IMMIGRATION
Following Tony Blair’s unconvincing interview with Jeremy Paxman, in which he was asked 20 times how many illegal immigrants were in this country, Blair himself made a major speech about immigration in Dover on Friday, assuring us that everything was under control.
This is from a man who claims not to know how many illegal immigrants are in the country despite being in receipt of a report which had set the figure at 500,000 plus dependants. The assumptions on which the report was based are not considered as suitable even by the report’s author, Professor Salt. The English Rights Campaign has tended to use the figure as being up to 1m, as the number of illegal immigrants in the UK, and will continue to do so. Labour has continually sought to fiddle the figures in order to understate the problem and one should assume that the report’s figures were so fiddled.
Tony Blair’s Friday speech was matched by a 1pm news report by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation which was fully supportive of the Labour line and in favour of mass immigration. Even by the BBC’s standards, it is fair to say that they excelled themselves.
The report started with a picture of Dover which, we were told, ‘for centuries’ had been the sight greeting immigrants moving to Britain. This implies that there has always been mass immigration into the UK, and that the UK has always been an immigration country - when in fact it has always been an emigration country up until the mid-20th century. Then the BBC had a spokesman from an immigrant pressure group telling us how the immigration debate tended to stir up racism, and then an economist telling us how we needed immigrants for economic reasons and that the faster the economy grew, then the more immigrants we needed. It would seem that the current levels of immigration might not be enough!
Given that there are millions of people registered as either unemployed or on incapacity benefit, there are absolutely no economic reasons for mass immigration into the UK at all. There are approximately 7.85million people of working age who are designated as being ‘economically inactive’. 2.1million of these people say that they want a job. There are 2.7million people claiming incapacity benefit (1million of whom are doing so citing depression or stress). A government minister has said that two thirds of these could be brought back into the labour market, one third immediately.
But the BBC did not see fit to allow anyone to answer the fatuous claims made by the immigration lobby.
As if that was not bad enough, up pops Digby Jones of the corporatist CBI to make a fool of himself on the Channel Four news on Friday night too. According to the CBI, there were skills shortages and the greater the number of immigrants, the greater the level of economic growth. Digby Jones complained about the Conservative immigration proposals and claimed that big business wanted mass immigration.
This is at a time when manufacturing industry has lost 1million jobs since Labour came to office, including 93,000 jobs lost last year alone. Recently, Rover has closed down, which will not only affect those employed by the company, but suppliers as well.
It might be recalled that the CBI was half-hearted about union reforms in the 1980s and was a firm advocate of the UK’s continued membership of the ERM, even when the whole system was collapsing and the UK had been pushed into the worst recession since the 1930s. Digby Jones was talking complete clap-trap although he has no doubt thoroughly ingratiated himself with Labour.
Meanwhile, Michael Howard was himself interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Friday. It is fair to say that he put up a spirited performance, aided by the timely drawing of 2 pieces of paper out of his hip and breast pockets to support his stance on immigration.
But the stark fact remains that the Conservative immigration proposals are not credible. They are dependent on the involvement of the UN, who have already refused to be so involved, and on some third world countries setting up asylum centres to process asylum applications, when no such countries have volunteered for this thankless task. Then there is the problem of the fact that anyone granted asylum in other EU countries has an automatic right of entry into the UK as a result of our membership of the EU.
The Conservatives seem to be hoping that the electorate will not see through these flaws. We will see on 5 May whether or not that assumption is correct.
This is from a man who claims not to know how many illegal immigrants are in the country despite being in receipt of a report which had set the figure at 500,000 plus dependants. The assumptions on which the report was based are not considered as suitable even by the report’s author, Professor Salt. The English Rights Campaign has tended to use the figure as being up to 1m, as the number of illegal immigrants in the UK, and will continue to do so. Labour has continually sought to fiddle the figures in order to understate the problem and one should assume that the report’s figures were so fiddled.
Tony Blair’s Friday speech was matched by a 1pm news report by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation which was fully supportive of the Labour line and in favour of mass immigration. Even by the BBC’s standards, it is fair to say that they excelled themselves.
The report started with a picture of Dover which, we were told, ‘for centuries’ had been the sight greeting immigrants moving to Britain. This implies that there has always been mass immigration into the UK, and that the UK has always been an immigration country - when in fact it has always been an emigration country up until the mid-20th century. Then the BBC had a spokesman from an immigrant pressure group telling us how the immigration debate tended to stir up racism, and then an economist telling us how we needed immigrants for economic reasons and that the faster the economy grew, then the more immigrants we needed. It would seem that the current levels of immigration might not be enough!
Given that there are millions of people registered as either unemployed or on incapacity benefit, there are absolutely no economic reasons for mass immigration into the UK at all. There are approximately 7.85million people of working age who are designated as being ‘economically inactive’. 2.1million of these people say that they want a job. There are 2.7million people claiming incapacity benefit (1million of whom are doing so citing depression or stress). A government minister has said that two thirds of these could be brought back into the labour market, one third immediately.
But the BBC did not see fit to allow anyone to answer the fatuous claims made by the immigration lobby.
As if that was not bad enough, up pops Digby Jones of the corporatist CBI to make a fool of himself on the Channel Four news on Friday night too. According to the CBI, there were skills shortages and the greater the number of immigrants, the greater the level of economic growth. Digby Jones complained about the Conservative immigration proposals and claimed that big business wanted mass immigration.
This is at a time when manufacturing industry has lost 1million jobs since Labour came to office, including 93,000 jobs lost last year alone. Recently, Rover has closed down, which will not only affect those employed by the company, but suppliers as well.
It might be recalled that the CBI was half-hearted about union reforms in the 1980s and was a firm advocate of the UK’s continued membership of the ERM, even when the whole system was collapsing and the UK had been pushed into the worst recession since the 1930s. Digby Jones was talking complete clap-trap although he has no doubt thoroughly ingratiated himself with Labour.
Meanwhile, Michael Howard was himself interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Friday. It is fair to say that he put up a spirited performance, aided by the timely drawing of 2 pieces of paper out of his hip and breast pockets to support his stance on immigration.
But the stark fact remains that the Conservative immigration proposals are not credible. They are dependent on the involvement of the UN, who have already refused to be so involved, and on some third world countries setting up asylum centres to process asylum applications, when no such countries have volunteered for this thankless task. Then there is the problem of the fact that anyone granted asylum in other EU countries has an automatic right of entry into the UK as a result of our membership of the EU.
The Conservatives seem to be hoping that the electorate will not see through these flaws. We will see on 5 May whether or not that assumption is correct.
posted by erc @ 9:06 pm
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