Great set of shots in your album BME330….good stuff! 🙂

Very enjoyable ‘show and the weather was absolutely superb. We spent four days in Spain and the temps were between 30 and 35 degrees throughout 😮

Here’s one from me…looks like I’m the only person still shooting slide film rather than digital these days!

Best regards

Steve Rush ~ Touchdown-News

There were just over 16,000 working visas granted to Indian citizens in 2004, which was more than a 50% increase on the amount issued the previous year.

I have no experience of the IT sector, or knowledge of how many of those entering the UK on working visas are IT professionals. I did, however, work in recruitment for the legal and accountancy professions, albeit it many years ago. I wasn’t aware of many (any?) qualified solicitors from India coming to work here back then, but qualified accountants most certainly were, and still are today. If you add to those the numerous Indian doctors, dentists and those following other career paths, are the numbers coming here to work in IT that significant? Indian news sources I found cited ‘Silicon Valley’ in the USA as being the first destination of choice for many IT grauates (of which it stated there are around 70,000 per year).

The stuff below is worth a read. Whether or not you believe it depends on your political views and opinions, I guess 😀

Managed Migration Programme

* Illegal migration is damaging to both India and the UK. The British Government’s Managed Migration Programme will benefit both countries and help protect the vulnerable.

* Effective managed migration is vital to Britain’s economic and social interest and we recognise India is an important and productive source of the skills we are short of in the UK.

* We encourage legal, managed migration. Migrants make a disproportionate contribution to the wealth of the UK, accounting for 8% of the population but 10% of the gross domestic product – and are 20% more likely to be self-employed.

* But we will be tough on trafficking and those who intend on illegal working.

* Home office research has shown that legal migrants contribute £2.5 billion more in taxes than they consume in services and have little or no adverse affect on the wages or employment levels of the existing population.

* No modern, successful country can afford to adopt an anti-migration policy. It is in our interest to harness the innovation, skills and productivity that new migrants can bring.

* If the UK is to achieve flexibility and sustainable growth, then legal migration as opposed to clandestine working, must be the way forward.

* The primary route for economic migration to the UK is through the work permit scheme.

* Employers in the UK must apply for a work permit for a specific vacancy and demonstrate they cannot fill the post with a domestic worker.

* In India in 2004, we issued 16,527 work permit visas, an increase of 50% over 2003.

* There is also a Highly Skilled Migrant Programme designed to attract top talent to the UK.

The Government’s Five Year Strategy for Asylum & Immigration

* This was published on 8.2.05, and underlines the benefits of migration to the UK but also the importance of effective immigration control. In the strategy, the Prime Minister highlights the expertise of IT and finance professionals from India, and goes on to:

* Acknowledge the economic benefits that migrants bring and reaffirms the UK’s commitment to our international obligations to refugees who need our protection.

* Set out who will be allowed to stay in the UK permanently, and how the criteria will change to carefully control permanent migration to provide long term economic and social benefits.

* Set out how within the next 5 years a fully integrated pre-entry, border and in-country control will be introduced

* Set out the progress we have made in recent years in removing a greater absolute number and a greater proportion of failed asylum seekers.

The UK will continue to welcome economic migration within strict criteria. Visitors, students and migrant workers make a huge contribution to the UK economy. The system we have at present works well but is complex and difficult to understand. The evolving system will be clear, flexible and employer-led.

Steve

p.s. Duxfordhawk: best of luck with everything involving you and your intended. My brother is very happily married to a Polish girl and their 5th anniversary is coming up shortly. They’ve never experienced any problems so I’m sure things will be fine for you too. Saying that, however, they both live and work in Sri Lanka now and for the year before that were in Bagkok!
I guess all of this reflects how the World has changed due to globalisation.

Yes, come on Swift.

We’re all waiting to hear what you mean by a “JF”……

Do all bigots live by the seaside, I wonder………

“Johnny Foreigner” I should imagine :rolleyes:

Steve

Part-Time Voluntary Work for SOC

Minutemen Plan To Patrol San Diego Border

Minutemen volunteers in Arizona have wrapped up their month-long stint monitoring the Arizona-Mexico border for illegal immigrants.

Now, in San Diego, volunteers for a border watch program hope to have the same success.

The group called “Friends of the Border Patrol” says the rusty metal fence along the border is not doing its job to keep immigrants out.

Members hope to have more than a thousand volunteers trained and ready by the end of the summer to help agents stop border crossings.
“This isn’t about race, this isn’t about ethnicity, where we come from. This is about…look at 9/11…that’s what it really comes down to. How many more buildings have to fall?” said Andy Ramirez who is with Friends of the Border.
Opponents, such as President Bush, call the volunteers vigilantes.

However, Governor Schwarzenegger has praised the minutemen for their efforts at the nation’s borders.

Steve

Have you ever actually supported any U.S. action, deed or policy, or given it credit for anything (past or present) on this forum? The current administration or any preceeding one? If you have, it must have been grudgingly.

Surely anybody here, Arthur included, can post whatever they want! Why does Arthur need to make postings that have any balance?

Your complaints about how the U.S. is handling terrorists and terrorism would have more creditability if you proposed solutions rather than simply complaining. From the european experience with terrorist you are obviously aware of how difficult it is to prevent terrorist attacks, find the guilty and prosecute them. Those held in Cuba are at least temporarly out of action.

Your confused ramblings would have more credibility if your spelling and grammar were on a par with several people here for whom English isn’t their first language, Arthur included.

Finally Arthur I see you are contibuting to the sly suggestion that the U.S. has supported IRA terrorism by supplying money and weapons. No one would argue that there isn’t some support in the American Irish communities for the IRA, but to advance the notion that the U.S. government supports terrorism in the UK is lunacy. Is the fact that U.S. weapons have been involved, proof?

Where on Earth do you get the idea that anyone posting on this forum believes that the U.S. government has any complicity in supplying arms to the IRA?? Yet again your fevered imagination takes precedence over what you are actually reading in people’s posts!

Steve

Steve Really now and when did this so-called “Homemade Missile System ” arrest happen, you would think it would have been all over the Greater north Eastern News but funny I don’t recall it and I ask some of my friends who work for the local Fishwrap to do a search and they couldn’t come up with anything. they did come up with a few IRA releated link that talk about the possibality of Money being sent thru certain mob control Busniess in New York and Chicago and even a item about thre IRA Supporters being question about some High Power Rifles bought at a Boston Gun Show.

I’m sorry, but I really can’t be faulted for the ignorance on your part. Facts are facts, and that you’re not aware of them is purely down to you not being well-read or well-informed. I gave you enough “leads” above: there are, quite literally, hundreds of links, threads and news items out there so all you have to do is look. Go along to the ‘Boston Globe’ and trawl their archive if you are interested enough: your acceptance of plain facts isn’t really of much concern to me and whether you believe them or not won’t alter history.

This is just an excerpt:

1983 – FBI foils IRA bid to buy explosives in Wyoming. Man arrested. Seven tons of arms, ammo and explosives seized. 1984 Cargo seized on fishing boat Marita Ann by Irish Navy. Men jailed in USA and Ireland. Arms procured by drugs gang in Boston. Small arms received from the USA

1985 – FBI foils IRA bid to buy small arms in Colorado, one Irishman deported. 40 firearms, including FN FAL rifles x 13; AK-47 x 1. Also: hand grenades x 2, drums of nitro benzene, 70,000 rounds of ammunition.

1986 – Dutch police seize arms in raid on apartment in Amsterdam. Two well known four IRA men arrested. Heckler & Koch G3 rifles found. Irish police seize 10 G3 rifles in 1986 – part of batch of 100 stolen from Norwegian Reserve base near Oslo, 1984. FBI ‘sting’ foils plot to fly arms cargo by private jet from Boston to Ireland.

1987 – IRA receives Redeye SAMs, M-60 MGs, M-16 rifles, MP-5 SMGs, bulletproof vests from USA. Several convictions followed. 150 tons of arms: AK-47s, SAM-7s (reported), Semtex, and RPG-7 rocket launchers, Taurus pistols, plus other materiel Libya

1985-87 Four shipments of arms and explosives successfully landed in Ireland by boat skipper Adrian Hopkins, these include 1,000 AK-47s, 20 SAM-7s RPG-7s, 2 tonnes of Semtex received from Libya. French Navy seize cargo on Eksund, skippered by Adrian Hopkins, off Brittany. Five arrested 380 gallons of nitro benzene.

1988 Cargo smuggled from Amsterdam aboard truck; seized by Irish police, Kells, Co Meath. Driver later jailed. Small arms described as ‘high-powered rifles’ USA received. US Customs foil bid to buy rifles from gun dealer in Alabama. Two men jailed. Detonators for bombs; anti-aircraft missile system received from the USA.

1990 – Group of IRA supporters jailed in Boston in 1990 for trying to smuggle a home-made missile system to Ireland. Member of group is also believed to have supplied detonators in 1982-88. Stinger missiles USA late 1980s/ early 1990s FBI foils plot to acquire Stingers on black market in Miami.

Steve

Arthur, try: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/aia/wilson95.htm

There are tons of links to be found using terms like “Marita Ann”, “John Crawley”, “NORAID”, “Valhalla” etc.

I don’t intend doing the legwork on RER’s behalf as I already know for a fact that Boston was one of the main sources for funding the IRA so far as the US is concerned.

There are also 1990 stories about Bostonians being jailed after attempting to export a “homemade missile system”.

Steve