From the Daily Mail:
47,000 Bulgarians and Romanians enter UK in a year
Here is Migration Watch’s estimate of the likely numbers of migrants from Romania and Bulgaria:
Our central estimate is that immigration from these two countries will add 50,000 a year to the UK population for the next five years of which about half is likely to be captured in the immigration statistics.
The Daily Mail gets its figures from a recent report from the supposedly neutral Oxford Migration Observatory but the OMO seem to be spinning a line that there has been no ‘surge’ in immigration from these countries…a line taken up by the BBC.
In actual fact the BBC seem to be rather coy about these figures…at least on their website. I can see no mention of this story on the website at all despite it being in the papers since Tuesday morning.
The Guardian does have a report but it plays down the numbers….
No surge of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants after controls lifted
It reports this statement from the researchers…..
Madeleine Sumption, the Migration Observatory director, said: “The growth in the Romanian and Bulgarian population of the UK has been steady for the last seven years, despite transitional controls that limited their access to the labour market and welfare state in the UK. The end of these controls do not seem to have had a very significant effect.”
…but as you can see later, this conclusion, that “The growth in the Romanian and Bulgarian population of the UK has been steady for the last seven years”, is completely false.
5Live did have a report on it (16:42:45) but whilst spinning the same line of ‘no surge’ seemed to know the figures don’t really support that conclusion and gave a rather lacklustre report telling us that immigration grew at same rate as in 2013….therefore there was no significant increase in migration when restrictions relaxed….no predicted influx of migrants…..Phil Mackie said there was no significant increase year on year.
They did admit there were 250,000 Romanians and Bulgarians now working in the UK.
Whilst mocking the ‘exaggerated claims of a surge in immigration from some’ what was noticeably missing from 5Live’s report was any mention of Migration Watch’s prediction which turned out to be entirely accurate, as is so often the case. The BBC calls Migration Watch a ‘pressure group’ but doesn’t label the Oxford Migration Observatory in the same way.
Are any of those conclusions on 5Live merited by the figures?
Not really.
The overall population of A2 migrants in the UK in Q3 2012 was 160,000; this increased by 45,000 to 205,000 by Q3 2013 and then increased by 47,000 to 252,000 in Q3 2014. By way of comparison, the A2 population grew by 163,000 between 2007 and 2013 – the years during which transitional controls were in place.
It claims these figures show no spike in migration…and Mackie said they showed no ‘year on year increase’…..
…… the existing data suggest it is more likely to show continued steady growth rather than the ‘significant spike’ some predicted.
But that clearly isn’t true….yes 2013 and 2014 were similar…but before that migration was an average of 27,000…somewhat different to 47,000….very selective with their choice of figures to base their conclusions on.
32,000 EU2 citizens immigrated to the UK in the year ending June 2014, a statistically significant increase from 18,000 in the previous 12 months.
A graph from the ONS shows the dramatic change in Bulgarian and Romanian immigration….note the large ‘surge’ in 2013..
5Live admitted that there were 250,000 Romanians and Bulgarians in work now…. in January and March 2013 the figure for Romanians and Bulgarians in work was only 140,000:
According to the latest official figures, the number employed in the UK between January and March actually fell. It was 140,000, down 4,000 on the final three months of 2013.
The BBC were then crowing that this ‘fall’ in numbers in january and March proved there was no influx of immigrants.
Note that most of these ‘in work’ are actually claiming to be self-employed…and can claim increased benefits based on that status:
Nearly six out of 10 Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants living in Britain last year claimed they were self-employed, allowing them full access to the welfare state, a new report has found.
The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory said its analysis showed 59.1 per cent of workers from the two former eastern European states said they were freelance, compared with just 14 per cent of the native UK population.
The figure was also far higher than the 15 per cent of self-employed people from the eight former Communist states – such as Poland – which joined the EU in 2004.
“Regardless of motivation, this status did provide access to the benefits system,” said the report.
[Migration Watch saying]
“Whether or not you call it benefit tourism, there is no doubt that the access to in-work benefits that is granted to the self-employed is a very strong financial incentive to come to the UK, especially for those with families.
“Those with a spouse and two children who declared only the minimum wage would get an extra £350 a week on top of their pay”.
The ‘Left’ are definitely playing down the figures and coming to conclusions not warranted by the facts. The BBC, on the Webiste at least, has pretty much decided to ignore the report, 5Live aside, presumably because the figures don’t support their case when examined carefully.
It is quite clear that immigration from these countries has gone up significantly in the last two years…and with net migration standing at 260,000 overall (net migration of foreigners actually being 310,00 into this country when discounting British natives emigrating) it is still obvious that migration is a huge problem….not just the numbers but the ‘diverse’ nature of those coming here from vastly different cultures….not something the BBC likes to emphasise…however when it suits, as when it can use such a narrative to harangue the government over its ‘failures’, it does highight such issues:
MoD told of Bassingbourn Libyan cadet ‘risks’ in advance
The government was warned of “significant immigration, security and reputational risks to the UK” of allowing Libyan soldiers on visits off a Cambridgeshire base, it has emerged.
Through a Freedom of Information Act (FoI) request to the MoD, the BBC has learnt a security and risk assessment document produced prior to the solders’ arrival warned of the potential danger of allowing unsupervised visits.
The report by the Cross-Whitehall Libya Security Compact Delivery Group said: “Outward recreational visits pose significant immigration, security and reputational risks to the UK.”
The pre-training security report pointed to “widespread” sexual violence during the period of conflict in Libya, and added there was “some evidence that it is a significant domestic problem which could be reinforced by cultural attitudes and entrenched by a lack of justice for those affected and for perpetrators”.
So importing people who have ‘cultural attitudes’ at odds with the British culture and values poses a ‘significant domestic problem.
Go figure. Still, remember to celebrate that diversity.
At some point yesterday evening, BBC R4 ran a feature on immigration (I listened only briefly) which was quite clearly calculated to elicit sympathy and support. The choice of people interviewed (mostly pleasant sounding, English speaking young women from Europe), the selection of music as a group of Latvians got together in London., everything was sculpted and polished to present a wholesome, favourable impression.
Why, they’re just like us! Who could possibly object to such pleasant sounding, educated people living her? How horrible these UKIP types must be to object to them!
Even when the programme spoke with a Polish unmarried mother of three, who received benefits, that ‘other side of the story’ was designed to tug at the heartstrings of R4’s female audience.
Even ignoring the blatant bias in the way the programme was presented it begged the obvious question: why, when immigration is being discussed, is immigration from Europe the only aspect that may be considered?
For many, the greater problem is posed by immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Africa. Yet the bien pensant Left attempts to stifle any concerns about that by framing the question entirely on the influx of Europeans.
This is shabby, deceitful and deliberately misleading propagandising by the BBC, confirming that, as an organisation, it has lost any sense of the words ‘impartial’ and ‘objective’. It is, truly, the thoroughly Biased BBC.
I think it was on ‘PM’ after 17:00 but maybe on ‘TWT’ from 22:00. Yes, it was very sympathetic although, to be fair to the rotten BBC, they did say that there would be another report in the series into specifically non-EU immigration (maybe tonight?)
Even UKIP, bless them, have been forced into concentrating on EU immigration rather than the more culturally damaging Islamic Third Word kind, because the terms of the debate have – as so often – been set by the ‘liberal’ / Marxist Left and the BBC. By focusing on White Europeans, UKIP can’t be accused of ‘racism’, but the sub-text is there for all to see, added to which non-Europeans from within the EU can come here until we withdraw from it.
The ‘Oxford Migration Observatory’ have a vested interest in immigration. Everything they write is designed to minimise concerns about its true level, particularly into England, the European country with the highest density of population. And it shows.
Every ‘fact’ is twisted to prove there is nothing to see except that more ‘students’ are vital for the economy. Now move on.
The best guide to the number of new working immigrants is the issue of national insurance numbers. It tells of nearly 600,000 p.a. – actually 1,138,593 over two years (House of Lords answer).
NINOs of course exclude children, non-working wives, asylum seekers and students so you can probably double that annual figure.
The BBC will only ever interview Jonathan Portes on these matters. Interview is the wrong word. They will let him say his piece without interruption unlike Migration Watch the odd time they get on air.
Do you know that ‘self employed’ includes people who are doing anything at all? One of the best scams is to join the Big Issue. As an ‘active work seeker’ you are entitled to all the benefits of the UK Welfare state – just for begging / flogging unwanted magazines. How dishonest is that??
‘Selling’ the issue gets automatic entitlement to housing benefit even if a non-national after a Bristol court case brought by a state funded community law agency. You only then have to have a low-income HMRC certificate – not hard to get.
I still want to know from the Gramscis and BBC why , if immigration is so good , why isn’t it encouraged into African countries, they need a leg up more than us ?
but, i can bet my grandmothers life savings that every middle and upper class types from the politacal and media establishment who preach diversity and multi culturism tend to live in the most less diverse and multi cultural towns,villages and hamlets they can find,dont they wanna make you puke heh,and yes edwina curire, that includes you living in rural leafy derbyshire.
Alan (the Guardian) Rusbridger, a rather lovely corner of the North Cotswolds, which he shares with his wife, who also writes for his rag and probably visited in the holidays by his daughter who also gets a job…..Nothing like keeping it in the family.
Shall we start a thread on Nepotism ?
http://www.anorak.co.uk/393065/news/nepotism-watch-the-guardians-rusbridger-mackie-family-are-looking-for-comment.html/
I don’t think so mate, they all live where I do in North London which is spectacularly diverse and multi-cultural and everyone rubs along great. Unfortunately that makes them wholly unable to differentiate people in small towns who are genuinely impacted by immigrants pressuring their services and jobs from the sad old men sitting with their daily express in the back end of nowhere and fretting about black people and Romanians they never see.
There’s a police commissioner post in Rotherham you should consider. Or maybe Mark Easton will leave a slot free if he pines for the JonDon lifestyle?
Well ‘me old China’, it certainly looks like everyone was ‘rubbing’ along great ?’ …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14438109
A Happy New Year to you all across the border !
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda !
Dozy Cockney
Were you asleep during the 2011 London race riots ?
Good point to be fair. Doesn’t outweigh the benefit of all of the businesses set up by immigrants which I use every single day though IMHO.
Go on admit it Cockney, you were asleep – and you have been ‘swamped’!
Most of those businesses were set up by the migrants to cater for the ‘surge in migrants’ that this country has experienced over the years – witness the shortage of school places, shortage of houses, shortage of appointments at doctor’s surgeries etc. etc. etc.
Gosh, yes! I remember how few shops and businesses there were in the London of my youth. We had to walk miles to buy a newspaper or a bunch of flowers. And as for doctors… why, we’d only read of them in books.
You had books?
Luxury!
;p
I remember shit food, shit pubs, shit shops selling bog standard mediocrity, everything closing early, nothing organised going on. In short it was pretty much like most medium sized towns in the UK are now. I can eat at some of the best and cheapest restaurants in the country and buy pretty much anything 24 hours a day 5 mins from my front door and it isn’t natives running these places. The proof is in the market anyway, right? The fastest house price increases in the country are in the ‘multicultural hellholes’ of London, round my way almost exclusively driven by young affluent Brits bundling onto the bandwagon. Somebody is less miserable than you about the way it’s going.
Correlation is not causation.
London was pretty much a 24 hour a day city in the 1890s. As for house prices, you seem to have a pretty weak grip on the driving factors behind London’s bubble. Most of the Brits you fondly imagine are buying property are commuting. The buyers are from anywhere but the UK.
It’s not new arrivals from Eastern Europe buying £800k houses in the trendy bits of hackney where the 25% growth is. It’s professionals who want to be where the action is.
And why do you imagine prices in a dump like Hackney are in the £800 thousand region?
Because affluent professionals are voting with their feet to live where there are restaurants, bars, cafés, nice shops, cultural venues, populated by interesting people from everywhere with a bit of life and a work ethic. Hackney isn’t the dump it has always been any more precisely because these people have decided they want to live in the 21st century and have dragged it up. There are plenty of leafy and vastly cheaper places to sit around doing nothing and moaning incessantly if you’d rather, so I don’t see why progress is such a problem to some people.
Then Mrs Thatcher changed things !
Correct in part, plus the mayors have helped too. The ukip rank and file (not farage to be fair) are the antithesis of Thatcherism. She may not have intended it but Norf London hipsterism is her creation.
As ever a London liberal ‘elite’ swing things so that they are happy, the rest of the country who get the shitty end of the stick, you know those who pay the taxes for it, grow your food, provide your water, your power from the power stations, the windmills, they get nothing apart from no jobs, no houses, or people who they live next door to who talk no English .
We outnumber you, our concerns override your little melting pot built of clay. We want our country back, stand in our way you might come unstuck.
The London elite and non elite, liberal or otherwise, have propped up the country since the war. If you want to carry on with whatever it is you do you might want to try making it economically viable.
Really? I wonder who has made it uneconomically viable ? One Incompetent government after another no matter what the colour. You will be far too young to remember Duncan Sands (Tory) who in 1957 decided that the future belonged to missiles and therefore cancelled all manned fighter development apart from the Lightning. The Saunders Roe 177 was doing very well and was wanted by the Germans, Sands cancelled it, forcing the Germans to buy the F-104 Starfighter from Lockheed which went on to sell over 2000 in Europe. Because of stupid errors made by London politicians. Saunders Roe sacked 1000 highly trained workers.
labour was just as bad cancelling TSR 2 and buying American as a way to amalgamate and control the British aircraft industry.
This is just one of many terrible decisions in one industry made by cretins in London. I could go on all day telling of political stupidity destroying British industry. We make only what the government of the day allows and promotes, when they all found it all too hard to deal with and decided to turn to money markets as a way to make a living they turned their backs on the workers and let it all slide to the mess it is today. Try reading some history of the mess made in London since WW2.
I would gladly swap today’s ‘Britain’ for the one I grew up in the 70’s. I would happily sacrifice technology,Internet,mobile phones, and all other ‘benefits’ to be in the Britain of my youth. That feeling is reinforced every time I see retrospective look back programmes on tv (even the anti-BBC).
Ditto, would even go as far as the mid 80’s.
We were talking about this yesterday on a long journey and the fear that you may have strayed 4 mph over the limit, put one wheel in a bus lane, overstayed your parking limit by a couple of minutes, or had a drag of a Lambert and Butler with a kid in the back and suffer the wrath of the establishment. We even have to watch that we don’t place the wrong item in the wrong bin, that’s the crime of the century around here …
We are suppressed in so many ways, in what we can say, what is and isn’t acceptable and the workplace is a nightmare, we no longer live in a free country.
Youngsters today wouldn’t believe the freedoms we had.
That Britain of the 1950’s to 80’s seems like a foreign land, but one that I too would give everything to return to….
Yes lets go back to the good old days of pre-1860 American South.
Why would we go back in time to a country we do not live in ? Are you trying to draw some parallel between 1860 USA and 1860 UK ? I think you will find that the Royal Navy was at that time well on its way to destroying slavery at sea and the movement of said slaves to the US.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/royal_navy_article_01.shtml
Read what the bbc has to say ! I am somewhat surprised to see they acknowledge the truth of 20,000 slaves a year being moved to Zanzibar for onward movement to the Middle East by Arabs whose atrocities against the Africans aroused the sympathy of the British people.
Do you think they might even go so far as to film a historical drama showing the treatment of the Africans by the Arab slavers and the British leading the way in stopping the trade ? Gosh we must not have been institutionally racist in them days eh ? Either that or the left’s harping on about our faults is a load of old tosh, you decide.
Reply to Cockney:
Cor blimey thus spake the last Cockney.
So-called ‘Cockney’ , I was born in North London (N1) and still live in North London over 60 years later. I can tell you ‘Mate’ , that the North London of today is hardly ‘spectacular’ and that each racial/cultural group keeps very much to itself . The degree of ‘rubbing along ..great’ as you say , is zero.Instead , there is suspicion ,aggression, and complete lack of manners and civility everywhere.
You are a fantasist who sees only what he wants to see if you think otherwise.
Why don’t you ‘migrate’ to a Liebore site where you can indulge your One World fantasies with some other stoodents?
The Islamization of the U.K. 2014……Long – long – dreadfully long!
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4996/britain-islamization
“Some of Ukip’s members aren’t perfect – but at least we don’t think like the others.”
By Nigel Farage.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/some-of-ukips-members-arent-perfect–but-at-least-we-dont-think-like-the-others-9953137.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30653742
This is going to be a big problem over the Winter. Europe pulls out of providing a rescue service to the traffickers use of small tubs right off the North African Coast, the traffickers turn to using old coasters instead. Supposedly coming from Turkey ( where is the Turkish authorities watching their ports ? ).
Europe is being attacked by slow speed manned Cruise Missiles which will continue until someone makes the decision to board them at sea and turn them around, no amount of wet hand wringing is going to stop this.
The Camp of The Saints.
Prophetic futuristic 1973 novel by Jean Raspail.
What prescience.
Let’s not forget a great Englishman (E.Powell) also saw great Trouble ahead…’Like the Roman , I see the Tiber foaming with blood’.
This is often mis-quoted, and was at the time mis-represented.
But he was a Truthful man.