How To ‘Earn’ Citizenship
Spotted yesterday on A Tangled Web who in turn hat/tip’s The Mail. Immigrants will be eligible for fast-tracked passports if, within six years, they perform 50 hours of community service. This would shave two years off of the usual period to get to properly get elbow-room on the benefits ladder. Suggested suitable tasks are suggested above.
Entertaining, the lists includes (effectively) knocking on doors asking people to vote Labour and shouting abuse at any worker trying to cross a picket line to get in to work. Both of these count towards “Earned Citizenship”.
Citizenship is required to vote and becoming a member of a Trade Union
to speed things up is hardly going to turn you in to a hard-core Thatcherite, is it? Rather like bloating the public sector workforce with non-jobs…turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
However the pressure is off our new found friends – employers will have to give staff time off to do this. Entertaingly this gives us all the chance to pay extra on our grocery bills as small employers struggle to cope with their staff randomly making up their 50 hours by preaching at the local mosque, and extra on our Council taxes as local authorities claw back the increased expenditure needed to audit the thing. It is unclear whether the “referee” each of them will need will be able to sign off on the hours spent on the picket line in the picture. It’s possible that only picket lines not featuring tear-gas will count but you never know.
Anyway, the scheme isn’t due to start until Dec 2010 and we’ll have a different Government by then so with any luck it’ll get quietly forgotten about.
What can one say? They’re fuckers aren’t they.. this login malarky is a chore!!!!
Some of those activities would require CRB checks, perhaps that could be waived in the case of Citizenship Seekers.
It says ” add pictures ” so here goes
Yes but what to expect these days?
If you mean the ASE new way of registering posts…it was a test because David Vance wanted it in on Biased-BBC and I needed to give him a demo. Might take it off, might not. Probably will as not using it from the Admin point of view on ASE.
Sue, click on the blank face to add an avatar. Your click added an attachment.
I intended to add a paragraph about CRB checks – the Home Office make a specific suggestion about newcomers becoming Scout Leaders for example, but having lunch with a lawyer tomorrow so thought that I’d get the full breakdown of what immigrants could and couldn’t really do before doing a followup post.
Basically the whole scheme is a publicity sham, isn’t it?