The immigration figures for the last year…ending september 2013:

ONS estimates of Long-Term International Migration in the year ending September 2013
The latest ONS provisional estimates of Long Term International Migration (LTIM) show that there was a statistically significant increase in net migration to 212,000 in the year ending September 2013 from 154,000 the previous year.

Net migration is the difference between immigration to and emigration from the UK. The increase in net migration is due to the combined effect of a slight increase in immigration and a slight decrease in emigration, neither of which were statistically significant changes.
532,000 people immigrated to the UK in the year ending September 2013, compared to 497,000 the previous year, whilst 320,000 people emigrated from the UK compared to 343,000 the previous year.

Here is Tim Stanley in the Telegraph spelling out the real reasons people have for opposing uncontrolled immigration so often ‘forgotten’ by the BBC in its rush to assure us of the benefits of immigration:
Here’s a classic example of how the metropolitan elite gets it wrong every darned time. The latest immigration figures show that there are currently 144,000 Bulgarians and Romanians working in the UK – a rise of 26 per cent since 2013 and 44 per cent since 2012. “Ah, but,” says the aristocracy of Notting Hill, “the number actually fell after work restrictions were lifted in January. And didn’t Nigel Farage say that we’d be swamped with migrants in the New Year?”

Well, if he did say that then he had drunk too much London Pride: the idea that the whole of Bucharest was going to relocate to Bexhill on January 1, 2014 was a nonsense. But the failure of that particular prophecy to come true is beside-the-point. As is the small dip in the numbers since the restrictions were lifted. What will actually matter to most voters reading these words is that there are now 144,000 Bulgarians and Romanians working here. That’s the equivalent of building a whole new Notting Hill. A frightening thought in itself.

A word about the figures. First, the number of Bulgarians and Romanians might be down 4,000 since January but they are up 29,000 compared with a year ago. Second, we’re talking about net migration, so while some people will have left the country since the New Year, many new may have arrived – which means that the small overall fall might disguise fresh arrivals. Third, the work restrictions were lifted in all EU countries – so it’s likely that many Bulgarians and Romanians have chosen to work in other nations rather than our own (but may come here eventually). Finally, the number that really matters in the report is the one that shows there are now an astonishing 4.5 million non-UK workers here in Britain. That represents a 7 per cent increase year-on-year.

So will voters look at the latest figures and think, “Nigel Farage got it wrong?” Or will they look at them and think, “Ok, so the Bulgarians and Romanians didn’t all arrive in one go aboard a Megabus, but 144,000 still seems like a large number and 4.5 million is eye-watering?”

The latter, probably.  People approach this issue on an instinctual level.

The establishment doesn’t understand that Ukip doesn’t get judged by the same political standards as the mainstream parties. When David Cameron or Ed Miliband makes a prediction and gets it wrong, they suffer in the polls. But when Ukip talks about “invasions” or “swamping”, they are dealing in metaphors rather than statistical facts – and the floating voter senses that they contain a kernel of truth, even if they are shrouded in tub-thumping nonsense. Yes, there is something dark about Ukip’s conversion from a libertarian eurosceptic party to a populist nativist one, and there is something farcical about its tendency to make up warnings and solutions on the spot.

But they are a protest vote, not a vote for a Prime Minister, so people will tolerate their mistakes. Moreover, Ukip’s fumbling pessimism accords with the experiences of most Britons. Our lives have not gotten better in the last six years but much worse. The middle-classes are overtaxed. The working-classes – white, black, Asian, whatever – have to compete for work with EU migrants while the price of living goes ever upwards. For everyone living outside of the metropolitan Xanadu, mass immigration is not about celebrating our wonderful diversity as a continent (viva Conchita!) but about fewer jobs, school places, council houses, hospital beds.

No one is for zero immigration: they want controlled immigration. And these latest figures will add to the sense that we don’t have any real control over our borders, that they are too porous and that this works to the detriment of regular Britons.

That’s what matters and that’s what people will probably vote on next Thursday.

This from Der Spiegel might be of interest:

‘Fresh Meat’: A Bulgarian Businessman Moves His Village to Germany

Kurt knows that his people are unwanted in Germany. They are poorly educated, rather than being doctors and engineers, they don’t speak German or English, they are not members of any elite and they are not even skilled workers. But none of this has deterred them from coming to Germany.

Those who leave Slivo Pole usually have a brother, a sister or a cousin already living in Wilhelmsburg. They have neighbors whose wives have become prostitutes, siblings who live in basements in Wilhelmsburg, paying €250 a month to sleep on a mattress or acquaintances who sleep under bridges. They are familiar with the stories of bosses who pay €3 an hour and beat their workers when pallets aren’t being packed quickly enough, or of construction foremen who suddenly leave without paying their workers.

And still they board Gül’s bus.

Kurt doesn’t even need to speak German in Wilhelmsburg. His doctor is Turkish, and so are his bosses. The grocer, the cigarette seller and the man at the Western Union counter are all Turks. “What do I need to learn German for?” he asks. “To talk to the bums?”

Bold claims about how little effect the lifting of labour market restrictions will have on the numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK over the next year are premature.

Claims of this sort, based on a single quarter of evidence from one source, are nearly as risky as the predictions last year that lifting work restrictions would lead to a sudden “flood” of A2 migrants.     Oxford University’s Migration Observatory

The BBC has been playing up the significance of the latest immigration figures released by the ONS which show a fall in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians in work in the UK in the last Quarter compared to the previous one….despite the annual figures showing a significant increase.

Five Live has been reporting that the ‘alarmist’ predictions by ‘some politicians’ (UKIP)  and some ‘campaign groups’ (Migration Watch) have been proved wrong.

Here is Nick Robinson’s dismissive take on the figures:

So much for those predictions of a flood of immigrants coming from Romania and Bulgaria once the door to the UK was opened

 And Mark Easton’s:

MPs and newspapers warned of a “flood” of hundreds of thousands of poor Romanians and Bulgarians who would strain our welfare system and public services. It was an argument that played directly into anxieties about immigration and the influence of the EU.

But today’s figures, the first official estimate of workers from Romania and Bulgaria since the transitional employment restrictions were removed on the so-called A2 countries in January, suggest there has been no flood. If anything, the reverse.

So some ‘bold claims’ based on one quarter’s data made by the BBC….‘premature and risky’?

But today is also a good day to bury other figures which are good for the government but which shouldn’t be forgotten.  In the same ONS report we have these figures for employment:
1.57 million people were employed in the National Health Service, up 13,000 from September 2013 and up 6,000 from a year earlier.

1.52 million people were employed in education, up 8,000 from September 2013, and up 44,000 from a year earlier.

Back to immigration.

Was Migration Watch wrong?

This is what they predicted as the likely annual immigration figures:

As in 2004, there is no purely statistical basis on which one could estimate the likely future flows of migration from Romania and Bulgaria. It is a matter of judgement, taking into account the factors outlined above. Our view is that they are likely to add between 30 and 70,000 to our population in each of the next five years of which about half will appear in the immigration statistics.

So 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.

In other words they were pretty much spot on….the statistics show that there has been an increase of 26,000 Romanians and Bulgarians coming to the UK over the past year…..so as suggested half of their predicted figure was captured by the official statistics….and the statistics only tell us who is employed not the total number of people coming here.

The ONS itself admits this:

“These figures will not show how many Romanians and Bulgarians arrived to work in Britain between January and March this year,” said an ONS spokesman. “They only show how many were in employment during that period. They do not show when they arrived in Britain.”

In other words you could have had an influx of immigrants as the fugures don’t say when they arrived.

The ONS also states that not all immigrants admit their country of origin:

These UK and non-UK estimates do not sum exactly to the total number of people in employment because some people do not state their country of birth in their Labour Force Survey interviews.

What does the Oxford University’s Migration Observatory have to say about the new figures?:

Today’s (14 May 2014) new data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown a small reduction (a drop of about 4,000) in the number of Romanian- and Bulgarian-born people employed in the UK in the first three months of 2014 – the period immediately after restrictions on the employment of migrants from these countries ended.

It is tempting to conclude that the new Labour Force Survey (LFS) data – showing that the opposite has happened and that actually, fewer Romanian and Bulgarian people are now working in the UK than at the end of last year – proves these stories wrong. But it is far too early to tell.

Bold claims about how little effect the lifting of labour market restrictions will have on the numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK over the next year are premature.

Claims of this sort, based on a single quarter of evidence from one source, are nearly as risky as the predictions last year that lifting work restrictions would lead to a sudden “flood” of A2 migrants.

So the reality is that Migration Watch have been proved correct and anything up to 50,000 Romanians and Bulgarians have probably entered the country…half not showing up on the statistics.

The full picture can’t possibly be known as to the effect, if any, of the ending of work restrictions until this year has ended….as you can see from the chart the June to September period there were 135,000 Romanians and Bulgarians in work…this leapt to 144,000 the next Quarter, then dropping to 140,000 for the latest quarter…the surge in immigration occured before the new rules were put in place….and could quite as easily go up again.

The BBC has been presenting this and talk about immigration control in general as Right Wing scaremongering but how true is that?

Here are Labour’s words of warning about immigration spoken only today:

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government had to do more “to address people’s legitimate concerns”.

She said: “Ministers aren’t doing enough to stop employers and agencies exploiting cheap migrant labour, particularly from Eastern Europe, to undercut wages and jobs.”

Here is Labour again:

Immigration figures to drop 20,000 as Home Office ‘massages’ numbers

Labour accused Mrs May of trying to “fix” the net migration figures.
David Hanson, the shadow immigration minister, said: “This is a desperate attempt to fiddle figures from an increasingly desperate Home Secretary.
“David Cameron promised his Government would cut net migration to the tens of thousands and he has failed. Now Theresa May wants to fix the figures brazenly, trying to take the British public for fools. If the Home Secretary thinks cheating the public is the way forward, it’s this Government that’s the fool.”

Here is Labour’s own think tank the IPPR telling us of the problems that immigration brings:

In transition: Romanian and Bulgarian migration to the UK

The report draws three key conclusions about the likely shape of migration from Romania and Bulgaria:
It is likely that patterns of migration from Romania and Bulgaria will be different to those seen after the A8 countries joined the EU in 2004.
However, the impacts of future migration from Romania and Bulgaria will be similar to other flows from eastern Europe.
Romanian and Bulgarian migration remains a source of worry for the public, but this has been exacerbated rather than alleviated by political interventions.
The main challenges that arise as the result of new A2 migration flows are likely to relate to increased demand for housing and public services, as well as new arrivals’ language needs. Over time, these migrants will accrue more entitlements to welfare, which needs to be planned for. There are also some specific issues that will need to be tackled at both national and local levels, such as the exploitation of workers from these countries and the integration of Roma migrants.

And look here’s the BBC itself reporting that:

EU migrants: Public services ‘must prepare’
23 December 2013

Ministers should take practical steps to help public services cope with the arrival of Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, a think tank has urged.
There should be more funds for housing, schools and policing, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said.
Bulgarians and Romanians have been able to work in the UK only in certain circumstances, but EU restrictions on movement will be lifted on 1 January.
The institute said practical help was needed to deal with increased demands on the privately-rented housing sector and on police who may have to deal with more incidents of anti-social behaviour by people unaware of UK laws and customs.
It also called for extra translators in schools and health centres.
It said there should be a “dedicated” pot of money to pay for the measures, from visa fees and the European Social Fund.

So is the BBC ‘scaremongering’ as well, and Labour and the IPPR?

Seems that it is only Right Wing politicians, newspapers and ‘pressure groups’ who get accused of that by the BBC.

I happened to catch a BBC report on the imminent findings of the investigation into the Islamification of certain schools in Birmingham this morning just after 7am. BBC only managed to find parents and schoolchildren who PRAISED the schools they attended and who were shocked, yes shocked, at this outrageous slur that they were being Islamified. One pupil helpfully pointed out that in her school, the Muslim population attending the school was around 99.9% “there are a few others” she added. Funny how the BBC miss a story within the story, isn’t it? It struck me that this was the BBC getting a pre-emptive strike in ahead of the official report which comes out next week. The meme is that we have little to worry about with State schools that are almost 100% Muslim and which are much loved by the parents and pupils. Clear?

Middle of the week and time for a new one of these!Off you go…..

Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband I should perhaps have to remind you, is having a torrid time…..the Tories have just overtaken Labour in the polls, he is being condemned left, right and centre, even from within his own labour ranks, he has no big policy ideas and the ones he does come up with are almost immediately shot down.

You might suppose a grilling on the Nicky Campbell show would be the last thing to look forward to if you were Miliband.

That’s of course if he were to get a grilling.  What he in fact got was a few soft questions lobbed half heartedly in his direction and a lot of airtime to assure Britain that Labour has the ‘solution’….not quite sure what the problem is that Labour has the solution to though.

Campbell had a pleasant little chat this morning with Miliband (08:36) who had learnt his lines well and refused to deviate from the script….‘there is a ‘deep sense of discontent in the UK, a sense that the country only worls for a few people at the top and not for most ordinary families…and ‘we’, Labour,  have the solutions.’

Campbell asked Miliband about his refusal to meet the CEO of Pfizer after having claimed that the ‘stakes couldn’t be higher’….Miliband dodged the question and Campbell didn’t press it.

The same with the recent video released attacking Clegg…Miliband claimed it was merely a ‘light hearted’ comment on the government……not admitting it was targeted at Clegg personally and was highly offensive to the Tories.

Campbell did suggest it was ‘chippy and mean-spirited’ but once again Miliband was allowed to brush that off saying he didn’t see it that way and that when you’ve seen the pain and suffering that results from the unfair and unjust decisions of this government you can understand the sense of anger out there.

Campbell didn’t raise the question of just who might ultimately have been responsible for all that ‘pain and suffering’…could it not have been a Labour government that destroyed the economy and left us in the worst recession in living memory?

Campbell didn’t get Miliband to expand on his economic policies and exactly what he was going to do with the economy….the best he got out of him was that Labour would protect scientific research and create high skilled and highly paid jobs…not saying how and where the money would come from.

Then Campbell asked about Miliband’s latest proposal on providing GP access…Campbell decided not to challenge him on this merely asking if Miliband had ‘sorted out the problems with that policy’ when it was last tried by Gordon Brown.

Miliband assured us that it was all good and that it was a no cost policy…..the savings made on cutting this government’s bureaucracy would pay for it.

Campbell didn’t question that…you might have thought he would as GPs themselves say the policy would cost £3 billion.

Ed Miliband’s promise to give all patients a “same-day consultation” and a guarantee of an early GP appointment was questioned this morning after the Royal College of GPs said the policy would cost £3 billion to implement.

 

Campbell’s final probing question was which of the leaders of the other parties would Miliband have a pint with?

The real question might be would any of them want to have a pint with Miliband?

All in all a pretty poor interview when elections are due in just over a week and the national election in a years time with Miliband campaigning hard already….Miliband wasn’t exactly on the ropes and must have traipsed away happy that he’d got away with it again.

I imagine Cameron, Clegg and Farage have been lined up for similar interviews…..wonder what treatment they will get, just how rigorous will the questioning be?

Amnesty International seems to have forgotten all about this from Gita Sahgal:

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

David Vance was up against it today on Sheila Fogarty’s (13:47) show as he argued in defence of ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods against Amnesty International’s representative and the BBC’s default position that Amnesty’s line is the correct one…..that a cup of tea that is too hot or a biscuit without chocolate on it in the course of an interrogation amounts to torture.

Amnesty is horrified that the great British Public are not wholeheartedly behind their campaign to eliminate what they call torture completely…and blames films and television for de-sensitising us…the Public just doesn’t understand the horror and brutality of torture.

Of course we might just be taking a rational view and think that certain methods, not all, are acceptable if the stakes are high enough……and that’s the rub…what constitutes ‘torture’ and is it justified to save possibly thousands of lives?

Amnesty thinks not.

DV thought it was….and claimed AI was acting as de facto apologists for our enemies in the war on terror….joining forces with the Islamist Caged Prisoners (Now ‘Cage’) doesn’t help AI’s case of course.

The BBC has been all too ready itself to come to the aid of Islamists such as Moazzem Begg and spread accusations of abuse by British forces….probably no coincidence AI releases its poll results today as the BBC has this as its headline story:

ICC to investigate claims of abuse by UK forces in Iraq

It tells us that:

Even though this is not an ICC “formal investigation”, at least yet, it’s still a significant victory for the Human Rights Lawyer Phil Shiner and his firm Public Interest Lawyers.

He’s long argued that British forces were involved in the systematic abuse of Iraqis.

He believes that mistreatment – some of which has been proven – was allowed by senior military officers and even ministers.

In other words that it wasn’t just a “few bad apples”.

and then says:

The anger in the MOD and the military will be directed at Mr Shiner more than the ICC. They feel he’s dragging the British military’s reputation through the mud.

Unforgiveably the BBC doesn’t tell us that Shiner & Co withheld information crucial to an ongoing case…that they actually had no evidence of abuse by British troops…a case that, had that information been revealed, would have been thrown out of court…..and Shiner & Co wouldn’t have been paid millions of pounds in legal aid money….and their own reputation, such as it is, wrecked….they do themselves seem intent on dragging the British Military’s reputation through the mud for as long as possible.

You’ll be hard pushed to find a mention of that case being abandoned on the BBC webpages….no link referring to it being added to other reports.

Happy to link to this from a year ago though:

Iraqis claim British troops ‘acted with brutality’

I read that  “Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region have claimed a resounding victory in a “self-rule” referendum, saying 89% voted in favour. In Luhansk, another eastern region, the results – also expected to show a strong backing – will be released soon. BBC reporters at polling stations spoke of chaotic scenes, no voting booths in places and no electoral register.”

Gosh, that comes as a surprise, doesn’t it? The BBC has been to the fore in downplaying the wishes of anyone in Ukraine who takes a pro-Russia sentiment. This morning, on Today, they interviewed a perfectly lucid lady from Donetsk (sounds like the start of a bad limerick!) and all they could do was quote that the PEW research group in the USA had conducted a poll that shows most Russian supporters want to be remain in the Ukraine. It’s funny how the BBC is so pro self determination unless it is in parts of the Ukraine. I wonder is it possible that the BBC is shilling for the EU, using the Ukraine as the handle?

Here you are, on time, a brand new Open Thread to start the week! Enjoy and detail the bias.

Boris Johnson: BBC’s treatment of veteran broadcaster has been ‘utterly disgraceful’

Boris Johnson says entire BBC board should travel down to Devon and apologise in person to broadcaster forced to resign for unwittingly playing song containing racist slur

Doreen Lawrence becomes UAF honorary president

UAF is very proud to announce that Doreen Lawrence has agreed to become our honorary president.

Curious……..

Doreen Lawrence denies link to group accused of Farage threats

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon played down her involvement with Unite Against Fascism (UAF), whose members are accused of trying to silence the Ukip leader

The UAF are essentially Unite Union baron Len McCluskey’s  storm troopers….sent in to do battle on the streets with those they want to deny the right to speak…..

Its head honchos:

UAF’s honorary presidents are Ken Livingstone and Doreen Lawrence.

Our elected officers for 2013 are:

Chair – Steve Hart, political officer, Unite
Vice chair – Christine Blower, general secretary, NUT
Vice chair – Hugh Lanning, deputy general secretary, PCS
Vice chair – Azad Ali

Miliband is kept in place by Unite and Owen Jones is another Unite stooge.

Interesting that a so-called ‘anti-fascist’ organisation has Azad Ali, an extremist Muslim, as its vice chair.

Ken Livingstone’s anti-fascist group appoints fascist as vice-chair

One of this blog’s oldest friends, Azad Ali, has a great new post. As the Harry’s Place blog reports, Azad is the new vice-chair of Unite Against Fascism, the ostensibly anti-racist group (in fact more of a meal-ticket for the leadership of the Socialist Workers’ Party.)

Azad is the community affairs co-ordinator of the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe, which controls the East London Mosque and which is dedicated, in its own words, to changing the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed … from ignorance to Islam.”

The BBC take a quick peek at the story…..originally broken by Andrew Neil…so you might think…’scoop’!!!…but that’s not how the BBC thinks at all

The BBC’s intent is to move in and, if it can’t erase history, it will try to downplay or ridicule Farage’s claims….that the UAF threatened him….or, if they can’t deny there is substance to Farage’s claim, they will try to excuse the UAF’s actions as a result of his own ‘racism’.

And indeed in the article that is what they do….a sub-heading being entirely misleading….‘Racist adverts’…..UKIP’s adverts were not racist.

The BBC then goes on to give Unite and Hope Not Hate a long say and a chance to denigrate Farage and UKIP.

What the BBC doesn’t bother with is to actually investigate if there is any truth in Farage’s claims…because they know that there is.

The UAF is a Fascist organisation….. Fascists are of course Socialists…never mind the teaming up with Islamic ‘fascists’.

All a bit embarrassing for the BBC….which also doesn’t mention Doreen Lawrence.

All a bit two faced of the BBC which has put a great deal of time and effort into attacking and trying to sideline the EDL…..an organisation which, unlike the UAF, opposes Islamic ‘fascism’ and all that entails.

But the BBC has never shown the slightest interest in exposing the UAF…….and once again the BBC is guilty of manipulating the news so that its ‘friends’ get protection and positive coverage whilst those it sets it hat against get the full Pravda treatment and face the equivalence of being sent to the camps in Siberia….’exiled’ to the fringes of society by BBC denouncements and erased from history as undesirables.