The BBC’s Norman Smith strikes again. How is it that a man with such an everyday name can manage to come up with the most fantastical, imaginative, sinister flights of fancy that would have Roald Dahl turning in his grave with envy?
The government has announced that landlords must check the immigration status of tenants and has given them the ability to evict them without a court order…the penalty for not doing so may be 5 years in the clink…whilst the illegal immigrants are entertained no doubt in fine style by HM’s social services.
The government says that this measure is targeted at rogue landlords who deliberately exploit immigrants and the system not your every day law abiding landlord.
Norman Smith’s main conclusion on Today? This would lead us back to the 1960’s or 70’s with signs saying ‘No blacks, Jews or Gays’.
Not sure how he made that huge leap, and definitely unsure where Jews and gays come into this as part of the landlord’s ‘profiling’ of potential tenants. Why would a landlord think Jews or Gays were illegal immigrants? Perhaps he was thinking of a different future in England once another ideology gets the whip hand. Funny no warnings about that possibility.
Why did he make that claim when the main concern of the landlords was that if they tried to evict tenants it might result in violence as even the Guardian points out?..
A government plan to require landlords to evict tenants living in Britain illegally from their properties without a court order could lead to violent confrontations, the National Landlords’ Association has warned.
Smith has a habit of making hyperbolic, highly political statements of nonsense…claiming pre-election that the state of the economy was ‘utterly terrifying’ and that government plans to cut spending would take us back to the 1930’s depression era and Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier….and claiming that budget predictions read like the ‘Book of Doom’.
“While there was a lot of enthusiasm on the Conservative benches and political joy at a lot of the popular measures, when you sit down and read the Office for Budget Responsibility report it reads like a book of doom.
“It is utterly terrifying, suggesting that spending will have to be hacked back to the levels of the 1930s as a proportion of GDP.
“That is an extraordinary concept, you’re back to the land of Road to Wigan Pier.”
Curious that he failed to mention that Labour’s spending in 2000/01 was almost exactly the same as predicted for the Tories’ spending plans….and the country wasn’t reduced to poverty and ruin or indeed put on the road to Wigan Pier.
More quality reporting from the BBC.
Thank you for re-highlighting this – when I commented on the Weekend thread, I was so astounded that I was typing away on the edge of the bed within a few minutes of hearing it.. Anyway, you say it so much better- what a surrealist Mr Smith is.. (and how forbearing my wife is).
I can’t help feeling that this is as much part of the programme for revisioning history as everything from Tommy and Tuppence and Skin the Midwife (sorry, comes from ‘Skin the Bismarck’ many years ago), to the whole desperate monkeying around with temperature records to try and save the Climate Change Titanic from the Iceberg of Actuality.
Landlords to evict tenants-well in view of the fact that many landlords are of close immigrant backgrounds, it will interesting to see how this plan of the Prime Minister pans out. However surely more urgent just now is to deal with the Muslim invasion now assaulting the shores of Europe-there are already 52 million Muslims residing in Europe-their plans are well forward.
A tory spokesperson said on the WAO on Monday that when the illegal tenants have been evicted by the landlord, the local council must, under the national assitance act, provide them with accommodation. So who will then deport them ? What a wonderful world we live in.
I didn’t hear Norman’s pearls of crap on Today but, on the basis that anything proposed by a Conservative government is automatically treated as far right, kick the poor, racialist legislation at W1A, Humphys accidentally got it right this morning when he turned on Greg Clarke, the secretary of state for Communities and Local Government. Clarke gave a garbled explanation of the way the system of landlords doing the Home Office’s work would function. Apparently, the system involves (I think – Clarke wasn’t exactly clear) some kind of document issued by the Home Office (and relied on by the landlord) indicating that said tenant is not a legal resident of the UK.
Humphrys asked why, if the Home Office has such information and can force the landlord to evict (and/or punish him if he doesn’t), the Home Office doesn’t cut out the middleman and arrest and deport the illegal direct. Clarke had (and May hasn’t I guess – choosing those shoes again) any answer to this piece of common sense. After all, this is the Conservatives (copying Labour) implementing a PR exercise through law and regulation. Now, had this been a Labour government doing exactly the same Humphrys would have crucified a landlord on air and drunk his blood in celebration of this magnificent policy. Unfortunately, it’s only Conservative policies: all of them (even if they are or would be policies created and enforced by a Labour administration cf Alan’s quote re Labour’s turn of the century economic policies) which get a kicking from the BBC. This time the policy deserves a kicking: next time, who knows? All you can be certain of is that the BBC – and Norman Smith – won’t like it.
Yes, the act of turning a somersault, erasing one’s previous attitude to the very same policies or decisions, and substituting boiler-plated condemnation, purely on the basis of the political colour of their origin, is what used to be called bigotry. Assisted by a certain amount of ‘magical realism’, since the BBC is of course the home of creativity and can turn a frog into a prince and vice versa.
To have it displayed repeatedly and at length by our sainted broadcaster makes a mockery of any pretence it might have had to represent even honest (though ITOOM mistaken) liberal values.
It is definitely reminiscent of the Soviet state organs, brushing over the traces and emitting whatever ‘attitude of the day’ was demanded by their masters. The only issue here is, who are the masters? Not the UK government, I think – more likely the EU, if you follow the funding.
This idiot is all over the news during the day and on the VD show is laughably referred to as a “Political Guru”. I despair…….
‘No blacks, Jews or Gays’.
Wasn’t the original “No Black, No dogs, No Irish”? How widespread this was is open to question, but Smith appears to have “Misremembered”.
And there has been no pictorial evidence of even the more well-known ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’.
I’ve seen it on TV but it was probably a fake sign to “prove” it was “real” at the time.
Alternatively if it was genuine then it would probably have been one house in the UK amongst thousands of B&Bs.
I see don’tblameme… has already said that below.
‘No blacks, Jews or Gays’.
Really how common was the use of the term ‘gay’ for homosexuals in the 1960s?
The infamous cardboard sign in that door featured so regularly by the BBC read ” no blacks , no Irish ,no dogs. ” Commentators elsewhere on the internet have questioned the veracity of that sign suggesting it may have been staged by the BBC for effect, or as the BBC would put it
‘some might say’
Someone tweet him , that he now must call Comrade Corbyn `Master` instead of Comrade Millipeed .
Norman Smith needs to get out more! in my area there’s a huge problem with “beds in sheds” and many so called rogue landlords.These are not rich Tories!
They thrive because of the numbers of illegal immigrants so are not likely to be evicting their tenants any time soon.When they do get caught ,the appeals can and do go on for years.