YOU have to give credit where credit is due. It is really amazing to learn that the Westminster Parliament is now able to legislate to make Rwanda, a country some 4000 miles away in east Africa, “safe”. The power of the green benches apparently knows no bounds. Perhaps using the same magic spell they could make Gaza and Israel “safe” as well. London to Gaza is a mere 3000 miles.
Even the most right-wing, anti-immigration Tory MP must privately see that, beyond the smokescreen of the their PR machine, the idea of packing large numbers of human beings on to fleets of aircraft and sending them to some dubious new life in Rwanda is simply a fantasy.
READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: Gaza and Rwanda highlight continuing failure of British democracy
The current asylum backlog is more than 175,000 cases. More than 50,000 people crossed the English Channel in small boats in the year to June 2023. There is every reason to assume another 50,000 will start to arrive in the spring of 2024. Assuming that even a fraction of these people were willing to go to Rwanda, the number of flights required would be huge. The rather obvious question, which remains unanswered, is what the UK Government will do with those who simply refuse to take up the offer of a one-way economy-class ticket, with no air miles, to Rwanda. Will they be dragged on to the aircraft in handcuffs and chains? The year is 2023, not 1823.
Much UK Government time, money and effort has already been spent on this lunatic idea which has no other purpose than to fool the voters of the south of England into thinking that a simple, easy solution to a complex immigration crisis actually exists.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
HOW does Sunak think a treaty will solve the problems of human rights abuses in Rwanda? If the UK is prepared to ignore international law to put their Rwanda plan into effect, what guarantee is there that Rwanda will honour any treaty? Or do Sunak and co just not care if the asylum seekers they send just disappear?
P Davidson
Falkirk
THE reaction of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to the confirmation by the Supreme Court that the Rwanda policy breaches a number of laws and international agreements to which Britain is a signatory does not surprise me. He will use his majority in the crooked House of Commons to introduce legislation so that he can continue with the Tories’ heartless and immoral Rwanda policy. After all, he was the Chancellor who wrote off all the corruption surrounding the dodgy Covid contracts which saw the public purse lose billions of pounds. Sunak has shown, time after time, that he does not respect the law.
Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley
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SO there we have it. If the courts say something like a Scottish-based indyref is unlawful then, that’s IT! – game over.
If the courts say something like dumping refugees in Rwanda is unlawful then that’s NOT it – just change the law to MAKE it lawful. As I’ve said for years, what is LEGAL, is what the people in power SAY is legal. A clever man once said “the law is an ass”. This latest farce illustrates this completely.
If we play by Westminster rules we’ll NEVER have independence ‘cos they’ll make damn sure that it won’t be “legal” by simply altering any inconvenient existing laws which MIGHT have loopholes which allow it.
Barry Stewart
Blantyre
CAMERON is back, Braverman is out, McVey is in as Minister without Portfolio and Holden is elevated to the new Conservative Party Chairman.
Braverman’s resignation letter and the X (formerly Twitter) pronouncement by Andrea Jenkyns that “Sunak must go” are evidence that all is not well in the ruling government that in 2019 was elected by landslide thanks to Boris Johnson’s charisma and the negativity of media applied to Corbyn.
READ MORE: Rishi Sunak: UK will tear up laws and challenge judges on Rwanda plan
Sunak jettisoned his most toxic freelancing minister, but the direction of this government has not really changed, in the short term at least. Esther McVey has been slipped in along with Dick Holden, also of the party’s right wing, to placate the rumbustious members of the back benches following Braverman’s removal. It may be that these two will not be sufficient to repel the hordes, or the grenades being hurled towards the government front benches rather than to the benches opposite.
Cameron may well help turn the “super tanker” of government away from the current Corryvrekan whirlpool of the Westminster, whose “false profits” sold us the illusion that prosperity trickles down. The falsehoods of the globalisation of 1980s Reaganomics, which only creates billionaires and the throw-away societies we inhabit now, have been exposed
If the financial markets were working with a societal view as opposed to the myopia of the bottom line, the additional social costs require to keep ordinary people with real work, real food, real homes and real hope would be calculated into the accounts. They aren’t, are they?
Neither Sunak nor Starmer is a change candidate.
Alistair Ballantyne
Angus
JIM Taylor’s letter in Wednesday’s paper hits the nail on the head about SNP defections. The third-last paragraph sums it up neatly.
The only reason to vote SNP now is that they’re the best of a bad bunch as far as Scotland is concerned in most cases.
READ MORE: Michael Matheson tells MSPs his children streaming football matches led to iPad bill
What’s the point of showing up in Westminster only to have the Mickey taken by English MPs? Most of the constituency work could be done without taking part in the comedy show that passes for a parliament. It’s time to pull out of the sham that gets passed off as a democracy.
Drew Reid
Falkirk
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