517

We have lower than average immigrants in the EU and across the world.

We have 8.3%

The average in the EU is 8.6%

This is substantially less than that of major immigration countries such as Australia (23 per cent), Canada (19.3 per cent) and the USA (12.3 per cent)

Norway has 14.9%

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue Haystack.

What I am arguing is that we don't have that much of a problem. The world is becoming more culturally diverse and this is a trend that you can't change. You might try and stop it for a while, but the trend is there to be seen. The best solution is to control the process as much as you can in a sensible way.

The most important thing is not to let our infrastructure get overwhelmed.

The immigration costing jobs for UK people is rearing its head because the economy has been in a poor state. If we had a booming economy, we wouldn't care about the immigrants. In fact we would be pleased if they came to do all the jobs that we didn't want to do.

In code Max, that means hes frightened of UKIP.

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels and Steven Swinford

11:10AM GMT 11 Nov 2014





T


Britain can ban European Union migrants from claiming "special non-contributory cash benefits" for up to five years, according to a landmark judgement in Luxembourg.


The EU courts have ruled that it is up to the Government, not Brussels, how it drafts legislation that that excludes foreign, European nationals from claiming social assistance benefits.


As well as asserting national sovereignty over out-of-work welfare benefits, the European Court of Justice has stopped unemployed migrants from using human rights legislation to appeal against measures blocking them from benefits.


"The directive on free movement of EU citizens and the regulation on the coordination of social security systems do not preclude domestic legislation which excludes nationals of other member states from entitlement to certain ‘special non-contributory cash benefits’, although they are granted to nationals of the host member state who are in the same situation," the EU court ruled on Tuesday


The flagship judgment, following a case in Germany, confirms that governments can treat European jobseekers differently from their own nationals who are in the same situation without any recourse by migrants to EU human rights laws.

"When the member states lay down the conditions for the grant of special non-contributory cash benefits and the extent of such benefits, they are not implementing EU law, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU is therefore not applicable," said the ruling.

The judgment could have major implications for an EU challenge to Britain’s "habitual residence test" and will be seen by the Government as recognition that abuse of Europe’s free movement rules does exist.

"The UK and other national governments can therefore use this precedent to defend their restrictions on EU migrants’ access to non-contributory benefits," said Stephen Booth, of the Open Europe think-tank

"However, extending this principle and putting greater restrictions on to non-contributory in-work benefits, such as tax credits, the NHS and social housing, would require changes to EU legislation. This case could embolden UK allies to support such a move."

The German case involved two Romanian nationals, Elisabeta Dano and her son Florin, who were refused benefits in Leipzig because she "did not enter Germany in order to seek work there".

She and her son have been residing in Germany since November 2010.

"One of the conditions for a right of residence is that economically inactive persons must have sufficient resources of their own," said the EU court. "The directive thus seeks to prevent economically inactive EU citizens from using the host member state's welfare system to fund their means of subsistence."

The European Commission welcomed the judment as bringing "more clarity" to the rules on EU free movement.

Fishfinger - 11 Nov 2014 19:23 - 50007 of 50014

"People want to come here for our standard of living, a european act wont stop them when they are so desperate."

Why the fuck have you been prattling on about food banks, and how everyone has to eat tripe and chips, for the last year, if the standard of living is so good in the UK?

Because gf just likes to follow the party line and make cheap points with little regard to logic, sense and consistency.

Strewth, Haystack, you don't think Fishfinger's one of them Labour party activists, do you? But he gave a 100k grand to the Tory party out of the petty cash tin not so long ago, doncha know?

By Dan Hodges

12:31PM GMT 11 Nov 2014

CommentsComments





It’s possible to construct a case for John Bercow being one of the greatest Speakers in parliamentary history. He is a reformer. A parliamentary radical. He sees himself as the champion of the ordinary backbencher, with a mission to ensure that those humble representatives of the people are able to hold the executive to account effectively. He is cowed neither by reputation nor precedent. And he intends to drag Parliament, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the 21st century.


That’s certainly the case John Bercow would make. Which is why, far from being one of the greatest Speakers in parliamentary history, he is fast shaping up to be one of the worst.


This morning our papers are filled with righteous condemnation of the duplicity and stupidity of David Cameron, Theresa May and Michael Gove. Having promised Tory backbenchers a debate on the European Arrest Warrant, they realised they were facing a rebellion of such humiliating proportions that they opted to engage in some desperate last-minute procedural chicanery to hoodwink Parliament and avoid a vote. Or at least, that is the favoured narrative.


Unfortunately, it’s false. As I watched the chaos unfolding in the House of Commons chamber yesterday, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not least because it didn’t make any sense. By my understanding, the Government had the rebellion well under control. David Cameron and Theresa May were confident of winning the vote with only 30-40 rebels opposing, a fraction of the 100-plus that had been predicted.


Moreover, Cameron had taken the political decision to confront the issue head-on, get the whole thing parked in advance of the Rochester by-election, then move on to other issues like the economy and not being Ed Miliband.

So when everything went crazy yesterday, I thought to myself: “How did Cameron think he’d get away with going back on his word and not having a vote?”

The answer was that he didn’t. Because he wasn’t trying to get away with anything.

To understand why, you have to understand the nature of the parliamentary process that surrounds the ratification of the decision to sign-up to the EAW. The EAW was one of 35 justice measures the Government agreed to sign back up to following the 2010 Lisbon Treaty opt-out.

Normally, this ratification would have been done via a statutory instrument. These are devices used by the Government to give formal legal assent to policy without requiring a full debate of the House. I’ve sat in on dozens of SI sessions. They are resolved in one of the House of Commons committee rooms, with about a dozen bored MPs lounging around, and are done and dusted in about an hour. There is nothing nefarious about their use.


Because of the contentious nature of the EAW, Cameron decided to circumvent this normal SI process, and bring it to a full debate, and a vote of the whole House. You’ll recall he ambushed Ed Miliband with the announcement at PMQS a couple of weeks ago.

But legally, the statutory instrument still had to be passed to bring 11 elements of the 35 new justice measures into line with British legislation. The EAW wasn’t one of those measures, because it is already technically written into English law. So, on the advice of the Government’s lawyers, a motion was drafted which was built around the original SI, including the 11 measures that needed to be written into English law. That was done for legal reasons, not political ones.

But of course the EAW is highly political. It’s why David Cameron opted to bring the issue to a vote of the whole House in the first place. So the Government announced that it would be bound by the will of the House on all 35 measures, including the EAW. There would be a full debate. There would be a full vote. If the House approved the Government motion, ministers would sign up to the EAW. If the House rejected the Government motion, they would not.

As far as Downing Street, the Home Office and the whips office were concerned, that was it. They would have the vote, they would win the vote comfortably, and then everyone would move on. The rebellion was fading. There was no need for any legislative hanky-panky.

But then all of sudden Yvette Cooper – who has recently rediscovered her political mojo – popped up to allege that the Government was trying to back out of the vote. This bemused May and Cameron, and May wrote back outlining the Government’s stance. But some insiders began to smell a rat.

So on Sunday, after the Remembrance commemoration at the Cenotaph, Theresa May approached John Bercow, and explained the Government’s position. She also double-checked that the motion was in order, and that she would be allowed to focus on the EAW in her speech, even though it was not mentioned on the order paper. According to Government insiders, Bercow told her he “was happy” to proceed on that basis.

Which brings us to yesterday. When the Speaker calmly rose, told the whole House there would not be a vote on the EAW, and stated people would no doubt be “contemptuous” of the Government’s tactics.

The small handful of Tory rebels unsurprisingly went into meltdown. They had just been informed by the Speaker they had been duped. So did the rest of the House. Again with good reason, given it had just been informed by the Speaker it was being played for fools by a Government that had lost control of its backbenches.

Meanwhile, on the Government front benches there was incredulity at Bercow’s statement. But that incredulity was about to turn to naked fury.

A number of backbench Tory MPs noticed that Bercow had a copy of Parliament’s procedural “bible”, Erskine May, in front of him. It was open at a page covering an obscure procedural motion which states “this motion will not now be put”. Several minutes later, Yvette Cooper stood up to move that very motion. Ken Clarke said he had never heard a motion like it in all his time in the House.

Let’s turn away from this procedural malarkey, and back to The Greatest Ever Speaker In Parliamentary History. John Bercow is indeed a radical. And a reformer. It is true he is a champion of the ordinary backbencher. And he is rightly trying to drag the House of Commons into the 21st century. For all this, he should be commended.

But the Speaker of the House of Commons has three other much more fundamental responsibilities.

The first of these is to maintain order. And yesterday John Bercow did not maintain order. He precipitated chaos. It was his intervention, laced with his hyperbolic commentary about the Government’s “contemptuous” actions, that reduced a debate on a serious law and order issue to a circus. That is not his job. It is the opposite of his job.

His second responsibility is to remain invisible. The oft used analogy of a football referee is simplistic, but accurate. The Speaker is doing well when you don’t know he’s there.

John Bercow, however, gives the impression that he would have a nervous breakdown if he thought people didn’t know he was there. We see it weekly at PMQs. We see it in every major debate. We see it at each major parliamentary occasion. We saw it over the row over the Commons clerk. We saw it yesterday with his deliberately provocative intervention in the EAW debate.

John Bercow always has to make it about John Bercow. But it isn’t about John Bercow. It’s about us, and the people we send to the House of Commons to represent us. His ego is writing cheques his office – however grand – cannot cash.

The Speaker’s third responsibility is the most sacred of all. He or she must rise above politics: not only by being scrupulously neutral, but by being seen to be so.

John Bercow does not rise above politics. As we saw yesterday, he inserts himself into the centre of it. John Bercow is not perceived to be scrupulously neutral. Ask a Labour MP, and they will tell you – with a smile – that Bercow is a great Speaker, who is commendably independent. Ask a Tory MP and they will tell you – with a scowl – he is a terrible Speaker who has a grievance against David Cameron personally and the Government generally. Those disparate responses, by definition, mean he is failing to fulfil his primary function.

John Bercow would argue that is the price you pay for holding the executive to account. Well, it’s too high a price. It’s the job of MPs to hold the executive to account, not the Speaker. The Speaker sits at the heart of our democratic system. And that heart cannot beat unevenly.

Should the Government have communicated more effectively with MPs yesterday? Yes. Should it have been clearer about why the motion was drafted the way it was? Yes. Should it have been more aware of Labour’s clever attempt to cause parliamentary mischief? Yes.

But there was no attempt to hoodwink the Commons yesterday. The Government won the vote easily, as it knew it always would. The rebellion was well contained. As the Government always knew it would be.

It is John Bercow who is responsible for yesterday’s chaos, not Theresa May. It is John Bercow, not Theresa May, who muddied the waters on the EAW vote. And it is John Bercow, not Theresa May, who today stands guilty of treating the House of Commons with contempt.