Theresa May’s written to the 3 million. Again. She’s even finally mentioned the EEA/Swiss nationals living in the UK. A positive step? Perhaps. But I can’t help feeling you should read between the lines…

As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I am proud that more than three million EU citizens have chosen to make your homes and livelihoods here in our country.

Although not enough to unilaterally guarantee your rights over the past year and a half, nor stop my ministers referring to you – and using you – as bargaining chips at various points.

I greatly value the depth of the contributions you make – enriching every part of our economy, our society, our culture and our national life.

But especially the taxes you pay.

I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay.

And I mean that literally. As in, money.

So from the very beginning of the UK’s negotiations to leave the European Union I have consistently said that protecting your rights – together with the rights of UK nationals living in EU countries – has been my first priority.

Which is why it’s only taken a year and a half to cobble together this deal to protect some of your existing rights.

You made your decision to live here without any expectation that the UK would leave the EU. So I have said that I want you to be able carry on living your lives as before.

Even though the deal that we’ve reached doesn’t actually enable you to carry on living your lives as before.

But I know that on an issue of such significance for you and your families, there has been an underlying anxiety which could only be addressed when the fine details of some very complex and technical issues had been worked through and the foundations for a formal agreement secured.

Or we could have just unilaterally guaranteed your rights, but we had no bargaining chips of our own, so three million of you had to do.

‘When we leave the European Union, you will have your rights written into UK law.’

Which we can change on a whim. Good luck!

So I am delighted that in concluding the first phase of the negotiations that is exactly what we have achieved.

Read the fine print is all I’m saying.

The details are set out in the Joint Report on progress published on Friday by the UK government and the European Commission.

When we leave the European Union, you will have your rights written into UK law. This will be done through the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill which we will bring forward after we have completed negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement itself.

So: no rights for you unless all this goes through. Good job everything doesn’t hinge on a few dozen of my most rabid backbenchers, and the whims of the DUP!

Your rights will then be enforced by UK courts. Where appropriate, our courts will pay due regard to relevant ECJ case law, and we have also agreed that for a period of eight years – where existing case law is not clear – our courts will be able to choose to ask the ECJ for an interpretation prior to reaching their own decision.

We know you wanted lifelong rights here, but we realised we could throw UK citizens in the EU under the bus to get the EU to compromise. Which is a win-win for me.

So as we take back control of our laws,

Oops. My UKIP klaxon just went off. Sorry about that.

you can be confident not only that your rights will be protected in our courts, but that there will be a consistent interpretation of these rights in the UK and in the European Union.

For eight years. Unless we change our minds. Or none of this happens anyway. In which case, your guess is as good as mine.

We have agreed with the European Commission that we will introduce a new settled status scheme under UK law for EU citizens and their family members, covered by the Withdrawal Agreement.

If you already have five years of continuous residence in the UK at the point we leave the EU – on 29 March 2019 – you will be eligible for settled status.

Probably. If you’re not paying taxes, some of my ministers have said we might actually tell you to naff off, but then people who don’t pay taxes aren’t really human anyway, are they?

And if you have been here for less than five years you will be able to stay until you have reached the five year threshold.

Unless you’re not paying taxes, in which case we’re considering reserving the right for Boris Johnson to catapult you across the English Channel using a giant trebuchet.

As a result of the agreement we have reached in the negotiations, with settled status, your close family members will be free to join you here in the UK after we have left the EU.

For a bit.

This includes existing spouses, unmarried partners, children, dependent parents and grandparents, as well as children born or adopted outside of the UK after 29th March 2019.

Ish.

Your healthcare rights, pension and other benefit provisions will remain the same as they are today. This means that those of you who have paid into the UK system – and indeed UK nationals who have paid into the system of an EU Member State – can benefit from what you have put in and continue to benefit from existing co-ordination rules for future contributions.

More or less.

We have also agreed to protect the rights of those who are in a cross-border situation at the point of our withdrawal and entitled to a UK European Health Insurance Card. This includes, for example, tourists for the duration of their stay, students for the duration of their course and UK nationals resident in another EU Member State.

Although you are of course all Citizens of Nowhere, and I’d sooner you never darkened our shores again.

The agreement we have reached includes reciprocal rules to protect existing decisions to recognise professional qualifications – for example for doctors and architects.

Someone told me the other day that all the doctors are leaving.

And it also enables you to be absent from the UK for up to five years without losing your settled status – more than double the period allowed under current EU law.

We really wanted this to be two years, but the EU said “non”. Bally foreigners.

There will be a transparent, smooth and streamlined process to enable you to apply for settled status from the second half of next year.

Because British IT projects are the epitome of streamlined, robust, and reliable.

It will cost no more than applying for a passport.

Sidebar: suggest raising the price of British passports next year to £500.

And if you already have a valid permanent resident document you will be able to have your status converted to settled status free of charge.

Although a valid permanent resident document must be one signed by The Queen, hand delivered by The Queen, and submitted while The Queen stands by your side being Queenlike.

We are also working closely with Switzerland and EEA Member States to ensure their citizens in the UK also benefit from these arrangements.

Someone reminded me last week that these places existed.

I have spent many hours discussing these issues with all of the other 27 EU leaders over the last eighteen months as well as with President Juncker, President Tusk and the EU’s Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier. I am confident that when the European Council meets later this week it will agree to proceed on this basis. And I will do everything I can to ensure that we do.

So right now, you do not have to do anything at all.

Trust us!

You can look forward, safe in the knowledge that there is now a detailed agreement on the table

Although only currently on the table, and not in law.

in which the UK and the EU have set out how we intend to preserve your rights – as well as the rights of UK nationals living in EU countries.

Unless they wanted free movement. But then only Citizens of Nowhere want that.

For we have ensured that these negotiations put people first.

Albeit 18 months late.

That is what I promised to do and that is what I will continue to do at every stage of this process.

Although not to the point of having the Home Office right now stop enforcing CSI in a manner the EU vehemently disagrees with, because that would be too easy.

I wish you and all your families a great Christmas and a very happy New Year.

In limbo.

You probably know by now that in its desire to eradicate buttons, Apple’s ditched the Home button from the iPhone X. Instead, you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to go Home. (Control Centre is now activated by dragging downwards from the top-right of the display.) Presumably to help people get used to this, a Home indicator sits at the bottom of the screen. Which is fine. But it never goes away. Which is not.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. If you’re watching full-screen video and don’t interact with the display at all, the Home indicator temporarily buggers off. But if you’re playing a full-screen game, or using a full-screen app? It’ll be lurking, in all its glory, like someone’s scrawled across the bottom of your screen in pen. Bafflingly, it also turns out the thing sticks around on screen grabs, which will be just wonderful for journalists. And notably, developers are forbidden from hiding the indicator when interaction is happening on screen. The most they can do is fade it a bit.

Apple got heavily criticised for a lack of affordances when iOS was stripped back to Ive-level minimalism a few years ago. But the problem there was primarily in not knowing whether buttons were buttons. You had to tap things to discover whether or not they were interactive, which is terrible design. The Home indicator, though, feels like a really weird decision. By all means, have it there to begin with. And for those users who need the reminder, let them keep it. But for everyone else, there needs to be a setting to banish the thing for good. Having it sit there permanently is a distraction that feels decidedly un-Apple.

A number of years back, I was getting out of a car, and my Nintendo DS took a tumble on to the tarmac. On retrieval, I discovered it was in a bad way. More recently, I’ve had an iPod touch fly across the office and survive entirely unscathed, and an iPad Air hit the floor with a sickening thud, but that was found to be totally fine when examined.

Oddly, I didn’t feel the need to write articles for major newspapers about these events, because they weren’t news. When you drop stuff, it might break. That’s not news. If the things you drop happen to have glass screens and surfaces, they might break. That’s not news. And yet today I was pointed at a ‘news’ piece about the new iPhone X. It wasn’t news.

The publication dropped their new iPhone on to tarmac from three feet up. The screen cracked after the first drop, which they argued was “not good”. On what basis? What’s “not good” is this type of bullshit clickbait article that is ultimately entirely worthless. (And, no, I’m not linking to it.)

Still, presumably said publication is ensuring its various stupid, wasteful tests are all equivalent, so they can accurately gauge the relative strength of the various devices they’re ruining?

Tough to say, because none of our tests are scientific

You just hope when these idiots arrive at the Genius Bar, Apple knows who they are, notes they dropped the device with the intention of breaking it, notes some kind of AppleCare condition they’re in breach of, and hands over a roll of gaffer tape rather than a replacement iPhone.

Apple didn’t send me an iPhone X review unit. Clearly, I should now be outraged or something, and so here’s what I plan to do:

• Get on with my life, continuing to write about Apple as I see fit, working with my existing iPhone that’s only a couple of months old, and which I’m actually perfectly happy with anyway.
• Keep an eye out for iPhone X coverage, because I’m naturally interested in it, and may well upgrade to that line when next year’s model’s released.
• Pop into a local Apple Store when the iPhone X is on display and the crowds have died down a bit, to play around with one.

Here’s what I don’t plan to do:

• Whine about Apple giving some people who aren’t wealthy white guys iPhone X review models to talk to their readers about.
• Complain about Apple further widening its reach beyond tech bloggers, by giving people in other areas of journalism (including YouTube) a chance to talk about the new phone.
• Conflate people being seeded with a review unit with them seemingly getting a bit of hands-on time, to make a short video.
• Call out and insult the 19-year-old nephew of a writer who was provided a review iPhone X, because said reviewer gave the kid the iPhone for a bit to see what he thought about it.

Because that would be a shitty thing to do.

Theresa May has written to EU citizens. Well, I say written to EU citizens. It’s worth delving into the letter, so you can see precisely the way this government thinks.

As I travel to Brussels today, I know that many people will be looking to us – the leaders of the 28 nations in the European Union – to demonstrate we are putting people first.

As she travels to Brussels today, it’s worth noting she sent this letter to the press first, to get decent PR at home, only later sending it to the people it’s addressed to. As for putting people first, she’s right there if she means Brexiters and/or her government. Not so much EU citizens, whose rights she could have unilaterally guaranteed last year.

I have been clear throughout this process that citizens’ rights are my first priority.

As many commentators have noted, the use of ‘clear’ usually means the opposite.

And I know my fellow leaders have the same objective: to safeguard the rights of EU nationals living in the UK and UK nationals living in the EU.

In the UK’s case, by removing existing rights, and also by refusing to guarantee even the right to reside in the event the UK leaves the EU with no deal.

I want to give reassurance that this issue remains a priority, that we are united on the key principles, and that the focus over the weeks to come will be delivering an agreement that works for people here in the UK, and people in the EU.

Reassurance means nothing. These are empty words. EU citizens have been living in limbo since the referendum. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate: many thousands have already decided to the leave the UK, taking their skills, taxes and families (often including British nationals) with them.

When we started this process, some accused us of treating EU nationals as bargaining chips.

Apart from Liam Fox. Although May is technically accurate here, because he referred to them as cards in a poker hand rather than bargaining chips. Much better!

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Oops. Actually, almost everything is further from the truth. See above.

EU citizens who have made their lives in the UK have made a huge contribution to our country.

Which May, her cronies, and the British press continue on a daily basis to erode in people’s minds, by positioning EU citizens as simultaneously taking all the jobs that ‘should’ go to British people, and taking all the benefits they can possibly carry in their gnarled and evil EU citizen claws.

And we want them and their families to stay.

Except her government is continuing to push against family reunion rights, and is looking towards ‘equalising’ how migration works regarding the abhorrent income barrier (if you don’t earn over £18,600, bye); also, Amber Rudd helpfully noted that “maybe” those EU citizens who are unemployed won’t be able to stay. So the inference is even the unemployed spouse of an employed person here (British, EU or other) won’t necessarily be able to remain in the UK – despite May saying she wants them to.

The language is important here – as with a lot of Brexit guff, it’s about aspiration, rather than actions.

I couldn’t be clearer: EU citizens living lawfully in the UK today will be able to stay.

Lawfully.

But this agreement will not only provide certainty about residence, but also healthcare, pensions and other benefits. It will mean that EU citizens who have paid into the UK system – and UK nationals into the system of an EU27 country – can benefit from what they’ve put in. It will enable families who have built their lives together in the EU and UK to stay together. And it will provide guarantees that the rights of those UK nationals currently living in the EU, and EU citizens currently living in the UK will not diverge over time.

An entire paragraph of not awful. Hurrah! Although this all depends on the caveats already mentioned – and those I suspect are about to come. (I’m reading this for the first time now, by the way. Here’s hoping for exciting shock twists and a happy ending. I’m going to be disappointed, aren’t I?)

What that leaves us with is a small number of important points to finalise. That is to be expected at this point in negotiations. We are in touching distance of agreement. I know both sides will consider each other’s proposals for finalising the agreement with an open mind.

Probably accurate, if you mean “will approach the proposals with venom, and throw up roadblocks much like a cat spewing hairballs all over the carpet”. (The EU’s not perfect here either, note. The one actually quite smart thing the UK’s suggested – dropping a two-year maximum absence from the UK to retain settled status, for Brits in the EU to retain free movement within the EU – was spurned.)

And with flexibility and creativity on both sides, I am confident that we can conclude discussions on citizens’ rights in the coming weeks.

Meaning: do what we want, or we will have the press say failure is entirely your fault for being inflexible in not bending to our every whim.

I know there is real anxiety about how the agreement will be implemented.

But don’t care.

People are concerned that the process will be complicated and bureaucratic, and will put up hurdles that are difficult to overcome.

Probably because existing processes are unnecessarily complicated and bureaucratic, and put up hurdles that are difficult to overcome.

I want to provide reassurance here too.

Here we go.

We are developing a streamlined digital process

Because those never go wrong in the UK.

for those applying for settled status in the UK in the future. This process will be designed with users in mind,

As opposed to, say, people who aren’t using it.

and we will engage with them every step of the way.

COMPUTER SAYS NO.

We will keep the cost as low as possible – no more than the cost of a UK passport.

An actually good thing. Although I’m hoping this means people applying from scratch; otherwise, it goes against an earlier suggestion that moving from PR to settled status wouldn’t cost anything.

The criteria applied will be simple, transparent and strictly in accordance with the Withdrawal Agreement. People applying will not have to account for every trip they have taken in and out of the UK and will no longer have to demonstrate Comprehensive Sickness Insurance as they currently have to under EU rules.

There’s disagreement about CSI, but legal experts on Twitter have told me that either the UK could drop CSI as a block to PR right now, or at least remove the existing requirement. The EU’s long contended anyone with access to the NHS qualifies for CSI. But the UK Home Office disagrees, which means many EU citizens seeking PR (required for citizenship) do not qualify unless they have comprehensive sickness insurance.

The snag: almost no-one knew about this, and the Home Office helpfully doesn’t explain the specifics of what qualifies for CSI. So it’s a lottery of sorts, and an intentional block, to stop people who haven’t been working for the past five years from being able to stay.

The British government could change this right now, but chooses not to. Bear that in mind when you hear May and co. banging on about wanting people to stay. Again, the inference is “we want people to stay who make us money”. Anyone else is considered collateral damage. This kind of thinking isn’t smart, though, because that damage is poor for society as a whole, affecting social webs, carers and the like, and impacting heavily on families.

And importantly, for any EU citizen who holds Permanent Residence under the old scheme, there will be a simple process put in place to swap their current status for UK settled status.

File under: will believe it when I see it.

To keep development of the system on track, the Government is also setting up a User Group that will include representatives of EU citizens in the UK, and digital, technical and legal experts. This group will meet regularly, ensuring the process is transparent and responds properly to users’ needs. And we recognise that British nationals living in the EU27 will be similarly concerned about potential changes to processes after the UK leaves the EU. We have repeatedly flagged these issues during the negotiations. And we are keen to work closely with EU Member States to ensure their processes are equally streamlined.

OK.

We want people to stay and we want families to stay together.

Assuming you earn enough, that everyone’s in work, and that you can jump through enough hoops.

We hugely value the contributions that EU nationals make to the economic, social and cultural fabric of the UK.

Enough to leave them in limbo for a year and a half.

And I know that Member States value equally UK nationals living in their communities. I hope that these reassurances, alongside those made by both the UK and the European Commission last week, will provide further helpful certainty to the four million people who were understandably anxious about what Brexit would mean for their futures.

Nope.

Oh, and a quick PS to Theresa May and her government colleagues: are you even aware that EEA and Swiss nationals are in the UK on the same free movement rules? Given that you never mention them in your hot air letters, I suspect not.