UK News and Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

New restrictions on overseas students bringing family to UK come into force

Monday 1 January 2024 11:34

The government's new rules preventing most international students from bringing family to the UK are now in effect - but Rishi Sunak still faces a huge fight with his own party over reducing both legal and illegal migration.

Any international students starting courses from this month will not be able to bring dependants to the UK, unless they are on postgraduate research courses or courses with government-funded scholarships.

The changes were first announced last May as part of the government's bid "to prevent misuse of the visa system".

Ministers say it will see around 140,000 fewer people come to the UK each year.

In the year ending December 2022, 486,000 student visas were issued to applicants - up from 269,000 in 2019.

https://news.sky.com/story/new-restrict ... e-13040284

[Time_Traveller]

Sinn Fein aiming for government north and south of the border in 2024, says Mary Lou McDonald

11:13, 1 JAN 2024

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald said her party is aiming to be in government both north and south of the border in 2024.

Irish voters are set to go to the polls in June for European and local government elections, but there is speculation the next Irish general election will be held towards the end of the year. At the last general election in January 2020, Sinn Fein finished with 37 seats - but Fianna Fail (38 seats) and Fine Gael (35 seats) were able to combine with the Green Party to form a coalition to govern.

In her new year's message, Ms McDonald said her party will focus on electing enough Sinn Fein TDs to form a government without Fine Gael and Fianna Fail after the next general election to "deliver real change". She said: "The election is fast approaching and if the people give us the opportunity to lead, Sinn Fein will make housing the number one priority of a new government - not only in words but in actions and in results. By reducing rents and delivering the largest social and affordable house building programme in the history of the state.

"That is the level of action needed to match the scale of the challenge people face." She also called for "step change in the north", and urged the DUP to re-enter devolved government at Stormont.

Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O'Neill has been entitled, as the leader of the largest party at Stormont since the May 2022 Assembly election, to become the next first minister when the institutions are recalled. "It's decision time for the DUP. It's time to move forward and form the Executive. It is time for positive leadership. It is time for delivery," Ms McDonald said.

https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/sinn-fei ... h-28372638

[wjfox]

Chris Skidmore: Tory MP quits over oil and gas licences

10 minutes ago

Conservative MP Chris Skidmore says he will stand down as an MP next week in protest at plans to issue more oil and gas licences.

The former minister said he was resigning as a Tory MP ahead of a vote on a bill on Monday that would guarantee annual licensing rounds.

The move will trigger a by-election in his Kingswood seat in Gloucestershire.

He added his constituents deserved a new MP after his "personal decision" not to continue as a Tory MP.

Mr Skidmore had already announced he would stand down at the next election - but the by-election will bring another headache for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67895246

[Time_Traveller]

The Thick of It creator nails Tory war on ‘woke’

2024-01-05 09:30

The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci has given an insightful interview with Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight, where he discussed the war on ‘woke’ among other things.

Culture wars formed a significant part of the UK’s political discourse in 2023 as MPs from the right wing of the Conservative Party used issues such as racial equality and cancel culture to stoke divisions.

As Kirsty McNeill, co-author of The Fabian Society’s report into the matter notes, for those politicians, “riling up a base and pointing it at an imagined enemy is much easier than doing the hard yards involved in meeting the prime minister’s ambition to ‘level up’.”

She adds that the “public deserves better” than such “fabricated fights”.

Her sentiment was reinforced by Iannucci, the creative brain behind The Thick of It and Alan Partridge among other things, who rightly pointed out that the people who most use the phrase ‘woke’ are the “ones that are the most censorious”.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/polit ... ke-366319/

[Time_Traveller]

Post Office scandal: Hundreds of victims to have convictions overturned

40 minutes ago

Hundreds wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal could have their names cleared this year, after emergency laws were announced to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims".

Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake said that hundreds fell victim to a "brutal and arbitrary exercise of power".

There were more than 900 convictions linked to the scandal over 16 years.

But only 93 of these convictions have since been overturned.

Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of sub-postmasters and mistresses based on the faulty Horizon IT system.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67932595.amp

[wjfox]

General election likely to take place on 14 November, says George Osborne

Thu 11 Jan 2024 17.15 GMT

Rishi Sunak is planning a general election on 14 November, according to the former chancellor George Osborne, as the prime minister looks to maximise the amount of time he has to recover the Conservatives’ poll deficit before polling day.

Speaking on Political Currency, the podcast he hosts with the former Labour cabinet minister Ed Balls, Osborne said he had been told Sunak’s team were working towards the date in mid-November as the target for an election.

Sunak has said his “working assumption” is that he will hold the vote in the second half of the year, while Conservative sources say a final decision has not yet been taken over a date.

Osborne, who is close to many of those around Sunak, told the podcast: “A little birdie has told me that the various work programmes required to get ready for a general election have that date singled out – 14 November.

“By the way, logic leads you there because you’re not going to have it in the first half of the year. I mean, this pretence that Rishi Sunak could have a May election was something we discussed last year. It’s a non-starter. He’s more than 20 points behind in the opinion polls. He’s not going to have a spring election.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ge-osborne

[wjfox]

Tories facing 1997-style general election wipeout

14 January 2024 • 9:15pm

The Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, the most authoritative opinion poll in five years has predicted.

The YouGov survey of 14,000 people forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority.

Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats.

The Tories will win 196 fewer seats than in 2019, more than the 178 Sir John Major lost in 1997.

The poll exposes the huge influence that Reform UK is set to have on the election result. The Right-wing party would not win any seats, but support for it would be the decisive factor in 96 Tory losses – the difference between a Labour majority and a hung Parliament.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... 97-labour/

[Time_Traveller]

Northern Ireland ‘dirty corner of Europe’ due to lack of governance, say experts

Fri 19 Jan 2024 18.00 GMT

Northern Ireland’s environment is unlikely to benefit from higher EU standards because the country already flouts the existing rules, leaving it in a “grossly degraded” state, experts have said.

The region may escape a post-Brexit erosion of UK environmental law but still suffer grave environmental damage because of governance failures, they warned.

Northern Ireland has no functioning executive or environmental protection agency and the civil service has not published an environmental strategy or statement of principles.

Under the Windsor framework the region remains subject to EU laws that in many cases are more stringent than those in England, Wales and Scotland.

But Northern Ireland will struggle to exploit that opportunity, said Ciara Brennan, director of the advocacy group Environmental Justice Network Ireland. “It cannot be absorbed given the already grossly degraded state of the environment here. The crisis at Lough Neagh is symptomatic of how bad things are across the north.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ay-experts

[Time_Traveller]

‘Devastating’: Port Talbot steelworks to shut blast furnaces and shed up to 2,800 jobs

Fri 19 Jan 2024 17.15 GMT

The owner of Port Talbot steelworks has confirmed that its two blast furnaces will shut down, in what unions have condemned as an “absolutely devastating” blow that will cost up to 2,800 jobs directly and many more in the south Wales community.

Port Talbot’s parent company, the Indian-owned Tata Steel, said it was not “feasible or affordable” to adopt trade union proposals to continue production at the loss-making plant during a transition to greener, cheaper steelmaking operations.

Amid fury and despair in the Welsh town, Tata could now face strikes at the plant, according to Unite, one of three unions representing steelworkers, which said it was considering industrial action.

On Friday, after trading on the stock exchange ended in Mumbai, Tata officially confirmed its plans, which will result in most of the plant’s 4,000 workers losing their jobs. Of the positions slated for redundancy, 2,500 are expected to go within 18 months.

About 200 positions will be saved by maintaining operations at the site’s hot strip mill, which rolls steel slab, while some temporary jobs will be created in the construction of new electric arc furnaces (EAFs).

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -jobs-tata

[wjfox]

‘Devastating’: Port Talbot steelworks to shut blast furnaces and shed up to 2,800 jobs

Fri 19 Jan 2024 17.15 GMT

The owner of Port Talbot steelworks has confirmed that its two blast furnaces will shut down, in what unions have condemned as an “absolutely devastating” blow that will cost up to 2,800 jobs directly and many more in the south Wales community.

Port Talbot’s parent company, the Indian-owned Tata Steel, said it was not “feasible or affordable” to adopt trade union proposals to continue production at the loss-making plant during a transition to greener, cheaper steelmaking operations.

Amid fury and despair in the Welsh town, Tata could now face strikes at the plant, according to Unite, one of three unions representing steelworkers, which said it was considering industrial action.

On Friday, after trading on the stock exchange ended in Mumbai, Tata officially confirmed its plans, which will result in most of the plant’s 4,000 workers losing their jobs. Of the positions slated for redundancy, 2,500 are expected to go within 18 months.

About 200 positions will be saved by maintaining operations at the site’s hot strip mill, which rolls steel slab, while some temporary jobs will be created in the construction of new electric arc furnaces (EAFs).

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -jobs-tata

Sad news for the workers and their families, but we are facing a planetary catastrophe that requires drastic, urgent action. So in this case I support the move to greener steel. And if it's cheaper then that's surely a bonus too.