Don't pay!

The only time Theresa May is animated is when she's talking about immigration. She's usually talking bollocks, of course, but immigration is clearly her project.

She has already screwed up the Windrush generation: people who were invited from the 'Empire' to the UK to help out the motherland in its time of need have now died without ever having their status sorted out. Their children, who also came here legitimately, have been deported to places they don't know and some of them have also died with no resolution to the 'problem' created by May.

Now we have the 'problem' of the EU nationals and their position in brexit. The UK government wants these people to pay £65 to register as foreign nationals.

It's just that these people are not 'foreign'. Some came here to work in the NHS or in education. They drive taxis, run shops, manage banks, work in libraries. Some have married Scots. A lot have children born and educated here. Neither they nor their kids seem 'foreign'. They are Scots. Some have been here for a long time.

I'm old enough to remember Peter Lilley's catchphrase at the Tory Party conference of 1992: 'I've got a little list.' He meant of benefit 'scroungers.' And we know where that has led.

The Tory ambition is control: that means, control over the likes of you and me - and now EU nationals.

I'm happy to admit I loathe the Tories. I'm always alert to what they are up to. I don't think they've quite reached the Fascist level of preparing lists of people to be 'proscribed' but that may come. (Look where Peter Lilley's little benefits list has got us: into one of the cruellest Social Security regimes in the developed world).

So why does the UK government (which sadly still has control when it comes to immigration) want to 'register' these people? Are they making a list? What for? And what do the people in question get for their £65?

For the moment, my only advice to EU citizens is: Don't pay! Don't sign up to anything. The rest of us - only Scots by an accident of birth, while you are Scots by choice - we'll support you.

We have experience of this nonsense in Scotland. Remember the Poll Tax? I spent years denying the existence of painters, plumbers, carpet fitters, students who had apparently worked for me. Nope, I don't have an address - sorry.

Civil disobedience wins!

What will the UK government do? Make us cough up the whereabouts of EU friends and neighbours? Take EU nationals to court to make them pay and make them register? We love a fight like that in Scotland! We can call upon the brains of so many good lawyers to deal with this. But I'll bet the gutless Tories will cave in first.