The debate on immigration continues
It is rather amusing to watch right-wingers accuse Ed Balls of bigotry for talking about immigration, given they’ve said nothing about years of tabloid lies on immigration. Even P. Staines is outraged. Oh please.
I want to carry on from yesterday because I think some points need to be unpacked about this issue.
Here are some basic points to be made about immigration and the current Labour leadership election:
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Child asylum seekers deported to Afghanistan
The UK Border Agency is to set up a £4m “reintegration centre” in Afghanistan so that it can start deporting unaccompanied child asylum seekers to Kabul from Britain, the Guardian can disclose.
The terms of the official tender for the centre show that immigration officials initially hope to forcibly return 12 boys a month aged under 18 to Afghanistan and provide “reintegration assistance” for 120 adults a month.
Home Office figures show there are more than 4,200 unaccompanied child asylum seekers in Britain, with most being supported in local authority social services homes. Those from Afghanistan are the largest group. Of the 400 minors claiming asylum in the first three months of this year, almost half were Afghans.
A decision to start deporting Afghan child asylum seekers who arrive in Britain alone would amount to a major shift in policy. Up until now, child protection issues and an undertaking that failed child asylum seekers would be returned only if adequate reception and care arrangements were in place for them on arrival have blocked returns.
Defend the urban fox!
There’s a mini-tabloid storm brewing against urban foxes because, apparently, a fox wandered into someone’s home bit a couple of kids for kicks and then wandered off again.
The papers do not record whether the fox’s friends filmed the incident on their mobile phones, or whether the fox had arrived in London from Poland in a secret compartment in a lorry.
Whatever the ins and outs of the case, and let’s assume it’s all true, this would make it an extremely rare occurrence.
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McDonnell jokes about Thatcher; Tories angry!
John McDonnell, one of the Labour leadership contenders, joked today that he wished he could go back in time to the 1980s and “assassinate Thatcher”.
The MP for Hayes and Harlington, who was Ken Livingstone’s deputy at the Greater London council in the early 1980s, insisted later that his comment about Lady Thatcher, the former Conservative prime minister, was made as a “joke and it went down as a joke”.
…reports the Guardian.
Rather predictably, the Tories are already spinning their mock-outrage machines and calling for other Labourites to “condemn” him.
Jonathan Isaby at ConservativeHome:
McDonnell’s statement is utterly despicable and I hope that his rivals will condemn him for it.
Tory blogger Guido Fawkes in mock-outrage: ‘McDonnell’s Thatcher Killing Fantasy‘.
Oh dear.
Well, it was a better joke than Daniel Hannan, darling of the loony right, calling the NHS a 60 year mistake.
Oh wait…that wasn’t a joke?
Update: John has apologised to anyone who might find if offensive.
Why Cameron is wrong about the 8m “economically inactive”
Mr Cameron’s Milton Keynes speech about deficit reduction repeats a line that has become a common theme of speeches by Coalition politicians: one of the sins of the last government was “accepting as a fact of life the eight million people who are economically inactive.”
The implication is usually that this is a new low and always that it marks a tremendous failure of the last government. Where do we stand at the present?
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‘Blunkett’s sight is to blame for immigration’
Here is the columnist Melanie McDonagh in the Telegraph today:
Benedict Brogan’s admirable article in this paper last week describing mass immigration as Labour’s real legacy came to mind. He observed, correctly, that one reason Gordon Brown lost it on immigration was that, with his ethnically homogenous Scottish constituency and rarefied London social circles, he never really encountered its effects.
Mr Brogan was too kind to say, so let me do it, that one reason why much of the influx took place when David Blunkett was home secretary is that he was blind; he couldn’t actually see what was happening.
Erm….?
I suppose it had nothing to do with the enlargement of the EU in 2004 then.
Melanie McDonagh’s real beef is that there were these “bearded men in white robes” who were daring to demonstrate against Israel in London over the weekend. Why couldn’t Londonders be more like the “amiable women over 60 with printed skirts, white hair and sandals” that she saw earlier?
The problem is “mass immigration from the Muslim world” – except that most immigration during David Blunkett’s reign was from Eastern Europe.
There never has been “mass immigration from the Muslim world” in the UK.
Blogger Left Outside says:
Of course it doesn’t stop merely with wilful ignorance or accusation of bizarre theories that if Blunkett could see he would have been more racist. She also accuses immigrants of hurting the quality of Religious Education in the UK. The Ofted report she mentions doesn’t discuss migration, because it hasn’t had an effect on religious education, but she crowbars it in somehow.
When it comes to education policy she informs us she “met a really nice Pakistani Catholic last week.” She asks us to take a lesson on how to do education from Pakistan. This woman really doesn’t do subtlety (some of my best friends are brown, she informs us) or deep thinking (Pakistan has a religious atmosphere conducive to a free society!). Bilge.
Bilge indeed.
Pupils are getting thrown to the lions over Christian education
Only 50% of Britons describe themselves as Christian, while 43% say they have no religion. Some people wonder if there shouldn’t be a way of making this ostensibly Christian country a bit more, well, Christian.
And so, when Ofsted releases a report criticising the provision of religious education in UK schools, traditionalist voices like the Telegraph are ready to jump all over it and blame “misplaced enthusiasm for multiculturalism” and the “ignorance” of teachers for the limited treatment of Christianity.
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Israel sorry for video poking fun at Gaza dead
This is very shocking and callous:
The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.
The YouTube clip, set to the tune of the 1985 charity single We Are the World, features Israelis dressed as Arabs and activists, waving weapons while singing: “We con the world, we con the people. We’ll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is Jack the Ripper.”
Here’s the video
It features a group led by the Jerusalem Post’s deputy managing editor Caroline Glick (so much for journalistic balance) and includes the lyrics: “There’s no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all“.
There’s also: “We must go on, pretending day by day, that there is in Gaza, crisis hunger and plague“.
Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev tells the Guardian: “I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny.”
I’m sure those imaginary dead people from the Flotilla appreciate the humour.
Why I’m defending Ed Balls over immigration
In August 2005 several hundred Asian women in West London went on strike because their employer – BA caterer Gate Gourmet – decided to sack them enmasse and replace them with Eastern European labour. I was reminded of that incident when I read Ed Balls’ article for the Observer yesterday on immigration.
I won’t disagree with the view that the New Labour government had been utterly craven and scared about making a strong and positive case for immigration. Or even for the policies that they had in place. They completely lost the public debate and their disgusting stances (child detention, denying an Amnesty) drove me to vote Libdem. So I don’t come from a position of sympathy.
But I still think Ed Balls has to be defended over his stance.
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Our comments policy: updated
I’ve added a slight philosophical edge* to our comments policy. Broadly however, it remains the same.
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These points govern the Liberal Conspiracy comments policy.
1. The right to free speech and having the space to exercise that is a fundamentally important part of a free society and should be protected by law.
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The comments policy will eventually be part of a broader ‘code of conduct’ I’m writing up for LC.
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