I was under the impression that none had been sent* so 4 outdoes my expectations. But still, for £175million each they better have moved into mansions with a numbered Swiss account waiting for them. *(except that one guy they paid to leave of his own accord, who promptly left Rwanda and is free to re-enter the UK since he was never formally deported)
From what I've read all 4 were voluntary, including the one that did a runner the moment he touched down and hasn't been seen/heard from since.
From what I read elsewhere, one of the conditions was that deportees would be issued with Rwandan ID & citizenship papers as soon as they arrived. ID and citizenship papers that would guarantee legal entry to the UK. So my guess is that the missing guy is already back here.
Byebye Winter Fuel Allowance. I have a feeling that the next couple of years are going to be brutal for the over 60s, nobody else has much left to cut and they have all those state benefits and pensions just sitting there looking tempting...
Labour gave them the fuel allowance, they voted overhwelmingly Conservative for 2 decades, obviously they didn't want it.
Gave out that at the same time as raiding the tax relief on pensions that would make pensions earn far more than the sporadic winter payment and ultimately pushed pension funds away from investing in UK, nice shot in the foot, I'm sure there will be further raids on pensions/pensioners wealth soon enough.
What I find interesting is the comments by commentators that it's a 'political choice'. This may be but I don't recall mention of austerity being called a 'political choice', which it was. Fundamentally I'm not against winter fuel payments being means tested so long as people who need it don't miss out. I have the same comment every year off my mum who calls it her 'new shoes fund'.
So from what I read of the winter fuel allowance stuff… It will no longer be paid to those not already in receipt of pension credits or other means-tested benefits. There are up to 10 million people affected, and potentially up to 800,000 people are eligible for pension credit but are not currently claiming it. So, as always, there’s a bit more to it than a snappy headline. We could go into the previously unknown £22 billion black hole in public finances, or the budget reserves that had already been spent three times over within three months of this financial year. Those are probably also more complicated than they sound on the face of it. We could also go into the utterly brutal cuts that have been inflicted on all of us for the last 14 years. Or the financial deregulation in the 80s which was directly responsible for the market conditions that led to completely unnecessary ideological austerity. Much of it wasn’t, there simply isn’t the money to pay for the things that the previous government had committed to. It was a ‘political choice’ to accept the findings of the public sector pay review for healthcare workers. But that’s a review that the previous government instigated, and the alternative was to continue facing strikes which have already cost £1.7 billion.
In short, the 14 year old Jenga tower governance would cost incrementally more each year until some inevitable catastrophic collapse - vs - some uncomfortable belt-tightening that aims to correct the bullsh!t of the last 14 years and maybe steer us away from guaranteed disaster.
I would agree, its amazing what happens when you put someone who has some form of background in a subject in charge of it for a country.... Like making Timpson Prisons Minister.
Who knew that appointing Ministers with real-world expertise in their assigned role would actually work? (Not the Tories, that's who!)
Just when you think people can't get any more stupid: https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/ Despite all that happened around a month ago, Reform's popularity is still rising. F*ck me bloody sideways...
I guess you can take your pick, really… Maybe it was when terrorists were trying to burn down a hotel specifically because it houses asylum seekers. While people were still in the building (that’s the part that makes it terrorism, as opposed to “just” rioting). Or maybe it was when the leader of Reform UK, a sitting member of parliament, was encouraging people by sharing misinformation sourced from a man on the run from charges of sexual assault and sex trafficking of minors. Or maybe it was the decades of poisonous anti-immigration rhetoric that the leader of Reform UK has been at the forefront of.
