Do you wanna be a slave? Do you?
What are human rights?
It’s clearly meant to shock. What next? Rishi Sunak tweeting promises of concentration camps? Gas chambers? Mass graves?
The Guardian notes that it’s calculated…which is pretty clear if you think about it, because nobody more intelligent than Donald Trump would say that accidentally. Sunak is definitely not stupid, let alone as stupid as Trump.
The problem with the government’s illegal migration bill is not just that it is inhumane and unworkable. It is that the inhumanity and unworkability look calculated. They are not simply bugs of the project; they may even be features.
…
If the aim [were] truly to cut costs to taxpayers and save lives by curbing dangerous small boat crossings, there would be two obvious places to start. The first would be to tackle the sclerotic Home Office bureaucracy, where mismanagement and inadequate resources have created a logjam…
There is no legal requirement for people to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach. The government’s own actions are of questionable legality, as it has acknowledged. It has briefed that there will be a “brake” on rights, raising the question of how it can avoid obligations under the European convention on human rights.
Pretty much the way the Nazis did what they did, is my guess.
Apart from the bit about slavery, this is a direct copy of the Australian policy of the last 20 years.
We have people confined to places like Manus Island and Nauru, so determined are we that “if you come by boat, you will never settle in Australia”. We paid millions of dollars to Cambodia to take a handful of these poor, desperate people. The USA and New Zealand have taken some off our hands, but too many still languish.
Apart from the inhumanity, we are also losing great opportunities by not settling these people and taking advantage of the undoubted skills many can bring. A number of earlier “boat arrivals” have gone on to great things
Hieu Van Le – arrived by boat from Vietnam, and became a much admired Governor of South Australia.
Anh Do – On a boat from Vietnam, multi talented entertainer, artist and author.
Munjed Al Muderis – arrived by boat, after an arduous journey from Iraq, is now a world-renowned humanitarian and surgeon.
These are but a few of the refugees who have made Australia, and in the case of Munjed Al Muderis the world, a better place.
We love to see ourselves as the world’s greatest and most egalitarian nation, but in reality, we have the national mindset of children terrified of the dark and jailers terrified of the prisoners.
It is to our lasting shame that we have treated people seeking refuge in such a callous manner, and both our major political parties are in lock step with these policies.
The UK taught us so well, that the student has now become the teacher and they are following our lead, no matter how dark the becomes.
It is shocking. It’s also pretty clearly an appeal to the nativist vote in the UK. That will peel votes off Labour as racism and xenophobia have great crossover. This must breach multiple treaties and conventions that the UK has previously signed up to?
Rev @1, agreed. Australia was reluctant to pass boat refugees through to NZ because they were worried that if we granted them citizenship in NZ in years to come, then they would promptly move to Australia (because why would anyone want to stay in NZ?). Maybe so for some, but then if they cam straight to NZ (admittedly harder and more dangerous), then we could grant them citizenship and they could move to Australia anyway…
The worst thing about this is the human misery resulting. people are being held captive in appalling circumstances, denied proper healthcare and the ability to change their circumstances. There have been multiple instances of locals stealing from and assaulting, even reportedly raping refugees. For many, their mental health has suffered badly. It was one of the concerns NZ had when they were allowed to take a group pf refugees finally. There mental health needs were found to be much more significant than typical of refugees NZ takes. This did not have to be an is another example of a callous policy designed to deter through the threat of ruining lives permanently.
[…] a comment by Rev David Brindley on Do you wanna be a slave? Do […]
What does that even mean?
I dunno, in the US context I’d guess it’d be “you will not be allowed access to the berry fields and the meat packing plants”…
Who knows?
The text above the picture refers to “modern slavery protections”, which appears to refer to the Modern Slavery Act of 2015, laws protecting people against slavery. This appears to be one of the many cases where “the XYZ bill” doesn’t make it clear if the bill is to promote XYZ or restrict it.
maddog
First and foremost that the proof reader is an idiot.
Presumably it means that if you enter the country illegally, you will be denied access to the system that protects you from slavery as per point 2 in the fascism list.
But it very much does not say that.
This is a continuation of policies the Conservative Party has been obsessively pursuing for years for wholly cynical reasons – they were running scared of UKIP. In 2012, Theresa May, as home secretary, told the Telegraph that she sought “to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration”. (The Telegraph is the Tories’ go-to outlet: “I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession,” the present home secretary Suella Braverman said in a television interview fairly recently – the plane would of course be full of refugees.). And under Theresa May, we had the ‘Windrush scandal’ – it was more than a scandal, it was utterly disgraceful, though it destroyed the pretence that racism doesn’t really exist in the present. The ‘scandal’ has not finished yet, for there are victims of the government’s policies still seeking redress.
I must take exception to David Brindley’s remark that ‘the UK taught us so well, that the student has now become the teacher and they are following our lead, no matter how dark the (sic) becomes.’ Australia was racist from its foundation, since the settlers there, however they came to be in Australia, were imbued with ideas held in common by European nations about the inferiority of other races. That is to say, white Australians were not some separate people who were innocent of racism until the UK came along and taught them to be racist.