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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If O’Mara does quit as an MP on September 3rd the ensuing by-e
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If O’Mara does quit as an MP on September 3rd the ensuing by-election will be a backcloth in the build up to October 31st
The Sheffield Hallam MP, Jared O’Mara, has made it clear that as soon as the Commons returns from its summer break he will step down thus triggering what could be an interesting by-election in Nick Clegg’s old seat.
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LibDems normally need tactical voting to win this seat.
It was won originally from the Tories with Labour tactical voters.
When Labour targeted Clegg in 2015, Clegg cling on with Tory tactical votes. These dropped away in 2017 allowing Labour to win.
The by-election will be dominated by Brexit. Labour is campaigning hard, and defending its win, so I can’t see the LibDems getting any tactical votes from them. And Tory leavers will be unlikely to vote tactically.
LibDem success hangs on pulling over Tory remainers (as happened in Brecon) and taking a chunk of the Remain vote from Labour (as is happening everywhere). This does make the LibDems clear favourites.
The LibDems would benefit from one of the old parties falling into a clear third position in order to offer scope for tactical voting the next time.
In four working days I will supposedly know if I am still welcome in the U.K.
About 2 years ago I downloaded the form to apply for EU settled status the first time. 85 pages, many reports at the time how impossible it was to fill in, the first stories of ridiculous rejections hitting the news , I had to give it a try for the sake of my family. 24 pages or so into it I had to stop, gasp and ultimately give up.
I was asked to give every single time I had left the country , start and end day. I am EU citizen, well off and not afraid of flying. I also had given a damn to my CO2 footprint for many years. Maybe here was the punishment. I knew I had been out of the country a lot, here, there, everywhere. Zagreb, Dublin, Seattle, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, Holland, whatever. I also knew, even with weekend trips included, I had never have been outside of the country for more than the maximum of 6 months. I am a working doctor in the NHS after all. 6 weeks of annual leave for much of the time, the rest to find and pay for a locum. But I would struggle to reconstruct reliably my last year of travelling, let alone the last 5 or - as actually demanded - the last 23 years. I asked on this forum, I asked on other places for advice. From writing a letter stating I had never left for longer than... to simply making it up were the suggestions I got. Former I felt would be ignored, latter would risk my GMC registration, lying on official forms is an offence after all. So I wrote to my MP and MSP and put things to the files. I had tried. If the country wanted me to jump through impossible hoops, I would tell the country to fuck off. Canada needs GPs , I was told.
My MP kept me up to date with his endeavours to fix things and sent plenty cheery messages how I was needed and should not give up. I decided to wait. One thing I knew, I would not lie on an official form, even if it meant I had no status in the end.
9 months ago my MSP and our local NHS board chief exec wrote that there was now a special thing set up for NHS staff and I should try it. So I did. A vastly shortened form, a blank assertion that I was in the country for 5 + years and never left for longer than 6 months, so that was all good. But it also asked me to send the passport to somewhere in.Croydon for however long they felt they needed it. I have elderly parents, I do frequent charitable work abroad, I want to go.on family holidays. In short, I can not afford leaving my passport with people who are known to lose things all the time.
The alternative was to travel to an identity verification centre. So I checked those out. The nearest was in Lanarkshire, other side of Glasgow, I am in remote Argyll. Nevertheless, I called them. You.needed to make an appointment, not according to your choice but theirs (like NHS OPD in the bad old days) needed to be there in time and the times they offered the service were always during mid day working hours. So I would have to look at booking a full day locum at vast cost for a treck to Glasgow and beyond, hope not to end up in a traffic jam to arrive in time for someone to look at my passport - and all because my local council could not be arsed to set up a ID check centre themselves. The clamouring that EU citizens are welcome in Scotland clearly did not extend so far as to compel my council make an effort to check my ID in a place I can actually attend without paying hundreds of pounds for a locum. So I gave up again. Canada still wants GPs and even if their forms might be long and complicated too, I knew from my travel in the last summer that the welcome would be genuine, heartfelt and actually mean something.
Then the first reports of the ID check app appeared. Faulty, flawed, weird, failing without reason were the common theme of reviews. I had other things to do, equally exasperating like appraisal or more important, like burying an aunt.
I finally gave it another go today. It did work. Not seamless and flawless, but it did work. It took some experimenting , the RFID chip is only read when the phone lies exactly above it, though neither the passport tells you where it hides the chip nor does the app tell you it needs that level of proximity, so I had a few goes, but it did work. I am now one of the one million who have tried to register.
Over to the Home Office. In four working days I am told I will know if I am considered settled or if I should speak with one of the many recruiters from Canada who are currently approaching me on LinkedIn.
I wrote this tale, because I heard it too often, we EU citizens had supposedly 3 years to get registered.
Maybe we had them. But if I had tried earlier I would have been either at risk of getting struck off for lying on forms or £500 poorer for having to pay for a locum. I can do without either. I like Scotland, but being made welcome looks slightly different. Maybe this last attempt works. Otherwise it is Canada.
And if I recall you are on your way across the Atlantic on one of the Queens tomorrow
Have a wonderful time
The weather forecast for the outward looks good, provided we steer south of one windy patch, and yesterday I got upgraded to a window cabin which was a piece of luck. I will enjoy the crossing more than the dog, I fear.
In relation to the Sheffield Hallam by-election, it will be interesting to see whether Farage will himself contest it or is he chicken?
Shouldn't 23 years of tax records be proof of settled status?
Or is that naive?
And my wife and I follow you 3 weeks today on Sapphire Princess on a return trip to Nova Scotia and New York
And if I don’t get what I want I’m going to Canada! That’ll teach you!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Manchester_Gorton_by-election
But seriously - a slam dunk for the Libs one would have thought.
The LD's have this tiny window where they can tap into 50% of the UK vote that can't go anywhere else. It's still there but Labour have moved in the furniture vans.
Is Swinson on holiday?
An effort is clearly being made but it's seemingly haphazard. An acquaintance of the council CEO says he has been contacted FOURTEEN times to remind him to do the settled status procedure, but a Greek colleague at work has not been contacted at all (both have been here for years), though she is sending the application next week anyway.
Even space is no longer safe.
Of course being retired means no work stress and because of the numbers of cruises we have completed with them we each receive 500 minutes free internet access, making 1,000 minutes to keep upto date on UK politics
What is more interesting is if O'Mara stands down before or after the confidence vote in Boris. I'm sure Boris would much rather it was before!
Hope he is having a good time if that is the case.
Perhaps he thinks there would be no form filling in Canada.
He is, however a mediocre captain at best. Time for a change ?*
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/24/joe-root-england-inner-boycott-ashes-third-test
* Once the current series is done.
I've had a similar wish to sail into New York, so for my 60th next year we are booked on the Queen Mary 2 transatlantic crossing in May.
I wonder if Bercow actually would...
There's an Opinium poll out tonight for those suffering from pollius absentia:
CON 32%
LAB 26%
TBP 16%
LD 15%
Green 4%
Movements well within margin of error, CON +1, Lab -2, LD +2, Grn -1
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/24/johnson-seeks-legal-advice-parliament-closure
ASDA seem to flogging 400g boxes for 10p most evenings.
26% Antisemitic Fudge
19% Remain Alliance
I agree with Taxman. Sheffield Hallam have been without representation for the best part of a year now and there are people here proposing another two months of delay.
Just get on with it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-49451255
But it’s really up to Parliament, if they have the will.
It was confusing. It was ridiculously long.
It was rejected the first time because she'd not applied for a "EU Residence Card".
It was rejected the second time because her pension is from South Africa, not Portugal. If she'd had the minimum state Portugese pension, whe would have been fine (even though that would certainly not be enough for her to live on in London).
But her (significantly larger) private sector South African pension did not demonstrate her self sufficiency, and the fact she'd paid five or six years of income tax in the UK didn't cut any ice.
We've hired an immigration lawyer - at significant expense - and he's confident that she'll be allowed to stay. But it's all a bit of a pain.
And I can see that the people we're most keen to keep - the young and the upwardly mobile - are the ones who when faced with massive forms, will choose to go somewhere else.
I find it astonishing that my E2 visa application for the US required significantly less paperwork than the Settled Status application in the UK.
It was tedious (we could afford a lawyer which helped) and I went to Lunar House in Croydon a few times to queue for hours.
That’s probably the closest you can get without actually needing settled status
In 1964 Dennis Vosper (Runcorn) was elevated to the peerage on 20/4/64 and no writ was moved before the General Election on 25/9/64. 158 days.
If, and it's a big if, England can accumulate 70-odd runs without losing a wicket tomorrow morning, to bring the required amount down to 150, with seven wickets in hand, then they would be a 50/50 shot. If they manage to lose one wicket in getting the 70, they would be a 35-40% shot. And if they lost two, they would be 20-30%. More than two, and the odds become pretty long indeed.
Nevertheless, the odds of getting 70 runs without losing a wicket are no worse than 15-1, I'd say. Losing just one is perhaps 6-1. Losing two is 3-1.
Put those together and England has a shot - perhaps 7-1 or 8-1 - of pulling it off tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1165366743575027717?s=20
Richard Bertinet, who owns a cooking school and bakery in Bath and has written several award-winning cookbooks, described the government's settlement scheme to allow EU citizens to stay in the UK "shambolic"."
https://news.sky.com/story/top-chef-richard-bertinet-denied-permanent-uk-stay-despite-living-here-for-31-years-11792808
359 is a high challenge in a fourth innings. However how often could we see a score of 359 in a third innings without being too surprised at it?
From 156-3 in a third innings how often could the batting team go on to score 359+
There are pressures that are different of course with batting last, but realistically tomorrow is day 4 and we are not going to bat through 2 days while scoring less than 203 runs [even with Stokes scoring 2 runs off 50 balls]. Either we get bowled our or we win, but the target is not insurmountable.
Although, I accept it is slightly different.
Does EU citizen have?
1. no criminal record
2. a full time job earning above some hurdle (that they've had for a certain period of time)
3. a job with the NHS or other accredited body
4. a British spouse or British children
5. an advanced degree
If (1) and at least one of the other four is true, then the process shouldn't involve much more than going on line and filling out a five minute form that involves giving appropriate details. They can then get sent a card that is carried with their passport.
For people without jobs, etc., then the process should be more complicated. But for most people in work, it should be extremely simple. Otherwise you end up with a situation where the people you most want to stay leave, while those who have most time on their hands (i.e. the unemployed) are the ones who do the paperwork.
See h ttps://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1165366743575027717
See h ttps://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1155213186548797440