No room for tolerance

Writing for the Independent, freelance journalist Samuel Muston says:

The news that two gay asylum seekers fighting deportation have been given leave to stay in UK by the Supreme Court, is a welcome one.

The men, from Cameroon and Iran respectively, sought to challenge the previous government’s contention that they had no grounds for asylum as they could move “elsewhere” in their home states and be “discreet” about their sexuality...

This, then, is a good day for justice, a good day for compassion.

The tabloids, of course, weren't quite so sure this was a 'good day':



It's really, really hard to know where to begin. It's like wading into a stinking cesspool. Thankfully, Anton Vowl (here and here), Jonathan at No Sleep 'Til Brooklands and Dan Hollingsworth have already written blog posts about the coverage and they're all well worth reading.

But here's a few other observations.

First, Lord Roger admitted in his ruling that his comments about gay men going to Kylie concerts and drinking cocktails were 'trivial stereotypical examples'. But perhaps he should have been more media savvy and known that the intolerant, racist, homophobic tabloid press were going to leap on this point as a way of making the asylum system seem absurd - just as they did with that lie about the man who was (not) saved from deportation solely by his cat.

'Now' asylum seekers get to stay because of Kylie! You couldn't make it up!

The Express emphasise this point by saying 'Now...', which tabloids use at the start of a headline as shorthand for 'Look what stupid thing is going to happen now...'

Second, the Express' jumbled headline - and the tone of the other coverage - is totally misleading. The judgment doesn't mean every asylum seeker who is (or, in the tabloid mindset, claims to be) gay will be allowed to stay automatically, no matter how strong their actual case is.

The Express' ludicrous poll asks: 'Should you get asylum just for being gay?' This isn't the issue at all - as the writers of this muck well know. The issue is that certain countries are persecuting, imprisoning, flogging and executing homosexuals and that is a perfectly reasonable basis for them to seek asylum elsewhere.

And, as Jonathan says:

It's a thorny issue, so instead of arguing with the decision on moral or ethical grounds, which they can't really do without looking like they might have some kind of problem with gays and foreigners, just moan about how it obviously means that by 2015 the country will be sinking into the sea under the sheer weight of Iranians ostentatiously brandishing Scissor Sisters albums to try and pass as gay.

Third, the newspapers, the people leaving comments on the articles, and the two gobshites who pop up - tabloid favourites Andrew Green from Migrationwatch and MP Philip Davies - all suggest this ruling will, to quote the Star, 'open the floodgates'.

On the Sky News press preview last night, presenter Anna Botting suggested this would mean asylum seekers would now arrive in Britain and 'pass the gay ticket over' - whatever the hell that means.

But there's something deeply troubling about this view because behind it is the idea that asylum seekers are somehow looking for an angle. It's a belief based on the assumption that since asylum seekers aren't really fleeing persecution, they'll come to Britain and come up with any excuse going to be able to stay. It says: 'Now' they're all going to pretend to be gay if they think it'll work. This says much about the ground on which the asylum debate takes place.

Fourth, the attitudes of these newspapers are, of course, rooted in an anti-immigrant viewpoint.

So the Mail editorial says:

For at this time when our public services are strained beyond endurance, it means Britain must now, in a dramatic reversal of policy, give a home to all gay asylum-seekers who are prevented from displaying their sexuality openly in their home countries.

Where are we to draw the line? This is all about numbers and a small island’s ability to absorb an ever-increasing population.

But the Express is rather more blunt:

Of course homosexuals across the globe should be able to live free from persecution but their right to do so should not take precedence in British law over the right of the British people not to have their country overrun by foreigners.

And not just overrun by foreigners but overrun by 'gay' foreigners.

The Express' sister paper, the Star, managed to top that and came up with a depressing, and disturbing, headline:


This really is grotesque. There are many, many reasons why Richard Desmond is a completely unfit person to be running two national newspapers and that putrid headline can be added to the list.

Given the history of the Star - who have very obviously labelled Muslims and immigrants as not 'us' - it would be generous to think this headline is only about yesterday's judgment. You can't help but feel it is aimed a little more widely than that. As Refugee Action tweeted:

The Daily Star thinks their headline 'No room for gays' is acceptable in 21st century Britain. We think not.

The editors of these tabloids know articles such as these - inflammatory, scaremongering, intolerant - push the buttons of their readers. Unfortunately, most have been so brainwashed by the daily drivel they are fed by these wretched publications that they believe it all at face value. Reading their comments is a disheartening experience and any number of them could have been highlighted here. But we'll stick with two.

This one, because it gives an idea of the cluelessness of many of them:


And this one because it highlights the dangers and possible consequences of such coverage:

Tabloid coverage of immigration: 'wilful misreporting, inflammatory language, lazy hostility'

Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon has written an article for the latest issue of British Journalism Review about media coverage of asylum and immigration. An abridged version appears in today's MediaGuardian.

Kenyon says:

the seemingly non-stop campaign against asylum- seekers, and the wilful misreporting of the issue among some tabloid newspapers, is getting worse.

'Wilful' is a strong allegation, but it's a fair one.

Important distinctions, such as that between asylum-seekers and economic migrants, are often fudged or overlooked; the language is inflammatory; there seems to be a lazy hostility towards them, implying a universal acceptance that what asylum -seekers represent, what they are, is wrong.

He also points out some of the specific problems with the coverage:

It is a perennial theme, repeated until it has become part of our national folklore.

The Sun's opinion column put it succinctly in April: 'Many asylum-seekers are no more than dole-scroungers.'

UK benefits are not what inspired the migrants I encountered. Although some were fleeing persecution, the vast majority were indeed economic migrants, but had no idea there was a state benefit system in the UK.

This latter view echoes Refugee Council research, published in January and ignored by the tabloid media (of course), that three-quarters of asylum seekers:

had no knowledge of welfare benefits and support before coming to the UK – most had no expectation they would be given financial support.

Having made four programmes over two years on the issue, he's probably met more asylum seekers and immigrants than, for example, the Mail's James Slack, who thinks immigration reporting consists of copying-and-pasting Migrationwatch press releases.

But the problem is, as Kenyon is all too aware:

Around 3 million people watched the four Panorama programmes I eventually made, more than the circulation of the Sun.

A newspaper journalist can exercise his line on the story every day. Our programmes were transmitted over two years.

The anti-immigration tabloids are read by millions of people who are fed a diet of this negative, hostile, misleading coverage on an almost daily basis. The effect is that these views dominate and poison the debate about immigration.

Another Migrationwatch press release gets the churnalism treatment

The appearance of a new Migrationwatch press release is the cause of celebration at certain newspapers, because it means they can produce a story that bashes immigrants without doing any actual journalism.

None of the churnalists writing about Migrationwatch's new figures - about the numbers of visas-leading-to-settlement granted under the new 'points based system' (PBS) - seem to have bothered to make even a cursory check that they're reliable.

Migrationwatch claims Labour's 'Tough' Points Based System Actually Increased Immigration.

The first set of figures they compare shows that the number of 'entry clearances' for skilled and highly skilled workers actually fell by over 23,000 over the period:


The next set of figures is for visa extensions, and this is where it starts to look a little shaky:


Since the PBS was only introduced in June 2008, there's no way there could be any tier 1 or 2 'visa extensions' in 2007. Unlike with the previous set of numbers, Migrationwatch do not find the 2007 'equivalents'.

This leaves a rather large hole in both their figures and their subsequent claims.

How can they realistically, and honestly, suggest the 2009 figures say anything about immigration trends when they fail to provide comparable numbers from previous years?

After all, visa extensions did exist in 2007 and were, in total, higher overall then than in 2009. Going to back to the official figures which Migrationwatch used shows this very clear decline:

• 2007 - 274,020
• 2008 - 267,865
• 2009 - 251,245

Migrationwatch also provide numbers for work permits (which dropped - 44,685 in 2007; 7,290 in 2009) and for dependents (which increased by 5,565).

Overall, going by page 33 of the official stats, the very page Migrationwatch uses, the grand total of entry clearance visas including dependents is down (2,072,430 in 2007 and 1,995,840 in 2009).

Yet in the certain categories they have selected, Migrationwatch have claimed there's been an increase of 20%:


But strip out the 86,000 from the 'visa extensions' - or find and add in the equivalent figures for work-permit holders who gained extensions in 2007 - and that increase looks rather less certain.

In any case, immigration suggests people coming in - certainly in the minds of the hacks who then wrote about these figures. Yet 'visa extensions' clearly suggests that these are people already here.

But that didn't stop the Mail saying:


If that sounds like Migrationwatch's headline, that's not a surprise - Slack's article contains all their press release quotes.

Slack says:

Labour's supposedly tough points-based immigration system actually led to huge increases in foreign workers...cleared to live in Britain.

Except the number of new workers 'cleared to live in Britain' was down.

The Telegraph mindlessly followed too:


But the increase in Migrationwatch's figures includes visa extensions. These are not 'extra migrants...allowed into Britain' and the first figures show the number of foreign workers let in is down.

The Express went with:


As you can see from the opening paragraph, Martyn Brown makes a similar mistake, and goes further in claiming Migrationwatch's figures are about all non-EU migrants.

The BNP, as usual, picked up on Migrationwatch's figures and, having got out a calculator and added up all the big numbers, declared 1.2million immigrants had come in under the PBS in the last three years, despite it being in force for only 18 months.

The problem is the tabloids are obsessed with trying to prove there are too many immigrants coming to the UK. Migrationwatch are too, and so any press release sent to the tabloid churnalists which has an eye-catching headline, a few respectable-looking figures and an anti-immigrant message is grist to the mill.

There's no thought given to questioning the stats, no double checking, no quotes from anyone who may challenge Migrationwatch - because they have no interest in proving them wrong.

(More analysis of Migrationwatch's figures available at Left Foot Forward)

If the cap fits...

The Express' latest not-quite-true front page is this:


Who is this 'we'?

Among the very many offensive things the Express has ever written, suggesting 'we' all agree with them on immigration is right up there.

If, however, the 'we' is the Express, then maybe 'Labour' would have a point. If they'd said any such thing. But they haven't. Indeed, they specifically avoided saying it.

The paper illustrates the article with a picture of some women in niqabs because that's the impression the Express wants to give about immigration.

The story is back to the so-called immigration plot and the draft (and all this stuff was only in the draft) document that has resulted in so much coverage. None of this actually made it through to the final version.

As Anton has said in his post on this front page:

you could say it wasn't included because it's a big secret, and it was all a massive plot by Labour. Or you could say it wasn't included because it was rejected. Which one do you think the Mail and Express have gone for?

The Mail had already had this as the lead on its website for a long time on Monday. It also came under a misleading headline - which has already been changed once (Secret Labour plan to increase immigration said public's opposition was 'racist').

Back in the Express, Macer Hall - responsible for that euro nonsense two weeks ago - lays on the hyperbole:

Labour dismissed the British public’s widespread opposition to mass immigration as 'racism'...

But ministers were urged to ignore voters' 'racist' views...

But demonstrating thinly disguised contempt for much of the British public, the document said that this opposition was linked to racist attitudes.

So what did the draft document actually say? From the Mail:

'Recent research shows that anti-immigrant sentiment is closely correlated with racism rather than economic motives,' the authors wrote.

'Education and people's personal exposure to migrants make them less likely to be anti-migrant.

'The most negative attitudes are found among those who have relatively little direct contact with migrants, but see them as a threat.'

Which is not 'Labour' calling everyone a racist. It is the authors - possibly civil servants - quoting 'research' which suggests there is a link between anti-immigrant views and racism. But it does not say everyone who expresses a concern about immigration is a racist.

As the Express claims on the front page.

And look again at that last sentence:

'The most negative attitudes are found among those who have relatively little direct contact with migrants, but see them as a threat.'

Here's what Express Editor Peter Hill told a Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights in January 2007, when asked if he has personally met any asylum seekers:

'I have not. I have met representatives of the Romanian Government on a similar and associated topic but I have not met any asylum seekers - or I do not think so.'

Given the anti-immigration scaremongering the Express regularly pumps out, Hill's words would seem to prove the draft report was right on that point.

And you have to wonder how a life-long journalist in his early 60s (as he was then) had never met an asylum seeker in his life, and yet believes they deserve the coverage his paper gives them.

By a strange coincidence, Migrationwatch's Andrew Green once said there were no immigrants in the village where he lived, although unsurprisingly, coming from him, this wasn't quite accurate.

And if the Express wants to get outraged about drafts that weren't actually used, perhaps they could remind their readers about the 'Daily Fatwa' page that sister paper the Daily Star were planning to run a few years back.

Melanie Phillips is being deceitful about immigration coverage

Melanie Phillips is a great creator of straw men.

In her latest column on the Spectator website, she turns her attention to the claims of Migrationwatch about a Labour 'plot' on immigration.

As Ian Jack says in the Guardian the:

charge is pure speculation.

It all started last year with some comments from former Government speech-writer Andrew Neather, which he later said had been blown out of all proportion by:

excitable right-wing newspaper columnists.

Imagine that. He added:

There was no plot.

But Migrationwatch wasn't convinced so used the Freedom of Information Act to find out more. They think it's dynamite, even if they aren't quite sure why.

Here's what Migrationwatch Chair Andrew Green wrote in the Mail:

What could have been meant by social policy in the context of immigration, especially as it was dressed up as combating social exclusion?

This must surely have been code for increasing the numbers substantially, as Mr Neather revealed. If not, why all the secrecy?

Why the censorship that has now been laid bare? Reading between the lines of these documents it is clear that political advisers in Number 10, its joint authors, were preparing a blueprint for mass immigration with both economic and social objectives.

In other words: 'I'm not really sure but am guessing at this, and there's no actual hard evidence for what I'm saying'.

It's not very convincing, is it?

But back to Phillips who believes everything Migrationwatch says is true. She claims the 'plot' is:

an act of collective treachery to the nation: an enormous story, you might think? You would be wrong.

Other than in the Daily Mail, I cannot find any reference to this anywhere else.

I wonder why.

Why? Because she doesn't want to.

Her column was published on the morning of 11 February.

And she's right that the story appeared in the Mail the day before, when they wrote up the press release they received from Migrationwatch, and added a column from Andrew Green and an editorial comment.

But she seems to have conveniently missed the fact that the Sun also reported on the claims.

And, err, so did the Express.

And in the same day's Telegraph there was a story, an editorial and another article by Andrew Green. Oh, and Telegraph blogger Ed West covered it too.

And if all that wasn't embarrassing enough, she also missed this:


So for the record: that front page splash appeared the day before Melanie Phillips' blogpost in which she said she couldn't find 'any reference' to this story anywhere other than the Mail.

Ahem.

On top of all those, both Stephen Glover's views on the subject and Leo McKinstry's vile rant were in the Mail and Express respectively on the same day as Phillips wrote her piece - and thus available online. (Since then, Amanda Platell has also written about it).

Phillips either did no research or, more likely, is being deliberately deceitful to fit her agenda. She's trying to pretend there is some conspiracy to try to hide negative immigration stories.

But when that charge is so blatantly false, as it clearly is in this case, it makes her look a bit stupid.

That 'conspiracy' charge is regularly repeated by right-wing columnists in their frequent negative outbursts about immigration. But does anyone seriously believe the media is somehow scared of printing anti-immigration stories?

It would be much harder to find the positive ones, especially in the popular press.

Moreover, if she's unhappy about the Mail not putting this non-existent 'plot' on their front page, she should ask the people who employ her at the paper why they favoured Vernon Kay's love life over this 'enormous' story.

Links

Who knew?

Migrationwatch are advertising for a Director of Research. An opportunity to earn £45,000 for emailing press releases to the Mail explaining how there are too many evil immigrants in the UK, it sounds like very easy money.

Anton Vowl's application is here. 5CC can always be relied upon to take apart Migrationwatch's 'research'.

Some personal favourites from this blog: the stupidly worded poll (makes that polls), the million failed asylum seekers joining the NHS queue (which was plucked out of the air), and the amazing assumptions behind 'Each illegal immigrant to cost us £1m'.

Migrationwatch say they are:

recognised as the leading source for independent expert commentary on matters relating to migration into and out of the United Kingdom.

Apart from by themselves and the tabloids, who 'recognises' them as that?

Also from Anton, the Express gets into a 'fury' about @dianainheaven on Twitter. Good.

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing reveals how the Mail changed a headline on an anti-Gordon Brown story when the comments turned against them; and another classic example of the Mail choosing to highlight crime based on race.

The Daily Quail looked at Melanie McDonagh's unbelievable defence of Jan Moir, whose infamous column about Stephen Gately was, apparently:

off-message but factually truthful.

This despite the fact the coroner had said the death was natural and Moir said it wasn't. Still can't blame McDonagh for missing that news - the Mail buried it at the bottom of page 36.

Also worth reading is a post on the Beer Blog of Pete Brown (via Jeff Pickthall) - a look at how the media distorted figures on children and alcohol.

Meanwhile, 5CC has looked at why the Mail seems to have fallen out of love with Julie Spence.

Talking of the Mail and love: look - it's Kim Kardashian wearing two dresses in one night.

That article included yet another example of 'look what [insert name] has posted on Twitter', which the media seems to lazily rely on for celebrity gossip these days.

A particularly curious example of this was when The Sun took a jokey tweet from pop singer Katy Perry and turned into an actual article about her 'skipping work to watch porn'. But they hid some of what she said with this exceptionally cryptic bit of censorship:

*** ***** *****

Any guesses?

Back to the Mail and their oh-so-consistent coverage of swine flu continued with this article:

It's official, the swine flu 'pandemic' is over (shame it cost us £1billion and scared thousands witless)

'Scared thousands witless'? Good job the Mail wasn't involved in any of that. Oh:

How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare

That was another gem from Michael Hanlon, the Mail's Science Editor, who also produced this astonishing piece of scaremongering nonsense:

Killers in your kitchen: Gender-bending packaging, exploding floor cleaners and toasters more deadly than sharks...

'Gender-bending packaging'? Really?

Over on the evil Facebook, Hugh has created a list of all the things the Mail says give you cancer, from bras to chips, peanut butter to talc, and, of course, Facebook itself.

Another Mail obsession is ageism. When Arlene Phillips was replaced as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the Mail was delighted to bash the BBC over claims of ageism and wrote lots of supportive articles about her.

Until she dared go outside without make-up on. Then she looked:

washed out

and:

ensured she looked her 66 years.

With friends like that...

In Amanda Platell's unsurprisingly useless review of 2009, she called Alesha Dixon, Phillips' Strictly replacement, 'Clot of the Year'. She wrote she was:

Nicknamed 'Ditto' Dixon because of the hopeless way she drearily parroted her fellow judges' comments

Dixon was, of course, nicknamed 'Ditto' by, err, Platell. That doesn't really count.

And Platell's unjustifably nasty attacks on women (and they almost always are on women) continued into 2010, when she turned on Andy Murray's mum for no apparent reason at all:

Of course I'll celebrate if Andy Murray wins tomorrow's Australian Open final, but does he really have to grimace like a savage?

You wonder what makes a young man so full of ugly, uncontrolled rage - and then you see his fishwife mother screaming from the sidelines.

Charming.

(Hat-tip to the contributors of the Mailwatch Forum)

About those population numbers

A few short observations on the coverage of the population statistics, looked at in greater length over at 5CC.

1. It was entirely predictable that the one element of the stats that was in the favour of the anti-immigration lobby - the births to migrant mothers - would be the focus of the tabloid coverage. That the Express and Mail chose to use much the same headline on their front pages shows how little they otherwise had to cheer about.

There is the old problem of who these papers consider 'migrants', as many may well have become British citizens. As the Mail admits deep in its story:

Some of these [babies], however, will be of British descent.

But is Migrant Baby Boom even accurate? Well not entirely. Yes a quarter of all births were to migrant mothers. But the percentage increase was only 0.9% from 2007 (23.2%) to 2008 (24.1%). Does an increase of less than one percent make it a 'boom'?

And is Migrant Baby Boom even news? After all, both the Express and the Mail were telling us in May how 1 in 4 births were to migrant mothers.

Oh, and then there was the Mail article in July 2007 revealing...wait for it...'One in four babies born to migrant mothers'.

And this is what the Star refers to as a 'huge immigrant baby boom'.


2. There is the same old problem with the coverage and the 'experts' used. No TaxPayer's Alliance, surprisingly, but Damien Green, Migrationwatch and Balanced Migration, who all have the same agenda.

But what about the Refugee Council? What about the IPPR? Dramatic fall in migration figures exposes the scaremongering of anti-immigration groups is not what the tabloids want to report, so the Express was the only one to quote the IPPR at all - in one sentence at the very end of their coverage.


3. The Express phone poll of the day is: Has Labour's migration policy wrecked Britain?

Vile.


4. The Express editorial claims immigration 'weakens' and 'threatens' British society, and raises the spectre of 'militant Islamism', just so the readers know immigration is bad, damaging and dangerous.

Despite a fall in immigration, and the lowest net immigration for five years, they claim the government is 'deluded' for claiming immigration is under control.

The editorial ends with the highly inflammatory line:

Unless sanity prevails Britain will become grossly overpopulated and tragically unrecognisable.

It sounds like something the BNP would say, who warn of the:

extinguishing of Britain and British identity under a tsunami of immigration.

5. The Express is being more than a little dishonest in its story Exodus of Britons growing. The first line claims 400,000 left Britain - the website version even illustrated by a wholesome white family with three children. Allied with the headline the message of 'white flight' is clear. But it is also wrong.

For one thing of the 395,000 who left the UK in 2008, 237,000 were foreigners returning home, and 158,000 were British citizens. Therefore Britons are in a minority of those leaving.

Also, the population figures from two years ago showed 196,000 British citizens leaving, so the 'exodus' is less, not 'growing'. If it is an 'exodus' at all.

Mail continues lottery/Gypsy stories, but snubs Migrationwatch (shock!)

Following on from the previous two, the Mail has decided it needed to have a third article about Big Lottery Fund money going to Gypsy projects.

The headline is interesting: We must reclaim National Lottery funds for the good causes WE say are worthy.

So there you have it. 'WE' clearly does not include Gypsies - or indeed, immigrants, it becomes clear later. This rant is written by Harry Phibbs and begins:

Gypsies have been handed millions from the Big Lottery Fund to help them subvert planning laws - money that is supposed to be for ‘good causes.’

It's tiresome to point out for a third time why this isn't the case, but it seems the Mail wants to keep repeating something until people believe it is true. He goes through some of the same Littlejohn cliches about Gypsies being 'filthy' and 'criminals'.

He goes through the usual suspects of what he deems unworthy causes, attack an award of £33,000 for the Gender Trust for, he says:

for transsexuals and people who are ‘uneasy about their sexuality’

Why is this a problem? Apart from the fact Phibbs and the Mail don't like anyone who isn't heterosexual? Just read the Gender Trust's 'Who we are':

The Trust is a listening ear, a caring support and an information centre for anyone with any question or problem concerning their gender identity, or whose loved one is struggling with gender identity issues. The Trust is also recognised as an authoritative centre for professional people who encounter gender identity related issues in the course of their work. In particular this group includes employers, human resource officers, health workers and information services.

How is that not a 'good cause'? He then turns his focus on immigration, attacking the

£340,000 to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns - a group not concerned with assisting the welfare of asylum seekers but campaigning for the overthrow of Britain's asylum laws.

In fact, this is simply not true. As the name of the organisation suggests, they are concerned with the welfare of asylum seekers. From their website:

The Coalition lobbies to amend law and practice which leads to unjust or inhumane deportations, and assists in mounting campaigns against such legislation.

That is 'overthrowing asylum laws'?

And then Phibbs fibs again:

So we have had a Lottery Grant of £700,000 to the Student Action for Refugees which campaigned to hound out Professor David Coleman from Oxford University because of his links with the Migration Watch think tank.

Now while it is obvious that the Mail would take umbrage at anyone who might not like Migrationwatch, this statement is misleading. The grant was clearly not for STAR to campaign against David Coleman but was for other activities - as the Mail pointed out in 2007:

The funding is specifically to "raise awareness of refugee and asylum issues, campaign on behalf of refugees and offer practical support to refugees" and to support "local groups...to set up and implement practical projects for students to work with local refugee organisations and create links to their local communities".

While there was a petition circulated, it appears this was never submitted to the university. And one of the other concerns STAR had about Coleman was because of his involvement in the Galton Institute, which was formerly known as the Eugenics Society, and how that linked to his work with Migrationwatch. Coleman protested his innocence although referring to 'Continental excesses' may not have been the wisest choice of words when referring to what the Nazis were up to in the field of eugenics.

Coleman popped up again on 10 August with the latest press release and briefing paper from his friends at Migrationwatch, which was largely based on his work.

This is one of the strangest Migrationwatch efforts for a while because, although dated 10 August, it was not reported on until the 12th by the Express and Star and does not appear to have been picked up by the Mail at all.

Is this a first? Was the Migrationwatch paper really that hopeless that even the Mail and Sun ignored it? Well yes, it was.

UK face a new flood of migrants, warns watchdog was the Express' headline, the Star went with Britain faces new wave of migrants. The claim a UK population in 2050 of 80 million - although Migrationwatch do not actually use that figure at all. Macer Hall's article begins:

Britain faces a colossal wave of immigration over the next 40 years because of predicted population explosions in Africa and Asia, a report warns today.

The influx would send the country’s population soaring well over 77million unless radical action is taken to tighten border controls, experts say.

'Flood', 'colossal wave', 'influx' - all good emotive words for the anti-immigration lobby. The Star added another:

Britain faces an immigration timebomb because of soaring populations in third world countries.

As with the Telegraph the other day, 'timebomb' implies something dangerous and threatening. Their editorial Foreigners flood to UK is even worse, adding the word 'swamped' before edging very close to BNP-style rhetoric:

Influential think tank MigrationWatch reckons we’ll be swamped by millions more foreigners in the coming years.

Numbers are set to soar, according to world population trends.

By 2050 an extra 17million people will be living here.

It will push our already overstretched public services to breaking point.

We cannot allow these huge numbers of immigrants to continue to swan in unchecked.

Our health, housing and council services are struggling to deal with those already here.

And with a fresh wave facing us from the developing world, they could collapse altogether.

It’s time for the government to cut the numbers coming in.

It’s time to close our borders.

Britain is full.

The problems with all that are so obvious, it's not worth pointing them out. But what is all this based on? Back to the Migrationwatch report, and more importantly the footnote at the end:

This paper is largely a precis of The shape of things to come: world population to 2050.The data have been updated. By Professor D.A. Coleman. A contribution to the Engelsberg Seminar 2005. Published by the Ax::son Johnson Foundation, Stockholm, 2007, in Empire and the Future World Order, pp. 209 230.

Right - so the figures are reheated from a few years ago?

In summary, the paper suggests that since a UN World Population Report for 2050 has shown a big increase in the population of countries where Britain currently receives lots of visa and asylum applications, there is going to be this huge increase in Britain's population, taking it to 80 million.

At which point, one questions leaps out - if this UN Report data is used to claim as fact the population of other countries, why not just look up what it says the population of the UK will be in 2050 and be done with it?

Well because if you look at the latest (2008) Revision (p.62) it states the UK population in 2050 will be...umm...72.3million.

Which isn't quite 80 million. Or even 77 million. It wouldn't have need complicated calculations or sleight of hand. And would have been much easier than using all the graphs which mean nothing.

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?

A little post-script to that Migrationwatch poll

There were a few oddities about the Migrationwatch poll that appeared yesterday asking people their opinions of a 70 million population, a reduction in net immigration, and their views on Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

One other oddity stood out, but I wanted to check it out with YouGov first. Click this to see a bigger version of the results, as presented on the Migrationwatch site:
It seemed very strange that the voting intentions of the sample were missing. Or had they been deleted on purpose?

Well YouGov have the full results on their website, with those voting intentions in place. Of the 1956 people surveyed, 653 were listed as Conservative, 383 as Labour and 279 as Lib Dem, with 641 others.

The poll results showed that the Conservative voters were far more concerned than the other two groups. 90% of the Conservative group were worried or very worried about the 70 million mark, compared with 75% Labour and 76% Lib Dem.

I can't claim to be an expert on weighted/unweighted samples, but the fact Migrationwatch appears to have deleted these numbers suggests they were trying to hide something. But if the sample was favouring Conservative respondents - a third of the sample - it is hardly surprising how the results turned out.

And that's true about one thing - the survey respondents were asked about their newspaper of choice and 42% of them chose the Mail, Express, Sun and Star. That may well reflect the popularity of those papers, but it might just reflect what happens when people get force-fed endless negative tabloid stories about immigration.

Lies, damned lies and immigration polls

Here we go again.

Migrationwatch has done a poll. It has produced a press release based on the results. It has emailed them to the newspapers. The Mail and Express have published them without raising a question. Deja vu, all over again.

The results of the poll are not very surprising. It finds that most people want a cap on immigration, and are worried about the population hitting 70 million. Given that just a few days ago Migrationwatch was issuing completely false claims about a million illegal immigrants swamping the NHS, it's hardly surprising that people who read and believe such crap then become anti-immigrant in their views.

On top of that, in the last few days the tabloids have told us they are going to be manning the swine flu helpline eventhough they can't speak English, they're stealing council houses (even when they aren't), they're cutting off their fingerprints, they're holding up British tourists at knifepoint, they're killers, fraudsters and ruining Britain...it's been an endless cycle of nasty coverage.

And then they wonder why people might want to cap immigration.

But Migrationwatch can never play fair. Its last poll included some semantic trickery which rendered the whole exercise worthless. And when the Mail quotes a Home Office spokesman saying the poll is 'based on leading questions' it needs a closer look. The first question asked was:

According to official statistics, the population of the UK will rise from 61 million today to around 70 million in 2028. How would you feel about a population of this size?

But the problem with this question is with the multiple choice answers which were:

• Delighted
• Wouldn't mind
• Slightly worried
• Very worried
• Don't know

Does anyone else detect a bias towards the negative there? Surely there should have been a choice along the lines of 'not worried' - the distance between 'wouldn't mind' and 'delighted' seems rather larger than between 'slightly worried' and 'very worried'. This is, of course, partly the responsibility of YouGov, which should know better as a reputable polling firm.

It should perhaps be added that YouGov was founded by Stephan Shakespeare, who is also the largest shareholder in the firm. He also owns ConservativeHome, was a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate and a spokesman for Jeffrey Archer during his London Mayor campaign...

It's the second question of the poll that raises the biggest question. Here it is, in full:

According to official figures, around 70 per cent of that estimated increase – about 7 million people – is likely to be as a result of immigration. Some argue that this will put great strain on resources in the UK, while others argue that the economic benefits justify this level of immigration.

To stop the population rising to 70 million, net immigration needs to be cut from around 250,000 per year to around 50,000.

In your opinion which of the following is the right level of NET immigration for Britain (i.e. the number of people who enter minus the number of people who leave)?

The first sentence - a 'likely' percentage of an 'estimated' increase is very woolly. The second makes the negative far more attractive than the positive angle - especially since Migrationwatch endlessly (and erroneously) tell us there is no economic benefit. The third sentence is unbelievably leading and also total bollocks - if net immigration is rising, then it is almost certain that 70 million will be reached at some point. It is simply not credible to say net immigration of 50,000 a year would 'stop the population rising to 70 million.' (Indeed, forecasts say it would hit that figure after 2081)

Guess what? 22% of respondents did plump for net immigration of 50,000. There were more (32%) who went for 'one in, one out', while 22% said no immigration at all.

Of course, the consequences of no immigration are not explained in the same, leading detail as the answer Migrationwatch wants - its policy is for a cut to around 60,000 a year. Amazing how these things work out, huh?

The third question reheated Home Secretary Alan Johnson's statement that he did not 'lie awake at night' worrying about the population hitting 70 million. 78% then said he was 'out of touch with people like me'. Do 78% of the people in this country really 'lie awake at night' worrying about that? Almost certainly not, so why is he out of touch?

In order to back up their case, the papers have added in a second poll which was done by Ipsos for the UK Border Agency in March. From the 26 page results document, it picks out one fact that suits them - that 81% said they favoured a cap on immigration. Of course, that doesn't mean that these 81% wanted the same cap the Migrationwatch poll suggested, but the mixing of the two polls implies as much (after all you might want a cap at 500,000 net, it's still a cap).

In fact, some of the other results show opinions on immigration issues are softening. The papers don't bother reporting any of these. Asked 'what is the most important issues facing Britain' the number of people saying 'immigration' has reduced from 24% in December 2006 to 7% in March 2009.

29% said immigration was not much of a problem or no problem, up from 22%. When asked about whether it was a problem in 'your local area' 78% said it was not much of a problem or no problem.

When asked if they agreed with the statement 'Immigration is good for Britain' 40% agreed (tend to agree, strongly agree), up from 32% in 2006. Those who disagreed went down, from 48% to 36%.

Even when respondents agreed on statements such as 'too many immigrants in Britain' and 'Britain should accept fewer asylum seekers', the numbers were still down on 2006.

Why would the tabloids regard these figures as not worth reporting? And when will they show some backbone and not take Migrationwatch at face value for everything?

BNP joins Sun, Mail and Migrationwatch in spreading lies

Following on from the Mail and Sun, the BNP has added its view on the news that a limited number failed asylum seekers will be eligible for free NHS treatment. (The Express has covered the story too, although Macer Hall only put the figure at 'thousands' and while he did rely on quotes from Migrationwatch, he didn't use the 'one million' figure at all.)

It's titled '‘One Million’ Failed Asylum Invaders Get Free NHS Treatment', and although it keeps the figure in quotes, it doesn't for a second make clear it's a total guess:

British taxpayers will be forced to pay for the medical care of ‘a million’ failed asylum invader scroungers as from today

And it goes to acknowledge the source:

Independent think tank MigrationWatch has already responded by saying that the new move will open the floodgates to “up to a million illegal immigrants.” Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green said the rules gave the “green light” for illegal immigrants to get free NHS care.

Independent indeed. Still, Sir Andrew must be delighted his comments are receiving more coverage.

Sun follows Mail with asylum scare story

The Sun has outdone the Mail in scaremongering reporting on the plans to allow some failed asylum seekers access to free NHS treatment.

'NHS to be swamped by 1m illegals' includes the emotive word 'swamped' in the headline, the words 'to be' as if it is definitely going to happen, and the figure of 1 million from the 'experts' (don't laugh) at Migrationwatch.

The Mail version did at least say it only affects 10,000-20,000 asylum seekers, amongst all the other (much larger) figures it threw around. The Sun only mentions the million figure, and like the Mail, it doesn't give any indication as to what this figure is based on. The Migrationwatch website still isn't explaining it either.

Mail misrepresents health story to create anti-asylum scare

Failed asylum seekers will get free NHS care in U-turn to protect human rights that 'could attract 1m' says the Mail.

Notice that none of these people need NHS care because they might be sick. It's because of their human rights. It's like a Littlejohn wet dream.

But the key thing about the way the Mail has presented the story is - once again - about the numbers. The headline implies a million failed asylum seekers will be joining those Gypsies in the dcotor's queue ahead of you.

Surprisingly, this is not a story by either James Slack or Steve Doughty, but Daniel Martin. His grasp of the issues are equally terrible however.

'NHS treatment will be available for tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers', the story begins.

'The decision increases the numbers potentially able to use the NHS by tens of thousands', it repeats three sentences later, just in case you aren't outraged enough yet.

And then, just when you were wondering where that headline figure of a million came from (as if you needed telling):

the campaign group MigrationWatch believes it could open the floodgates to 'up to a million' illegal immigrants.

Never saw that one coming, did you?

Neither the Mail, nor the Migrationwatch website appears to explain on what evidence this 'million' figure is based, but coming from them, it's probably just plucked out of the air.

Anyway, the Mail goes on to say:

'There are understood to be around 450,000 failed asylum seekers who have not left the country'.

This is an old canard that the Mail (and Express) keep using and which is not correct. This is the figure for the so-called legacy cases (except they aren't all cases, they aren't all failed asylum seekers, because their cases haven't been resolved, and those that now have have been rejected by factor of 2:1).

But the implication is that that is another possible figure for the numbers of failed asylum seekers about the get free NHS treatment.

That is, if it's not a million.

Or tens of thousands.

In fact, the Mail then reveals: 'only 10 or 20,000 are directly affected by the new rules'.

Oh. That's not quite what had been implied earlier - especially as they won't all be sick or need treatment. A quick look at the NHS website reveals what the plans actually are:

asylum seekers whose claim has been refused but who are being supported because there are recognised barriers to their return home should be exempt from charges

Which is odd because the way Mail reported it, it sounded like all failed asylum seekers were getting free NHS care. In fact, it's a very specific group, and a very limited group.

And, perhaps most important of all, within that very specific and limited group, it's people who are sick. But apparently, the Mail doesn't think that matters one bit.

Shameless back-slap...and some thoughts

This very blog was mentioned in an article by Gaby Hinsliff, the political editor of the Observer, as an example of a 'new breed of blog' attacking the tabloids. She says: 'It's rough and ready, but it's an interesting new way of holding newspapers to account'.

Hopefully people do find it interesting. But there is something more to it than that. The question is - who holds the newspapers, and particularly the tabloid press, to account?

It should be the Press Complaints Commission, but this pitiful regulator has proved time and again that it is completely unable and unwilling to do it.

The PCC is a cosy club, where Editors sit on the various committees - so how can it be properly unbiased? It's also unbelievable that a regulator could have Daily Express editor Peter Hill sat on it for five years - despite pushing out endless untrue rubbish about Diana, Madeleine McCann, Muslims and asylum seekers.

But the real problem with the PCC is that the powers it has are so feeble. Editors will come up with all manner of excuses against fines, but if Ofcom can impose them on broadcasters that break the rules (as it did to the BBC over Sachsgate), why is it inappropriate for the newspapers?

The previous PCC Chair, Sir Christopher Meyer, said in 2005: "The best argument against fines or statutory regulation is the effectiveness and prominence of the negative adjudication". But in what way is a negative adjudication a punishment? Has a national editor lost his or her job over a negative adjudication? It means absolutely nothing in the scheme of things.

This was proved in the PCC's adjudication on the Sunday Express' appalling Dunblane story. It read: 'Although the editor had taken steps to resolve the complaint, and rightly published an apology, the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it.'
The natural question that follows from their phrase 'so serious that no apology could remedy it' is: so what is the penalty for the Sunday Express? They print an apology - although only after an outcry and a 10,000-signature strong petition - and four months later have been told off by the PCC. Does the PCC really think that that remedies it?

Then there was the Alfie Patten case, where the Sun printed an entirely untrue front page splash, boosting sales and hits to its website and so gaining in all manner of financial ways, at the same time as exploiting a 13 year old child. It admitted much later that the story was untrue, but the PCC has never even censured the paper for it.

Besides, the rules for a complaint are so restrictive, with the PCC only bothering to consider complaints from third-parties in 'exceptional circumstances'. In other words, if you are not the person who is the subject of the article, there is next to nothing you can do. And in that way, they can exclude most complaints about asylum-seekers, for example, as they are groups and not named persons.

So if the PCC refuses to do what it should, who will? There is a reluctance for the newspapers to criticise each other. There might be the occasional item - such as when the Guardian looked at some of the misleading 'political correctness destroys Christmas' articles.

But other than in extreme cases - such as the News of the World phone tapping - newspapers very rarely criticise each other (and the Guardian's new revelations have mainly been ignored by the other printed press). This is likely because it would set off the type of tit-for-tat nonsense the Mail and Express have pointlessly engaged in at occasional intervals. And if one paper takes apart a rival's story, it knows it is likely to get it back when it makes its next transgression.

The broadcasters are different. Channel Four was targeted when the Big Brother racism row broke out, and of course the right-wing papers are all to happy to pile into the BBC at any opportunity - even when it's something as thin as the number of people sent to cover Glastonbury. But the papers seem like a no-go zone.

There are a few places where such things are highlighted. Private Eye's Street of Shame is likely to be the most well known, but coming out every two weeks it doesn't have the immediacy to react to a misleading or mischievous story. And it means that the story has had time to embed in the public consciousness.

This is the other problem with the PCC - it takes so long for it do anything. Take the recent Inayat Bunglwala apology from the Mail on Sunday which appeared four months after the original story, by which time the original story had spread like wildfire on the various anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sites and forums.

This happens for almost any immigration or Islam story, and this blog has highlighted how two recent Mail articles and a Littlejohn column (on Gypsy access to NHS services, the number of non-white children in London, and on foreign workers) were used and reproduced - with slight changes to the words, but in almost the exact same structure - as BNP press releases.

Blogs such as this one generally do it on the day the story appears. It's not just about doing what a misrepresented member of the public might want to highlight. It's about how certain papers have an agenda and will twist stories to fit it. They will print, without question, press releases from Migrationwatch, and yet almost never bother getting quotes from the Refugee Council.

In explaining why the BNP now has two MEPs, Max Hastings produced an article full of anti-immigrant scares and BNP talking points, and not once mentioned the positive contribution made by immigrants. He falsely claimed that Migrationwatch figures had never been challenged, but blogs have repeatedly proved their figures to be highly questionable. But because the organisation feeds them an endless supply of refugee-bashing stories, and the Mail and Express engage in 'churnalism' more than editors Paul Dacre and Peter Hill will admit, neither paper bothers to do the journalism that is required.

Does any of this matter? Well, yes. When certain tabloids fill their pages with exaggerated, inflammatory and often just plain wrong stories attacking minorities, they seep into the public consciousness. They get repeated on far-right websites and become accepted as true.

A Red Cross survey for Refugee Week proved that '95% of the British public do not know how many people apply for asylum in the UK each year, with the vast majority hugely overestimating numbers'. The first question - why did none of the tabloids bother reporting on this survey? The second - where would 95% of the public get such a wrong idea from?

My impression - and it's certainly true of this one - is that all the blogs highlighting tabloid nonsense are written by people in their spare time, which may explain why they may appear 'rough and ready'. But in doing a job that neither the PCC or other media seem keen to do, their contributions are definitely needed.

Macer Hall deliberately misleads on asylum cases

Two days ago, the UK Border Agency's chief executive, Lin Homer gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee. It was mainly newsworthy, to the tabloids, for the Nigerian jail story.

But she also gave an update on the progress with the so-called asylum legacy cases. This news has finally reached the Desmond papers - and swiftly been massaged into something not very accurate.

Here's how it was reported by the Guardian:

197,500 of the 450,000 cases had been resolved by the end of May. Of those resolved, a third (62,000 people) had gained permission to stay in the UK. For 27,500, removal directions were issued.

However, a caveat should be added to that from the Home Office's UK Border Agency website:

We have previously estimated that there are between 400,000 and 450,000 electronic and paper records, but many of them are duplicates or errors. So this figure is not the number of asylum applicants awaiting a decision.

Therefore, as there are not 450,000 cases, you couldn't just say 'well, as a third of the resolved cases have resulted in leave to remain, we'll divide 450,000 by three and say that's how many are staying'.

Unless you were a moronic, lazy, anti-immigrant journalist. In which case, you already have.

So in its story '150,000 asylum seekers to stay' the Star claims: 'Nearly 150,000 asylum seekers will stay in Britain because staff cannot handle the paperwork'. Which is a bizarrely worded first paragraph, using incorrect figures and making it seem as if these asylum seekers aren't being allowed to stay for any other legitimate reason.

The Star then quotes two totally unbiased commentators on the subject - Migrationwatch and the TaxPayers' Alliance.

Those two also pop up in the Express' version of the story. Soft-touch asylum as 144,000 get 'back door amnesty' is their headline. Of course, only 62,000 have actually been granted leave to remain, so talking of the 144,000 in the present tense is misleading. And the 144,000 is dubious anyway, because there aren't 450,000 cases - the Express allows 'officials' to call the figure 'speculative' towards the end of the story (and only towards the end of the story).

But journalist Macer Hall also makes it seem as if all those people who have been given leave to remain shouldn't have been. The use of the button-pushing word 'amnesty' is for no other reason than to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment, and implies their asylum claims had no genuine merit. As the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association states:

Some people think...the Home Office have begun a new ‘amnesty’ exercise for granting indefinite leave to remain to people in order to clear their backlog. This is not correct. The Home Office may grant leave to remain to some individuals. However, this will only happen if the individual’s circumstances meet existing criteria for a grant of leave to remain.

But Hall ploughs on, saying: 'many suspected border cheats are effectively being given an amnesty from deportation.' Except, it's not an amnesty. And asylum seekers are not 'border cheats'. He also writes: 'Many are claimants who should have been deported as far back as the mid-1990s'.

But the fact of them being 'legacy cases' is that their original cases were never decided one way or another. Hall and the Express either don't understand this, or - more likely - wilfully choose to ignore it. Here is the UK Border Agency explanation:

We define these unresolved asylum cases as ones where an asylum claim has been made and, as yet, the application has not been concluded either because of errors in recording information or because there is still some action we need to take on it.

So if they never had their asylum claim turned down, how can Hall conclude they 'should have been deported'? Of course, the Express is only interested in making them all seem undeserving. And to that end both it and the Star conveniently 'forget' to mention that 27,500 who have had their claims rejected and are lined up for removal.

It's more insidious inflammatory and - of course - untrue crap from hate-filled papers.

Still, at least a previous, ridiculous scare story about the legacy cases - that half a million asylum seekers would be granted leave to remain as the backlog was cleared - has been well and truly destroyed. Who would come up with such wildly exaggerated bullshit?

Macer Hall. In the Express.

Yes, in 2007's Secret 'amnesty' for 500,000 asylum cases, he believed all those 450,000 'cases' were to be approved, and then made up another 50,000 just to make it an even half-million. He also inaccurately referred to 'failed asylum seekers' and 'immigrants who were turned down for refugee status but not expelled from the country'. So after two years, he still doesn't understand what he's talking about. Or doesn't want to.