Me and my MP

My MP replied to my letter about a new Conservative Party policy concerning public housing as follows (my original letter is copied below). His response ignores many of the comments I made in my letter.

Dear Mr Jacobs, 

Mrs Whateley’s views are entirely reasonable, in fact, they are the moderate position. A social home with a lifetime tenancy in London or Sunninghill, say, will in very many instances exceed a million pounds in its financial benefit. Very obviously non-citizens should not be eligible; to think otherwise is not an enlightened position, but rather a rejection of the concept of citizenship and borders. Any non-citizen requiring such a financial subsidy to live comfortably should return home. A majority of British people share her views – as do I

Yours sincerely,

Jack Rankin MP
Windsor

I responded:

Dear Mr Rankin,

Thank you for your concise response, from which I deduce that I am to be categorized as one of your unenlightened citizens. I am pleased to be so classified if it distinguishes my views from those of Ms Whateley and yours.

Sincerely yours,

Ian Jacobs

My original letter:

Dear Mr Rankin,

 

Your colleague Helen Whateley has just convinced me that I cannot in good conscience vote for any candidate representing the Conservative party.

 

My Saturday paper quoted Ms Whateley as stating the following:

 

“Making Britain your home should be earned by working, paying tax and integrating. It should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world.

 

Labour has lost control of immigration and lost control of the welfare bill, and it is British families picking up the bill and sitting on waiting lists. The next Conservative government will make foreign nationals ineligible for social housing. Nearly 230,000 homes could go to British families.”

 

Perhaps you will tell me that Ms Whateley has been misquoted. However, on the assumption that she has been accurately quoted, I write to point out that this asinine farrago of prejudice and misrepresentation appalls me.

 

First, Ms Whateley implies that all foreign nationals who live in social housing came to Britain for a “free ride,” implying that they do not work, pay tax or integrate. How can she possibly know that this is true of at a minimum 230,000 people (assuming that only one householder per home holds a foreign passport) and perhaps as many as 460,000 (if there are two such householders in each home)? Is there any evidence that a significant proportion of these fellow human beings do not work, pay tax or integrate? I doubt it. Would you be encouraged to integrate if the government were to evict you from your home simply because you were not born in Britain?

 

The members of our communities who live in social housing might include retired couples or people in active employment who have taught our children, nursed us when we were unwell, cared for our elderly neighbours, whose children are in our schools, who are our neighbours perhaps attended the events that I help to organize in Sunninghill Library, or participated in activities in Cordes Hall. Would that constitute a failure to integrate.

 

Do you, as my elected representative, know how Ms Whateley will identify those she intends to evict from homes they may have occupied for a long time? If those who determine that a family should be evicted make a mistake (remember the Windrush scandal), will a candidate for eviction be allowed to appeal? And once evicted, if these unfortunate victims of Ms Whateley’s racism fail to find a home they can afford, will she ensure that local authorities have sufficient funds to house them, as they are legally required to do so? In this event, exactly how has Ms Whateley’s policy saved the taxpayer any money at all? Indeed, perhaps the cost will be higher because a private landlord will charge a high rent.

 

Persecution of people simply for being workers in a country of which they are not citizens, is a very personal matter for my wife and me, since we have two immigrant sons, one in Mexico and one in Japan. They earn salaries and are seeking to benefit their host countries with their talents. They both have access to the public health system in the country in which they live. Are they really personally responsible for any waiting lists in Mexico or Japan, and if waiting lists do exist should they be punished for the failure of the respective governments to manage an adequate health system?

 

Closer to home, we have a friend of many years, a Muslim lady who worked alongside my wife in a university library, and who has continued to work in her “retirement years” while I live idly on my pensions. She was educated in her own country but in the British curriculum, speaks excellent English, volunteered during the Covid pandemic, is a friend of Kew Gardens, and a valued friend. Please tell me how I can advise her to integrate? She might well be the target of one of Ms Whateley’s evictions.

 

I hope you will excuse me, if I trouble you concerning one more vacuous statement, in this case something said by your leader Ms Badenoch. Many years ago (when the Poll Tax was so controversial that even Conservative Party members travelled to London to join protests), a Conservative canvasser for council elections called at my home. When I told her that I could not vote for the Conservative candidates, she said words to the effect: “Why not, it’ only bout emptying the bins.” I thought that this betrayed a profound ignorance of the duties of a borough councillor, but she was only a canvasser not the leader of the Conservative Party. However, I understand that Ms Badenoch justified her selection of a former Neo-Nazi for a council seat on the grounds that he would be concerned only with “parking, sorting out bins.” I know that you were once a councillor for RBWM, so I can assume that your knowledge of the functions of a council is superior to that of your leader. Perhaps you can explain this to her when you next see her.

 

I am sorry to interrupt your summer holidays with this matter. I wish you and your family a relaxing summer.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Ian Jacobs

 

ICE in New Jersey

  

A friend in New Jersey responded to my last piece about prisons in the UK. Her testimony is both moving and appalling. She agreed that I could share it with you. She sent her comments in two messages.

 

Message 1:

 

Oh Ian, don’t even get me started on prisons. I’m part of a program from our church called “Eyes on ICE”. Not a protestor, not getting pepper sprayed or on the news, just standing outside the facility where they are holding the largest number of detainees of Homeland Security on the East Coast in a god forsaken area of Newark, lacking any shade or seats for the people waiting, unreachable for the poor families by any kind of public transportation and the rules for who can visit and what they can wear and what time they should show up change almost randomly and daily.  The other day in the paper they said this particular facility is the most restrictive prison in the state.

We’re documenting how the ICE officers are treating the families and visitors of the people inside — who may have overstayed their visas, who may have wandered across the border, or who may be perfectly legal and waiting for their hearing but just happen to be Spanish and swept up with others so they get to be thrown in with the other 1000 detainees. We also have food, grocery store cards and clothes for the visitors. Last time I was there a man came by UBER from CONNECTICUT and wasn’t allowed in so he got a hot dog meal before his long trek back. It makes me want to cry. So far this particular facility has had 3 deaths and of course haven’t really had anything announced about the causes of the deaths in what would be youngish men who may have not been getting whatever medicine they were supposed to be getting. It’s unbelievably cruel, and designed to be just that. I have no idea what the end game is for these guys, but after the second death this week they started releasing more almost every day. And today only announced the 3rd death happened a few weeks ago, although ICE considers that none of these were in their custody since they transfer them to the hospital when things go south. Along with another woman I drove home a man to Hackensack (since we were going that way anyway) who had been held for two weeks only because he lived with his cousin who was illegal.  I mean, WHAT HAS THIS WORLD COME TO????????.

 

Message 2:

 

I was so mad when I wrote that e-mail that I left out other facts you might want to know. Delaney Hall is run by a private company,  The GEO Co. which received a $1 billion, 15 year no-bid contract. As a federal prison they have so far not let any NJ state elected people in to see it, which has resulted in some arrests when NJ legislators have claimed it’s their right to go inside, and there was a short hunger strike this summer carried on because of poor  (and rotten) quality food, lack of medical help. Apparently two of the deaths that occurred happened when the detainees were not given their seizure and/or high blood pressure medications but then moved to a hospital so technically the deaths were not at the facility. When I was there last week only 2 visitors were allowed at a time and they must be family members. Thus, no lawyers, no any kind of advisors, church, or friend visitors. This is especially significant when they keep moving detainees around different prisons in different parts of the country. The clothing visitors wear must be approved by the guards on duty. No hoodies, no tee shirts with slogans, no ripped jeans, no crocs and no “skin showing” so when I was there last week an 8 month pregnant girl had shown up in a beautiful sun dress and we had her put on an extra large tee shirt and an extra large pair of gym pants over it, as well as exchanging her sandals for high top sneakers. She came in looking lovely but wasn’t nearly as pretty in her gym clothes to see her partner. Of course these rules change all the time, as does the visiting hours in 2 hour blocs — only twice a week, once during the week, once on the weekend — detainees are assigned certain visiting hours and it’s not uncommon for their visitors to show up (in an uber)  and find out that their particular visiting hour has been changed and is already past. And all further visiting for the day for all visitors can be cancelled at the discretion of the guards on duty. The whole thing is so secretive, and sneaky and cruel that it doesn’t even seem like the country I grew up in. I’m just horrified that people are treated like that.

How many prisons do we need?

  

I remember learning on my publishing travels that once upon a time the budget of the excellent California State University system exceeded that of the state prison system. However, as tough on crime policies became popular the budget for imprisonment exceeded (and still exceeds) that for education.

 

Another anecdote. A professor I called on at a Mississippi Delta Community College introduced me to her husband, a photography teacher in the art department. He showed me a portfolio of photographs taken in the local state prison: he photographed inmates on admission and on release. Since Mississippi had the death penalty his second photograph of a prisoner sometimes included those about to die. The photographer told me that the prison once provided basic education for the prisoners. However, a Mississippi legislator discovered that the education of a prisoner cots more than the education of a student in a state high school. He proposed to eliminate this disparity by removing funding for education programmes in state prisons. He cannot have been successful, since the state’s prisons do provide education programmes, but I imagine that the legislator may have attracted popular support.

 

My British friends will already know that there is much controversy here about a government policy to release a substantial number of prisoners before their planned release date. The reason is that our prisons are almost full and may soon be unable to admit any further prisoners. Our government that tells us that its finances are very constrained, but nevertheless reassures us that the problem will be resolved by building more prisons at considerable expense. I am no criminologist, but I am not sure that I value a government by its ability to build prisons.

 

A couple of weeks ago Jan and I returned from a short trip to Manchester by train. At Oxford a man boarded the train and began to address the passengers in a loud voice. He asked whether anybody had any cocaine; or did anybody want one of his cookies (he walked up and down the carriage offering them). He informed us that he had been in jail for five weeks, convicted of a second offence of driving while banned from doing so, and that he hadn’t had a cigarette or a drink in five weeks. He also entertained us with some football chants: “Who are yer? Who are yer? Up the Seagulls [Brighton & Hove Albion], fuck the Palace [Crystal Palace].” He was in a hurry to get home to his wife and thought he might get a taxi to Brighton where he lives. He was not short of cash because he had gone from prison to a Wetherspoon’s pub (for my non-British friends, popularly known simply as Spoons), where he had clearly made up for his five weeks without a drink, and had also won a lot of money on a slot machine – hence his ability to pay for a taxi from Reading to Brighton. He would have left prison with a standard £76 maintenance grant and a rail ticket to Brighton, so he must have invested his subsistence in drinks and the slot machine. As the train arrived at Reading station (where we changed trains) he informed us that “Old Bill” was waiting for him. As we left the train, we saw him in conversation with three or four police officers who were checking his papers.

 

In short, this man had occupied a scarce prison space for five weeks, and upon his release had headed straight for the pub, become very drunk, and was possibly detained by the police within a few hours of his release. His driving offence may have been very dangerous and required punishment, but I wonder whether five weeks of imprisonment (cost c.£6,000) and of police officers detaining him at Reading Station was a sensible use of scarce resources. He disturbed the quiet of our journey, but harmed nobody except perhaps himself.

Me and my MP

 Dear friends,

 We live in distressing times. I sent the following letter to my Mp this afternoon:

 

Mr Jack Rankin MP

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

 

9 August 2026

 

Dear Mr Rankin,

 

Your colleague Helen Whateley has just convinced me that I cannot in good conscience vote for any candidate representing the Conservative party.

 

My Saturday paper quoted Ms Whateley as stating the following:

 

“Making Britain your home should be earned by working, paying tax and integrating. It should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world.

 

Labour has lost control of immigration and lost control of the welfare bill, and it is British families picking up the bill and sitting on waiting lists. The next Conservative government will make foreign nationals ineligible for social housing. Nearly 230,000 homes could go to British families.”

 

Perhaps you will tell me that Ms Whateley has been misquoted. However, on the assumption that she has been accurately quoted, I write to point out that this asinine farrago of prejudice and misrepresentation appalls me.

 

First, Ms Whateley implies that all foreign nationals who live in social housing came to Britain for a “free ride,” implying that they do not work, pay tax or integrate. How can she possibly know that this is true of at a minimum 230,000 people (assuming that only one householder per home holds a foreign passport) and perhaps as many as 460,000 (if there are two such householders in each home)? Is there any evidence that a significant proportion of these fellow human beings do not work, pay tax or integrate? I doubt it. Would you be encouraged to integrate if the government were to evict you from your home simply because you were not born in Britain?

 

The members of our communities who live in social housing might include retired couples or people in active employment who have taught our children, nursed us when we were unwell, cared for our elderly neighbours, whose children are in our schools, who are our neighbours perhaps attended the events that I help to organize in Sunninghill Library, or participated in activities in Cordes Hall. Would that constitute a failure to integrate.

 

Do you, as my elected representative, know how Ms Whateley will identify those she intends to evict from homes they may have occupied for a long time? If those who determine that a family should be evicted make a mistake (remember the Windrush scandal), will a candidate for eviction be allowed to appeal? And once evicted, if these unfortunate victims of Ms Whateley’s racism fail to find a home they can afford, will she ensure that local authorities have sufficient funds to house them, as they are legally required to do so? In this event, exactly how has Ms Whateley’s policy saved the taxpayer any money at all? Indeed, perhaps the cost will be higher because a private landlord will charge a high rent.

 

Persecution of people simply for being workers in a country of which they are not citizens, is a very personal matter for my wife and me, since we have two immigrant sons, one in Mexico and one in Japan. They earn salaries and are seeking to benefit their host countries with their talents. They both have access to the public health system in the country in which they live. Are they really personally responsible for any waiting lists in Mexico or Japan, and if waiting lists do exist should they be punished for the failure of the respective governments to manage an adequate health system?

 

Closer to home, we have a friend of many years, a Muslim lady who worked alongside my wife in a university library, and who has continued to work in her “retirement years” while I live idly on my pensions. She was educated in her own country but in the British curriculum, speaks excellent English, volunteered during the Covid pandemic, is a friend of Kew Gardens, and a valued friend. Please tell me how I can advise her to integrate? She might well be the target of one of Ms Whateley’s evictions.

 

I hope you will excuse me, if I trouble you concerning one more vacuous statement, in this case something said by your leader Ms Badenoch. Many years ago (when the Poll Tax was so controversial that even Conservative Party members travelled to London to join protests), a Conservative canvasser for council elections called at my home. When I told her that I could not vote for the Conservative candidates, she said words to the effect: “Why not, it’ only bout emptying the bins.” I thought that this betrayed a profound ignorance of the duties of a borough councillor, but she was only a canvasser not the leader of the Conservative Party. However, I understand that Ms Badenoch justified her selection of a former Neo-Nazi for a council seat on the grounds that he would be concerned only with “parking, sorting out bins.” I know that you were once a councillor for RBWM, so I can assume that your knowledge of the functions of a council is superior to that of your leader. Perhaps you can explain this to her when you next see her.

 

I am sorry to interrupt your summer holidays with this matter. I wish you and your family a relaxing summer.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Ian Jacobs