Yesterday's column was one that has been seen many times before: Britain is crap, and it's all the fault of Labour and the immigrants. In 'Labour is guilty of a sickening act of national betrayal' he writes:
Many parts of our towns and cities no longer resemble Britain.
All sense of social cohesion has been lost. We no longer have a common culture, shared heritage or even universal language.
'No longer resemble Britain'? He doesn't say explicitly that there are too many people around who aren't white, but he might as well.
Later, he makes a direct link between immigration and violent crime:
the consequences of mass immigration: the violent crime; overcrowded transport and overstretched hospitals and schools.
It's really quite depressing to read these views getting such a platform. But it's hardly a surprise - he's being repeating the same things for years.
At the start of February, when calling Gordon Brown the worst PM in history, McKinstry said:
Our sense of national identity has been destroyed by the twin forces of mass immigration and multi-culturalism.
Hmm. Sounds familiar. He goes on to claim the Government is engaged in a:
desperate appeasement of militant Islam
although fails to produce much evidence for that. As usual.
In the column before that, 'We are betrayed by Labour's sick, so-called justice' he says:
the Government wilfully destroys our borders, appeases militant Islam, turns London into the global capital of jihad
Ah. That again. But London? More than, say, Afghanistan or Pakistan? Really?
The previous week, in an article about how he would save billions of public spending, he advocated abolishing the entire overseas aid budget as well as the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and its 'politically correct bullying'.
And, of course, the immigrants and Muslims got a kicking too:
It is particularly outrageous when the benefits go to grasping migrants who have made no contribution to our society, as highlighted by a string of recent cases where new arrivals have been given housing benefits worth more than £100,000 to live in luxurious houses in west london, far beyond the dreams of most Britons.
Why should we be required to support in our jails foreign criminals who should be de- ported, or give welfare hand- outs to Muslim extremists who want to blow us up? This abuse of the taxpayer has to end. Radical surgery of the state would be a gain, not a pain.
The lack of capital letters and other formatting errors, incidentally, mark all McKinstry's online articles - it's not clear why.
'It is time to stand up to this plague of violent crime', he raged on 18 January. Guess who's responsible for that, according to McKinstry:
Mass immigration has not only shattered social cohesion but also brought a vast influx of criminals into our society. According to police figures, one murder in every five is committed by a foreigner.
That figure is totally untrue, but just because it's not true, doesn't mean he won't keep mindlessly repeating it.
Then there was 'Immigrants squat in your house and you're powerless' on 14 January, in which he claimed:
large swathes of our country have been taken over by hordes of migrants who have made no contribution to our society yet still believe they are owed a living by the British public.
His two rants before that didn't mention immigration or Islam, but on 28 December normal service was resumed:
For Brown has wilfully put the British people at risk from terrorism by promoting the Islamification of our country, appeasing the radicals and encouraging the settlement here of over two million Muslims.
A 2009 Labour Force Survey put the number of Muslims in Britain at 2.4 million. As there were 1,591,000 at the time of the 2001 census, Brown hasn't encouraged - or even overseen - any such thing.
This blog had previously exposed the repetitive nature of McKinstry's columns - he refers to Labour as Marxists who loathe Britain repeatedly too - as well as their inaccuracies.
But the far more serious concern is that his rhetoric is so inflammatory. In his world, migrants are benefit-grasping, violent criminals who ruin Britain and are responsible for most of the problems in the country today. Muslims are all would-be terrorists who are constantly 'appeased' (a carefully chosen word given its historical context) by Government.
McKinstry never writes anything in praise of immigrants. Indeed, he never mentions immigrants at all unless it's to castigate them or blame them for some ill.
And who does that benefit? It certainly doesn't help that 'social cohesion' he claims to be so worried about.
His language often sounds much like the language of the BNP. So it's no surprise to find a thread with the title 'Fantastic article by Leo McKinstry' (about one of his efforts on immigration and the Government hating white people) on the Stormfront forum.
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Are there any serious grounds for reporting this vile man and used-toilet-excuse-for-a-news-paper to a relevant body for inciting racial hatred or similar? It does seem unbelievable that the "Greatest Newspaper in the World" (copyright Richard Desmond) can churn out this garbage with impunity even if to a rapidly diminishing readership.
ReplyDeleteAnother fantastic analysis of the abhorrent Leo McKinstry. How his views are constantly regurgitated is beyond me; I'm all for freedom of speech, but not the freedom to lie, and peddle this complete nonsense, without any requirement to provide evidence for his bigotry and fear-filled-garbage.
ReplyDeleteI wondered where I had heard the idea of abolishing the overseas aid budget (as opposed to reducing it or trying to ensure it is put to better use). Then I remembered this little beauty, listed on the BNP’s website, as one of their health policies
ReplyDelete“We will see to it that no money is given in foreign aid while our own hospitals are short of beds and the staff to run them.”
I try to live my life as free of the Express as possible, and was not familiar with Leo McKinstry. Ignorance has never been more blissful.
Previously, McInstry has contributed an article to the Express headed "Why Gordon Brown is the Worst Post War Prime Minister". You can imagine him sitting in Richard Desmond's office being given that to write about like a little boy at school being given his weekly essay.
ReplyDeleteYou say that McInstry gave little evidence in support of one of his assertions - but isn’t that the way with tabloid journalists?
ReplyDeleteIf they want to convince their readers of anything they either refer to it in an ultra-confident way that suggests that it is established fact, or they infer that it is a majority opinion. In other words, they try to persuade their readers to accept ideas without really thinking about them.
When McInstry wrote an article with the schoolboy’s essay title, “Why Gordon Brown Is The Worst Post War Prime Minister” - since exaggerated to “The Worst Ever” - he obviously thought that his readers had forgotten or had never heard of Sir Anthony (Suez) Eden or Edward (Economic Disaster) Heath. Either way, it was a little insulting to the intelligence of his readers - although he is, after all, an Express columnist - and I’d accept that it’s a little difficult to insult the intelligence of a Daily Express reader.
As a man constantly taking the moral high ground, McInstry might have been expected to nominate Harold (You’ve Never Had It So Good) MacMillan, Margaret Thatcher’s forerunner as the advocate of cynical materialism. MacMillan encouraged Eden to go ahead with his Suez adventure, pulled the plug on him by telling him, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, that we couldn’t afford to go on with it, then did more than anyone else to bring him down and, with the aid of the Tory “magic circle” got his job. In 1959 he doped up the economy to win a General Election, then spent the rest of his time in office trying to repair the damage.
At the last Labour Party Conference there some encouraging signs following Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that he was going to support the Tories at the next General Election or, as some might put it, he said that he was going to sell toilet rolls with David Cameron’s picture on them. At last, it seemed, a major political party was going to take the line that as the Press were never going to give them a fair deal anyway, there was nothing to lose by going for them head on.
Somebody in office should read the words of columnists like McInstry, the challenge them to justify their assertions. The majority of sports fans regard sports writers with contempt so a very good line would be to make the point to that political columnists are merely journalists, like the idiots who write nonsense about their favourite football teams.
There is a belief that up to 90% of the letters published by newspapers as having been received from readers are actually written by the staff of the newspapers. If this is true in the case of the Express, I would imagine that McInstry is a leading contributor. If that sounds harsh, look at the integrity shown by the Express.
ReplyDeleteWhen Robert Kilroy-Silk pushed his luck too far on the subject of Arabs, the Express claimed that in the three days following publication in the Sunday edition, they had received a number of supportive telephone calls - which, had those calls lasted only 60 seconds each, would have occupied ten telephone operators working 24 hours a day over 34 days.
It was once claimed that their cartoonish Paul Thomas had won an award for "Political Cartoonist of the Year". He was captioned as that for 18 months. That prompted me to write to the Express letters feature, asking if he had won the award for a second year. It should give nobody a heart attack to learn that the letter wasn't published. Three days later. however, there was no Paul Thomas cartoon, the following day he had returned, but minus his accolade.
Pleasing that McInstry contributed a piece referring to Rawnsley's allegations about Gordon Brown as though they were proven facts but later on the same day, Sir Gus O'Donnell denied the allegations which were a lynch pin of the whole fabrication.
ReplyDeleteLeo's at it again. Today's rancid offering was headed "Never Forget the 13 years of dreadful Labour misrule." Is Leo feeling the heat - the Ashcroft affair and the Tories' diminishing lead in opinion polls making him feel desperate?
ReplyDeleteMcInstry - the latter day Owl of the Remove - is writing his compositions again. Latest is "Why Labour Is No More Than The Political Wing of Unite". With Unite causing the Government a lot of worry - rememher the Winter of Discontent when Thatcher was able to pull off the biggist steal since the Great Train Robbery? - I do think that Bunter might have been given something easier. Still, Daily Expres readers aren't the most politically aware people in the country, are they?
ReplyDeleteMcInstry was once an aide to Harriet Harman, something he doesn't care to mention. I wonder if his hatred of Labour has something to do with that - did she perhaps dispense with his services.
ReplyDeleteMcInstry now has a rival on the Express. Nick Ferrari is not only as nasty and bigoted, he has just as many chins.
ReplyDeleteWHAT IS WRONG WITH THE FACT THAT THE MAN MCINSTRY IS SIMPLY VOICING HIS OPINIONS IN A FREE COUNTRY UNTER THE CONCEPT OF FREE SPEECH - WHAT ARE YOU ALL SO INSECURE AND HYSTERICAL ABOUT - LEST YOU SECRETLY FEAR THAT HE MAY BE PROVIDING A PLATFORM FOR VIEWS AND OPINIONS OF , BY FAR , THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN BRITAIN TODAY - INCLUDING MANY FIRST GENERATION IMMIGRANTS
ReplyDeleteLeo Mckinstry tells it like it is. Good for him
ReplyDelete