After the death of a deportee and other controversies, the Home Office has decided to award the lucrative deportation contract to another firm (though G4S claimed the award was to do with the price of its bid):
The company that will now deport detainees from next year, Reliance Security Task Management Limited, already manages several contracts for the Prison Service.
Three G4S guards were released on bail this month after being questioned over the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan who collapsed and died on BA flight 77 as it was preparing to depart for Luanda. G4S said it had received assurances that the failure to renew its contract was related to the price of its bid “and not to recent events”.
The question is,will anything change though? G4S had been using controversial measures for years without much problem:
The performance of G4S guards has been questioned for several years. A document obtained by the Guardian reveals the Home Office warned G4S in 2006 that restraint techniques used by its guards potentially impeded breathing and could result in a fatality.
The letter, headed “positional asphyxia” – a form of suffocation caused when people are placed in dangerous restraint holds – was circulated to all G4S staff in 2006 after guards were spotted using an unauthorised form of restraint.
Let us hope the change in contract results in an increase in scrutiny. Deporting people is never going to be problem free, but this was clearly unacceptable.
Jonah Goldberg is a regular contributor to Fox News, editor-at-large of National Review Onlien (right-wing US mag) and one of those highly rabid neo-conservatives. In an article for the Chicago Tribune, he asks: Why is Assange still alive?.
These people stop at nothing in order to silence anyone who exposes their projects (the Iraq war) as one massive scandal.
Some of the UK’s largest faith organisations have been having crisis management meetings discussions this week as they begin to explore the full impact of the public spending review is felt.
Religious communities have historically provided social care and education services and in the last few decades have been doing this increasingly in partnership with the welfare state, working with it on cradle to grave provision.
There is a real sense that the impact of the review will lead to an increase on demand for their care services as unemployment and social need rises whilst diminishing public resources for their work are cut.
Much of this passed me by, but this video is excellent. Highlighted by Kevin Blowe, who says:
From a BBC Open Space programme from 1992, the much missed Newham anti-fascist activist and dockworker Mickey Fenn talks about the 1970s, when the most militant elements of the Socialist Workers Party and the Anti-Nazi League formed fighting ’squads’ to physically confront the fascists. The squads, which were later disowned by the leadership of the SWP, were the forerunners of Anti Fascist Action.
The clip talks of how the anti-fascists first confronted, and then later physically beat fascists off the streets to reclaim them back. Then only, they say, did people have the courage to come out and hold widespread marches against fascism.
At 3m 38s there’s guy in a red cap who says these immortal lines:
There’s probably quite a few liberals out there – trendy lefties – who are feeling quite uneasy at this talk of violence, and saying ‘there are other ways’. Well we’re not either – or – we’re both. We’ll try all methods. We have marches, carnivals, music events, we even have a travelling exhibition. Showng you all the truth of fascims. History’s proven that fascists based their philosophy on physical force.
If you’re not prepared to meet that force, with physical force, then you must retire from the political arena. Because the fascists feed on fear, and to ignore them is to encourage them.
I think the time for fighting back with physical violence is over, though I’m pretty sure if I was around during those more racist times I would have been involved in more than one scuffle.
Two points:
1) A guy talks about how housing is behind all these problems, and that rage makes the white youths easy pickings. Seems history constantly repeats itself.
2) Right-wingers (and this includes people like Boris Johnson’s advisor Munira Mirza) are fond of ignoring history and claiming that the rise of the BNP came as a result of ‘too much political correctness’ or ‘diversity policies gone mad’ – this shoots that down too.
The fascists weren’t carrying around banners saying ‘diversity officers out’ – it was more ‘pakis out’. That should give you an indication as to whether ‘identity politics’ fuelled the rise of the BNP or not.
3) Well done to all the activists who stood up to the fascists.
Update: I’ve changed the headline from ‘arrested’. That was my mistake.
News reports from India state that Roy, the author of the Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things, will be arrested and charged with ‘sedition’ over comments she made on Kashmir.
In statement issued to news organisations and campaigners (reproduced below), Roy claims she said only “what millions of people here say every day” and that her comments against India’s operations in Kashmir were made in support of her fellow countrymen.
Lisa Appignanesi, President of English PEN, said:
Since June, Kashmiri journalists and broadcasters attempting to report on unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir have been subject to violence and gagging.
Booker Prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy has now stepped forward to draw the world’s attention to the plight of Kashmiris. The truth of what is happening in Kashmir needs to be told. Brutality by the state, and the silencing of reporters, is no option for a modern India.
The author Hari Kunzru said:
I’m concerned to hear that Arundhati Roy may face sedition charges. India trumpets its status as the world’s largest democracy, but the Indian establishment is notoriously unwilling to listen to dissident voices. Whether or not one agrees with Roy’s positions on Kashmir or the Maoist insurgency in Central India, the issues she raises are important and deserve to be debated. The willingness by elements of the Indian establishment to use the legal system to intimidate critics is lamentable. India’s writers are an important part of the nation’s identity on the international stage. Supporting their right to free speech goes hand in hand with applauding them when they win the Booker prize. One is meaningless without the other.
Laws of ‘sedition’ (criticising the state) are routinely used by governments all around the world to threaten critics of official policy and state actions. In former British colonies, these are based on archaic English laws. Last year, English PEN campaigned successfully to ensure the remnants of such laws were removed from the English statute books, but elsewhere in the Commonwealth they remain law.
Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, manages to unite the United States and Iran….. in, err, giving him bags of cash.
President Hamid Karzai acknowledged on Monday that he regularly receives bags of cash from the Iranian government in payments amounting to millions of dollars, as evidence mounted of a worsening rift between his government and its American and NATO supporters.
During an often hostile news conference, Mr. Karzai also accused the United States of financing the “killing” of Afghans by paying private security contractors to guard construction projects and convoys in Afghanistan. He has declined to postpone a December deadline he set for ending the use of private security forces despite urgent pleas from Western organizations, including development organizations, that need protection here.
To summarise: Nato presence in Afghanistan has become a joke and a massive waste of money. I think it’s probably best President Obama pulls out now, this situation does not look to be improving.
The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) has reported an increase in the number of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) teenagers coming forward to ask for help from them:
This year, the FMU has dealt with 29 confirmed cases of forced marriage involving gay men and women. Last year, the unit offered support and advice to nearly 1,700 cases in total.
Just how many of those involved lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) victims is unknown, because not everyone is willing to divulge their sexuality. However, it is thought this emerging trend is just the tip of the iceberg, as more gay men and women seek assistance.
A number have been referred by the Albert Kennedy trust, which specialises in helping LGBT teenagers. Many of these teenagers have been forced into marriage either because their parents don’t know about their sexuality, or else see marriage as a way to ‘cure’ their children from being NEH (Not Exclusively Heterosexual). One girl, Reviva, interviewed by the BBC, spoke about her experiences once her parents found out about her sexuality:
The troubled teenager was taken to her grandmother’s house in the Middle East where, as she recalls with a chilling lack of emotion, her parents tried persuading her to take her own life. “I was damaging the family honour. I was making the family looking like a modernised, westernised, filthy family. So what they wanted to do is get rid of what is damaging the honour.
“They put you in a room on your own, I don’t get any food, or any water, and I have to just sit there and wait to die or kill myself.” To aid the process, a gun, a knife, and pills were left in the room, along with a can of petrol and a box of matches. In her view, Reviva says it would have amounted to murder, not suicide, should she have decided to kill herself.
Many LGBT teenagers, whatever their backgrounds, feel that they have no one to turn to about their issues (though organisations do exist, as shown above), given the bullying and abuse that can result from such a revelation, whether at school or at home. Until this is tackled, LGBT teenagers forced into a marriage will feel even more isolated than their heterosexual counterparts. That is certainly not to excuse the attitudes which lead to forced marriage, but rather highlight areas others can work on in order to reduce this practice by making LGBT teenagers feel as though there are more people they can turn to.
Update: The 5 Live Investigates programme is here and an interview with the head of the Forced Marriage Unit is here (thanks to Richard for sending in the links).
Most Tories say they’re against the ‘no-platform’ stance with extremists like the BNP. They put up Baroness Warsi against Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time even though Labour MPs like Peter Hain refused to share a platform with the BNP.
Their reasoning is that white extremists should be debated rather than shunned, otherwise the problem gets worse. And debating solves everything, right?
But you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s one rule for white extremists and another rule for Muslims. The Observer reported yesterday that David Cameron has banned Baroness Warsi from attending the Global Peace and Unity event organised by the Islam Channel. Since it’s the IC, you can expect some Muslim extremists to also be part of the proceedings. But the Tories don’t want them to be debated. Neither does Paul Goodman of ConservativeHome – who previously argued that we should debate the BNP.
Oh, bloggers at Harry’s Place are also applauding this decision, but they gave up any pretence on having equal standards on free speech ages ago.
As I’ve documented before – this hypocrisy of neo-conservatives, on the left and right, crops up regularly. Tories are against racial profiling when it’s to encourage equality in representation, but for it when arguing for black and Asian men to be stopped and searched. They want to allow white extremists like Geert Wilders coming into this country, but not Muslim ones like al-Qaradawi. They wouldn’t like white extremist groups like the BNP to be banned, but happy to advocate for groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir to be banned.
I don’t suppose it makes the heads of these ideologues explode with irony and hypocrisy, but you’d think at least government ministers who claim to care for free speech and civil liberties engage their brains a bit more. For the record: I’m not fussed either way – what pisses me off is the double-standards. Either say you’re going to debate all extremists, or don’t share a platform with any.
by Tehmina Kazi from British Muslims for Secular Democracy
The website of the Madani Girls School in Tower Hamlets is replete with slogans about “educating for an Islamic life.” Amidst all the glittering reports of a 100% pass rate at GCSE, and a recent OFSTED inspection where inspectors praised the school for the “motivated staff and the enthusiastic and polite nature of the pupils,” one section lies conspicuously blank: school uniform policy.
This school – as well as the Jameah Al Kauthar in Lancaster and Jameah Girls’ Academy in Leicester – came under fire this weekend for insisting that all girls must wear a niqab (face-veil) when travelling to and from school.
The Sunday Telegraph, having captured the Madani Girls School uniform policy before it was removed from their website, confirmed: “The present uniform conforms to the Islamic Code of dressing. Outside the school, this comprises of the black Burka and Niqab.”
Nobody is calling the school’s outstanding results into question; they go some way towards justifying the £1,900-a-year fees that parents have to pay (in cold, hard cash as opposed to cheques, which the school refuses to accept).
It goes without saying that tolerance is a two-way street, which is why an absolute ban on niqab in public spaces was always going to be a bad idea.
However, it is disingenuous for niqab advocates to use the language of choice and empowerment when advocating their religious freedoms, then to deny these same concepts to young girls in the same breath. It is one thing for a mature adult to make a decision about covering her face in public, but quite another to impose a face-covering onto girls as young as eleven.
This from a press release
At the High Court in London this week, Lady Justice Smith granted Indian national ‘His Holiness Sant Baba Jeet Singh ji Maharaj’ the right to appeal in his libel case against British journalist Hardeep Singh. The case will now go before three judges at the Court of Appeal to decide whether it should proceed to a full trial.
Hardeep Singh said: “I’ve been fighting this case for three years already; this adds a minimum of another six months of torment. If I lose, it will cost me over £1 million, let alone my costs so far and a tenth of my life. This feels like the biggest game of poker you can possibly play: all for exercising my right to free expression.”
He added: “I’m hoping the government take reform of our libel laws seriously and we get a robust bill in the New Year.”
Mike Harris from Index on Censorship said: “When individuals like Hardeep Singh risk £1million and bankruptcy all for a single newspaper article, it really hits home how important libel reform is. I hope the government backs the Libel Reform Campaign’s call for wholesale reform of our libel laws so free speech is protected.”
Síle Lane from Sense About Science said: ‘Change in the libel laws cannot come soon enough. Singh’s case highlights that the laws as they stand are unfair, unduly costly, out of date and against the public interest. Until we have a clear, strong public interest defence against libel actions writers, bloggers, NGOs and journalists will be forced to back down in the face of threats.’
The case centres on an article that Hardeep Singh wrote in August 2007 for the Sikh Times, a British newspaper, in which he claimed that Jeet Singh was an “accused Cult leader” whose teachings were not in line with mainstream Sikh doctrine. In May 2010 Mr Justice Eady threw the case out with no right to appeal.
Eady’s judgment held that secular courts should not make a judgment on a religious dispute. This week’s application for appeal was granted on the limited basis that there are arguable issues in Singh’s article that do not tread on the forbidden area of doctrinal dispute.
Luftur Rahman, the former Labour council leader, has been elected as the mayor of Tower Hamlets. Mr Rahman was exposed earlier this year as working with a group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, which pushed an Islamist agenda at the council:
The council chamber has hosted at least one debate with an anti-homosexual Islamic preacher. Until last month, Tower Hamlets public libraries stocked hundreds of items of extremist Islamic literature, bought at taxpayers’ expense and available to borrow. These included hundreds of audio tapes of sermons by the extremist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, blamed for inspiring September 11, the Fort Hood terrorist massacre and the underwear bomb plot.
After Dispatches exposed this entryism, Mr Rahman’s position became increasingly precarious, and led to his removal as leader of the council and Labour’s candidate for mayor of Tower Hamlets, leading Mr. Rahman to stand as an independent. Thanks to the support of people like Ken Livingstone, Mr. Rahman was elected, winning just over half the vote. No doubt part of this vote was due to the support of the IFE, but it also reflects a communalist, block voting tendency (which major parties are happy to exploit when it suits them).
The prize-winning author Rohinton Mistry was today at the centre of a row in India after his novel Such a Long Journey was cut from a university reading list after complaints from an extremist group.
The decision to withdraw the book by the vice chancellor of Mumbai University, Dr Rajan M Welukar, shocked many in India’s cosmopolitan commercial centre. Supporters of Mistry and free speech campaigners criticised the university for agreeing to the demands of the nationalist Shiv Sena, which has a reputation for using violence to intimidate opponents.
The bastards. I loved that book as well. It’s an outrage that academics in India are so spineless and the government does nothing about it (as was the case during Satanic Verses).
This is just for amusement purposes. The odious Rod Liddle yesterday wrote a blog post dissing the even more odious James Delingpole (climate change denier-in-chief on the right), calling him ‘politically correct’ for getting outraged over the 10:10 video.
The film begins with a teacher explaining the 10:10 thing to her class of kids and asking them if they fancy doing anything to help cut carbon emissions. Most eagerly sign up, but two kids do not. The teacher says ok, fair enough, never mind – and then presses a red button and the recidivist kids explode, showering their class mates with gore. I saw the film and thought it quite funny, and nicely done and even self-deprecatingly ironic. And – here’s the point – if it had been George Monbiot and Lord Stern exploding I suspect James would have been howling with laughter, instead of foaming with indignation.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with Rod Liddle over this. But even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day.
Rod Liddle knows even less about Climate Change than I do about Millwall FC
In a shameless attempt to win some readers for his little known Spectator blog, Rod Liddle has thrown together a desperate post with the highly offensive and almost certainly libellous headline The Politically Correct James Delingpole. It’s about my reaction to Richard Curtis’s ecofascist snuff movie No Pressure, which Rod reckons was overdone.
See? It is sometimes amusing to read these head-bangers.
Edit: This is a post about an imperfect organisation that exists in an imperfect world. It is not an endorsement of Project Prevention by Pickled Politics or by any of its bloggers.
Project Prevention aims to stop men and women who are addicted to drink or drugs creating children. That’s it. So why is the scheme so reviled? Women are paid £200 to undertake either temporary or permanent sterilisation. Men only have the permanent option (obviously).
The reality is that around 100 addicted babies a month are born in the UK. Even if they are born healthy they face a period of detoxification and are usually risk being removed from their parent(s). This process is horrific – I witnessed a drug addicted baby for the month I spent in SCUBU with my premature children – and no baby should have to endure it. There can also be long-term medical effects but I know of no readily available study which factors out things like the effects of prematurity so this point is uncertain and I think unproven.
The main criticism is that sterilising addicts is eugenics. There is certainly a strong argument behind this. But this isn’t a state mandated programme – it is voluntary. It is suggested that addicts cannot make an informed decision and this is probably true for the most part. But pregnancy isn’t a risk-free state and the risks of complications are also higher for the woman taking drugs during pregnancy.
Obviously in an ideal world nobody would consume drugs to make up for horrible life circumstances. In an ideal world there would be adequate drug rehabilitation facilities available. But this isn’t the case. I’m glad Project Prevention has come to the UK.
George Osborne has compared benefit fraudsters to muggers in a recent speech:
“Frankly, a welfare cheat is no different from someone who comes up and robs you in the street. It’s your money. “You’re leaving the house at seven in the morning or whatever to go to work and paying your taxes – and then the person down the street is defrauding the welfare system.
The comparison seems somewhat tenuous, as often muggings are violent and can leave the victim traumatised (presumably the comparison holds for everyone who has defrauded the taxpayer).
That aside, there are some problems cracking down on benefit fraud. Some fraud is unintentional; the system can be monstrously complex and people often find themselves receiving benefits without realising the precise rules. Take somebody who is receiving Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for a damaged spleen, as well as Council Tax Benefit and Housing Benefit, who then goes back to work. If she works under sixteen hours a week, and earns under £94 a week, all her benefits will continue for a year, then will be reviewed. If she earns over £94 a week or work over sixteen hours, she will lose her ESA and have her Housing Benefit and Council Tax pro-rated depending on income. She may be entitled to Working Tax Credit (a varied sum) depending on her previous year’s income and expected income for the next year. She could also get Return to Work Credit of £40 a week for a year if she earns under £15,000 a year, unless she is a lone parent, which will see her net £60 a week in the form of an in-work credit instead (in that case her Child Tax Credit will also be affected too).
That’s the straightforward bit. The real difficulty is letting everyone know. Once a person goes back to work, all the relevant divisions have to be contacted. The benefits delivery centre needs to be contacted (and they can only be accessed by telephone, not face to face) to inform them about going back to work. The Return to Work/In Work Credit form should be completed via the job centre; the Working Tax Credit office needs to be phoned, and it is very difficult to get through to them. the local council’s housing department needs to be told too. All this should be done in the first couple of weeks of returning to work, during office hours, which can be rather difficult if a person is working full time. Any of the divisions may be tardy in getting back to her, leaving her without an income from that particular source (even if it is backdated later). And woe betide if her circumstances change (such as her earnings rising to £15,000+) and she doesn’t inform everyone quickly enough. She may have her future benefits/tax credits docked to repay any overpayment (even if it was not her fault); she may even be prosecuted for benefit fraud.
The inaugural South Asian Literature Festival takes place in London from 15th – 25th October, followed by outreach events in Brighton, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester at the end of October.
Some events have already taken place, but here are upcoming ones: Words Without Borders: Literature in a Time of War
19 October, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA, 4pm
Acclaimed Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif along with special guests from the region will offer their perspectives on the effects of war on South Asian writers. Can great literature thrive and new voices be found in this environment? What impact do conflicts have on freedom of expression?
From Fatwa to Jihad
19 October, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA, 6pm
An examination of how the rise of terrorism in the last 20 years has led to a curtailing of freedom of expression and civil liberties in the UK. Writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik and journalist Shiv Malik explore multiculturalism, terror, free speech and the “culture of offence” in modern Britain.
Twin Dynasties
21 October, Kings Place Hall 2, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG, 7pm
Two dynasties come together with Nayantara Sahgal and Fatima Bhutto. Nayantara descends from the Nehru family while Fatima is the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the niece of Benazir, both former Pakistani prime ministers. Both will meet for the first time and discuss their experiences of growing up in such powerful families.
I remember a few years ago I was asked to contribute to a paper about about citizenship and identity (can’t remember who for, now), and I looked at how other western democracies dealt with multiculturalism.
One of my main points was that whatever a country does, it should avoid being like Germany – where immigrants were deliberately excluded from being Germans for decades.
Under previous German law, children born to foreigners in Germany were not entitled to German citizenship[citation needed] because the law was based on jus sanguinis, in other words on a blood connection. This was modified in 1991 and in 1999 German citizenship law recognised jus soli whereby people born in Germany could now claim citizenship.[86] In 2000, legislation was passed which conferred German citizenship on the German-born children of foreigners (born after 1990), and the naturalisation process was made easier, though dual citizenship is still not tolerated and any person possessing it by virtue of birth to foreign parents must choose between the ages of 18 and 23 which citizenship she or he wishes to retain, and forfeit the other
News agencies are reporting that Angelina Jolie has been been banned from filming in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Rumours about Jolie’s latest film project, first printed in Variety, have been reported in Bosnia-Hercegovina and have inflamed women’s groups. The government has quickly taken the opportunity to use rape victims to express their outrage.
Now, I haven’t read the script of Jolie’s film, and neither has anybody else outside the project so all I can do when looking at this story is consider the backgrounds of both parties.
Jolie has supported human rights all around the world. She is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR and has visited refugee camps in many countries, including Bosnia-Hercegovina and talked to thousands of victims. Jolie has used her position to highlight injustice, and her money to help. Obviously she could have now decided to make an incredibly insensitive film about victims of rape. The producers say not – “The stories about the film which have recently been circulated are incorrect.”
The government of Bosnia Hercegovina don’t even know how many victims of rape are in their country. The victims of rape or the children who were conceived from rape have never been supported in any meaningful way. In 2002 rape victims were offered monentary compensation. The victims of rape camps were offered half the amount of the victims of war camps. Because they had been ignored for so many years there were ‘problems’:
“In a traditional society with a huge stigma attached to rape it is unusual for women to report it, and at a later stage it is difficult to establish it medically,” says Slobodan Nagradic, Deputy Minister for Human Rights and Refugees. “So now women are coming forward and we have no way of knowing if they have really been raped or not. There are no living eyewitnesses and 10 to 12 years later it is difficult to establish the authenticity of these women’s claims. Many are very poor and may just be doing it for the money.”
There are ‘living eyewitnesses’ – the women and men themselves. The victims who live in poverty as a result of being cast out or as a result of their injuries, both physical and psychological. A very tiny proportion of rape victims receive this compensation.
Marijana Senjak, a psychologist working for the NGO Medica in Zenica, which assists women who have been abused, says ‘ A lot of politicians have taken advantage of the women’s plight and used the issues of war rape for their own ends. The state has done nothing to organise a unified response to women’s needs.
“It has used war rape as a political tool and a means to get money, nothing else.’
The government of Bosnia-Hercegovina are grasping at straws trying to defend rape victims. If this film is insensitive to rape victims then Jolie will be judged on that – we have to wait and see. We already have the evidence of how Bosnian rape victims have been ‘living’ for the last 15 years.
Last night I noted that a BBC story on Migration Watch’s latest “report” on how foreign students were going to place considerable “strain” on our education system didn’t bother with any balance at all. It just regurgitated the MW press release and contained only their comment.
By this morning, the report had been updated to include a comment by Tim Finch of ippr. There’s a rebuttal here by Phillipe Legrain:
1) By using cumulative figures. If you add up spending on anything over a long period of time, it looks much bigger than it really is. Using a single year’s statistics, 2009, and MW’s deeply flawed methodology, the cost of schooling the children of migrants who have arrived since 1998 is £4.6 billion, out of an education budget of £88 billion.
2) By counting children who have one parent who was born abroad as half due to migration. Since Nick Clegg has a Spanish wife, they include half the cost of educating their kids as being due to migration. Excluding that dodogy use of statistics, the cost in 2009 falls to £3.6bn.
3) By ignoring the taxes that migrants pay. Research by the Home Office, IPPR, Christian Dustmann at UCL and others show that migrants pay more in taxes than they take out in benefits and public services. Allowing for that, it is not UK-born taxpayers who are paying to educate migrants’ children, it is migrants who are subsidising the education of the children of people born in the UK.
Will you see any of this basic analysis in the BBC report? Of course not. Their job is to just convert press releases into stories, and let others offer soundbites. The BBC’s reporting has become a joke.
Moreover, MigrationWatch say that their figures are based on “the ‘principal projection’ by ONS of UK population over the period 2008 – 2033, projects a total of births of 19.8 million, of which 2.3 million are projected to occur, directly or indirectly, because of net migration”.
But after much searching and head-scratching, Full Fact was unable to discover any ONS projections which broke down predicted birth rates by the parents’ place of birth.
A call to the ONS confirmed that no such statistics exist: “”We certainly don’t publish population projection data by country of migrant or any kind of ethnic background,” said a spokesperson, “the sums themselves won’t have been done by us.”
But you wouldn’t get the BBC report pointing that out either, because they can’t actually be bothered to ask some basic questions.
Most Tories say they’re against the ‘no-platform’ stance with extremists like the BNP. They put up Baroness Warsi against Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time even though Labour MPs like Peter Hain refused to share a platform with the BNP.
