The Express, the EU and plastic bags - part 3

On 20 May 2011, the Express claimed:

The EU hadn't actually said 'ban shopping bags' or even 'ban' plastic bags.

In fact, the EU had simply launched a public consultation on what action, if any, should be taken on plastic bags.

Undeterred, the Express said this on 19 January 2012:

The EU hadn't actually said it wanted 'all plastic bags' to be made 'illegal'.

In fact, it had been reported that the results of the public consultation were that 70% of the 15,500 responses favoured a ban. But there was no evidence in the story that the EU was to adopt this stance.

Undeterred, today's Express said:

'Now EU bans plastic bags'. 'Now'! So 'now' it is actually happening?

Well, the subhead seems to contradict the main headline as it says: 'Shoppers will be forced to pay new Brussels tax'.

So there will be a 'new tax' for something that's going to be banned?

The actual article, by Martyn Brown, does not clear up this confusion:

Brussels commissars want to outlaw shops from stocking them or impose a wallet-busting tax on shoppers to dramatically reduce their use.

The use of 'commissars' is not, of course, accidental.

So there might be a 'ban' or shoppers may have to pay for them (something some shops do already). Either way, the Express knows the charge will be 'wallet-busting'. It just doesn't say what the charge will be.

The paper says:

One of the key proposals will be a recommendation for mandatory charging for plastic shopping bags.

'Mandatory charges'? Won't one of the 'key proposals' be a 'ban'?

The paper says that the Commission's report will be published next month. Two sentences later, it says:

The proposals were met with fury last night by retailers and politicians and added to the growing support for our crusade to get Britain out of the EU.

Fury always erupts 'last night' for the Express. But how can 'fury' erupt at a set of proposals that haven't been published when it's not clear - especially from the Express' article - what those the proposals are.

Indeed, a week before the Express' article, the BBC website published an article weighing up different options for plastic bags. It said:

The European Commission is to publish proposals in the spring designed to reduce the number of plastic bags used in Europe each year.

Moreover, Speigel reported on 21 March that an internal Commission report has ruled out a complete ban:

At least one of those options -- the complete ban -- has already been taken off the table. According to the Commission study, a ban would have positive environmental impacts, but it would also "raise difficult legal questions." The report calls a complete ban: "a blunt instrument that gives little flexibility to producers, retailers, or consumers." The report also says that a ban would conflict with international trade law and EU internal market rules.

So we wait to see what the Commission actually says when its report is published. Maybe it will propose banning plastic bags, although the Spiegal report suggests that is unlikely. But at this stage it simply isn't clear.

Importantly, nothing in the Express' article justifies the claim in that front page headline.

(Hat-tip to Tim Fenton, for noting the constant eruptions of fury at the Express)

Net migration, not immigration

The front page headline on today's Express claims 'Immigration soars 20% in a year':

The article that follows, by the paper's political correspondent Martyn Brown, continues with this line:

The number of foreigners coming into Britain surged by a massive 21 per cent last year, shattering the Government’s pledge to bring immigration down.

Official figures yesterday showed the number of immigrants soared to 239,000 – up from 198,000 in 2009.

But what Brown and the Express are calling 'immigration' is, in fact, net migration. It was net migration that rose 21% between 2009 and 2010.

As the Office for National Statistics report states:

The provisional estimate of net long-term migration to the UK in the year to December 2010 was 239,000, an increase of 21 per cent on the estimate of 198,000 in the year to December 2009...

The provisional estimate of total long-term international immigration to the UK in the year to December 2010 was 575,000. This level has been broadly maintained since 2004.

Indeed, far from increasing by 21%, the rise in the number of immigrants coming to the UK rose by 1.4% between 2009 and 2010.

The Express was not alone in getting this wrong. The Mail's website used almost the same headline ('Immigration soared by 20% last year') although the print version used a different, more accurate one. The Mirror and Independent used similarly misleading headlines although both used 'net migration' in the first sentence of their articles.

The Press Complaints Commission's guidance note on refugees and asylum seekers states:

The Commission is concerned that editors should ensure that their journalists covering these issues are mindful of the problems that can occur and take care to avoid misleading or distorted terminology.

(Hat-tips to Full Fact, Left Foot Forward and New Statesman)

Winterval (again)

Yesterday, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles issued a press release entitled 'Councils should take pride in Christmas celebrations.'

It came with all the usual nonsense about 'politically correct Grinches' and the 'War on Christmas':

"The War on Christmas is over, and likes of Winterval, Winter Lights and Luminous deserve to be in the dustbin of history."

Mr Pickles explained that the Christian festival has previously been ambushed by those intent on re-branding Christmas as a bland 'Winter festival', insisting that multi-cultural Britain can enjoy Christmas without abandoning its underlying Christian heritage in a misguided attempt to appease these politically correct 'Grinches'.

Ah, Winterval. Not even December and it's time for Winterval stories.

Although Paul Dacre has claimed that the Mail never does churnalism, 'Daily Mail Reporter' quickly bashed out a story, which involved copying-and-pasting all the quotes from Pickles.

And the Mail then stuck this headline on the story:


Winterval was, of course, 'ditched' in 1998-9 - which was the second and last time Birmingham council used it.

It did point out that:

the Winterval festival of the 1990s...combined secular and inter-faith religious elements

which is at least some progress from the usual 'Christmas renamed as Winterval' myth - the myth that appeared in Emma Wall's article in the Star:

A clutch of councils have cancelled Christmas and replaced it with multicultural holidays in a bid to be right-on.

Changes have included banning carols and even rebranding the celebrations “Winterval”.

Wall doesn't provide the name of one council that has actually 'cancelled Christmas'. And she has form on this - when the tabloids leapt on remarks made by the Pope during his visit to the UK in September, Wall wrote:

Speaking to a packed Westminster Hall in London, he urged people to turn their backs on the use of words like “Winterval” to describe the festival of Jesus’s birth.

Once again, she didn't name any person who had done this.

Over in the Express, there was lots of hyperbole about Christmas being 'saved' from the 'PC Brigade' and a 'major victory for common sense'. But hack Martyn Brown was also being less than truthful when he referred to:

Birmingham’s annual Winterval festival

That's 'annual' in the sense that it happened in 1997-8 and 1998-9 but not before or since.

Brown also said:

Town halls were last night ordered to celebrate Christmas in the traditional way

But Pickles' statement was 'urging', not 'ordering' (albeit 'urging' councils to stop using some terms that haven't been used for over a decade anyway).

In the Sun, Clodagh Hartley claimed Pickles had:

said the politically correct days of calling December 25 a "Winter Festival" must end.

That's not quite what he had said (he made no reference to Christmas Day) - and Hartley doesn't mention which council has renamed Christmas Day 'Winter Festival'.

The tone of the coverage, and the majority of the comments that have followed each article, are in praise of Pickles. The 'War on Christmas' myth lives on.

As Anton Vowl says:

...you can't put things in the dustbin of history if they didn't really exist. Say it once, say it a million times, but Winterval wasn't a way of taking Christianity out of Christmas. Say it loud, say it long, say it dressed as a Christmas turkey with a giant Nativity scene stuffed up your jacksy; it doesn't matter...

It's depressing. No-one's trying to ban Christmas, for fear of offending minorities, or anything like that. Must we go through this every single year? Oh, we must. 'Christmas is banned' is as much of a Christmas tradition as granny falling asleep in front of Where Eagles Dare after scoffing the Milk Tray, it seems.

Immigration story slips into Express unchecked

On 4 August, the Express ran this box-ticking headline:


Immigration? Check. Illegal immigrants on the loose? Check. Open borders? Check. Police can't do their job because of political correctness? Check.

But that headline is misleading for two reasons.

Firstly, the report in question was not about 'illegal immigrants' slipping in 'unchecked' but about what happens in custody suites when the police arrest foreign nationals.

Secondly, racism is only mentioned once in the whole 33 page report.

What is immediately notable about Martyn Brown's article is that it doesn't include a single direct quote from the Home Office's Determining Identity and Nationality in Local Policing report and so nothing that backs up his opening assertion that:

Thousands of illegal immigrants are routinely freed instead of deported because police fear they will be branded racist if they question a suspect’s nationality.

It's also important to note that the report was based on evidence collected from 14 custody suites in 2006-7 and makes clear:

since then the police and the UK Border Agency have implemented a range of actions designed to improve the practices involved in checking the nationality and migrant status of arrestees.

The Express includes a quote to that effect as the last line of their article - online, it is separated from the rest of the story by a conveniently placed search bar - but the headline and opening paragraphs strongly suggest that this is the situation now.

The report also adds:

The introduction of enhanced checking processes led to a marked increase in both the level of checks undertaken in each pilot site, and in the number of IMs or SIMs identified.

The number of individuals who had their details checked by the UK Border Agency across the four pilot sites increased by over 400 per cent, from 129 checks in the three months prior to the pilots to 650 checks in total across the four sites during the pilots.

So does the 'racism' claim stand up? Well, it certainly is mentioned in the report as one of:

a number of circumstances that could result in officers failing to check an individual’s status effectively, either before or after arrest.

But the Express doesn't point out it is only one of seven reasons, and doesn't mention the other six. Here they are:

• An arrestee being perceived as compliant or nonconfrontational.
• An arrestee who was familiar to officers through repeated encounters over a period of years was (at times wrongly) assumed to have a legitimate immigration status.
• An arrestee’s details had previously been taken and logged on the PNC. Generally, these details were accepted, unless there was substantive evidence to hand to cast doubt on the accuracy of the record.
• Arrestees who looked like they belonged to a well established local ethnic minority or FN population could escape scrutiny.
• In some sites there was a marked reluctance to challenge arrestees who claimed to be British, even though officers suspected that the claims might be false. This reluctance was commonly ascribed to the fear that any such challenge could result in an accusation of racism.
• There was some confusion over which nations currently constituted the EEA or the EU. In the majority of sites, claims to EEA citizenship were not challenged.
• Officers were often unable to form a sound judgement about the likely credibility of identity or travel documentation presented to them, and did not always initiate further checks when appropriate.

So there were many reasons why police checks on foreign nationals in custody were not always as comprehensive as they should have been.

But in some places, four years ago, some police were worried they might be accused of racism if they questioned an arrestee who claimed to be British.

Yet the Express turns that into 'Illegal immigrants slip in unchecked as police fear charges of racism' and 'politically correct regulations' (whatever they are) leading to 'thousands of illegal immigrants' strolling free.

Another Migrationwatch press release gets the churnalism treatment

The appearance of a new Migrationwatch press release is the cause of celebration at certain newspapers, because it means they can produce a story that bashes immigrants without doing any actual journalism.

None of the churnalists writing about Migrationwatch's new figures - about the numbers of visas-leading-to-settlement granted under the new 'points based system' (PBS) - seem to have bothered to make even a cursory check that they're reliable.

Migrationwatch claims Labour's 'Tough' Points Based System Actually Increased Immigration.

The first set of figures they compare shows that the number of 'entry clearances' for skilled and highly skilled workers actually fell by over 23,000 over the period:


The next set of figures is for visa extensions, and this is where it starts to look a little shaky:


Since the PBS was only introduced in June 2008, there's no way there could be any tier 1 or 2 'visa extensions' in 2007. Unlike with the previous set of numbers, Migrationwatch do not find the 2007 'equivalents'.

This leaves a rather large hole in both their figures and their subsequent claims.

How can they realistically, and honestly, suggest the 2009 figures say anything about immigration trends when they fail to provide comparable numbers from previous years?

After all, visa extensions did exist in 2007 and were, in total, higher overall then than in 2009. Going to back to the official figures which Migrationwatch used shows this very clear decline:

• 2007 - 274,020
• 2008 - 267,865
• 2009 - 251,245

Migrationwatch also provide numbers for work permits (which dropped - 44,685 in 2007; 7,290 in 2009) and for dependents (which increased by 5,565).

Overall, going by page 33 of the official stats, the very page Migrationwatch uses, the grand total of entry clearance visas including dependents is down (2,072,430 in 2007 and 1,995,840 in 2009).

Yet in the certain categories they have selected, Migrationwatch have claimed there's been an increase of 20%:


But strip out the 86,000 from the 'visa extensions' - or find and add in the equivalent figures for work-permit holders who gained extensions in 2007 - and that increase looks rather less certain.

In any case, immigration suggests people coming in - certainly in the minds of the hacks who then wrote about these figures. Yet 'visa extensions' clearly suggests that these are people already here.

But that didn't stop the Mail saying:


If that sounds like Migrationwatch's headline, that's not a surprise - Slack's article contains all their press release quotes.

Slack says:

Labour's supposedly tough points-based immigration system actually led to huge increases in foreign workers...cleared to live in Britain.

Except the number of new workers 'cleared to live in Britain' was down.

The Telegraph mindlessly followed too:


But the increase in Migrationwatch's figures includes visa extensions. These are not 'extra migrants...allowed into Britain' and the first figures show the number of foreign workers let in is down.

The Express went with:


As you can see from the opening paragraph, Martyn Brown makes a similar mistake, and goes further in claiming Migrationwatch's figures are about all non-EU migrants.

The BNP, as usual, picked up on Migrationwatch's figures and, having got out a calculator and added up all the big numbers, declared 1.2million immigrants had come in under the PBS in the last three years, despite it being in force for only 18 months.

The problem is the tabloids are obsessed with trying to prove there are too many immigrants coming to the UK. Migrationwatch are too, and so any press release sent to the tabloid churnalists which has an eye-catching headline, a few respectable-looking figures and an anti-immigrant message is grist to the mill.

There's no thought given to questioning the stats, no double checking, no quotes from anyone who may challenge Migrationwatch - because they have no interest in proving them wrong.

(More analysis of Migrationwatch's figures available at Left Foot Forward)

More front page lies from the Express

On Thursday 11 February, the Express ran the headline: 'Now we have to bail out the euro'.

It could hardly be more unequivocal, or more appealing to an anti-European paper such as the Express.

And here's how the article, by Macer Hall, begins:

British taxpayers could be forced to pay up to £3.5billion a year towards bailing out the crisis-hit Greek economy, it emerged last night.

'Could be' bailing out Greece? But that makes it sound as if the headline - 'Now we have to bail out the euro' - is misleading. On two counts.

Surely not? Hall goes on:

And it is understood that German President Angela Merkel is to press for all EU states, including Britain, to be ready to provide billions of pounds in emergency debt aid.

Which is strange given that Merkel:

mounted stiff resistance tonight to any swift bailout of Greece.

Moreover, the Guardian reported:

Greece tonight vehemently denied that it had gone to Brussels with begging bowl in hand to resolve its debt crisis, insisting there was no question of a 'bail-out'.

In other words 'we' are not bailing out the 'euro'.

Two days after that, the Express served up Zero bin waste or get fine, with free chocolate and fish and chips.

This one was written by Martyn Brown, who suggested that as Britain has had some snow, there can't possibly be global warming, so you know it's going to have some intellectual rigour behind it.

He writes:

An army of snooping bin police will inspect the rubbish of millions of families under a sinister Government plan to create 'zero waste' in Britain.

Squads of spies will carry out dawn raids to check that householders are not throwing out any rubbish and recycling it all instead...

The cloak-and-dagger crackdown from the so-called 'Talibin' has been launched in six pilot areas, the Daily Express can reveal, and could eventually apply to virtually all UK households.

When Brown says the 'Daily Express can reveal' what he actually means is that this was announced in a Defra press release in October 2009 (although the scheme began back in 2008) Hardly 'cloak-and-dagger'.

You would think he'd be able to get it right after four months. After all, if the Express is going to put a story that old on the front page, you'd think they'd get the facts straight.

They haven't. At all.

The impression Brown gives is that your wheelie bins are going to be inspected in dawn raids by people just like the Taliban. And:

People failing to comply with the strict rules face hefty fines.

Unfortunately for the Express, it falls apart at the end of the article. A Defra spokesman is quoted explaining what's really happening:

'This project does not involve fines for householders who fail to recycle and it does not involve going through individual bins.'

So how did Brown, who is meant to be a journalist, get that quote and think that meant there were going to be people issuing fines after rummaging through your bins?

And how did the Express dream up the front page headline 'Zero bin waste or get fine'?

And why does the PCC let the Express get away with such a blatant lie splashed across its front page?

Global warming chaos at the Express

With tiresome predictability, the weather was back on the front page of the Express today. And it's not just any old weather story - that would never do. It's got to be weather 'chaos':


But let's ignore yet another airing of the word 'chaos' (and two days ago, there was more 'taxpayers' fury' - which actually meant TaxPayers' Alliance fury) as it's worth looking at the actual story.

Although it is being quite generous to call it that.

As the sub-head makes abundantly clear, the Express is actually suggesting that because it is snowing in Britain in winter, global warming can't possibly exist.

The article, written by Martyn Brown, begins:

As one of the worst winters in 100 years grips the country, climate experts are still trying to claim the world is growing warmer.

It appears the Express does not know the difference between weather and climate. That's possibly wilful, but probably just ignorance.

Furthermoe, as George Monbiot and Leo Hickman point out in their fisking of Brown's piece:

There's a clue as to where he might have gone wrong in that sentence: 'country' has a slightly different meaning to 'world'.

Quite. Mid-way through the article, Brown is generous enough to quote someone who thinks the Express is talking rubbish:

The Met Office’s Barry Gromett said December and January’s cold weather was 'within the bounds of variability' in a global trend of rising temperatures in which 2009 is set to be the fifth warmest year on record.

Ah. So last year was the fifth warmest year on record and that's still not enough for the Express. The Met Office backed this up with a press release highlighting that in the last week or so:

North-east America, Canada, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and south-west Asia have all seen temperatures above normal – in many places by more than 5°C, and in parts of northern Canada, by more than 10°C.

But look at that sniffy sub-head again: 'And they still claim it's global warming'. The Express clearly doesn't believe a word of it.

But who are 'they'? Who are the mysterious, not-to-be-trusted clique who claim that global warming exists?

Oh:


So three weeks ago, an article by Martyn Brown, on the front page of the Express, claimed that although global warming wasn't caused by human activity, it was definitely happening. Brown wrote:

climate change is natural

and mentioned

the warming we are now experiencing...

And today?

climate experts are still trying to claim the world is growing warmer.

Who needs 'experts' when you have Martyn Brown and the Express?