Those income requirements for spousal visas ...

This is something I feel quite strongly about, my daughter having married an American and having had to wait to bring him across. The principle, I agree with the Supreme Court, of not requiring HM's Government to import people who will be dependent on benefits (outside of our obligations to refugees and asylum seekers, who ought not to but seem quite often to be economic migrants), is reasonable.

The BBC, as always, with its full SJW hat on, gets it badly wrong:

Satbir Singh is a British citizen who is unable to bring his wife to the UK from India, because his more than £60,000 a year income comes from more than one source.

I went through this with daughter. She had income from three sources - her part time job, research assistant work at her University, and research assistant work with our company. The big question was whether she would build up enough income from her three jobs, or eventually reach the full income requirement from her university job.

Here are the rules. And remember this guy is on £60k per year, according to the BBC - more than three times the current £18,600 requirement.

Category A - if any of his sources of income is a job that pays £18,600 or more a year, salaried or not, he can apply to bring his wife over after 6 months in the role (lowest salary in the period counts, non-salaried get it slightly easier and it is total gross income over that 6 months.) And you can add non-employment income, a savings contribution or pensions.

Category B - (and the example c in the rules is a good one) - this is how my lass qualified in the end.

Part 1: Gross up your employment over the last 6 months and do you exceed £18,600 annual equivalent? If you are salaried, you can use your current salary rate. If you are non-salaried or have multiple earnings, do some trivial arithmetic.

Part 2: Did you earn more that £18,600 over the last 12 months?

Pass both parts and you can apply. And you can count your partner's income (if they are in the UK with permission to work) and, as above, non-employment income and pensions count for both parts and a savings contribution can be used for Part 1 but not Part 2.)

So, I reckon somebody on £60,000 p.a., an average £5k per month, would be trivially able to meet category B after about 3 months and 22 days, before adjusting for lumpiness of income?  That would be enough time to earn £18,666.67 - covering you for both Parts 1 and 2 of Category B.

There are various adjustments, to the benefit of the applicant, for sick leave (and maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave) and other categories, C through G, for different circumstances.

I call "Bollocks" on the particular instance (rather than that there are specific people who have particular issues with the system.) Unless, of course, his income is undeclared - but that's his problem, not HMG's.

He hit him with the cluebat!

Somehow, I've got on to the "Medium" daily mailing list. Quite a lot of it is just the usual pathetic SJW whining with a strong levening of "This shit is only relevant to Yanks. And, even there, it is probably still wrong."

But this cracked me up:

Though the vaunted Free Market has no incentives to, say, take care of babies with cancer, a well-functioning market can definitely be a great way to see which provider offers the cheapest price for a roll of toilet paper or a bushel of apples.

Sighs.

It is fairly obvious that there are:

• people with babies with cancer, 
• and their Friends and Relations, 
• people who have had babies survive cancer, 
• people who have had babies die from cancer, 
• people who have other tragedies to do with cancer, 
• medics who care about babies, 
• medics who are just doing their job, 
• medical researchers who want fame and fortune

All of these people have things to contribute to taking care of babies with cancer - money, insurance providers with money, time, skills, tear-jerking stories that can get in to the press and raise awareness.

How best can they co-operate to ensure that these resources are brought to bear to provide the most effective treatment or palliative care for babies with cancer? Well, medicine is a not-really-but Free Market - loads of guild controls, loads of government interference - some of it justified, much of it less so - but there is no reason that paediatric cancer treatment should be any different to, say, adult cancer treatment. Or hip replacements, frankly.

Luckily for my still-too-high blood pressure, at the bottom, this was linked:

Are you really going to indirectly compare “babies with cancer” and “getting a ride?”

If anyone was wondering why the endlessly breathless hipster-press gets the stink-eye, I think I can hook you up.

Okay, timeout.

When you open your article — when the lead paragraph — is patent bullshit, you significantly undercut your credibility.

“Though the vaunted free market has no incentives to, say, take care of babies with cancer.”

You mean, aside from all those people who care about babies with cancer?

Well worth reading the response in full (much more than the OP.)

Now, of course, that the cluebat has struck home, let's see if it has any lasting impact.

British Values?

So Jeremy Corbyn thinks that John Bercow is right to reflect "British values" in signalling that the Trumpocalypse will stop at the gates of the Palace of Westminster.

I wonder if these values are the murderous homophobia and anti-semitism and the legalised misogyny that he loves so much in his friends from Hamas and Hezbollah, or the torture and murder practiced so freely by his friends in the IRA?