Afghanistan

[86glebestreet]

7 minutes ago, aaid said:

And if you read the blog from DIFD they're pretty clear that the aid they supply is being targetted directly.

Funnily enough, those countries with despotic leaders are usually those where the population are most in need of assistance

Despotic leaders, are you including Sturgeon 🤣

 

 

 

 

 

 

thats a joke before your head explodes

[Morrisandmoo]

9 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Just heard on the radio we're taking up to 20,000 with up to a quarter coming in the first 12 months.  Following that abomination that we've been complicit in completely fucking up we're looking to take a maximum of 5,000 in a year.  By which time the Taliban will have their feet under the table with the UK government likely hoping they can get away with not taking in a further 15,000 if at all possible.  Scotland's share of that would be 500 a year but will likely take more which on the one hand is admirable but on the other simply accepting it isn't - they should be challenging the figure the UK are taking in as abhorrently and grossly inadequate.   

Wouldn't be massively surprised if this started to fall down the news agenda and disappear for a while within a fortnight.  

I know folk are really focusing on the numbers when it comes to Asylum seekers, because it's an easy thing to count and an emotive subject for people. But it doesn't matter as much as people think (imo). 

If the Taliban go back to the bad old days then the asylum numbers don't matter. Millions of people (no matter what we do) would be left living in a society where rape, torture and murder are part of the fabric of day to day life. And that's not ok. The focus needs be on promoting a more progressive Taliban now that they are back in power, accepting that evacuating 38million people is not practical. 

I also think a knee-jerk high immigration/asylum strategy of say the West taking 2-3million citizens in the next 12mths is a shitty outcome for Afghanistan when viewed over the medium term. Those immigrants/asylum seekers will inevitably be younger and relatively better off than most Afghans. The very people best placed to influence a better future for Afghanistan, as difficult and unlikely as that seems at present. 

For me, while an immediate strategy to evacuate millions of immigrants/asylum seekers would certainly feel like charity for those on the planes and help us all with our guilt - i think it's ultimately an unambitious policy, which doesn't give Afghanistan a chance. 

[Hertsscot]

53 minutes ago, 86glebestreet said:

Some president he is, giving money to Arsenal instead of helping his own people, do you think a lot of people see visit Rwanda on the Arsenal shirt and say, Oh I must visit Rwanda,🤣

Countries who are poor should get assistance as long as it goes to those who need it

 

Our church has been heavily involved with a microfinance project in Rwanda. There have been some been some very positive results working with our African partners in terms of food provision, job creation, skills training etc. So it was strange to see Rwanda sponsoring a football team. However the argument is that it is to boost tourism, that makes sense and seems a legitimate use of Government money but I'm not sure how they work out whether it's good value for money or not. Has there been a big increase in visitors to Rwanda and how many would have to come to justify sponsorship of Arsenal?

[ThistleWhistle]

45 minutes ago, Morrisandmoo said:

I know folk are really focusing on the numbers when it comes to Asylum seekers, because it's an easy thing to count and an emotive subject for people. But it doesn't matter as much as people think (imo). 

If the Taliban go back to the bad old days then the asylum numbers don't matter. Millions of people (no matter what we do) would be left living in a society where rape, torture and murder are part of the fabric of day to day life. And that's not ok. The focus needs be on promoting a more progressive Taliban now that they are back in power, accepting that evacuating 38million people is not practical. 

I also think a knee-jerk high immigration/asylum strategy of say the West taking 2-3million citizens in the next 12mths is a shitty outcome for Afghanistan when viewed over the medium term. Those immigrants/asylum seekers will inevitably be younger and relatively better off than most Afghans. The very people best placed to influence a better future for Afghanistan, as difficult and unlikely as that seems at present. 

For me, while an immediate strategy to evacuate millions of immigrants/asylum seekers would certainly feel like charity for those on the planes and help us all with our guilt - i think it's ultimately an unambitious policy, which doesn't give Afghanistan a chance. 

 

There’s a couple of things for me though – we had scope to take 5m from Hong Kong barely 6 months ago so why now are we trumpeting 20,000?  Added to that there is surely more than 5,000 including families who have helped us in the last 20 years who’ll be in immediate danger from reprisals – in that 20 year period we’ve already rejected 30,000 applications. 

 

Not suggesting we take millions but when we’re 17^th in the EU per head of capita and looking to reduce it further when we surely have an obligation, particularly given our involvement, to at least give a vague pretence of taking our fair share. Instead the figure seems basically arbitrary and probably decided upon because David Cameron got away relatively unscathed promising a similar figure for Syria, which has half the population of Afghanistan, rather than identifying the local needs.   

 

As an aside taking a nation’s skilled workforce has not really bothered us before – as an example there’s various agencies in Nepal and India headhunting nurses with benefits packages they’re not going to come close to competing with locally.     

[aaid]

52 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

 

There’s a couple of things for me though – we had scope to take 5m from Hong Kong barely 6 months ago so why now are we trumpeting 20,000?  Added to that there is surely more than 5,000 including families who have helped us in the last 20 years who’ll be in immediate danger from reprisals – in that 20 year period we’ve already rejected 30,000 applications. 

 

 

We don't have scope to take 5 million from Hong Kong.  That *was* virtue signalling from the UKG and a hollow offer as they know that no where near that number would take up the offer.  If they did that'd we rescinde it tout suite.

Their actual estimates of who would take up the offer were less than a tenth of that over 5 years and currently those estimates look overcooked.

[Och Aye]

Can they drive lorries? 

[gkm_vancouver]

2 hours ago, Morrisandmoo said:

I know folk are really focusing on the numbers when it comes to Asylum seekers, because it's an easy thing to count and an emotive subject for people. But it doesn't matter as much as people think (imo). 

If the Taliban go back to the bad old days then the asylum numbers don't matter. Millions of people (no matter what we do) would be left living in a society where rape, torture and murder are part of the fabric of day to day life. And that's not ok. The focus needs be on promoting a more progressive Taliban now that they are back in power, accepting that evacuating 38million people is not practical. 

I also think a knee-jerk high immigration/asylum strategy of say the West taking 2-3million citizens in the next 12mths is a shitty outcome for Afghanistan when viewed over the medium term. Those immigrants/asylum seekers will inevitably be younger and relatively better off than most Afghans. The very people best placed to influence a better future for Afghanistan, as difficult and unlikely as that seems at present. 

For me, while an immediate strategy to evacuate millions of immigrants/asylum seekers would certainly feel like charity for those on the planes and help us all with our guilt - i think it's ultimately an unambitious policy, which doesn't give Afghanistan a chance. 

Fair points. Is evacuating millions from here as well as the Middle East, HK and other African countries the right policy to have? Difficult to know how this gets resolved. There does seem to be an ongoing Cold War in the background which is probably another factor so despite the botch up of the hasty exit would staying on made a difference to the ultimate solution? The only way to solve a repressive state is for a unified global response between the major powers. But whilst some of them have interets in these corrupt states that is not likley to happen.

[TDYER63]

4 hours ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Yes I do, but we can control that less. 

We need parliament to step up and deliver far more transparency in Government spending generally (not just foreign aid). The amount of corruption swept under the carpet with a confident "it was perfectly right" is outrageous (e.g. multi-million pound covid contracts awarded to any cunt so long as they're a relative of a minister).

Very weird world we live in when something very wrong and corrupt goes away if a UK minister just says that is was "correct and reasonable" or something to that effect. 

Totally agree.
We pish our own money away at times its hardly surprising that foreign aid money is any different, there should be far more scrutiny of both. 
But for all the people who tiredlessly give their time to help other countries you have to hope that a reasonable amount of it gets through to the right areas.

 

[phart]

Bremner Bird and Fortune wrote a book almost 20 years ago called "You are here" it had a lot of good info on how foreign aid worked. For instance a £51 million aid package to a country but it turned out £50 million was to pay for privatising their copper industry and a million for infrastructure.

[TDYER63]

3 hours ago, ThistleWhistle said:

 

There’s a couple of things for me though – we had scope to take 5m from Hong Kong barely 6 months ago so why now are we trumpeting 20,000?  Added to that there is surely more than 5,000 including families who have helped us in the last 20 years who’ll be in immediate danger from reprisals – in that 20 year period we’ve already rejected 30,000 applications. 

 

Not suggesting we take millions but when we’re 17^th in the EU per head of capita and looking to reduce it further when we surely have an obligation, particularly given our involvement, to at least give a vague pretence of taking our fair share. Instead the figure seems basically arbitrary and probably decided upon because David Cameron got away relatively unscathed promising a similar figure for Syria, which has half the population of Afghanistan, rather than identifying the local needs.   

 

As an aside taking a nation’s skilled workforce has not really bothered us before – as an example there’s various agencies in Nepal and India headhunting nurses with benefits packages they’re not going to come close to competing with locally.     

Talk is cheap. They will say anything to make it sound like we are actively helping . Dominic Raab was sitting on the front bench earlier practising the next pile of shit under his breath .

 

On 8/17/2021 at 12:53 PM, ThistleWhistle said: 

 

For me your Halloween projection seems wildly optimistic – I’ll give it two weeks until we’re seeing pictures of dinghies again complaining the French are doing fuck all to curb the swarm every day crossing the channel.  The fact there’s three times more refugees in France than the UK settled and they received four times more applications in 2019 than the UK did will go unreported along with how the new system Patel put in place is making it even more difficult to get in/verging on impossible so going to make smuggling more rather than less likely.   

 

 

Yep. I am pretty certain there will be dinghies,  the Talibans talk is cheap too. A movement that is prepared to overcome the government and take control by force is unlikely to negotiate responsibly with other countries.  Media focus will be on the main areas of Afghanistan but there will be chaos in the outlying areas . 

[Lamia]

5 hours ago, Och Aye said:

Can they drive lorries? 

👏

[Lamia]

Well Westminster was particularly embarrassing today. Everyone just trying to outdo how caring they appeared

[phart]

India's Pandemic Death Toll Estimated At About 4 Million: 10 Times The Official Count

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/20/1018438334/indias-pandemic-death-toll-estimated-at-about-4-million-10-times-the-official-co

[gkm_vancouver]

1 hour ago, Lamia said:

Well Westminster was particularly embarrassing today. Everyone just trying to outdo how caring they appeared

I think Tom Tugendhat took a fair stance on the situation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58254794

[phart]

1 hour ago, phart said:

India's Pandemic Death Toll Estimated At About 4 Million: 10 Times The Official Count

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/20/1018438334/indias-pandemic-death-toll-estimated-at-about-4-million-10-times-the-official-co

wrong thread.

[aaid]

1 hour ago, Lamia said:

Well Westminster was particularly embarrassing today. Everyone just trying to outdo how caring they appeared

What the world really needs now is a special edition of Question Time.  Who actually thought that was a good idea. 

[gkm_vancouver]

40 minutes ago, aaid said:

What the world really needs now is a special edition of Question Time.  Who actually thought that was a good idea. 

Actually turinign out to be quite a good one with some good participants

[ThistleWhistle]

21 hours ago, aaid said:

We don't have scope to take 5 million from Hong Kong.  That *was* virtue signalling from the UKG and a hollow offer as they know that no where near that number would take up the offer.  If they did that'd we rescinde it tout suite.

Their actual estimates of who would take up the offer were less than a tenth of that over 5 years and currently those estimates look overcooked.

I get it was merely posturing offering 5m as that would have been 70% of their population but it doesn’t stop the point the gesture was made in the first place, and allegedly the administrative procedure in the background, was there to deal with it.  Even if they expected 300k, so 60k to the Afghans in comparison we’ve only got capacity for 5k a year up to 20k.   Even taking that HK’s are coming in on visas so would have access to jobs as a factor surely there’s trained folk in Afghanistan we could have arranged work visas for to supplement the numbers or it seems completely and utterly pointless setting up universities especially for women – there was an example of a bloke on BBC trying to get out female vets he’d trained in his sanctuary as example who could go through the visa route rather than refugee.

 

NS has called for the number to be doubled, David Davies is going with 50k, but there is no magic number.  Germany took a million, for better or worse granted to pay off their own perceived ethical debt by the crux of it, so a nation as big as ours could have scope if we wanted to but the political will isn’t there.  No political party is going to advocate for a million Muslims to come here and any number that we land upon will be through political expediency rather than the need on the ground so regardless of the rosette colour none of them can pretend what takes precedence in their decisions.  Patel coming out and saying the reason for the 5k is because that’s all we could cope with at the moment was pretty much rubbished by a Lancaster councillor this morning who basically was on hawking the benefits of Afghans coming to other councils as the target could be met quite easily if everyone did their bit.  We all know that won't happen though - Welcome to Stoke, Glasgow, etc.    

 

There’s very little the SG can do but shouting for more refugees to be taken I can get behind us pushing for at least double the 20k all day long.  Overall the UK isn’t taking anywhere near enough for me and has a massive hole in the balance sheet in this regard.  I knew we were bastards but 17^th out of 27 in the EU is damming but what worries me is we’re getting away with it!  

[ThistleWhistle]

Absolutely fucking surreal this morning on the news going from the truly harrowing scenes of parents chucking their baby or toddler over razor wire fence to get on a plane to absolutely fucking anywhere else to seeing PR video from Twitter of the Taliban in the palace gym looking like they’re auditioning for the imminent role of baddie in Rocky VII.   

[thplinth]

16 hours ago, Lamia said:

Well Westminster was particularly embarrassing today. Everyone just trying to outdo how caring they appeared

It not just Westminster. It is like the virtue signaling Olympics just kicked off. Full peacock level displays going on.  

[thplinth]

We should take in a few dozen million obvs. Scotland has a long track record at successfully accepting immigrants. Just look at how well we accepted all those immigrants from Ireland all those years ago now. We have marches to celebrate it every year and sing songs of migratory celebration and brotherly love at football matches even to this day. 

(edit: And they were escaping a fucking famine!  (why am I laughing))

Edited August 19, 2021 by thplinth

[Orraloon]

On 8/17/2021 at 12:18 PM, TDYER63 said:

We will never, ever , know what it is like to live like that. On the news last night they covered Afghanistan , and the pictures of people trying to get on the plane, then it moved onto the next news story and a guy who ran a company in England which served afternoon tea, and how the covid pinging was causing havoc in his business. I am not saying this was not a concern for the guy but the difference in what we see as a problem in our lives , and what others have to contend with, could not have been more revealing  in those two back to back news stories. 

 

Last night's news was a cracker. We got a load of stuff about Afghanistan then they moved swiftly on to the big news of the day, affected folk in the UK - Nando's ran out of chicken.  

[TDYER63]

1 hour ago, Orraloon said:

Last night's news was a cracker. We got a load of stuff about Afghanistan then they moved swiftly on to the big news of the day, affected folk in the UK - Nando's ran out of chicken.  

Wtf. You win. That is unbelievable. 

[Hertsscot]

3 hours ago, Orraloon said:

Last night's news was a cracker. We got a load of stuff about Afghanistan then they moved swiftly on to the big news of the day, affected folk in the UK - Nando's ran out of chicken.  

...and sadly there will be some people more upset about the Nandos story than what's happening in Afghanistan.

[Morrisandmoo]

On 8/19/2021 at 6:41 PM, Hertsscot said:

...and sadly there will be some people more upset about the Nandos story than what's happening in Afghanistan.

Not many. Cunts are mostly decent.