Here in Ghana people are stunned by the announcement that a bond of £3,000 will have to be submitted by visa applicants to the UK, redeemable on return.
It is unpleasant for a nation to be singled out as comprised of particularly untrustworthy individuals against whom special measures are needed. Theresa May appears quite deliberately to be singling out countries whose citizens are normally black or brown – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ghana and Nigeria. They are all citizens with extremely close ties to the UK. For example, all of those countries supplied large numbers of men to British armed forces in two World Wars; with little resulting gratitude.
The true level of Britain’s regard for the Commonwealth is disclosed in all its arrogance; citizenship of the Commonwealth countries with the longest link to the UK will become a positive disadvantage in visa application. Israeli settlers living in Occupied Palestine on the West Bank, incidentally, will still be allowed to enter the UK without any visa at all, despite membership of neither Commonwealth nor EU. Paradoxical, isn’t it?
The measure shows the arrogant British disdain for these countries – of which India pre-eminently but also Ghana are fast growing and important trading partners. Undoubtedly Ghana will retaliate with measures which hurt British businesses; many of my good friends are senior Ghanaian politicians, and they are all furious. The rhetoric the British employ about transformation from colonial status to a modern partnership of equals is exposed for the tissue of lies it has always been. This is a straightforward racist measure, aimed at securing the racist vote to the Tories.
Not does it make any sense. If you are intending to enter the UK under false pretences, and have the intent illegally to settle and start a new life there, then £3,000 is scarcely a deterrent given the substantial economic gains you intend to make over the long period you intend to stay. It will rather seem a good investment; people will find the money. The people it will deter are those who never intended to overstay. The extra cash upfront, to the businessman for a business trip, for the student coming to study, for the tourist will drive them to go elsewhere, to the UK’s net loss.
More cruelly it will deter decent middle class people from coming to see grandchildren in the holidays, from going to the niece’s wedding, from going to graduation. Those things will become the prerogative of the wealthy, those with plenty of cash to spare.
This does nothing to deter illegal immigration. It merely demonstrates populist racism, demonstrates contempt for some of the UK’s best-disposed friends, and demonstrates that the government thinks the right to travel is only for the rich. It is contemptible.
I don’t have an iPhone and I’m not getting one … and I leave my old Motorola at home most of the time.
Jives, the prospect for future generations is frightening. And to think we were encouraged not to go to the Soviet Union because we might be followed by the KGB.
I don’t have any loyalty cards either. If they want to know what I eat and drink they can ask me. And I’ll tell them. But taking that information without asking is a kind of theft.
people, Adblocker works.
doug: the repulsive language stuff is from someone already banned, i think we’ll find.
And of course Dreolin and Jives, all SatNav systems have unique identification numbers which like computers, which is what they are, individual movements can be traced. There need to be new laws protecting consumers from this kind of intrusion.
Re Michael Hastings,
If there was manipulation over,say,WiFi or Bluetooth i’m sure the NSA and GCHQ will have pulled that out the ether to store away for ever…
Complete capture of every transfer of a digital footprint is,after all,their remit.
Adblocker works. Yes. Also try NoScript. The sayanim/eichmannn thing is probably a regurgitation of English Knight (etc) and as someone has already said, an attempt to discredit the blog. As much of its stuff is overtly and genuinely antisemitic, I’d say there’s a case for its deletion on sight.
‘For example, all of those countries supplied large numbers of men to British armed forces in two World Wars; with little resulting gratitude.’
Err… except that, in the case of India, large numbers of their citizenry who initially took the King’s shilling subsequently switched sides and fought for the Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere. Subhas Chandra Bose, their leader, was for a time more popular with radical Indian nationalists than the Mahatma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Army
Other than that, Jemand’s comment @7.45pm yesterday is pretty spot on.
SatNavs: I read that they broadcast while you’re on the move, but they don’t store old data, i.e. previous journeys.
Don’t have one and don’t want one.
And I’ll be off Windoze by Christmas – I heard a rumour. 🙂
I’m supposed to be tidying this room … heh …
I made the puffed up Bilderberger Balls sound like a Wildebeest there. But apt, a herd animal which migrates to find better pastures.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11740
The Co-Op are stupid enough to fund him. Price Waterhouse there too, the Folletts and on his most recenthttp://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/edward_balls/morley_and_outwood#register
Bloomberg and the Limited Liability Partnership whatever that is.
Partial to a bit of triple flipping
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5325590/Ed-Balls-and-Yvette-Cooper-flipped-homes-three-times-MPs-expenses.html
and claiming for travel for their kids.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/233033/Probe-into-Ed-Balls-14k-expenses-for-children
There is no end to the Balls/Cooper troughing.
The Church of England has no intention of following in the steps of Christ by casting the moneylernders out of the temple. They are buying the temples and the moneylenders.
http://news.sky.com/story/1108747/church-of-england-backs-1bn-rbs-branches-bid
Trust that Justin is enjoying his visit to the mother country on his ME tour and I wonder how the Rev Stephen Sizer is getting on. Details within this rant.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13462#.Ucwngq9wb4Y
Not sure what point you are making here Fred. Well other than you have crappy radios or your personal car is a Faraday Cage like tank 🙂 Of course an external area is better but with many cars having the bluetooth antenna integrated into or close to the windscreen – reception is fine inside or outside the car.
If your point was about range, I have no doubt that the NASA Deep Space Network dishes could pickup car bluetooth even if said car was on the moon. They couldn’t pair with it though no matter how much transmitter power they directed at it thanks to speed of light delays.
The reason I am thinking bluetooth is that an incoming cellular connection will be logged by the network. Unless you have your own cellular base-station of course and can convince the car to roam onto your fake network but that would likely have half the neighborhood connecting to your base station which would also leave a trace. Built in car wifi could also be an attack possibility but cracking bluetooth is much easier.
Jives, I certainly don’t believe they are recording all bluetooth and wifi everywhere all the time. Wide band recorders certainly exist but unless one was nearby (relatively) with a directional antenna the signal you were looking for would be buried by other closer signals on the same set of frequencies and there is a limit to the ability to dis-entangle that.
I’ve deleted the “damned muzzies”/”wog immigration” post. I’d seen it earlier, though it was quite clear the phrases were used sarcastically. However I suspect it was from our old friend English Knight, who has a history of anti-Jewish racism, but doesn’t ever take part in discussions. Thus, it is gone.
Anon,
All digital transfers will be logged on your device and uploaded regularly to those interested i’d imagine.
There’s always a footprint.
Always.
That’s the job of the Google Streetcar, surely 😉
A Streetcar Named Spook…
http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/09/ap-source-google-to-pay-7m-to-settle-wi-fi-case/
Dreoilin,
Yes it is interesting that a number of experts in the field are saying that they believe the Hastings crash is consistent with a cyber attack. I notice in the crash photos the car front wheel (the one you can see) appears to be pointing straight ahead. I’d be interested to know if steering lock was engaged.
That said a clever attacker would use the car’s collision detect system to trigger steering unlock to remove the evidence as it crashed.
I did read a comment from someone claiming to have worked on the design of even newer car collision avoidance systems. Said they had fun playing with the simulators where they created Kamikaze cars by having them slam into the detected obstacle. Easy to do on a real car fitted with that system they claimed.
Personally I’d be tempted to install a physical cutoff switch if I owned one of these too clever for your own good cars.
By the way if you still have steering control but no brakes and the car running flat out and you can’t get it out of gear, the advice seems to be throw the steering into full lock (left or right). It won’t be pleasant but chances are greater that you will live. So goes the claim anyway.
Thanks for your explanation on the UN thread and for clearing up the mess above.
Jives,
Yes there would be a stored record in the car of the bluetooth pairing if it physically survived. However all evidence of this can be wiped in the huge amount of time you have (in computer terms to a real-time operating system) between initiating a crash and loss of function of the hardware. Other devices in the area are not likely to have any record of a pairing not involving them unless someone was actively sniffing.
Jon,
Yes, Google still thinks one of my wifi routers is 2 miles away as that’s where it happened to be at the time when the Google street car passed by.5
Anon,
I’m sure many interested agencies would have been most feverishly sniffing around Michael Hastings,and had been since he busted a couple of 4 Star Generals…
@ Suhayl Saadi– 26 June 6.47PM re “We all know there are rackets. I don’t think this measure will stop those at all. It’ll just stop the honest people.”
Quite so. The measure is a sign of an incompetent bureaucracy / government that has given up trying to control its own borders despite being an island. So it resorts to silly measures whose sole purpose is to con the public into believing that their government is on top of the situation. It may stop the honest people while making things easier for the rackets since the bureaucracy may want to believe that the Bond is the new control measure; thus giving them an excuse to be even more lethargic (and less accountable) than at present. If I were a businessman affected by this bond, I would be looking to take my business elsewhere.
No he means Douglas Murray.
See what you made me do!
Damn I have to wash my keyboard and screen for typing and printing the secret name of the Beelzebub.
Jives,
It is certainly possible that some records exist if he was a specific target for collection (which seems highly possible). It might even be possible his car mic was on and transmitting away over the cellular network at impact as such hacks have been demonstrated. Heck it is entirely theoretically possible to have multiple taps into the car at the same time over cell by different agencies – only limited by bandwidth.
But still I think Bluetooth seems a good bet if you have to do it with a moving car and want the best chance of not getting caught.
Anon,
The people/agencies who did the hit-if it was a hit-are exactly the same people/agencies who get to do the investigation.
Perfect cover for not getting caught as you can take the investigation in whichever direction yo want i.e. destroy all incrimiating evidence against yourself.
@ Jives
“Habbabkuk 7.50am.
So if it’s not direct racism then might it be indirect racism aimed at the Little Englander demographic?
Either way it leaves a sour taste and i can’t believe for a moment the Tory strategists would have somehow missed either potential dimension.”
___________
Thank you for that. The sentence I used in my post was “I doubt if this is a racist measure..” and I intended it to cover both direct and indirect racism.
Now, the govts’s intended measure may well leave a sour taste in the mouth of some and a sweet taste in the mouth of others, but I think it would be more constructive and in the spirit of this blog to focus discussion on the issue itself and leave questions of individual’s reactions on the side for the time being. I’m sure you would also thing in this spirit.
I’ll post some more substantive comments later today to complement the substantive comments I’ve already made and I look forward to lots of interesting and informative participation from
you and other members of this community.
See you later!
Jives,
Well certainly elements connected with those doing the investigation could be responsible and may have opportunity but that tends to leave at least suspicions with local police and other investigating agents not connected with causing the crash, if they see evidence of a cover-up. Let’s see where this goes.
Btw,
I went back to check video filmed just after the crash. Witness Jose Rubalcava was asked within minutes of the crash to estimate the car’s speed when it first passed him. In the later interview I linked earlier he said “as fast as it could possibly go” (in Spanish). At the time he said (In English) “Over 100 mph” which is consistent with his later interview.
Can I just say that I’m rather astonished, after the recent discussions about this blog and some of its commenters, to find that many of today’s comments are about issues which appear to have nothing to do with the theme of this thread : a lot about whether cars can be guided electronically by someone else and quite a lot of the UK govt’s latest financial and economic proposals and Israel , and then Ed Balls and his wife?
I’m afraid that if this continues, there is a risk that this thread will be disrupted and derailed , and that would be a pity because the subject is interesting .Could I please ask those concerned to focus on the subject of this thread and avoid posting extraneous material?
Thank you.
Fred
26 Jun, 2013 – 8:03 pm
“Some of my best friends are poor uneducated people who can’t speak English.”
Which languages do they speak and how do you communicate with them?
Only asking.
“Not sure what point you are making here Fred.”
Easy, car bluetooth devices are not designed to be used at any distance and I don’t believe they can be.
It would be a simple matter for a state security service or even a large security company to rig a car’s control units without any of the fantasy island stuff. They just look up the key’s pseudo random number seed off the database they no doubt have and plug into the diagnostics port.
@ Doug Scorgie
Grunts? 🙂