By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--January 6, 2016
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Things are so jolly for the masses in England that their MPs are taking time to debate a government-sponsored petition calling for American presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be excluded from the UK.
MPs will discuss the call for the Tempest-in-Teapot Trump ban in the usually more august Westminster Hall come January 18.
British politicians whose sensibilities have been highly offended all because Trump noted ‘Britain’s Muslim problems’, are somewhat akin to the sheriffs in old Western movies, who ordered the bad guys out of Dodge by sundown-- except in this case the ‘bad guy’ is nowhere near England by being an ocean away. 'As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the Committee has decided that the subject should be debated. 'A debate will allow a range of views to be expressed.'Mind you, no one’s really saying that the debate will not lead to a vote and cannot implement a ban. “Last week, the Government declared Mr Trump could be banned from entering the UK if he is deemed by ministers to be 'non-conducive to the public good'. (Daily Mail) Isn’t that just an über polite way of saying, ‘Hide your babies, hide your grannies, The Donald may be coming?’ “Prime Minister David Cameron said Mr Trump's call to ban all Muslims from entering America was 'divisive, stupid and wrong' and ministers had steered clear of backing a ban on the controversial politician. (Daily Mail) Mr. Cameron seems clueless that being termed ‘divisive, stupid and wrong’ would be considered a good day for The Donald. Nor is Mr. Trump exactly withered by the British Prime Minister’s personal take on him, largely because the insults coming at him from overseas can’t hold a candle to the incendiary ones hurled his way by fellow Americans. “Trump is ‘the Kim Kardashian of politics’ and ‘famous for being famous’ says Carly Fiorina as his fame grows and her poll numbers slump. (Daily Mail)
“New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says the country isn’t electing an ‘entertainer-in-chief’ and ‘showtime is over’, but refuses to mention The Donald by name.”From the glossy pages of Vanity Fair magazine, Fox’s Megyn Kelly claims Donald Trump tried to ‘woo’ her before he announced he was running for president--and P.S. reveals she was ‘violently’ ill the day of the FoxNews debate forcing her to keep a bucket under her desk in case she had to upchuck. Given a study of the data of the government petition by Canada Free Press columnist Sierra Rayne, the petition was not sustained by British signatories as touted:
First-hand evidence of data manipulation now exists from the U.K. parliamentary petitions site. On Friday, anyone could go to the website of the "UK Government and Parliament" and look at the infamous petition to "Block Donald J Trump from UK entry." In other words, as of Friday, less than half the purported signatories to the petition that sought to ban Trump from the U.K. were actually from the U.K. -- according to the .json data file downloaded directly (and not manipulated in any form) from the U.K. Government and Parliament website. This result was indeed unusual, as on Friday I checked a number of other major petitions on this site to see if they also had the minority of signatories coming from within the U.K. They did not. All other petitions looked at had >98 percent of signatures coming from the U.K. Thus, the Trump petition was an anomalous outlier. And now, magically, as of Saturday afternoon CST (following publication of my article (CFP, Dec. 13, 2015) questioning the data), we see that the data behind the Trump ban petition has been radically changed on the U.K. government website. According to the current dataset, 523,230 of 550,500 total signatories (95 percent) are coming from within the U.K., and the sum of the individual signatures for each of the 650 MPs is now 515,789. What an amazing turn of events in terms of data integrity, or lack thereof.“The U.K. government’s petition website is a joke, and any data obtained therefrom should be viewed with great skepticism and as being subject to potential—if not likely—manipulation. That a major modern democracy is operated in such a form is an embarrassment” Rayne concluded. At the same time, Rayne discovered (CFP, Dec. 12, 2015) that “a parliamentary petition to stop all immigration and close the U.K. borders until ISIS is defeated is now at 450,000 signatures and growing.
The petition was started by a copywriter, Tina Reeves, who lives in Plymouth. According to the petition -- which was created on November 28,Meanwhile, is it only British MPs who would carry on with a debate over a full-blown Tempest in a Teapot?Allowing uncontrolled immigration and taking in these refugees potentially endangers the entire UK population. At any other time in our history this would be tantamount to a declaration of war and borders would be closed.The British Home Office has already responded to the petition, stating that "[t]he UK government has no intention of closing Britain’s borders, as this would create more problems than it would solve." Comparing the map for supporters of the call to close the U.K. borders and halt all immigration with the corresponding map for supporters of the petition to ban Donald Trump from the U.K. clearly shows that the former has widespread support in urban and rural regions of the United Kingdom, whereas the latter is concentrated on highly urbanized areas such as Greater London. One must also question whether the petition to "Block Donald J Trump from UK entry" has been fraudulently manipulated by non-UK sources. The raw data files behind these two petitions can be downloaded directly from the parliamentary petitions website. In these files, the "Block Donald J Trump from UK entry" petition has -- at the time of writing -- a total signature count of 527,669, but the data file lists only 253,966 signatures coming from the U.K. itself. By comparison, the "Stop all immigration and close the UK borders until ISIS is defeated" petition has a total signature count of 449,285, of which the U.K. signature count is 439,483. In other words, according to the U.K. parliamentary data files on these two petitions, it appears that only 48 percent of the signatories for the petition to ban Trump came from within the U.K., whereas 98 percent of the signatures for the petition to close the U.K. border and halt immigration are sourced from within the U.K.
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