Theresa May 'planning changes to immigrant test'

[dipsydoodle]

Home Secretary Theresa May is reported to be planning changes to the test taken by foreign nationals who wish to become British citizens.

The Life in the United Kingdom test was introduced by Labour in 2005.

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The revised version will focus less on the practicalities of daily living in Britain and require more knowledge of British history and achievements.

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Mrs May is understood to have scrapped sections of the test which dealt with claiming benefits and the Human Rights Act.

[non sociopath skin]

1. Well, well, what a surprise!

I taught a course for students preparing to take the Citizenship test a couple of years ago, many of our learners being talented, articulate Iranians who had very understandably fled the theocracy in their country, as I would have done in their place.

The requirements weren't bad and, within them, my co-tutor (also Iranian) and I strove - successfully, I like to think - to give them a "fair and balanced" (though not in the Faux sense) picture of the country, its culture and its institutions. Interestingly, many of them had already picked up on the resemblance of the views of the BNP, UKIP and the Tory right to what they had gladly left behind and there were some excellent and well-informed political discussions which would probably have caused Theresa May to hold up her hands in horror.

Incidentally, we did point out regularly that if we went out to the High Street any morning and asked the British citizens there a sample of the Citizenship Test questions cold, few of them would be likely to achieve a pass mark.

So now, it seems, a reasonably useful and practical test is to be replaced by Norman's Cricket Test.

Who'd - a - thunk it?

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. The case against making history knowledge part of a 'Britishness' test was best made

by Sellar and Yeatman, in about 1930:

The book is a parody of the Whiggish style of history teaching in English schools at the time, in particular of Our Island Story. It purports to contain "all the history you can remember", and, in fifty-two chapters, covers the history of England from Roman times through 1066 "and all that", up to the end of World War I, at which time "America was thus clearly Top Nation, and history came to a ." (This last chapter is titled "A Bad Thing"; the final pun even requires the English term "full stop", rather than the American "period", to work.) It is based on the idea that history is what you can remember and is full of examples of half-remembered facts.

Although the subtitle states that the book comprises "103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates", the book's preface mentions that originally four dates were planned, but last-minute research revealed that two of them were not memorable. The two dates that are referenced in the book are 1066, the date of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman invasion of Britain (Chapter XI) and 55 BC, the date of the first Roman invasion of Britain under Julius Caesar (Chapter I). However, when the date of the Roman invasion is given, it is immediately followed by mention of the fact that Caesar was "compelled to invade Britain again the following year (54 BC, not 56, owing to the peculiar Roman method of counting)". Despite the confusion of dates the Roman Conquest is the first of 103 historical events in the book characterised as a Good Thing, "since the Britons were only natives at that time".

Chapter II begins "that long succession of Waves of which History is chiefly composed", the first of which, here, is composed of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, mere Goths, Vandals and Huns. Later examples are the 'Wave of Saints', who include the Venomous Bead (Chapter III); 'Waves of Pretenders', usually divided into smaller waves of two: an Old Pretender and a Young Pretender (Chapter XXX); plus the 'Wave of Beards' in the Elizabethan era (Chapter XXXIII).

In English history Kings are either 'Good' or 'Bad'. The first 'Good King' is the confusingly differentiated King Arthur/Alfred (Chapter V). Bad Kings include King John who when he came to the throne showed how much he deserved this epithet when he "lost his temper and flung himself on the floor, foaming at the mouth and biting the rushes" (Chapter XVIII). The death of Henry I from "a surfeit of palfreys" (recorded in other historical works as a "surfeit of lampreys&quot (Chapter XIII) proves to be a paradigmatic case of the deaths of later monarchs through a surfeit of over-eating or other causes. Other memorable monarchs include the Split King Henry IV, Part 1
and Henry IV, Part 2 and Broody Mary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That

It's very British to be unsure of British history.

[non sociopath skin]

3. A fine classic of English humour, totally lost on those whose sense of irony ...

... was surgically removed in the San at Eton.

I particularly like the idea of Henry IV Part One abdicating in favour of Henry IV Part Two.

The Skin

[fedsron2us]

4. They will be asked simple question such as 'How many bankers does it take to fiddle LIBOR'

or 'How long does it take to get your wages credited to an Ulster Bank account' (Answer - More than two weeks and counting from what i can determine following the RBS\NatWest computer fiasco).

Once they get a grasp of how dodgy the whole financial edifice of the UK has become then they can start planning to emigrate somewhere with a future.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Did you notice

that despite the allegation the RBS fiasco was triggered in India it wasn't : it was Edinburgh.

[fedsron2us]

6. Well that is the official line being put out by RBS management

but then they are very keen that the debacle should not be linked to their decision to sack 1800 experienced UK workers and offshore their jobs to India. The reality is that it matters not whether the mistakes were made in the UK or India since RBS management should have in place processes to ensure that failed software upgrades can be backed out without compromising the underlying system. One or two IT workers no matter how incompetent should not be able to cripple the entire operation of a major bank That makes this failure an IT governance issue for which management are responsible not a mere software glitch that can be blamed on some lowly technician.

The Treasury Select Committee are chasing Hester on this matter because in April 2008 the Government Banking Service was transferred from the Bank of England to RBS (ironically it occurred only a few months before the taxpayer had to rescue RBS from Fred Goodwins recklessness by buying 85% of its share capital).

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/treasury-committee/news/tyrie-demands-answers-over-computer-failures/

One wonders if they are also going to ask whether it is fit and proper for a bank that is majority owned by the UK taxpayer to be actively sending UK jobs offshore in the middle of a major recession.

You can track the impact the breakdown of the systems is having on ordinary punters here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4026289&page=93

It is pretty clear that not all issues have been fixed and that Ulster Bank has largely ceased to function for its customers. Some people are beginning to ask whether a banking group which can not do the basic functions of taking deposits, paying out money, making transfers and keeping accurate accounts of transaction should have a banking license at all.

We will see what happens next week