Good to see @Marthakearney on @BBCr4today taking @pritipatel to task over the numbers of lorries in Dover - now 1,500 in Stack (M20) and Manston airfield combined - rather more than 170 that @BorisJohnson said yesterday, baffling haulage groups /1

@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson She won't say whether lorry drivers will have to take a PCR test (long-winded, requires RNA extraction etc. 24-48hrs) rather than much faster (and less sensitive) lateral flow test. Short Strait will struggle to operates with PCR tests. You'd need one yesterday for tomorrow! /2
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson Because of the delays that have empty lorries already stuck in the queues, in an earlier interview British Retail Consortium @the_brc Andrew Opie said fresh food shortages would occur within days because lorries couldn't get back to Spain etc to reload /3
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc Haulage experts like @RHADuncanB are always at pains to explain that the lorries at Dover (and GB-IE, for that matter) are flowing in a continuous cycle. More than 85% are from EU countries. So if you block one side, or artery the whole system starts to grind to a halt/4
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc @RHADuncanB This episode has been a bit of a teaching moment, exposing the canard that the UK can unilaterally "take back control of its borders". It can't. Borders are membranes. Traffic flows in both directions. Actions by one side impact the other - as French move has demonstrated. /5
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc @RHADuncanB The UK government attempts to diminish the importance of the Short Strait (Dover Calais) is slightly baffling - I guess it maybe calms people down, stops panic buying, but reality is there is no escaping that 70+% of UK fresh produce is from EU in winter/6
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc @RHADuncanB So @pritipatel saying that we can use airfreight instead, doesn't really take much account of the relative volumes that come in by road across the Short Strait and by air, or the relative costs /7
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc @RHADuncanB When Grant Shapps @grantshapps was playing with the numbers yesterday - simply not comparing like with like in terms of containers entering the UK, one haulier I know replied with a single word "Nonsense". /8
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc @RHADuncanB @grantshapps I think the government, when it tries to mask realities like this, really does think it is being clever, when really it risks taking everyone for fools - which arguably why the #COVID19 comms have been so utterly disastrous. /9
@Marthakearney @BBCr4today @pritipatel @BorisJohnson @the_brc @RHADuncanB @grantshapps Better to trust people with the facts, because once you start to distort them habitually - as we've seen with #Brexit - you get trapped in a fallacious narrative of your own making. That might work for a while, but ultimately it makes a soggy foundation for government. ENDS

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My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:
We’ve been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this.

The community’s response? Outrage.


Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.

When we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep:
- Has the company promised to hire in the existing community?
- What’s the quality of jobs + how many are promised? Are these jobs low-wage or high wage? Are there benefits? Can people collectively bargain?

Displacement is not community development. Investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people and families.

Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life.

We need to focus on good healthcare, living wages, affordable rent. Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism.

It’s possible to establish economic partnerships w/ real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition.

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