Voting TaKtiX

Would it work?:

Do you think that if we ran a publicity campaign to let people know that the left/right distinction is French, then we could rely on latent British Francophobia to finally abort the distinction?

Well, something has to. “The Lib Dems move Right”, “That’s a left-wing policy”. Um, no. It’s neither. left vs right is and ill-defined, misunderstood term that is abused by the commentariat (especially in the MSM) who show little understanding of the history. (more…)

The government has today announced it’s plans for a points based immigration system. I don’t see this as an awful measure, to be honest. In fact it’s one of those things that I’m quite surprised hasn’t come into effect a lot sooner, what with it being used in most of the old colonies already.

The main issue, of course, is management of the system. The government’s handling of immigration and asylum so far hasn’t exactly been stellar, and introducing a fairly complicated system to further vet immigration hopefuls might be too much of a challenge for them. So ten out of ten for the idea, zero out of ten for originality, zero out of ten for stealing an idea that Tories were discussing before the last election, and a big ? out of ten for how well the government will actually manage to implement a big new scheme.

The bigger issue though is of course asylum, and this measure will do nothing to help out either asylum or illegal immigration. It may even make illegal immigration more commonplace, as people who would otherwise have been allowed entry no longer qualify and seek to enter illegally instead. And a final point on the new system - online application. So we’re definitely only interested in a certain type of immigrant then, God forbid you don’t have easy access to the internet and would like to move to the UK.

Maybe that’s a little too harsh. I do like this idea for its sensible approach to an otherwise confused and heated topic. Perhaps I’m at the point where I’m so jaded by this government and their big initiatives that even when they come up with a good one, I can’t build up any enthusiasm. Either way, let’s hope the government follows up on this announcement about immigration with a similarly sensible one on asylum, otherwise they are dealing with the easy problem while the hard one goes unsolved.