Three cheers for Julian Huppert MP

Three cheers (and a pint, if we happen to see down the pub) for Cambridge's Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert who intervened to prevent the repatriation of an immigrant to a nation where he was likely to be persecuted and tortured.

Cambridge's LibDem MP Julian Huppert - a good bloke, even if he is a politician.

Image from Wikipedia, Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 licence.

It's about time a few politicians stood up for immigrants, who - by allowing the right wing press (especially the Daily Mail, which is virtually fascist) to ram a load of utter racist rot down the electorate's collective throat - they have used as a convenient scapegoat, allowing them to take the blame for problems that were in fact the government's fault all along.

Secondly, repatriating immigrants to nations where they will face persecution, torture and even murder is shameful and flies in the face of all the traditionally British qualities that make us a great country. Mr. Huppert should feel as proud of himself as we do to have him as our MP.

Give a dog a bad name...trouble oop t'Immigration Centre

As any teacher with half a brain will tell you, all children start off as good kids and all good kids do something naughty once in a while (the infamous PVA glue in the school milk incident of 1979 being one example from my own childhood). If, following chastisement, that child is treated no differently to his or her peers, the child will continue being what he or she was previously - a normal kid. However, if adults then mark the child out as a bad kid, he or she gains a reputation and begin living up to it. Over time, the reputation gets worse and worse and - eventually - what you end up with is a juvenile delinquent who in all too many cases is destined for a life of anti-social behaviour and crime.

Immigrants enjoying their stay at Oakington, which is kind of like Butlins only guests are treated as criminals and kept locked up behind barbed wire.

Image from UK Indymedia

Recently, at the Oakington Illegal Prison...sorry, I mean Immigrant Detainment Centre near Cambridge, trouble broke out after one detainee died at the facility. While the death is not being treated as suspicious, inmates used the situation as an opportunity to protest. Around 60 detainees were involved and, according to the Home Office, "a number of ringleaders have been removed" from the Centre.

Six Immigration officers and one police officer were injured during the trouble on Thursday. Why did the inmates turn to violence? It's statistically unlikely that all 60 of them are normally violent people and many of them have probably never committed an offence in their lives apart from entering or staying in Britain illegally, either to escape their homeland where they may face persecution or simply because - like any human being - they wish to improve their lives and make something of themselves. Treat a child like a bad kid and he or she will feel they have something to live up to. Adults are not so different to children.

Home Office Oakington website here.

British Citizenship Eligibility Test

People who wish to enter the UK and to live and work here permanently will now have to sit a test to see if they are eligible for the right to do so. The test features 24 questions which the entrant must complete within 45 minutes - answering more than 75% of them correctly means they may be eligible for citizenship.

If you were born here, making you British, have you ever wondered how well YOU would do in the test? Well, now you can find out...

Click here to take the test

Acid Rabbi scored 67%, Mrs. Rabbi scored a more respectable 71%. As such, we will both be leaving the country as soon as possible. Expect future posts to be sent from our new home in the Seychelles.

63K asylum seekers will be allowed to stay in UK

63,000 asylum seekers have been informed by the Home Office that they will be permitted to remain in Britain because they have been here for so long while the Government tries to catch up with a backlog of cases that removing them would be too difficult.

Officials have to date examined nearly 200,000 out of 450,000 individual cases and approved the claimant's right to asylum in 32% of those cases. If they keep up that rate, 144,000 people will be allowed to stay here. Some of them are cases that would not have otherwise been approved, going back to the 1990s, while the majority will be genuine examples in which the asylum seeker faces torture, political imprisonment or murder should they return to their place of origin.

Good. That's another 144,000 people who, once approved, will be able to start looking for work and - as soon as the recession is over and they find it - start paying taxes which can then be spent on health and public services.