Last month Labour home secretary Alan Johnson announced tougher rules for students wishing to gain visas to study in the UK. Lib Dem Voice reader Ian Lawrence has passed us this thank you message from Australia’s Cultural Attache aka Sir Les Patterson …

G’day. Just heard my little possums that ahead of Labour’s March Visa rules, one group of Turkish students has decided not to go to Bournemouth but to spend tens of thousands in Australia instead – makes a change from Indians. The first of many groups I hope – good on you mate. How did Gordon Brown’s prudent/drongo government achieve this triumph/banana skin?

A stroke of genius only allowing foreigners to study long-term in the UK if they can already speak English – to GCSE level.
Making the UK Visa form the most difficult in the English speaking world.
Closing any school that helps students fill them in.
Charging would-be students nearly £700 for them.
Doubling the charge if they want to change schools.
True Blue hospitality – treating students as potential terrorists, illegal immigrants or money launderers – criminalising them. Great idea, we see nothing wrong with convicts!
Halving the number of hours they can work to 10.
Stopping them bringing their Sheilas with them.

Fair dinkum, what an inspired visionary policy transcending logic and common sense at this time of UK unemployment while at the same time Alan Johnson saying “we are not damaging a major part of the UK economy”. Real common touch cobber announcing it on the TV first, not Parliament and pushing it through without a vote.

So the Spirit of the Charge of the Light Brigade is not dead with you Poms charging heroically onto financial disaster under unequalled blinkered leadership. You show solidarity and the Spirit of the Blitz with the Tories saying the rules do not go far enough!
What generosity sacrificing UK jobs to help your Antipodean cousins! Brings tiers to my eyes.

A big Aussi thanks to our Commonwealth Chums, we are happy to welcome unemployed UK language school teachers, university and college lecturers, shop owners, publishers, hospitality workers, taxi drivers, exam board workers, even Sheilas with rooms to let and bankers, to come and work Down Under. For the paupers in the cheap seats, Lez Pat would welcome more jobless Brit Ex Pats.

Already foreign students contribute £15 billion dollars a year to Oz and is our third biggest export earner, and we let them work 20 hours a week, so send us more.

Anyone of you whingeing Poms wanting to join me in personally thanking the head of the UK Borders Agency responsible can contact Ms Lin Homer (DOH), UKBA CEO at 2 Marsham St, London SW1p 4DF, fax 0870 3369050, email: [email protected]. She gets my special commendation for Oz’s highest political award – the GSV (Gladiolus for Sticky-beak Valediction) for helping to close down those pesky UK language schools. Lin can put a snag on my barby anytime.

Again, thanks and good on you Home Sec –

Sir Lez Pat – Oz Cultural Attache

* Sir Les Patterson was speaking to the imagination of Lib Dem Voice reader Ian Lawrence, “one of many Bournemouth teachers in decent schools likely to lose their job directly thanks to the UKBA”.