Simon Cox
migration & equality, law & politics | lawyer | cis | he/him | @DoughtyStImm.bsky.social | trustee Right To Remain | ex-OSF | my views obvs, not doughty st | large photo Paul Trevor, 1978, Brick Lane
- I first met Gerry when I was 16 and volunteered for Searchlight. Completely committed, enormously knowledgeable about the far Right, and open to work with any serious anti-fascists. I learned a lot from him. May his memory be for a blessing.
- This hards hard. From 1973, strangely not on radio playlists open.spotify.com/track/1tPsPj...
- When your Danish Hat Game acting clue is a Nazi salute and that covers Farage, Musk and Kanye.
- Overheard, late teen, early 20s “ I think I’m just gonna write Mum a poem for Christmas”
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- Aww I think that was a lovely thing to do.
- mood
- This is very basic stuff
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- Yeah.
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- 🤞
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- The Home Secretary can take British citizenship away if she thinks that doing so is “in the public interest” - section 40(2) British Nationality Act 1981 www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/6... but not if that would make the person stateless: section 40(4). That’s facially broad words. …
- what have the Romans ever done for us? They brought the cats. hhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8dvdp9gn7o
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- gotta link? I like a laugh
- we can hope open.spotify.com/track/2XIr0K...
- Home Office spent £400,000 for boy band to sing “anti-radicalisation” song www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news...
- Mahmoud has listened to same clique of senior Home Office officials who have advised for 30+ years that loud announcements of punitive policies will deter refugees from coming to UK to seek asylum. Labour did this extensively last time. It didn’t work. A history thread. +
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- Thanks, I litigated each of these issues at the time. By “work”, I meant “deter refugees from coming” - what do you mean?
- Unsurprising Labour Govt has gone down rabbit hole of talking as if asylum-seeking can be ended. They listen to immigration officials, in a fantasy island isolated even from other civil servants. When Diane Abbott was Shadow Home Sec, she made no attempt to create an alternative policy. But…
- Fondly remembering Mike O’Brien MP, and reading his exchange with senior officials about implementing his policy of taping asylum interviews. They *hated* it and tried every trick to stall or block it. He saw through it and kept on going. We do not seem to have a Mike O’Brien today.
- PS. There is no data to support contention that any significant proportion of genuine refugees will change their intention to come to UK based on these kind of announcements, or the implementation of the policies.
- Take the jewellery confiscation idea. Will a person who would have to pay a smuggler £1000s (of their own or family money), or pay them with their body, and maybe risk drowning, change their mind about the journey / destination to keep their jewellery? You be the judge.
- Labour, 2005, Govt loudly passed law listing all the things to take into account when deciding if a person is lying about their asylum claim. This applies to judges, you know, those people whose whole job it is to decide what the facts are. Didn’t make any real difference.
- Labour, 2005, Govt quietly introduced formal scheme for failed asylum-seekers who couldn’t leave UK or whose human rights would be breached if they were forced, extending support to those with plausible fresh asylum claims.
- Labour, 2002, Home Office loudly announced that asylum-seekers who didn’t claim asylum on arrival would be denied asylum support. Rarely applied in practice because law’s own human rights exception exempted destitute people, after Govt had to be dragged through courts to properly accept that +
- (Side note, senior Home Office official gave witness evidence that immigration officials ask *everyone* arriving in UK for their name - even if they present a UK passport - which surprised at least one judge who said he had never been asked) +
- (Home Office got a temporary budget boost to speed up decision-making, on basis this would cut expenditure on asylum-support) +
- 2000, Home Office had to quickly, quietly establish a “hard cases” scheme for the failed asylum-seekers they couldn’t remove or who had plausible fresh asylum claims based on new evidence / events +
- Labour, 1999, loudly established Home Office asylum support scheme for asylum-seekers only, at much lower rates than income support & with “no choice” accomm, replacing pre-1996 option to take rented accomm directly and claim housing benefit / LA support, none for failed asylum-seekers +
- As part of new scheme, asylum-seekers would have to hand over their jewellery to Home Office to pay for accommodation. (This didn’t become a practice, probably because staff found it humiliating and Govt depts aren’t set up to re-sell jewellery. )
- Ministers ended access of destitute asylum-seekers & failed asylum-seekers to income support & housing benefits with no replacement support (Cons 1996. Drove destitute asylum-seekers to seek local authority support)
- That David Frost, Nick Timothy and others attached essentially zero importance to the Dublin third country removal system -- the result of over 30 years of UK diplomacy -- at the time of Brexit is fascinating. People with very limited understanding but infinite self-belief.
- last sentence there is just brilliant.
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- No.
- The comments here that are questioning the history curriculum: WE LEARN THIS IN SCHOOL. I DON'T KNOW HOW PEOPLE MISS THIS.
- But only on curriculum since 1990s. Maybe 70% of population went to school before that? And 10% went later but weren’t paying attention?
- Searching for the Holy Grail of British politics, No 10 think they’re Arthurian. Everyone else realises they’re Monty Python.
- Labour seem to now come up with a new kamikaze nosedive operation to alienate social liberals while failing to attract Reform curious voters every month. Then back off again in face of anger from progressives and failure among social conservatives. A doom loop which may yet kill them off altogether.
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- Brazil nut PSA: One nut has more than minimum recommended daily amount of selenium. Don’t eat more than 6 a day: too much selenium makes you ill. ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/S...
- Trump regime sacks immigration judges with a background in immigrant defence. www.reddit.com/r/law/s/2SLW...
- “It’s a shame Austin-Saddington didn’t Google Trengrove. I found an article (metro.co.uk/2015/09/19/w...) in 2015: “exceptionally dangerous”, sentenced to 13 years in 2015 for “repeatedly raping a teenage girl”: 20 women alleged he had assaulted them.” www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
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- Hi!
- really, on main, Wimbledon? *boink boink*
- the damage being done to the standing of law enforcement amongst previously non-radicalised Americans must be huge
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- kin’ell
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- I knew it couldn’t last
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- oh, what fun! Let’s hope you don’t end up being a modern-day Isherwood…
- when I spend time (and I do) with family, colleagues and friends aged 30 and under, I am struck by their confidence, emotional intelligence and reasonableness.
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- Mario was with a young woman, dressed as Princess Peach. No inappropriate comments to her. Just friendliness. To them, this seemed very normal. To me, it felt so different to my early 20s, when a group of young men out of a Friday night might so quickly slide into a fight with a stranger.
