Thursday 19 August 2010

Playing Fast And Loose With The Figures…

Ah, a morning isn’t complete without Gary Younge’s grinning mug at the top of yet another article pushing the Open Borders agenda, is it?
When it comes to media coverage of immigration the facts that are given the floor, the context in which they are interpreted and the conclusions that then emerge make rational debate, let alone effective policy making, nigh impossible.
And does that have anything to do with the progressives insistence that any such discussion is ‘racist’?

No, that would be crazy talk, eh Gary?
The problem is not that the facts are selective – all facts are selected somehow and for some purpose. But they are selected poorly and with the specific intent of creating panic, fostering resentment and stoking xenophobia.
Whew! All that?
And it works. A Mori poll in 2002 revealed that more than a third of the country believed there were too many immigrants. It's not difficult to see why.
Because there are too many immigrants? Particularly in their areas?

Well, no. It’s all an optical illusion, according to Gary:
The public's mean estimation of the proportion of immigrants in Britain is 23%; the actual figure was around 4%.
Ah, yes, Comparing numbers with area of the UK (including all the farmland plus uninhabitable rocky bits, naturally!) to come up with a harmless sounding figure to ‘prove’ that your opponents are all racist.

Completely overlooking the fact that that 4% is almost entirely in already overcrowded inner and outer cities

The rest of the article is basically a rant against the media for whipping up prejudice against migrants, and not worth the photons it took to publish on CiF.
Unemployment is important and people's anxieties about immigration should be addressed.
That, Gary, is the last thing you and your ilk will ever allow. You aren’t sure of the answers you’ll get…
But their prejudices needn't be pandered to and can't be confronted on the basis of wanton misinterpretations.
You mean, like the one you just tried?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

This guy is a known clown AP. Other figures show the UK will be the largest country in the EU by population in the not distant future. I've been coming across DNA stats of late that shake me to the bone. Claims in court that the chances of samples not coming from the 'assailant' are 97,000 to 1 - when the truth is nearer 2 to 1 and so on.
Our neighbours are Bulgarian and altogether more acceptable than the English scum they replaced. Yet I feel sad most of our cab drivers, I'd guess 80% are 'ethnic'. Whole schools, for many years in some parts are the same.
Racist and other PC clamour have prevented the problems being addressed. My own feeling is the real problem is madness and denial of what our eyes can see, as you suggest.

Anonymous said...

Why do the righteous always lie with statistics?

The 2001 census indicates c.8% of people foreign-born and the graph is rising rather sharply -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreignborn.jpg

No wonder we never believe a word they say.

Oldrightie said...

No sign either that this "new" Government will be any different than any other, since WW2.

Kevin said...

He doesn't even live in the UK does he? I thought he lives in New York.

Dave H. said...

“The public's mean estimation of the proportion of immigrants in Britain is 23%; the actual figure is was around 4%.

I wonder if his numbers are as muddled as his tenses.

"Comparing numbers with area of the UK (including all the farmland plus uninhabitable rocky bits, naturally"

A bit O/T: when they calculate population densities they usually do the same trick for the UK -quite correct technically, it just gives a wholly misleading picture.

(The average UK pop. density is about the same as Germany; when you do the same calculation for England, it's a lot higher than comparable developed countries and even higher than 'famously' crowded ones like Japan or India. It's a wonder they don't include the Falklands)

Dave H. said...

Or as muddled as my HTML tags, sod it...

Anonymous said...

Isn't the problem also with 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants who have not integrated, none of these will be in his figures either and could easily quadruple his figures

Anonymous said...

Figures in this area may not be very reliable. The percentage of non-whites was around 7.9% in the ONS of 2001.
There has clearly been a sharp rise. I wonder why they ain't making the numbers obvious and turkeys like the one AP exposes trot out very old news?
We also have very little information on who finds it unacceptable and why.
Migration Watch has some disturbing information.
I'd guess only 80% of our population is British and that includes people like me who'd rather be Scandinavian.

Jiks said...

I also very much doubt that 4% is right, I'm sure it's much higher than that even in rural areas like Worcestershire now.

Uncontrolled immigration is definately not in the interests of people at the lower end of the job market. However it is surely helping many companies. Comparing the quality of the average Pole/Lithuanian/Bangladeshi/Mongolian sent by the temp agencies to the average English types ... well I know who I'd prefer to employ.

Of course there are exceptions to that but too many of us have forgotten how to work it seems.

English Viking said...

If you are White and English and live in Birmingham, you are an ethnic minority.

His figures do not account for the fact that successive Governments have been handing out British passports like confetti for years, thus making hordes of foreigners 'British'. They also do not show the ridiculously high birth rates amongst certain immigrant groups. These births will produce literally millions of people who apparently do not give a fig for Britain or the British way of life, yet they are all classified as British.

This is not immigration, it is colonisation.

JuliaM said...

"This guy is a known clown AP."

Oh, indeed. He's featured in these pages a few times for irredeemable idiocy.

"No sign either that this "new" Government will be any different..."

It's already taking on a distinct 'more of the same' flavour, isn't it?

"He doesn't even live in the UK does he? I thought he lives in New York."

It looks like he spends a lot of time there, from his bio. Lucky Yanks, eh?

"It's a wonder they don't include the Falklands..."

Give it time. They will!

JuliaM said...

"Isn't the problem also with 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants who have not integrated..."

Yes, but that's a group-specific problem. A group that I doubt Gary want's to focus any attention on, right now.

"Figures in this area may not be very reliable."

Deliberately so, as I suspect. Migration Watch does indeed have some startling statistics.

"Uncontrolled immigration is definately not in the interests of people at the lower end of the job market. However it is surely helping many companies. Comparing the quality of the average Pole/Lithuanian/Bangladeshi/Mongolian sent by the temp agencies to the average English types ... well I know who I'd prefer to employ."

You can't blame them, can you? Not when you look at the quality of some of our Neets.

"His figures do not account for the fact that successive Governments have been handing out British passports like confetti for years, thus making hordes of foreigners 'British'."

Indeed.

Greencoat said...

Younge isn't merely a 'clown'. He hates white English people.