She means well but she goes too far.

But she does mean well.

I will only make one comment on asylum seekers in general. The whole system is a mess and it needs root and branch reform. But whilst it has been such a mess that the Labour Government had to arrange to use empty Glasgow Council houses to house asylum seekers it hadn’t managed to process – for YEARS – it has also had a positive effect in those communities in Glasgow where the asylum seekers have been housed.

Let no one tell you differently. Whenever asylum seekers are taken away it is the local community here who react first. And it will be the local community who will have to deal with this tragic event.

My thoughts are with the people in Red Road and the poor Concierge who found this family lying dead. It’s a traumatic event and I don’t think it should be used as a foundation for debate.

It would appear from what little we know that the father was mentally ill. Was he receiving any treatment? If not, why not?

The fact that he was a failed asylum seeker surely does not remove the duty of care, for as long as he is in the country.

Or maybe he has.

Well, exactly. Kampfner says in his article that

David Cameron is on the verge of power … For many Labour supporters, the single most important reason for their party to stay in power is to keep the Tories out. Yet people can only for so long be exhorted to hold their nose, to vote for a party they feel has let them down, simply because the alternative is worse.

He suggests that Cameron’s victory is a foregone conclusion (it isn’t), so why don’t his (Kampfner’s) good little Guardian readers do the sensible thing and vote for the LibDems. That way they won’t offend their oh-so-delicate sensibilities by having to hold their nose (FFS!!) and vote Labour. Instead they can bask in a sense of their own right-on self-righteousness. And of course it won’t be their fault if the rotten old Tories get back in!! So in order to be good little Lefties, he seems to be saying, they need the unsullied – and utter futility of – opposition.

Labour, he says, have ‘one all-consuming purpose: re-election’. Well, he’s wrong and extremely crass to think that that’s the only thing Labour care about. And as for wanting to be re-elected. Well, how very dare they!

Neil Kinnock’s response really rips Kampfner’s argument to shreds. He takes particular issue with Kampfner’s pious reference to Robin Cook:

Robin was an inveterate, lifelong opponent of dilettante self-indulgence and always a principled, gutsy democratic socialist, never a sunshine soldier. He would see John Kampfner’s “platform” as a scaffold, not a launch pad, for progressives.

I thought that candidates were supposed to emulate Cameron’s message of change, and support his commitment to the NHS? I thought they would be endorsing his vote blue go green initiative?

Is that not the whole point of our party system? One votes for a party on the basis of the manifesto, and leader? Otherwise, if candidates are allowed to think or believe in whatever they please could they publicly declare where they stand on issues? Could they write on their website that they are conservatives but don’t believe in the nhs or global warming? So that the electorate can find someone else to send to parliament instead?

This is FOOLING the public. It’s not a joke, people are voting for one thing and getting something else?! That’s seriously messed up.

The shadow chief whip endorses YBF and so does the chairman of the party. Remind me, what is the chief whip’s job? To WHIP MPs into voting a certain way right? What if he pursues a YBF agenda in Parliament? Will Cameron allow that?

As far as I’m concerned, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t!!

Actually that was exactly what was happening, according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

I read JN’s comments differently. He seems to me to be saying that if the claiment has no right to asylum, e.g they flew in from Canada where they had been given leave to stay, then they should be on the next flight home. No need to hang around or give them false hope.

Likewise asylum seekers who arrive here from France, or any other EU country, where they are obviously under no threat.

Tom- here’s an article from yesterdays Guardian Diary section: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/09/hugh-muir-diary-ed-vaizey

PPCs are:
Conor Burns,PPC in safe seat Bournemouth West, Mark Clarke, YBF director in Tooting, Michelle Donelan in Wentworth who is also standing for council in Ealing, Karen Allen in South Shields and Jesse Norman in Hereford are to name a few.

Wow – what ignorance. You seem to be suggesting that every single asylum seeker should be returned straightaway, as though none of them were genuine.

Labour shouldn’t have taken its committed supporters for granted over the last 13 years. Those on the left who believe in civil liberties have been ignored. Those who wanted effective reform of public services have found themselves spectators to a Blairite-Brownite political football match in which both sides contrived to lose. And those who felt betrayed over Iraq in 2005 still feel keenly that betrayal now, even if Blair and Brown still fervently believe the war was right.

Instead of suggesting Kampfner is a traitor, you’d be better off reflecting on why he feels so disappointed.

No-one can expect you to admit it so close to the election but one hopes you share a little of that disappointment too. On May 7, if Labour have returned to opposition, I suspect your post-mortem will quite closely reflect Kampfner’s. And I’m sure the Lib Dems would also welcome you with open arms!

“….In a statement on Tuesday night, a UK Border Agency spokesman said: “Any death of this kind is a tragedy, and our deepest sympathies are with their family and friends at this time. We had advised the family that we were making arrangements to return them to Canada – where they had been granted protection. However, no imminent action to remove them from the UK had been planned….”

“…Unconfirmed reports suggested the the father suffered from serious mental delusions, believing himself be a Russian secret agent who had uncovered a plot by the Candian government to assasinate the Queen….”.

“….the allegations were branded a “smear campaign” by the Director of a Scottish immigration charity…”

“…Ms Qureshi stormed out of an impromptu meeting held by Stratchclyde Police yesterday…”

Clearly a strange case. “Bizarre”, as Willie Bain, the local MP, calls it, and not one upon which to hang too many conclusions or judgements.

In addition – in this particular, very sad, case the father appears to have had severe mental health problems which date back before he sought asylum in the UK. According to the Independent:

…it emerged that the father, who it was reported had been suffering from delusions, made a series of bizarre claims on leaving Canada in 2007 where they had been granted leave to stay two years earlier. He fell out with the Canadian authorities when he alleged that they were swapping top-level secrets with Vladimir Putin and using “psychotronic drugs” in an attempt to alter his mind. Before arriving in Glasgow last autumn they had travelled through Germany, Holland, Spain and Ireland. Once they reached London they contacted an MP claiming the Canadian Prime Minister was plotting against the Queen.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/call-for-inquiry-into-glasgow-tower-suicides-1918839.html

If these people had been delt with swiftly, and retured to where they belong, they would not have had time to do what they did. The way the process works must cause massive trauma. Speed is the answer, send them back on the return plane at once and stop messing about.

And if you’re needing a Party Political Broadcast doing….

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

You do realise that the quality of work the Home Office does on asylum can be poor and already very distressed people are affected by it. What this translates to occasionally is people throwing themselves to their deaths while others live in quiet, fearful misery for years. Your party’s stance is that this is a price worth paying for your immigration policy. While I understand it, it’s not a stance I and many others are able to accept in good faith, while realising that systems are never perfect. Sometimes it makes us emotional.

As for your poorly erased comment about PAiH being a branch of Solidarity, and your teenage style “”s around charity, I’m disappointed that you would be such a twit as to bring up your wee grudge with PAiH in these sad circumstances and I want to remind you that you’re wrong. I would know because I’ve worked for PAiH as a housing adviser very hard for the last four years helping people with everyday housing and homelessness issues. I can tell you categorically that there is no party political element to the work that we do – the suggestion that there is would predictably come from one as myopic as an MP. Do you realise the world isn’t nearly as obsessed by your New Lab/Tory playground politicking as you’d wish? Probably not.
We are a charity – you can check. Oh wait – I think you already did and OSCR decided very clearly that there was no question whatsoever that we are.

That you only notice when we’re talking about asylum is because you don’t care about the work we do here on a daily basis. I wouldn’t particularly expect you to – it’s not in the papers much.

Is the way you talk about PAiH broadly indicative of the way you approach arguments in general? If so, I’d be grateful if you’d leave Westminster and get a far less responsible job.

On the other hand, well done for not talking about matters the facts of which you do not know.

I agree we don’t know the details but I still think it is fair to say at this stage that whatever agency or perhaps agencies were dealimg with them should examine whether they did all that they could to support them.

Comments about open door immigration policies, people being here illegally etc are quite irrelevant to this case.

The fact is that we had three people living here – legally or illegally – who were clearly in a highly distressed and desperate state. Was anyone aware of that and if so what did they do about it?

I’m not suggesting finding scapegoats or even apportioning blame. No system is foolproof and bad things can happen even when agencies do all the right things. But let’s try and establish what was done and what was not done to support this family and see what can be learned.

While some local authorities in England, especially in London and the south west, are complaining about the strain that immigration and asylum are putting them under, Glasgow City Council were actively lobbying the UK government to place asylum seekers in Glasgow, and the Scottish government have been advertising abroad for people to immigrate to Scotland to start a new life.

The needs of London and the south west are so much different from that of Scotland. Why can’t the rules be changed or even relaxed if an asylum seeker or someone applying to immigrate, agrees to live in Scotland? Even if that means we end up with a two tier immigration and asylum system, then so what? It could encourage people in London and the South West to come to Scotland, and relieve some of the pressure on the local authorities in those areas.

It’s tragic that anyone feels so desperate that they do such a dreadful thing, but throwing blame in all directions before the full facts are known is silly and counter productive.

I missed that post of yours. However, after reading I’m not certain the best way for the people to say we don’t want Brown, Cameron or Clegg to be PM.

If I abstain or spoil the ballot paper as suggested then I’d be giving them a bigger mandate (higher percentage of vote).

One suggestion in the comments was vote Monster raving – hardly a good solution.

Perhaps it’s time we start a new party – the “None of the Above Party”. “Vote for us and we’ll dissolve parliament and call a new election every 6 months until the political parties find someone electable.”

Would you be willing to post a few flyers for me Tom ? You know, as you deliver yours just pop one of mine in the postbox at the same time. It would be good for the environment!

However despite Labour’s honest intentions on the NHS, the more money that is thrown at it, the less return we get. I sincerely believe that there should be other solutions to health care that compliment the NHS. Tax relief on private health care plans, for example.

If the cost treating the average person in this country is £3,000 per year, you are given a voucher worth 80%, £2,400 which you can put towards to private health medical plan. The remaining £600 subsidises NHS accident and emergency departments and pays towards a state system for those less fortunate. An NHS forced to compete may benefit everybody.

My last thought is irrelevent as Cameron is committed to increasing spending on the NHS in the first 5 years, if elected.

My point, in far nicer terms, is that there are several good reasons why not many Tories find the presence of Bercow in their lives a highly negative experience.

Not because of his ‘conversion’.

Say ‘hi’ to those good old Labour types Woodward and Davies when you next pass them in the corridor. I wonder what ‘arguments’ those brave and passionate ideologues were ‘open to’.

Nigel Farage has the opportunity to create one of the funnier moments in modern politics. A nice years effort and then retirement. The only thing that will top that is to see all your faces if you should actually win and have to defuse the myriad landmines your integrity filled party have laid in the way.

I note you breeze straight passed the ‘extremist’ accusation.