The Political Thread

[Old Tankie]

I'll drop out of this conversation now, Sharkey, as I was talking about a general point rather than your own situation and I don't want to offend you.  Cheers, Mike.

[Professor Bear]

Even if they do look like getting their collar felt for breaking EU laws, there's nothing to stop them changing the law retroactively, like IDS did to stop himself being charged with slavery.  It was around that time Dave "Fucking Cunt" Cameron wanted to ditch the ECHU altogether - funny, that.

[The Legendary Shark]

 No offence taken, Tankie - please don't stop on my account.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

The ECHU says that people are entitled to a home and uninterrupted enjoyment of their property (amongst other things).
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Here I sit as living proof that governments - and even local councils - don't give a shit about the ECHR.

Little bit unfair. You got yourself evicted by refusing to accept housing benefit, and not having the means to pay your rent any other way.

I reckon the state's implicit offer to pay 100% of your rent was a pretty good indication they did want to support your right to stay in your house.

It's true that the Tories hate the ECHR, and the feeling is probably mutual, but I'm not so sure that even the European courts would have taken your side over that one...

[Professor Bear]

Sharky detailed at the time how he asked the benefits people to pay directly to his landlords without attempting to involve him as an intermediary, which while not technically how things are done, was neither unreasonable or beyond the abilities of those involved.  I know if I was in the position of kicking someone out of their house or filling in a form for them to make both our lives easier, I'd choose the latter course of action and not be an asshole about it.

I've probably mentioned this before, but my brother works in claims processing for the DWP, and he was told to write and sign a letter to a widower telling the man that his benefits were being sanctioned because his wife had been paid benefits when she was classed as "available for work", even though she had been bed-ridden with cancer at the time.  She had since died and so the DWP were taking the money back by sanctioning her spouse.  My brother refused to write the letter, as did many others in his office before the job of doing it quietly went away.*
People work in these organisations and they decide every day how much of an asshole they want to be.



* It's not really a great ending to this anecdote, but consensus was that someone in the office who wanted to suck up to management probably wrote the letter on the QT.

[IndigoPrime]

We don't throw out people who are obeying the immigration laws.  Sure, we throw out people who aren't, as other countries throw Brits out if they aren't obeying the laws of those countries.  I'm talking about law-abiding citizens.

The point being, the law (or the regulations) are an ass. As per the linked article, that South African guy is going to be deported, sent away from his British wife and their child, because she wasn't deemed to have earned quite enough money last year, based on averages inflated by London wages, despite them living in Cornwall. He's broken no laws; they've only not matched required regulations (and not missed by much). She's earning. They're happy here. Now, they're essentially all being forced to move back to South Africa. That makes no sense to me.

And, I'll go back to my point about the European Court of Human Rights.  Do you really believe the European Court of Human Rights would allow Spain to throw out a million law-abiding Brits?

As already noted, I was being extreme. But the fact remains that if the UK leaves the EU, that obliterates any Brit's right to move/live in any EU country, and it raises serious questions regarding the right to reside. As per the analysis Jim linked to, the UK would largely be reliant on bilateral deals with specific countries, which would almost certainly require major concessions from the UK.

So we end up in the situation where we leave the EU but basically have the same freedom of movement that we do now, in order to keep the EU happy, or we leave the EU and end up with a shit-load of Brits moving back (the "the eggs that have to be broken to make the omelettes of those British politicians who feel uncomfortable living next to Romanians" as Steve Peers puts it).

Of course, many UKIPers and Tories will pretend this won't happen. Of course the rest of the EU will do what we want and make every Brit happy, while the UK's busy telling Europe to get fucked and excluding Romanians! But they also seem to labour under the misapprehension that the UK is still a major player on the world stage, rather than a country that could at most be one of the three major drivers in Europe, but doesn't want to be. I'd sooner see our government say "Right then!" and get its hands seriously dirty in Europe, truly defining its future, rather than being the arrogant little shit at the back of the class, flicking snot at its peers.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

Sharky detailed at the time how he asked the benefits people to pay directly to his landlords without attempting to involve him as an intermediary, which while not technically how things are done, was neither unreasonable or beyond the abilities of those involved.  I know if I was in the position of kicking someone out of their house or filling in a form for them to make both our lives easier, I'd choose the latter course of action and not be an asshole about it.

I suspect allowing that kind of thing would make fraud pretty easy (eg. landlord claiming housing benefit when the tenant is in fact also paying the rent, and only the landlord knows they're being paid twice) but I do agree that it would have been possible, and of course preferable, had Mr Shark been allowed to stay in his house through some creative solution to his ethical difficulties.

[The Legendary Shark]

Well remembered, AA!
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But even if I had been forcibly evicted for flatly refusing to pay my rent, that still means that money is more important than "law" - whether that be local, national, European or international law.
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Like old M.A. Rothschild is reputed to have said, "give me control of a country's money and I care not who writes its laws."

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

But even if I had been forcibly evicted for flatly refusing to pay my rent, that still means that money is more important than "law" - whether that be local, national, European or international law.

It certainly means that the law that says you have to pay your rent trumps the law that says you get to stay in your house.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

I'd sooner see our government say "Right then!" and get its hands seriously dirty in Europe, truly defining its future, rather than being the arrogant little shit at the back of the class, flicking snot at its peers.

Seconded!

[The Legendary Shark]

Not exactly, JBA, as I was (and am) perfectly willing to pay what I can afford for my Social Housing. As being in debt is not a crime (if it was, virtually every government in the world would be in jail), the Council decided that being skint is a crime instead. I mean, people who can't afford to pay for social housing, housing meant for the poor and disadvantaged, aren't entitled to home and are not covered by any legislation whatsoever. I often wonder what might have happened if the officers involved had been armed.
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What it seems to mean, from my perspective, is that the government/council only observes legislation when it falls in their favour and that any legislation that falls in my favour (and there is plenty) is irrelevant.
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This is one of the reasons why I hold my personal law above government/council law. Under my law, I cannot lay my hands on anyone who tells me not to (except in extreme circumstances like self defence) and I most certainly cannot smash my way into somebody's home, throw them out and then steal all their stuff.

[Professor Bear]

Sharky detailed at the time how he asked the benefits people to pay directly to his landlords without attempting to involve him as an intermediary, which while not technically how things are done, was neither unreasonable or beyond the abilities of those involved.  I know if I was in the position of kicking someone out of their house or filling in a form for them to make both our lives easier, I'd choose the latter course of action and not be an asshole about it.

I suspect allowing that kind of thing would make fraud pretty easy (eg. landlord claiming housing benefit when the tenant is in fact also paying the rent, and only the landlord knows they're being paid twice) but I do agree that it would have been possible, and of course preferable, had Mr Shark been allowed to stay in his house through some creative solution to his ethical difficulties.

I don't know if you have to be judged mentally incompetent or something first, but social workers actually do exactly that kind of thing all the time on behalf of members of the community - filling in forms and liasing between council departments to make sure money goes where it's supposed to and no-one gets kicked out of their home.  It's also worth pointing out that Sharky didn't have a private landlord, he was a social housing tenant, so the council was technically evicting him because they weren't paying themselves.  This was an avoidable situation for all concerned, and the heavy-handed police presence - and attendant perjury - is deeply troubling.

[TordelBack]

This is the fundamental point that seems to get missed in relation to SharkGate.  It's not really about whether we agree or disagree with Sharky's wordview and the decisions he makes in support of it, instead it's a question about how an individual could not be accommodated within the system at no additional cost because maintaining the rigidity of the system's procedures was apparently more important than providing the basic human needs of one of the people it exists only to serve. 

Then there's the manner in which this inflexibility was translated into heavy-handed action, and the allegedly false testimony used to demonise Shark and thus reinforce the supposed rightness of those actions by showing the subject to be a violent degenerate, said alleged perjury actually undermining the whole concept of objective law and inflexible policy that was being asserted by the whole sorry mess. 

And most importantly of all, that all these things were done by individual people to another person in their community, supposedly carrying out sanctioned orders in the name of the greater good because there was no better way. 

That's what keeps this story in my mind, not just another tale of self-inflicted woe from an internet pal.

[Jim_Campbell]

instead it's a question about how an individual could not be accommodated within the system at no additional cost because maintaining the rigidity of the system's procedures was apparently more important than providing the basic human needs of one of the people it exists only to serve.

All of which rather neatly overlooks the fact that the system couldn't function if it was reconfigured to match the needs of each and every person on a 1:1 basis. If we make an exception for TLS, why not the next person, who wants something subtly different, and the person after that, who wants something different again? Why not? Because the system will break down, and then it will serve no one.

The system is a machine and while I don't defend any number of flaws in both its mechanism and operation, doing so is not a requirement of recognising the fact that it is a machine that works in a specific way to deliver a specific result.

Cheers

Jim

[ZenArcade]

I'm with Jim on the above. Z