Today's corrections

The Sun has published the following correction on page two of today's paper:

We reported on October 18 that 'more than 40 per cent' of all knife crime involves juveniles. In fact, this was an estimate by local police for the London borough of Enfield. The most recent Ministry of Justice figures show the proportion is just under 20 per cent in England and Wales.

This comes after Full Fact looked into the original article and complained to the PCC that the figures were inaccurate. They say:

The correction - within a month of the original article - is welcome, even if it does come after the claim was used by elected representatives when pressing particular policies from the Government.

It highlights how important it is for newspapers to take as much care as possible not to publish inaccurate figures, particularly on crucial matters of policy.

The Mirror has also published a correction today thanks to an investigation by Full Fact:

In our article “Cheating up 30% in 3yrs” we stated the figure for benefit fraud had reached £22billion a year. In fact this figure is an estimate for the total of all fraud and error, and includes mistakes made by the Government and claimants, and fraud which is unrelated to benefits.

Today's Mail corrections are:

Two commentary articles about psychic Sally Morgan in September stated that it is 'illegal in this country to claim to be a medium'. It has been pointed out to us that mediums are in fact legal in this country, although like other businesses they are subject to  consumer protection legislation.

*

In our coverage of Joe Frazier's death on Wednesday, we said that Muhammad Ali had had only one  comeback fight before facing Frazier in 1971. He had in fact fought twice before that bout, facing both Jerry Quarry, as we stated, and Oscar Bonavena.

Earlier this week, the the Mirror published this apology and correction:

On August 3 this year the Daily Mirror published an article regarding the death of Miss Catherine Zaks, aged 21, in Krakow, Poland.

The article contained claims that Miss Zaks, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, abused drugs and had engaged in casual sex following the break-up of a long-term relationship.

Miss Zaks’ parents have pointed out that these claims are entirely false and that their daughter was much loved, and of good character.

We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for any distress caused.

Immigrants and benefits, aspirin and cancer

Yesterday's Daily Express:


Over the past week or so the Express has had front pages stories about foreigners taking your jobs (twice), your home and now, your money.

You'd almost think the Express has some kind of anti-immigrant agenda...

For this story, the Express is upset that the High Court Judgment has ruled a Portuguese man who came to the UK and worked for four years until being incapacitated following an accident in his work place is entitled to child benefit for his children in Portugal.

The Express considered this a 'scandal', a 'monstrous injustice' and an 'unacceptable burden'. The editorial ranted:

the message goes out to the indolent classes across the EU that Britain is the place to be.

A man works for four years before being seriously injured, and yet is dismissed as 'indolent'? Charming.

The paper's daily phone poll asked 'Should benefits to immigrants be stopped?' The result won't be a surprise.

But buried in the story is a quote from a lawyer involved in the case. Gareth Mitchell said:

The EU rules that Mr Ruas has relied on also benefit the 1.5 million UK workers who live outside the UK and elsewhere in the EU.

The EU rules say that where parents go abroad to work and children stay behind, it should be the country in which the parents are working that should pay child benefit.

Up to 1.5million Brits working in the EU may be benefiting from such reciprocal social security agreements as the man in this case?

That figure came from Angela Eagle, Minister of State for Pensions and Ageing Society, in a House of Commons debate in December 2009 (column 525).

She said:

However, we are bound by EU reciprocal laws on social security that enable the 1.5 million UK citizens who live and work in the European Union to benefit in turn from local arrangements in the countries in which they work.

And as the Department of Work and Pensions website makes clear:

If you are in another EEA country and you are employed or self-employed; and you are insured under that country's insurance scheme you can usually get the children's allowance paid by that country. You can get it even if your child stays, or your children stay, in the UK.

So does the Express think it's a 'scandal' and 'monstrous injustice' that British workers abroad may also receive child benefit from their host country for children living in the UK?

Alas, they don't say. Indeed, they don't seem very interested in that point at all. After all, it wouldn't fit with their view that it's only ever Britain that is paying out to immigrants.

The other main story on the Express' front page was 'Now aspirin may cut risk of breast cancer'.

This may seem surprising given that a year ago, the paper ran this front page:


So, the Express' advice on aspirin appears to be: take it and get brain bleeding or don't and get cancer.

Not to mention that in November the Express said aspirin 'can be bad for your health' but in December it could stop you going blind.

Hmm.

So does aspirin cut the risk of breast cancer, as also reported by the Sun?

Here's the verdict from the NHS Behind the Headlines team:

this study does not provide any evidence that aspirin, anti-inflammatory drugs or paracetamol reduces the risk of hormone-related cancers such as breast or ovarian cancer.

This study did not examine cancer outcomes in these women.

Oh.

And as for the presentation of the research:

Withstanding the headline, the Daily Express generally gave an accurate representation of this research by discussing how regular use of aspirin was associated with lower oestrogen levels, and this in turn may be related to risk of cancer.

It is not clear where The Sun's claim that aspirin can cut the risk of both breast and ovarian cancer by up to 10% originated. The Sun also did not mention that regular aspirin use is associated with the risk of serious side effects such as internal bleeding.

Neither newspaper mentioned that this was a cross-sectional analysis, and so cannot prove that current painkiller-use is the cause of current hormone levels.

So the Express headline was exaggerated and then stuck on the front page, while the Sun seems to have exaggerated in other ways.

Either way: it's eye-catching but unsubstantiated reporting about cancer. As usual.

Max Hastings - lying about immigrants, and sounding like the BNP

Max Hastings' latest column appears to be an attempt to out-do The Sun in lavishing praise on David Cameron ahead of the next election. Max swoons:

Cameron possesses the brains, fluency and star quality to become a remarkable prime minister if he can also find iron in his soul...When friends express doubts to me about the Tory team, I respond simply: we must believe.

Testify Brother Max!

Does this mark an attempt by the Mail to become a louder cheerleader for the Conservatives than their red-top rival?

Max has listed all the problems he believes need fixing about modern Britain and - unsurprisingly - immigration pops up. But he displays an ignorance that suggests he doesn't even know what the problem is, by stating:

Immigrants, legal and otherwise, can often invoke human rights to gain access to Britain's benefits system.

By 'otherwise', he means illegal. And illegal immigrants do not get benefits. No matter how often he, or Carole Malone or Richard Littlejohn or Judge Trigger say it, it won't make it true.

Perhaps Max could tell us which benefits these illegal immigrants are getting?

He goes on:

Nothing would more swiftly check the immigration tide than calling time on newcomers' automatic claims to benefit and housing.

There's so much wrong with that sentence.

Firstly - does Max really believe that all immigrants to Britain just for benefits and housing? There are no other social or cultural reasons? Nothing to do with Britain as a fair, tolerant, multi-cultural, democratic society?

Apparently not.

Secondly - why peddle this myth that new arrivals get 'automatic claims to benefit [sic] and housing'? The benefits available to immigrants are far more complicated, and tough to get, than that.

So Max thinks people flock to Britain solely to avail themselves of free money and houses, and if these 'automatic' benefits were stopped, so would the 'tide' of people.

It's an idea that happens to be supported by the BNP. An article from May 2009 entitled 'Invaders Resort to Armed Violence to Get into Soft Touch Britain' says:

swarms of bogus “asylum seekers” know that if they can just get onto British soil, they will qualify for council housing and generous benefits...

Only once the scroungers of the world know that they will not get benefits in Britain, will they stop coming here.

Compare that with what Max says:

Nothing would more swiftly check the immigration tide than calling time on newcomers' automatic claims to benefit and housing.

'Swamp' may be more extreme than 'tide' but it's much the same idea. And it's not the first time Max has sounded like the racist far-right party.

Max also says:

It would be so irresponsible for uneasy Tories to cast a protest vote for UKIP or, worse still, the BNP.

Yes, we wouldn't want people supporting the ideas and policies of the BNP. That would indeed be worse than 'irresponsible'.

Carole Malone gets it wrong again

Carole Malone is treating News of the World readers to more of her idiotic views on immigration, in an article on (yes) Judge Trigger.

Truth Triggers a rotten response uses 'truth' in the same way Littlejohn did. In fact, it's much the same as his rant - Trigger's telling the truth, you can't say what you mean any more, and on and on.

Needless to say, the 'truth' never comes into it.

Quoting Trigger's remarks on people coming to the UK to avail themselves of 'generous' benefits, Carole adds:

So what did he get wrong? What lie did he tell? Who did he insult apart from illegal immigrants who come here to sell drugs? And who the hell cares what they feel?

The linking of illegal immigrants to drug dealers may be related to the case at hand, although that phrasing seems designed to imply that it is more common than that.

And if she wants a list - welfare benefits are not generous, immigrants can't easily get them and they don't come here just to get them.

Judge Trigger also pointed out that the burden of the millions being handed out in benefits to people who come here illegally...

So what did he get wrong there?

Well for the hundredth time, illegal immigrants don't get benefits. Why is that so bloody difficult for these thick columnists to understand that?

Nothing the judge said hasn't been said by me, a whole host of other journalists

Yes, and you're all wrong.

Then her agenda becomes ever more clear:

So, again, I ask why is Judge Trigger being investigated? The Office for Judicial Complaints says that if a judge makes insulting or racist remarks he can be sacked.

Now, what Carole has done, in an entirely underhand, but absolutely deliberate way, is avoid repeating Trigger's remarks about national debt since 1997. When the investigation was announced, the statement made clear it was about whether his comments

extended overtly into the political arena

which a judge is meant to be above. So that's why he is being investigated. Read the one paragraph statement Carole. It's not hard.

So racism doesn't come into it at all. Anywhere. Maybe the Office for Judicial Complaints does say that racist remarks will lead to a sacking - as they should - but that's not what this case is about. That's just her way of pushing the tabloid readers' buttons. Warming to her theme she goes on to say:

The inquiry into Judge Trigger's remarks is an affront to free speech because what it says is that anyone who speaks out about immigration risks being punished, publicly humiliated or left with a career in ruins.

Yes, clearly you and Littlejohn are really struggling with your careers. And that 'free speech' argument is one that inevitably only extends to people she agrees with. And not to people like those Muslim protestors she wanted arrested for taking part in a demonstration.

Pathetic. And her big finish?

And there you have it - the insidiousness, the hypocrisy and the ugliness of this so-called democracy of ours writ large. In Britain today to say that an illegal immigrant who fraudulently claims benefits and sells drugs shouldn't be here or claiming those benefits IS now classed as racism.

So another outing for illegal immigrants claiming benefits, eventhough they can't, and there hasn't been anything in the (many) articles I've read on this case that says this drug dealer was on benefits.

And no one is actually classing this as racism; the criticism is that his remarks were both unwise for a judge, and just plain wrong. Racism is a straw man introduced by her, so she can knock it down in yet another nasty, ill-informed rant.

And she still hasn't explained where those free cars come from.

Benefits madness

On Monday, the Express had a story about benefits on its front page. Coming less than a week after Judge Trigger made his ill-advised comments about illegal immigrants being behind the rising national debt, it was enough to make ignorant Express readers to put two and two together and come up with more than £42.16.

The Labour's £186bn benefits madness story was based on a Centre for Policy Studies report which was essentially calling for a simplification of the benefits sytem.

But some of the figures it used were interesting - and overlooked by the Express. The £186bn figure comes from the Budget Red Book forecasts for 2009-10. But in the first table of the report, the various benefits and allowances add up to £155.9bn - which is £30bn less.

And of that, £68.58bn is set aside for pensions and pension credit. That amounts to 43.6% of £155.9bn.

Clearly the Express will be campaigning to end that type of 'madness'.

Except, it was only in June they were complaining about the state pension being 'the most miserly in the developed world'.

But back to Judge Trigger who said, lest we forget:

People like you, and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people like you, come to these shores to avail themselves of the generous welfare benefits that exist here.

In the past ten years the national debt of this country has risen to extraordinary heights, largely because central Government has wasted billions of pounds. Much of that has been wasted on welfare payments. For every £1 that the decent citizen, who is hard-working, pays in taxes, nearly 10 per cent goes on servicing that national debt. That is twice the amount it was in 1997 when this Government came to power.

The table here for government spending on benefits in 1997 shows the figure at around £92bn out of total government expenditure of £318bn. Using the £155bn figure for spending on benefits in 2009, out of overall expenditure of £631bn appears to show that as a percentage, benefits made up 29% of expenditure in 1997 and is 24.5% in 2009.

Comparing the figures for welfare as a proportion of national debt (which seems an odd - rather meaningless - figure, but he brought it up...) shows

• 1997 - £92bn benefits / £357bn debt = £25.8%
• 2009 - £155bn / £794bn debt = 19.5%

So benefit payments as a percentage of overall spending, and of national debt, are in fact less in 2009 than in 1997.

Which seems to make Judge Trigger's remarks, errrr, wrong.

But then we already knew that, and it was confirmed when Littlejohn declared he spoke the 'truth'.

And the Mail has been big enough to give a slightly dissenting voice on Trigger a say. Lawyer Richard O'Hagan has not written on the substance of the comments, but has said:

Whilst he was undoubtedly expressing an opinion held by a vast number of people in this country, the most important thing about any judiciary is that it should be seen to be entirely impartial and to conduct cases without any regard to their own personal opinions.

In giving vent to his own views in this way, Judge Trigger has not only done himself no favours, he has also given the accused an opportunity to appeal against their conviction and sentence, on the grounds that he was biased.

Judge Trigger was, of course, merely the latest victim of judicial foot in mouth disease.

The idea that the drug dealer may have grounds for appeal because of Trigger's remarks is an interesting development - and something Littlejohn and the others haven't seemed to consider.

How convenient.

(Hat-tip to Jamie)

The ignorant Judge Trigger fan club grows

The Mail, Sun, Express, Migrationwatch, the Taxpayer's Alliance and BNP all agree: the prospect of anti-immigrant judge Ian Trigger being sacked is an outrage.

The news that the Lord Chief Justice has referred Trigger to the Office of Judicial Complaints (OJC) as to:

the propriety of the judge's statements and assertions, and whether they went beyond the facts of the case and extended overtly into the political arena.

It seems fairly obvious they were improper and were political. As mentioned here before, they had little to do with the case at hand, as none of the reports suggested the drug dealer whose case Trigger was ruling on had received benefits, and had arrived in the UK on a visitor visa. Over and above that, his comments were wrong and seemed designed to stoke up anti-immigrant sentiment.

Needless to say, the messageboards are full of comments of the type 'you can't say what you think any more', 'political correctness gone mad' and so on. And on.

Which begs the question - why is Trigger allowed free speech, yet the so-called immigrants who want to protest against the Iraq War are not? Because just yesterday, there was little criticism of the new citizenship proposals which said just that. Eventhough most (if not all) of the Luton protesters were born in Britain.

The Mail reports:

Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think-tank, said: 'This reinforces the view that there are certain things that may not be expressed in this country any more. There are great fears for freedom of speech.'

Quite so. Freedom of speech, but only if your skin is the right colour, apparently.

And anyway, Trigger's remarks are not really about freedom of speech. They are about what a judge should and shouldn't be saying, and far more importantly, whether he should be using his position to make claims which are both inflammatory and inaccurate.

Back to the immigrants and benefits story however, and here is one of the picture captions from the Mail website story:


Illegal immigrants can't claim benefits. If they could, they wouldn't be 'illegal'. It is highly unlikely for the drug dealer in the Trigger to have been 'on the run' and claiming benefits.

Do they genuinely not understand this, in which case how are the immigration judges and home affairs reporters? Or do they just not want to?

Apples and oranges; soldiers and asylum seekers

A rotten Sunday Express 'investigation' decides to cash in on the controversy of payments to injured soldiers and write some more crap about benefits to asylum seekers.

David Jarvis' article compares the two in such a manipulative and misleading way that there is no other reason for it to exist than to increase animosity against asylum seekers.

Take the headline: Cash for asylum seekers but not Our Boys. It makes a statement that is clearly not true - does the Sunday Express really think soldiers get no cash? - but simply wants you to be angry.

But it also immediately introduces this false comparison about payments to soldiers, who are all regarded as heroes, and asylum seekers, who are all regarded as scrounging scum.

Here's what Jarvis claims: there were 2,500 asylum seekers from Afghanistan in 2006-07 and the cost in legal aid, accommodation and food allowances for these was £30 million. (It does not explain where that figure is from but whether it is right or not is not the point; it certainly seems a little off with the figures here from June 2009).

In comparison, there were 560 British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were paid £5.3 million under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.

Dividing the total costs by the number of people means each asylum seeker got £12,000 and each wounded soldier received £9,000. Any fool - or Express journo - can work that out.

Therefore, in the Sunday Express' view: Cash for asylum seekers but not Our Boys. The story even begins with the misleading:

The Government has handed out six times more cash to bogus Afghan asylum seekers than to our heroes wounded fighting the Taliban.

Six times more cash? That might just be because there were 2,500 of the former and only 560 of the latter.

More over, it is taking the soldier's compensation payments entirely in isolation. Take Corporal Anthony Duncan, who is mentioned in the story, who received £9,250 after being shot in the leg (and is now back fighting on the frontline in Afghanistan).

A Corporal in the British army receives an annual salary of £25,886.88. Jarvis doesn't mention that. And that's the equivalent of £497 per week, whereas asylum seekers will soon get £35 per week. Add in other costs soldiers receive - food, pension - and it proves the whole exercise of comparing these two things is entirely pointless.

And at the end of the story the Sunday Express admits as much:

The Ministry of Defence said the Armed Forced Compensation Scheme was in its infancy in 2006-07 and some soldiers were compensated out of the War Pension Scheme which did not show up in our figures.

So this 'investigation' hasn't even bothered to find out the total costs of payments to soldiers injured in Afghanistan.

And then, just so you may not see it on the website, the last sentence is curiously buried below a search bar. What could they be hiding with this odd bit of formatting?

It paid out over £33million in 2008-09.

Ah. Indeed according to the Ministry of Defence figures, the total amount paid in 2006/7 under the Scheme was £32.9million for 889 claims. If the Express says 560 of these were for Afghanistan that represents 63%. Yet £5.3million represents 16% of the total compensation paid. It's hardly surprising, but something doesn't seem quite right with the Sunday Express' figures.

But that's not really the most important issue. It's way they have decided to take on the cause of compensation to wounded soldiers, and turn it into another opportunity to outrage its readers about what asylum seekers are getting.

Nobody benefits from 'immigrants on benefit' stories

The news that the weekly cash support payments for asylum seekers are to be cut from £42.16 to £35.15 is a disgrace. Yes they live in paid-for accommodation, but to survive on £35 per week - £140 per month, £5 per day - is dreadful. As is the suspicion that this is almost certainly a response to the endless anti-immigrant-and-all-their-benefits piss we read in the papers so often.

Most recently yesterday, when idiotic judge Ian Trigger spouted off about something he appears to know nothing about. The case in front of him was of a drug dealer who, when his visa had expired, claimed asylum, was refused and then he disappeared. As he was here illegally he couldn't have been claiming benefits anyway. But eventhough neither the judge provided no evidence to back up his wild claims, all the usual papers decided he was telling the truth.

You can tell, because the Express put Foreign spongers scandal, by judge on the front page, and the Mail's Hundreds of thousands of migrants here for handouts, says senior judge includes the word 'senior' just so you know he's an impeccably reliable source. The Express relied on their usual suspects - Damian Green, Migrationwatch and the Taxpayers Alliance - to back up the 'truth' of what the judge had said. Inevitably, the BNP picked up the story too.

The Express sub-head decided to say 'hundreds of thousands abuse benefits', as if claiming benefits is automatically abusing benefits when a 'foreigner' does it. Which is not only wrong, but is also not what the judge said - the word 'abuse' does not appear in any of his comments.

And what he did actually say was bollocks. He referred to 'people like you' when addressing the Jamaican drug dealer eventhough he came to the UK on a visitor's visa so wouldn't have been eligible for benefits then either.

And are 'hundreds and hundreds of thousands' coming to the UK just to 'avail themselves of the generous benefits'? Well no, because the benefits aren't 'generous' and they really aren't as easy to get as he and the papers - and that fool Carole Malone - seem to believe.

Look at the still-hardly-covered report which showed those workers from Eastern Europe were in work and paying 37% more in taxes than they claimed in benefits.

Or the 2008 IPPR report which showed:

Very few post-enlargement migrants claim state benefits (only 2.4% of those registering for National Insurance numbers between May 2004 and December 2007 did so in order to claim benefits)

Or even a figure the Mail itself has reported - that in 2007, Eastern European migrants claimed £170million, which amounts to a fraction of overall social security benefits expenditure. (Total managed expenditure on social security benefits in 2007/8 amounted to £140 billion - £170 million is 0.12% of that.)

It's worth reading the government guidelines for who can and can't receive benefits. For example, non-EU nationals with limited leave have to wait two years to claim. Those from the newly expanded EU countries (so-called A2 and A8 nationals) can claim benefits related to housing if they are working, but have to work continuously for 12 months before having access to other benefits. In other words, by working, they have paid in to the system. Asylum seekers get £42 a week.

This is what the judge called 'generous benefits'.

But back to the cutting of asylum seeker support payments. The Independent has written an editorial lambasting the plans, and put them in the right context. The Refugee Council - a group the tabloids often 'forget' to contact for a quote' - issued a press release which stated:

These changes mean they will receive a little over half of what the government says is the minimum people need to live on.

But the Mail report the story as Asylum seeker payouts to be cut as officials admit they are 'too generous', thus confirming all the prejudices that already exist. The story even repeats that nonsense about £1,700 grants that wasn't true two days ago, and isn't true now.

And predictability the messageboards are alive with deeply unpleasant, xenophobic and mostly totally inaccurate anti-immigration ranting. For example:

there's more "foreign nationals" in this country than natural born brits, we're the minority now - J, blackburn lancs, 30/7/2009 10:57

Natural born Brits are a minority? Errr, J, no they aren't. There just aren't.

Why does a single asylum seeker get given more than the basic state pension? - Eleanor, UK, 30/7/2009 11:05

Basic state pension - £95.25 per week. Last time I checked, that's more than £35.15, Eleanor.

reduced to £35.15 a week!, NO NO NO. it should be reduced to £00.00 a week, why should we pay a penny, how much are the french paying them?, nothing i bet, hence why they want to be here - Ian, Sussex, 30/7/2009 9:36

Except, Ian, the French pay them 10 euros a day, which is £59.74 per week, which is also more.

We should not have this problem.If they are in danger why dont they seek asylum in the first safe country.How many French asylum seekers are there - cockneyrebel, folkestone uk, 30/7/2009

Well cockneyrebel, in the last quarter's asylum figures, France took more than the UK did.

why should they get any money at all, if we are good enough to provide them with a roof over their heads, they should be grateful for that - martha, w midlands, 30/7/2009 12:03

So Martha you think they should be happy with a roof? No food, or drink, or clothes. They may have just fled somewhere fearing for their life, and we should starve them.

How does all this crap get through the moderators when it is clearly not true? It's not a case of free speech, because the Mail bans so much which doesn't toe the line.

In fact, if you go by the comments, you get this impression from people who read the Mail: all asylum seekers are 'bogus'; all come through Calais; all are scroungers who don't deserve any sympathy or help, especially not financial help; all are coining it in.

So many say asylum seekers should receive no financial support that they either want them to starve to death, or they just don't believe the UK should provide refuge to people who experience things that these selfish bastards couldn't even imagine.

Given the endless flurry of stinking xenophobic filth the Mail shits out on a daily basis, none of that is very surprising.

But that doesn't make it any less depressing.