Is ‘Falkirk’ the Scottish tragedy that no one at the BBC dare mention any longer in case disaster follows?

Disaster that is for Ed Miliband:

Why Falkirk is a ‘cesspit’ for Ed Miliband

On the 5th November, which seems to be the last time the BBC visited this story, Nick Robinson had this headline:

Falkirk – the row which simply won’t go away

The BBC however does seem to be very keen to make it go away.

Again in the 5th the BBC reports this:

Labour leader Ed Miliband has refused to commit to a fresh inquiry into allegations of vote-rigging by the Unite union in Falkirk.

He insisted he had taken comprehensive action and acted “swiftly and thoroughly” in the case.

and add this:

A Labour spokesman on Monday said the party had re-interviewed an important witness, Lorraine Kane, but she had said nothing to justify reopening the inquiry.

Now that’s just not true…..she said she had not withdrawn her evidence as claimed by Miliband in order to try and end the investigation of Unite’s activities:

On Monday, the Daily Mail revealed that Lorraine Kane, the whistleblower who first alleged she and her family had been signed up as Labour members without their consent, had rejected Unite claims that she had withdrawn her testimony.

Another witness who claimed Labour’s biggest funder was embroiled in vote-rigging is standing by her account – piling more pressure on Ed Miliband to reopen an inquiry into the scandal.

Michelle Hornall is one of several who claimed to have been signed up as Labour members without their knowledge by the union Unite.

For two weeks now there has been revelation after revelation, all pretty damning and highly damaging for Miliband and yet little from the BBC.

Compare the coverage of this with that given by the BBC when Labour claimed the Tory’s Aussie spinner, Lynton Crosby, was influencing policy in favour of his own business interests :

David Cameron’s election strategist has denied Labour claims of a “shocking conflict of interest” over his lobbying firm’s work on behalf of private health companies at the time of NHS reforms.

A relentless barrage of smears came from the BBC about Crosby, slinging enough mud in the hope that some sticks whatever the real truth.

(And contrast that also with the BBC’s complete refusal to cover claims made about Tim Yeo’s green interests)

and nowt on this from the Daily Mail, and front page on the Sunday Times all day :

Now Unite union boss Len McCluskey faces investigation into claims his election included 160,000 ‘phantom’ members on the ballot – including some who had DIED

Even Labour’s own supporters are doing their own investigations and analysis….shame the world’s most powerful broadcaster and news gatherer can’t be bothered…….

UNCUT: The real reason Labour is petrified of re-opening the Falkirk inquiry

It is politically unsustainable for the party to continue insisting all is well when figures as senior as Alistair Darling are calling for the inquiry to be re-opened and news reports related to Labour are increasingly dominated by this one issue.

And on the evidence that has emerged from the cache of over 1000 Ineos mails that were passed to the Sunday Times, the party appears to be wilfully averting its gaze. Ed Miliband was wrong today when he said that no new information had come to light on Falkirk.

Quite apart from whether key witnesses have or have not withdrawn their original complaints, if the Sunday Times e-mails are true there are several other potential rule breaches now in the public domain that merit further examination by the party.

Why would the Labour leadership indulge in such an apparent act political of self-harm by pretending nothing has changed on Falkirk?

The answer is that there is a far greater fear of the consequences for Ed Miliband if the inquiry is re-opened and a civil war with Unite ensues.

Beyond the potential financial cost to the party of withheld union donations, the leader’s office is scared about what will happen at the special conference next year on Ed Miliband’s proposals to reform the union link………

It means that although the majority of CLP delegates are likely to back Ed Miliband’s reforms, almost half are in the left camp and likely oppose the Labour leadership’s plans.

Without Unite or one of the other big unions backing the reform proposals, a crushing defeat at the special conference beckons for Ed Miliband.

This would ignite a media meltdown. It’s difficult to imagine a situation where the weakness of the leader was more viscerally demonstrated than to be defeated in such a manner. The contrast with Tony Blair and the 1995 special conference would be brutal.

This is the nightmare scenario which is scaring the leader’s office and is why they are petrified of re-opening the Falkirk inquiry.

or maybe:

The suggestion being whispered is that Mr Miliband’s refusal to hold another inquiry can be explained by the need to keep Len McCluskey satisfied. Mr McCluskey is furious about the attacks on Unite’s integrity and claims rather implausibly that the whole scandal is a Tory plot. That defence is not particularly credible; there are not many Tories in Falkirk.

“I really hope a deal hasn’t been done,” said a worried Labour MP yesterday. “In which Ed agrees not to reopen the Falkirk inquiry and Unite says it will fund the election campaign. I really hope that isn’t what has happened. But it is starting to look like it.”

The BBC looks like it has closed ranks and is giving Miliband a huge amount of protection from a ‘bad Press’ whilst at the same time headlining every new Labour policy claim such as his latest effort:

Miliband: Ban children’s TV loan ads

Payday loan adverts should be banned during children’s TV shows, in the same way those for junk food are, says Labour leader Ed Miliband.

Astonishing that Paxman is allowed to get away with his political comments, especially as he is one of the BBC’s most senior political interviewers….here he is not talking about a past election but the next one and is expressing what are self-evidently highly political views…

Paxman says that we “ignore the democratic process at our peril” and believes people should vote. However he is also damning about the opportunities on offer when the people of Britain go to the polls to chose the next government.

“At the next election we shall have a choice between the people who’ve given us five years of austerity, the people who left us this mess, and the people who signed public pledges that they wouldn’t raise student fees, and then did so – the most blatant lie in recent political history.

“It won’t be a bombshell if very large numbers of the electorate simply don’t bother to vote. People are sick of the tawdry pretences.”

Yet again he is wrong as he was with Cameron and the WWI commemoration….for which he owes a very public and big apology to Cameron:

Downing Street is demanding a ‘full and public apology’ from the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman for calling  the Prime Minister a ‘complete idiot’ over his plans for the First World  War centenary.

Paxman claims it is ‘a choice between the people who’ve given us five years of austerity, the people who left us this mess‘

But it was being left in ‘this mess’ (nice to see he admits it was Labour wot done it) that made some form of ‘austerity’ inevitable.

It’s not a choice.

The very fact that Paxman agreed with Brand meant he couldn’t interview him properly…as shown in the actual ‘interview’ in which Paxman didn’t bother to challenge Brand in the slightest.

Rather than telling Paxman to pipe down the BBC are going to town on his comments:

Viewpoints: Do MPs agree with Brand and Paxman?

and this:

Jeremy Paxman: Like Russell Brand, I didn’t vote

It does seem they really have lost the plot and forgotten any idea of their public service remit…not to mention the legal requirement to report events impartially.

The BBC (& others) have been enthusiastically hyping the storm in the Phillipines as the strongest in history…then moderated it to ‘one of the most powerful‘….but still giving wind speeds  incorrectly:

The storm made landfall shortly before dawn on Friday, bringing gusts that reached 379km/h (235 mph), according to the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.

WUWT gives the figures as reported by the Phillipine Met Agency:

That’ll be 235 KPH….not 235 MPH!

The BBC has now updated that report…still calling it ‘one of the most powerful’:

Typhoon Haiyan – one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall – swept through six central Philippine islands on Friday.

It brought sustained winds of 235km/h (147mph), with gusts of 275 km/h (170 mph), with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.

And as for that ‘one of the most powerful’…even that is wrong….

Terrible though this storm was, it only ranks as a Category 4 storm, and it is clear nonsense to suggest that it is “one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall ”

How is it that the BBC got it so badly wrong?  Even Category 5 storms aren’t that rare….so why the hype?

And why are they still reporting it in such apocalyptic terms relative to its strength?  I note that many reports have ‘world’s strongest storm…of 2013’..…but that certainly wasn’t what was said on the radio,   the ‘of 2013′ was missing….usually having ‘on record’ instead.

Is it just more evidence that the BBC’s environmental journalists are prepared to lie in order to keep pushing the global warming produces ‘extreme weather’ theme?

Many people have died in the storm but should their deaths be used to promote the BBC’s political and environmental agenda just as they used the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to campaign against the wars?

From the Daily Mail:

The BBC is too big and too left wing and should lose some of its licence fee, the Corporation’s former head of TV news has warned.

Roger Mosey claimed the BBC had wrongly kept critics of Brussels, benefits and immigration off the airwaves and veered to the left on many issues.

He said it would ‘enrich the nation’ if rival commercial broadcasters had access to some of the licence fee to take on the BBC’s dominance.

Writing in The Times, Mr Mosey said that while the corporation faced widespread competition in network television, its market share of 70 per cent of all news consumption on both TV and radio was something that ‘even long-term loyalists find uncomfortable’.

He suggested that while the BBC’s stance of co-ordinating its editorial content across the organisation was a good thing, it can ‘lead to homogeneity’ and conformity.

Mr Mosey said: “On the BBC’s own admission, in recent years it did not, with the virtue of hindsight, give enough space to anti-immigration views or to EU-withdrawalists; and, though he may have exaggerated, the former Director-General Mark Thompson spoke of a ‘massive bias to the left’ in the BBC he joined more than 30 years ago.

Editors’ views are ‘influenced by like-minded peers’ and co-ordination of policies across programmes can lead to homogeneity, he warned.

‘That can be intensified by regulation that sees there being “right” and “wrong” answers.

‘The BBC Trust speaks the language of diversity but in its edicts it promotes conformity, whether it’s about an agreed approach to the science of climate change, “correct” terminology in the Middle East or the way a documentary about benefits should be constructed.’

The BBC asks:

Kristallnacht 75 years on: How strong is anti-Semitism in Germany?

And reports:

“The significantly strongest agreement with anti-Semitic prejudices is found in Poland and Hungary. In Portugal, followed closely by Germany, anti-Semitism is significantly more prominent than in the other western European countries. In Italy and France, anti-Semitic attitudes as a whole are less widespread than the European average, while the extent of anti-Semitism is least in Great Britain and the Netherlands”.

Which is a bit inconsistent with this:

One person told the BBC she had experienced far worse prejudice in Britain than she had at home in Germany – in a Cambridge college, ham was sometimes placed in her postbox.

…and never mind that Jews were advised that it would be better for them to emigrate from the Netherlands:

Dutch politician urges Jews to ’emigrate to US or Israel’

Former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein says no future for Orthodox Jews in Holland because of ‘anti-Semitism among Dutchmen of Moroccan descent’

Not a mention of Sweden or Norway.

Norway could soon come top of another ranking: as the first country in Europe to be Judenfrei or Judenrein (the Nazi terms for the ethnic cleansing of Jews). 

What I found was a mixture of cowardly cultural relativism, examples of rabid Jew-hatred and a liberal Left that had joined forces with radical Islamists.

No mention of Islam and the massive rise in anti-Semitism due to the influx of so many Muslims to Europe by the BBC (as admitted by Mehdi Hasan….‘Our Dirty Little Seceret’….‘anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace.‘)….just a mention of ‘youths of Middle Eastern appearance‘…..

A year ago, Rabbi Daniel Alter was attacked by a group of youths of Middle Eastern appearance as he walked with his young daughter. “They made threats of violence against female members of my family, including my seven-year-old daughter who was by my side,” he says.

And then there is this…

It has made him change his life. Seventy-five years after Kristallnacht, he feels he can no longer wear his skullcap openly in some areas of Berlin, and covers it with a hat. And he has re-doubled his efforts to visit schools and talk to children – often alongside an Imam from a mosque.

On first reading I took it to mean they were touring Muslim schools and mosques perhaps with an Imam to castigate the non-Kufars.

On second reading I actually think the author was trying to suggest a link between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia….and make out that Muslims are ‘the new Jews of Europe’.

Strange when you consider it is Muslims driving out Jews from so many places in Europe.

The BBC, God bless ’em.

Funny what they choose to turn a blind eye to.

‘anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace.‘

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin sounded pretty desperate yesterday morning on the radio as he yet again pushed a very one sided version of climate change…helpfully he has written it all down as he helps in the fight to keep the Green show on the road:

Wavering on UK climate policy ‘not justified’

Britain is playing its part in a worldwide bid to reduce emissions and should not weaken its proposed cuts, says a report to the UK government.

The Committee on Climate Change says no change in global science or policy justifies a slackening of effort.

The report was compiled after Chancellor George Osborne said the UK’s competitiveness might be put at risk by leading the world in curbing emissions.

The CCC research challenges this assumption.

Harrabin also highlighted China’s apparent great leap forward on CO2 reduction…..Bishop Hill thinks he may be exaggerating:

And Bishop Hill goes on:

According to this article at Bloomberg:

The [Chinese] government aims to have 100 gigawatts of wind-power installed capacity and more than 35 gigawatts of solar power by 2015…

With a population of 1.34bn, 100 GW of wind power represents about 72 W/capita. The UK currently has 8445 MW of wind for a population of 63 million, which is 134 W/capita. So we are already doing roughly double what China is expected to achieve by 2015.

For solar, China’s 2015 figure of 35 GW represents 26 W/capita, while the UK has about the same already.

And according to the EU the UK was ahead of the game on meeting the 2012 Kyoto CO2 reduction targets.

But what about that Climate Change Committee?

Our Role

The Committee on Climate Change (the CCC) is an independent, statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008. Our purpose is to advise the UK Government and Devolved Administrations on emissions targets and report to Parliament on progress made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for climate change.

Independent.

Really?

We know that its Chairman, Tim Yeo had to step aside due to questions about his vested interests in renewable energy businesses….what about the others on the Committee?

Sir Brian Hoskins:

Over the last four years Sir Brian (Hoskins) has been instrumental in establishing the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, as an important centre for climate change research.

Ahh…the Grantham Institute…at Imperial College London.…one of the propaganda nerve centres for promoting man made climate change.

Robert McCredie May, Baron May of Oxford:

Again…..Imperial College London…

He now holds joint professorships at Oxford and Imperial College London….When asked if religious leaders should be doing more to persuade people to combat climate change, he stated that it was absolutely necessary….

“A supernatural punisher maybe part of the solution.”

“Given that punishment is a useful mechanism, how much more effective it would be if you invested that power not in an individual you don’t like, but an all-seeing, all powerful deity that controls the world,” he said

“It makes for rigid, doctrinaire societies, but it makes for co-operation.”

Such a system would be “immensely stabilising in individual human cultures” and societies, he pointed out.

Is he neutral on climate change…Maybe not:

One of Britain’s most eminent scientists has attacked President Bush for acting like a latter-day Nero who fiddles while the world burns because of global warming.

Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society and former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said the Bush administration must accept the case has been made about the link between man-made pollution and climate change. Continuing to deny the impact of human activities on the environment may ultimately have catastrophic consequences for everyone on the planet, he said.

Lord May will also castigate elements within the British media who promote “misleading” opinions about the true nature of the scientific uncertainties surrounding climate change.

“If the public are misled into thinking climate change does not pose a serious potential threat, some policy-makers could more easily find an excuse not to act. 

Lord May accused the Daily Mail of waging an undeclared propaganda war against the science of climate change… the Daily Mail gives undue prominence and support to the views of an extreme fringe, and misleads its readers about the state of our knowledge”

How about Lord Deben?:

David Cameron, who last month nominated Lord Deben (formerly John Gummer) as the new chairman of the influential and supposedly “independent” Committee on Climate Change, set up to advise government on energy policy under the Climate Change Act. This is despite the fact that Lord Deben’s array of environmental business interests includes chairmanship of Forewind Ltd, a consortium of four energy firms planning the world’s largest, and most heavily subsidised, offshore wind farm in the North Sea.

And what about his mate Tim Yeo?

MP paid £400,000 by green firms slams climate change peer… for hypocrisy exposed by the Mail

• Tim Yeo has complained about Lord Deben’s undisclosed green interests
• Mr Yeo has been paid more than £400,000 by three green companies
• Lord Deben is chairman of firm which connects windfarms to National Grid

Jim Skea:

Jim [Skea] has strong links to policy processes. He is a founding member of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change and is Vice-Chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the past, he was a member of the Commission on Environmental Markets and Economic Performance and acted as Launch Director for the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership. Jim is also a non-executive director of the Blackrock New Energy Investment Trust plc.

So he works on the IPCC?  Very independent….and not forgetting his Green business interests.

and comes from Imperial College London…

and is Director of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Environmental Change Programme.

The same ESRC that has close connections to the Grantham Institute and the famous Lord Stern

Professor Lord Stern of Brentford, Chair of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy who also runs the……

Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy wins second phase funding from UK Economic and Social Research Council

The University of Leeds and London School of Economics and Political Science have been jointly awarded more than £5 million by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to support a second phase of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, it was announced today (17 September 2013).

Professor Samuel Fankhauser: Co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment – LSE.

He also works for the business Vivid Economics which advises on climate to government and business:

The economics of climate change has taken centre-stage for energy-intensive industries and governments across the world. We are established thought leaders in this field, levering our expertise on competitiveness, strategy, infrastructure, resources and innovative policy.

We provide advice on policy design at national and international level, on commercial strategy and planning, mitigation of emissions, adaptation to climate change, investment, infrastructure, innovation and economic growth, with a thorough understanding of related financial and scientific issues.

Professor Dame Julia King non executive director of the Green Investment bank

We are committed to addressing the very serious issue of the ever growing demands on the planet’s natural resources and building a strong and sustainable legacy for future generations.

In order to meet this green challenge there are ambitious and legally binding targets which the UK must meet.

Paul Johnson serving on the council of the Economic and Social Research Council. (as above)

Professor Lord Krebs and David Kennedy seem to be the only ones without any serious vested interests in  green business or promotion.

The Committee on Climate Change..…

Independent then?

I think not.

Nice though of Harrabin to give so much credence to anything they say.

64% of Britons are satisfied with life.

The BBC has been pushing Labour’s ‘cost of living crisis’ hard recently (Ed Miliband: Only Labour can secure ‘recovery for all’) but seems not to want to make much of  this:

Britons happier than before financial crisis as contentment plummets in Europe – OECD

OECD says quality of life in the UK has been only “modestly affected” by the global financial crisis with happiness and even trust in government rising – in marked contrast with its neighbours in the Eurozone

The BBC’s response to the OECD’s report was very muted compared to its extensive and one sided coverage of immigration statistics.

Financial crisis hits happiness levels

Countries worst hit by the global financial crisis saw their happiness levels fall as a result, a survey has suggested.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), levels of “life satisfaction” fell sharply between 2007 and 2012 in countries like Greece and Spain.

Trust in governments also deteriorated over that time.

The OECD said the findings showed the far-reaching impact of the crisis.

However, the UK saw its happiness levels rise 1% between 2007 and 2012, putting it in the 20% of happiest countries in the OECD, alongside the likes of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.

The UK also bucked the trend by showing a rise in trust in the government, up from 36% to 47% between 2007 and 2011.

“The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments,” the 34-member organisation said.

Note how it emphasizes the bad news and only then slipped in the ‘but Britain is doing better‘……and note that sly ‘the UK saw its happiness levels rise 1% between 2007 and 2012‘.

Satisfaction risen…but by a mere 1%…nothing to cheer about eh?  Let’s downplay the truth.

Why not report what was actually said?:

‘The percentage of British people declaring being very satisfied with their lives increased from 63 per cent to 64 per cent.’

Which tells us that a good majority think their lives aren’t so bad as Labour tell us, via the BBC.

Immigration has cost a minimum of £62 billion between 2001 and 2011

If you’ve been listening to the radio you may have heard the BBC telling us that ‘immigration’, not just EU immigration, has benefited this country as ‘immigrants’ pay more in tax than they take in benefits.

Recent immigrants to UK ‘make net contribution’

Immigrants to the UK since 2000 have made a “substantial” contribution to public finances, a report says.
The study by University College London said recent immigrants were less likely to claim benefits and live in social housing than people born in Britain.
The authors said rather than being a “drain”, their contribution had been “remarkably strong”.

The trouble is ‘immigration’ as a whole does not benefit us….but that fact is missing from the BBC reports.

The source for these ‘facts’ is the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, funded partly by the European Union…..and staffed by mainly immigrants:

Research staff

External fellows

In 2007 this is what they were telling us:

Policy formation is likely to be influenced by the subjective opinion of domestic residents. This creates a dilemma for policy: while liberal immigration policies may benefit the industrial society, these may be difficult to implement due to public antipathy. 

Understanding the process of attitude formation and how it works through the media is essential to an appropriate policy response. 

That good old ‘Manufacturing of Consent’.

The BBC is happy to oblige, trying to persuade us that immigration benefits us….they do that by missing out essential facts…as does the CRAM.

This is what we are told:

The net fiscal balance of overall immigration to the UK between 2001 and 2011 amounts therefore to a positive net contribution of about 25 billion GBP.

Unfortunately that isn’t so……hidden on page 41 we get the real figures…..

1995-2011  Non EU immigrants cost  £104 billion

2001-2011 Non EU immigrants cost £87 billion

Now subtract a positive £25 billion from a cost of £87 billion and I make that a total cost of £62 billion.

Immigration has cost a minimum of £62 billion between 2001 and 2011

And that doesn’t include all the costs of course.

Take a look at the ‘research’ for yourself.

It’s fairly opaque in style and is impossible for most people to check their sources and conclusions.

But wander through it and cherry pick things that catch your eye and some of these might be of interest and raise a few questions:

The first point is that that whacking great loss isn’t quantified in the body of the text…you have to dig for it yourself….which raises the question as to why?

Fair comparison?

A major point is that immigrants don’t have all the costs put onto them that the natives do…..things that would be paid for whether or not immigrants were here, ‘pure’ public goods, such as defence, roads, the Civil Service and Government etc, are left out….but such costs are included for the natives when comparing expenditure by government on them and taxes paid…hardly a fair comparison…..

We assign the cost of all these “pure” public goods only to natives, meaning that the expenditure column represents the cost of pure public goods that natives would have to bear in the absence of any immigrant population.

Wages

The report says by ratio immigrants are better educated than natives but….

These stark educational differences between immigrants and natives are not, however, reflected by wage differences, as we show in Table 2a: the median wages of natives and non-EEA immigrants are nearly the same, while the median wages for EEA immigrants are substantially below those of natives, by about 15% in 2011

Hang on…..immigrants apparently pay more taxes and yet they earn less than the natives?

Employment

Whilst EU immigrants are apparently slightly more likely to have a job by percentage than the natives, non-EU immigrants are far less likely:

Since the mid-2000s, employment rates have also been slightly higher for EEA immigrants than for natives, 75% versus 70% in 2011(see Table 2b). The employment rate of non-EEAs, on the other hand, is substantially lower in all years, only 62% in 2011

But all those unemployed….25% of EU and 38% of non-EU immigrants will be claiming benefits or costing us in some shape or form.

Housing

The report tells us:

‘…recent immigrants overall are over 3 percentage points less likely to live in social housing than natives

Recent non-EEA immigrants, in contrast, are 2.6 percentage points more likely than natives to live in social housing.‘

Hmmm….2/3rds of immigrants are non-EU…..so 2/3rds of immigrants are 2.6% more likely to be in social housing than natives…..

…and yet the report says that overall, immigrants are 3% less likely to be in social housing.

I don’t know about you but I find those figures, em, confusing.

And what isn’t quantified is the cost of all those immigrants filling up the housing stock

Some more doubtful figures

Between 2007 and 2011, recent EEA immigrants made a net contribution of 15.2billion GBP (expressed in 2011 equivalency) to UK public finances, which amounts to an annual average of 2,610 GBP per capita over the 5-year period. Over the same time frame, the annual net fiscal cost of UK natives amounted to about 1,900 GBP per capita and the net fiscal cost of recent non-EEA immigrants to about 332 GBP per capita.

So EU immigrants contributed £2,610 each to the economy whilst a British native cost £1,900 over and above taxes paid annually….that’s around £100 billion annually (based on a population of 60 million).

Of course they did.

The trouble is that not all the costs of immigration are taken into account….housing for a start…the massive house inflation and subsequent lack of housing, NHS,  the schools costs, the roads and maintenance of those, the policing, judicial and prison systems, cost of unemployment of natives unable to get a job etc.

In 2007 they recognised such costs were relevant, not just financial but social, political and religious….

Over the years labour migration has been important for economic growth and contributed to economic prosperity in Germany and the UK.  It remains a crucial issue (economically and politically) and is one whereby economies can remedy unforeseen skill gaps which may otherwise have detrimental effects on the competitiveness of industry. 

However, although migration can offer benefits by leading to relief of skill shortages, it may also adversely affect labour market prospects of resident workers, put additional strain on the welfare system, lead to an increase in criminal activity, or otherwise unfavourably affect social cohesion (see Dustmann and Glitz 2005 and Dustman et al. 2005 for discussion). While the primary motivation for allowing immigration is because of temporary labour market demands, migrants and their children tend to remain in the receiving economy long after labour market conditions have changed. All this may lead to questions whether the possibly short term benefits from immigration may be outweighed by other consequences.

I don’t know about you but I find the ‘research’ from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration  less than convincing on my quick overview and the BBC’s reporting highly partisan and clearly designed to emphasise apparent benefits of immigration whilst hiding the negative.

You have to believe the figures and the interpretation put on them by the researchers to believe that overall EU immigrants benefit the economy.

I don’t believe the CRAM is independent and I believe it starts off from the point of view that immigration is beneficial and has been looking for facts to prove that….its hiding of the costs of non-EU immigration might suggest that attitude on their part.

New Open Thread…..

“….far from being an ally in the fight against extremism, the MCB is part of the problem…”

Andrew Neil lays into the extremist Muslim Council of Britain for:

It’s attitude towards women.

Its alliance with the most fundamentalist of Islamic mosques.

Its toleration of intolerant views, hosting ‘extremists’ at the East London Mosque.

Its willingness to be counted among such people and organisations.

Not to mention a senior member signing a document that threatens death to British troops…and that another of its senior members, a founding member, is now a convicted war criminal.

On the other hand the BBC surrenders its editorial independence to the same organisation….as revealed by Rod Liddle in the Spectator:

Brave, non-denominational freedom fighters

Those of you who wonder why the BBC is so politically correct, so craven in its expressions regarding, for example, Islamic terror, may find a partial answer here:

To:
Stephen Whittle
Director of Editorial Policy at the BBC
Dear Stephen,
We have received many complaints over the last 24 hours from British Muslims regarding the use of the phrase ‘Islamic terrorists’ by your news reporters in connection with the struggle for Kashmiri independence.
We believe this phrase it totally inappropriate and adds nothing to the story and even distorts what is a long-standing struggle by the Kashmiri people to gain control of their own destiny.
Mr Inayat Bunglawala
Secretary,
Media Committee,
The Muslim Council of Britain

Response from Stephen Whittle:
Thanks for your note. I have discussed this with the various output editors. It is not our policy to describe Kashmiri separatists in this way and that has been made clear. It was an isolated incident and will not be repeated.

Curious that Bunglawala  takes such an interest in Kashmir…because he is completely uninterested in talking about war crimes and terrorism in Muslim Bangladesh:

Inayat Bunglawala says it all with regards to conflict in Bangladesh: 

I was born in the UK and am not Bangladeshi, so to be honest, I very rarely think about the 1971 war. I reckon it is of much more import to those of Pakistani/Bengali backgrounds than to me.
I do nothing whatsoever to bring justice to Muslims in East Pakistan. I have enough on my plate here in the UK.

The MCB: The Taint of Genocide

In May 1995 a Channel 4 documentary ‘Bangladesh, War Crimes File’ directed by David Bergman made allegations of the involvement of three British Bangladeshis in the genocide committed in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971.

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, one of those individuals named in the documentary, was alleged to have been instrumental in plotting the assassinations of intellectuals, journalists and students with the al-Badr death squads, assisted by the Jamaat-e-Islami.

A UK Muslim leader and a US citizen have been sentenced to death over crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

UK-Bangladeshi Muslim community leader Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khanwas were being tried in absentia by a special tribunal in Bangladesh.

They were found guilty on 11 charges relating to the abduction and killing of 18 independence supporters.