the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

I think she's pretty sharp, but she also seems attracted to some really dreadful ideas, I remember she was one of the people pushing that 'progressive patriotism' thing, appearing at some events put on by Blue Labour and John Denham's godforsaken English Labour Network rtc

Rudd is a classic ministerial resignation, no? Your department does something wrong, you lie, you get caught out, you resign. It's the least-21st-century drama we've seen for a while.

It’s gotta be the physical iteration of NLP.

When I was working in China one of the high-ups in the company (an American business school type) led presentations on this stuff, and as a low-ranking manager I had to roll it out to my team. I was very glad to be able to tell them all (from the safety of my new job in the UK) when it was debunked. It was too late to stop me attempting, and horribly failing, to use it to increase my confidence in an interview where I completely crashed and burned though, so thanks for that Amy Cuddy and W*** D*****

i'd be marginally concerned that politicians in a representative democracy are into power poses and strong leadership and all that but ugggh what's the point fuck politics tbh

whoah! Woodcock suspended and whip has been withdrawn sexual harassment.

Whatever it takes - MP by MP, councillor by councillor..

apparently suspending him was a Jennie Formby decision. I'll get her a beer in.

xp that means someone sent Theresa May on an NLP course, LOL. But I tend to think that whenever I hear one of their ministers say ‘it is right that...’ in answer to some question about a constituent pranged by DWP or similar.

“Legs apart, try not to fart!”

I don't really know what to think of all this corporate psuedo-science bollox, at least until I've read Noel Edmunds take on it all.

Mr Edmonds can't come to the phone right now as he has chained himself to the bike rack outside his local Barclays

Whenever I have to do a speak on a film, I always begin by striking a power pose. Then I turn around, point to my name on the screen, and use the opportunity to shake my ass a little. That usually gets their attention.

I demand spotlights, dry ice and the intro to Back In Black before any presentations.

The NLP stuff smacks of such deep insecurity in the political class it’s embarrassing. Literally all they need to do half the time is stand there and not look weird and they can’t even manage that.

Pseudo-scientific corporate bollocks is the best way of knowing that all these people are mugs, and the teachers/testers/programmers see them as stuffed open wallets. *steeples fingers*

"see them as stuffed open wallets"

A bit like how China General Nuclear saw Gideon coming, when he was getting rinsed on the Hinckley Point C deal. The problem with people already millionaires in their 20's is that some tend to develop a lifelong arrogant sense of their own "special" predestination and uniqueness. Fucking tools.

Literally all they need to do half the time is stand there and not look weird and they can’t even manage that.

To be fair I've spent the best part of 40 years trying and failing to do this

Literally all they need to do half the time is stand there and not look weird and they can’t even manage that.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-12/1/12/enhanced/webdr10/enhanced-buzz-19746-1417454607-35.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42WFxAtoM-g

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-candidate-suspended-dudley_uk_5ae824eee4b055fd7fcf32b8

Should have just gone the whole hog and just put 'leprosy'.

A bit harsh on hepatitis to compare it with Ian Austin!

lol

- Pestilence

lurgy

that means someone sent Theresa May on an NLP course, LOL. But I tend to think that whenever I hear one of their ministers say ‘it is right that...’

Fifty virtual pence to whoever can tell me which go-getters' manual instructed the Maybot and many other power-dressers to begin sentences with a variant of "Let me be clear: <obfuscatory content-free waffle>"

It makes me itchy as hell, but perhaps I am just jealous, as I have just enough dim awareness that all my sentences are badly-phrased tangles not to claim otherwise even for NLP points

(I used to be sad that Neuro-Linguistic Snake-Oil had the same abbreviation as Natural Language Processing but now the latter mostly means "let's run 'sentiment analysis' on everyone's social media accounts so we can sell stuff" maybe it's appropriate)

Whenever I hear ‘let me be clear’ it is always in the voice of Barack Obama, so obviously the nerds were going to copy him. Before that, it was Tony Blair with ‘I say to you today’.

'i commission this to be inscribed on a giant stone tablet:'

Before that, it was Tony Blair with ‘I say to you today’.

In respect of the fact that [LONG PAUSE] I'm an evil cunt..

blair was also a pioneer in using 'look' at the start of sentences to indicate that the bullshit which followed was actually some straight-talking, no-nonsense TRUTH

"We've been very clear about this" maybe came in with Cameron - that erudite "well if you'd been paying attention, Mr Journalist, you would know that..." condescension.

guys how do we make ash sarkar PM

we need to elect her as an mp first iirc

This is a huge can of worms:

https://www.ft.com/content/2ae9b7d2-4d0c-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

praesee for us skinflints?

In a judgment on the case of one Bangladeshi student, published last year, an immigration tribunal judge said that the Home Office’s behaviour was ”so unfair and unreasonable as to amount to an abuse of power.”

“The highly questionable quality of the evidence upon which these accusations have been based and the lack of any effective judicial oversight have given rise to some of the greatest injustices that I have encountered in over 20 years of practice,” said Mr Lewis, who has represented several of the affected claimants and overturned the Home Office’s ruling in each case.

Short summary to follow

yikes

Pretty sure no-one in the UK media or the GBP gives a hoot about how the Home Office treats some young Muslim from Bangladesh.

https://www.ft.com/content/2ae9b7d2-4d0c-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Home Office told thousands of foreign students to leave UK in error https://t.co/BwHsXr1hoF

— Financial Times (@FT) May 1, 2018

The universities like the international student fees and Javid will have to say something or everyone of his background will be calling him a coconut on social media.

Ash Sarkar is one of my favourite commentators; love to see her gesturing with that dagger-nailed manicure and how much that annoys old white men plus it INCENSES them that she has ‘fucks like a champion’ on her Twitter bio.

A few years ago the government introduced a requirement that migrants and students had to speak English to get a visa or citizenship but spectacularly failed to set up much of a structure in place for which language tests were appropriate. Alongside the major tests used internationally for access to university and immigration, you had dozens and dozens of tests that were, for one reason or another, inappropriate for the purpose.

ETS delivers TOEFL, a reasonably well respected test used around the world - predominantly for access to US universities. They also deliver a lower-stakes, lower-cost version called TOEIC which started out as more of a commercial English test but is taken by huge numbers of people in Japan, Korea and France as a general English benchmarking test.

When the immigration rules came in, candidates understandably flocked to the easier, cheaper and more flexible options - so TOEIC rather than TOEFL or superior tests. TOEIC relies heavily on multiple choice which also facilitates cheating - it's much easier to evade scrutiny on tests where spelling and phrasing are less important. TOEIC does have an oral interview section, though.

It became very clear that there was massive malpractice going on across the assessment sector but particularly with TOEIC. ETS accredited dozens of dodgy colleges to deliver it and they'd charge £500, £800, etc for a guaranteed pass. A Panorama documentary did an undercover expose showing exam room doors being padlocked, large sums of money changing hands and answers being read out at the front of class.

Almost immediately, TOEIC was barred from the accepted list and all candidates who had taken it had their immigration processing frozen while the investigation went on. If they were in the process of applying for a visa they were told to take another test. If they had already obtained a visa, they were not told anything.

The investigation used what i'd assume was a combination of data analysis and "voice print matching" to determine how many candidates who had taken TOEIC had probably done so fraudulently. As a result, about 35,000 people had their visas yanked and most, i believe, were detained and deported. The problem is that ETS' voice-print matching tech doesn't really work. It is ok for what it does, which is give ETS grounds to launch investigations into their own centres, but isn't accurate enough to be proof positive. Subsequent analysis suggested that human raters (who are also obviously unreliable) agreed with the computer about 80% of the time - which is leading the FT to suggest that 7000 people might have been deported in error.

It's not as simple as that - ETS probably had other info to go on and a large majority were probably cheating - but it's very difficult to say, or at least to prove, any particular candidate was. As a result, i think every legal challenge to a specific deportation order (and there have been many) has been successful in overturning the ruling.

This all falls on May, tbh. She introduced the policy, she failed to implement a requirement for secure assessment until it was too late and she ordered the Home Office to err on the side of deportation when she knew the evidence was ropey.

She's under pressure in the papers as well ("Mayday Mayday" tick vg), but I feel that she'll be less vulnerable than Rudd because her position is basically "Yes, I've always done everything I can to fuck immigrants, is that not what you wanted?"

she should put "fucks over immigrants like a champion" on her twitter.

(xp) Probably OTM. Also Rudd was seen as an arch Remainer, so good riddance.

I would seriously believe that someone's had to argue her out of holding a press conference to say "Yes there were targets and yes they were ambitious, but if you look at these graphs you'll see that definite progress was being made towards them"

This is probably her single stupidest policy, and that's really saying something.

OTM. I can almost hear the but-but-but May internal monologue about how reducing immigration is firstly what she was told to do (at HO), and then what the public told her they wanted (as PM). And now her homework is being unfairly marked — by people who it turns out just wanted their racist feelings assuaged without causing any sob stories among figures they're sympathetic to.

I think this makes her *more* vulnerable though. "Yes, we meant control immigration, but not like THAT."

The angle May might be vulnerable on, if abuse of power doesn’t cut it, is how much this mess cost. They spent over £70m deporting people, I believe, and are now liable for all sorts of legal costs when people successfully appeal their cases. It underlines the idea that the Home Office simply failed to function properly under her watch.

She really doesn’t like anyone darker than the magnolia walls of a BTL landlord’s flat, does she?