Bad media reporting

Earlier this month I picked up Helen Szamuely's excellent post about misreporting in the media and cross-posted to the former UKIPforum. Well that attracted precisely no interest at all from UKIP members. But there are issues to be thought about and they won't go away.

Shortly afterwards the EU published some thought provoking if very dated numbers about media coverage of the EU in various countries - which again didn't interest UKIP members.

Today Richard North points out shortcomings in the BBC's latest coverage of the Galileo satellite navigation system. The BBC has wholly ignored the context in which the government is throwing more taxpayers' money at this unnecessary project, while reproducing the government spin.

Some will have it that reporting like this reflects bug-eyed Eurofanaticism at the BBC. I doubt it, though I wouldn't be surprised if acceptance of the EU is seen there as mainstream (which it is) and opposition to it therefore as "extreme" - which it isn't in essence, though UKIP can sometimes make it seem lurid.

The conspiracy theorists claim this is all a pro-EU plot. It's more likely that the media can't find a reliable source of comment on broad EU issues, and in their haste (they are given less and less time to produce their material) they use what they have.

This requires patient work by those who oppose the EU. It doesn't necessarily mean confrontational soundbites - though of course they have their place. What it does mean is patient work behind the scenes, feeding journalists context and facts, in the hope that in time they may start to ask questions before publishing.

This bias is more insidious than crooked photo-journalism. Since the chances of any photo-journalist genuinely stumbling on a dramatic image by accident are minimal, we should assume that most photos are posed or set up by some prior arrangement. This is a relatively straightforward assumption to make.

Words are far more slippery. And - as Richard North points out in his piece - the tilt of a piece sometimes lies in what is not there. Which of course is much harder to spot.

Is there a labour shortage?

In several posts I have noted advocates of continued high immigration claiming that it is needed in order to counteract a labour shortage.

Remember that The Business newspaper calculated that true UK unemployment levels are close to 5m.

Today The Telegraph tells us that "The Government is re-examining the economic assumptions supporting its current open-market trade policy amid concerns [incidentally, whoever uses the expression "amid concerns"?] the economy is too exposed to globalisation".

Since the government decided in 2004 that it was relaxed about globalisation, unemployment has started to rise again and pace of jobs moving offshore in certain industries has also accelerated.

A DTI study of the IT and software industry by consultants Ovum, published in June, stated that it was now technically feasible that "at least 70pc" of the industry's 249,000 jobs could go.

DTI officials are particularly concerned by the exposure of high-value services, like the legal profession, to offshoring.

One source familiar with the review said: "If you have got thousands of Indian graduates in UK law and they are offering their services via high-speed links it may have implications for Britain's economy."

So is there truly a labour shortage?

And what would a policy less friendly to globalisation actually mean in terms of law firms and IT workers?

This is a less urgent problem than immigration, but may become serious. And fragility of UK employment undermines the case for continuing large scale immigration.

Lower taxes will look more attractive

One of my complaints about the EU, and indeed the UK government, is that they impose higher costs on their people with insouciance.

Only today we have learned that the cost of the MoT will be going up because the slow computers mean the tests take longer.

No serious party is proposing smaller, cheaper government. UKIP voices this view from time to time, but does not campaign on the theme.

But spenders beware. "Experts" are predicting that the cost of food and drink is going to rise. If they are right, expect more protests as taxpayers' pips squeak.

New Labour wasn't just optimistic

John Lloyd argues in the Financial Times that John Reid and Tony Blair have recently voiced a theme.

It is the belief that an era is over: an era that New Labour heralded. It is the end of a certain kind of optimism about human nature.

Well. John Lloyd - sympathetic to Labour - seems to suggest that this was genuine naiveté on the part of New Labour. Bliss was it in their dawn to be alive. Lloyd seems to suggest that this shiny eyed optimism about human nature has been undermined by the IRA and then by Muslim extremism.

What has undermined this government is its incompetence at governing, coupled with a facility for repeatedly bending the truth almost to breaking point.

It is not that New Labour were starry-eyed idealists about human nature - just look at the men who headed that uniquely cynical operation, and ask why they would have believed in human idealism.

One can understand that its former disciples may want to cling that its idealism was genuine. After all, they need an excuse. But the fact is, they were prepared to bend the truth as far as they could, they were control freaks, and they thought governing would be far, far easier than it is - something they, and it seems their disciples, have yet to come to terms with.

The shape of the migration debate

Richard North has joined the immigration debate, relating Polish emigration to strains in the Polish economy brought about by accession to the EU. He argues that the terms made rationalisation in Polish agriculture inevitable, driving many off the land. But the industrial base was also contracting, under the weight of EU regulation, clamps on state aid, and global competition. So is the dispersal likely to be over? It seems unlikely.

Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch argues in The Telegraph that the real problem is "a growing number of immigrants from the rest of the world". Net immigration from outside the EU has reached more than 250,000 a year, he says, and

Not only are immigrants from outside Europe more likely to stay on here, but also some are from distant cultures that find integration more difficult.

Furthermore,

in 2003, only just over one in five immigrants were workers, while just over a quarter were students. The rest were mainly dependants, likely to add to the pressure on public services.

He points out that

Among the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, some 30 to 50 per cent of the second and third generations marry partners from their countries of origin. In Bradford, this figure reaches 60 per cent. The effect is to increase the number of households greatly, adding to the pressure on housing, and setting back integration by a generation - assuming, of course, that people now living in those rather closed communities wish to integrate.

These are sound points as far as they go, and do need addressing. But they don't go far enough. As David Rennie reminds us in The Telegraph,

Under a raft of EU laws, including a new Freedom of Movement Directive that came into force earlier this year, any EU citizen with a valid passport can travel to any other EU nation for a stay of three months.

So the debate about Bulgaria and Rumania is bogus - as well as distracting attention from the central issues of migration policy. Any migration policy has to address all the entrants.

UKIP's manifesto policy was to balance emigration and immigration, based on a points system like Australia's.

This is starting to look more and more like the right answer - to part of the question. Questions are also being asked about multiculturalism - which is long overdue.

Immigration and welfare dependency

People argue for more immigration on the grounds that the economy needs these workers. On the other hand we have The Business at the weekend suggesting that UK unemployed total some 5m (probably a bit on the high side but the point is made).

Until today most participants in the immigration debate were focusing on the issue of Bulgaria & Romania. But immigration from other EU countries is likely to continue. Frank Field called this morning on the Today programme for quotas on the number of people coming to work not just from Romania and Bulgaria, but from the states that joined in 2004. Of course, this is against EU rules.

As Migrationwatch has shown, most immigrants come to the south east, which is where the labour shortages are - a UKIP press release recently drew attention to the situation in Reading but drew the wrong conclusion.

But, as The Business pointed out, welfare dependency is worst in other parts of the country.

The regional disparities are scandalous: in the Merthyr Tydfil area of Wales over 30% of the working-age population are on benefits; in Liverpool and Glasgow, 27% are now welfare-­dependent, despite the supposed renaissance of both cities; it is 22% in allegedly booming Birmingham. Thus have vast tracts of Britain become condemned to the misery of a life on welfare.

So the jobs are in the wrong places. Philip Hammond for the Tories oddly said

Rather than find jobs for people on welfare, the government has taken the easier option of relaxing rules on immigration and this has taken up the slack.... Let’s be honest: an employer will prefer an able-bodied, English-speaking Pole to someone who has just come off incapacity benefit. Only if labour supply is short will employers go the extra mile.

Is it the duty of the government to find jobs for people on welfare? And is it the jobs that are in the wrong places?

We don't want to go back to harsh Victorian times, but we recall that people trekked to where the work was in the north of England, from Norfolk and even from Germany.

Nowadays we have a paradox. Advocates of high immigration say it is required to meet labour shortages (such as they were experiencing in Reading). Yet the UK continues to support nearly 5 million unemployed.

At some point someone will have to abandon the politically correct dogma that if there no jobs in an area people can continue to live there indefinitely on benefits.

It is not the jobs that are in the wrong place, it is the people.

But they are paid to stay where they are, while the South East is built on - not to accommodate UK nationals, but to house immigrants who have come here to work when we have so many unemployed.

Sir Digby Jones comments that

During a recent television series I made on the effects of migration from Poland, I spoke to an employment agency in Petershead, the heart of Scotland's fishing industry. I asked what it was that persuaded them to recruit from Poland rather than Scotland.

They explained that while advertisements for fish packers did elicit a response from local people, they would not stick at the job. By the end of the first week they would have drifted away. It is a problem for the industry and this in a country with the highest rate of young people not in employment, education or training in Europe.

The employers told me that when they recruit from Poland, they get as many people as they need and they always work hard.

It is too easy for people in the UK to live without working. Benefits should be cut, encouraging people to move to where the jobs are. If people from Poland will trek to Reading to work, is it too much to ask of someone from Birmingham?

Lower benefits will allow tax cuts. Tax cuts are good for the economy, and for taxpayers, especially at a time when household fuel costs are rising.

The true unemployment numbers

The Business reveals that

In February of this year, on top of the 970,000 people on jobseekers’ allowance, 2.7m people are on incapacity benefit, 314,000 people claim the separate disability living allowance and 777,000 are in receipt of lone-parent benefit (they are overwhelmingly not in paid employment, though a small number do work a few hours a week). There are also 368,000 people classified as carers, who receive out-of-work benefits and are supposed to be looking after relatives full-time; another 153,000 people are on other income-related out-of-work benefit. This gives a grand total of 5.3m people, more than three times the official 1.62m jobless figure and roughly 16% of the workforce, a stunningly large figure which has been kept secret from the British people.

The paper accepts that several hundred thousand people in Britain are truly incapable of working for physical or mental reasons and should not be included in the 5.3m figure; "but even the government agrees that most of those currently on incapacity benefit are capable of working.... Even when those truly incapacitated are taken into account, it is clear that the number who should be properly regarded as unemployed in Britain approaches 5m – and rising."

The paper discusses the social effects and points out that

in the Merthyr Tydfil area of Wales over 30% of the working-age population are on benefits; in Liverpool and Glasgow, 27% are now welfare-­dependent, despite the supposed renaissance of both cities; it is 22% in allegedly booming Birmingham. Thus have vast tracts of Britain become condemned to the misery of a life on welfare.

The paper concludes that it would require radical welfare reform and a drastic combination of carrot and stick to get those on welfare back into work; "it would also need tax cuts and deregulation to encourage companies to start hiring again".

Such policies, it says, are on nobody’s agenda. "Thus is Britain condemned to yet another lost generation of welfare dependents."

This article sits on the same page as their piece on UKIP, discussed below. Anyone care to make a connection? Could a policy of cutting welfare dependency appeal to the group who are cautious about immigration? Or would UKIP have to choose one or the other?

And this will make GCSE's harder?

The government has announced a shake-up of GCSE's, reports Sky News.

"A good pass", said the minister, "will mean that young people are equipped with the basics.

"That means being able to write and speak fluently, carry out mental arithmetic, give presentations and tally up a till at the end of the day."

That seems astonishingly meagre.

As well as exams, we are told, coursework will be overhauled to ensure that pupils cannot cheat or rely on help from third-parties or the internet. It will be interesting to see how they achieve that.

Puzzlingly, a spokesperson for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said, "We believe the GCSEs in English and maths are a rigorous qualification, but they necessarily cover a broad range of skills."

What does this mean (if anything)?

Now Byers says he wants inheritance tax ended

The ineffable Stephen Byers has called for an end to inheritance tax, reports the BBC. Removing the tax would allow Tony Blair's successor to show New Labour's middle class electors had not been forgotten, he said. He also described the tax as "a penalty on hard work, thrift and enterprise".

The Treasury rebutted him.

"Inheritance tax is a fair and necessary means of raising revenue for public services, and only affects the top 6% of all estates.

"Anyone who wants to abolish it needs to explain exactly how they plan to fund the £3.6bn cost - the equivalent to more than 1p on income tax, or 18p on petrol duty, and almost double what we are spending this year on counter-terrorism and security."

That's the "accountant's" view. More on the case for abolishing IHT here. Agreeing with anything Stephen Byers says must cause self doubt in anyone, but this time he seems to be right.

Foreign prisoners

Sometimes figures should be left to stand starkly. The Telegraph reports

One in every seven inmates is now a foreign national. The prison system currently houses criminals from 168 countries.

Since 2001, the number of foreign nationals has risen from 6,926 to 10,834, an increase of more than 50 per cent. Over the same period, the number of British prisoners has risen by 12 per cent to around 66,000.

Jamaica tops the table of foreign prisoners, with 1,564 nationals, including 134 women. Nigeria has the second largest contingent, followed by the Irish Republic, Pakistan, Turkey and Somalia.

Abolish inheritance tax, say the TPA

That's a suggestion by The Taxpayers' Association for a Conservative policy. They explain their proposal

Inheritance tax is currently levied at a massive 40 percent on estates worth more than £285,000. This currently affects around 1.5 million households. However, the Halifax have projected that by 2020 the tax will affect 4.2million households if the threshold continues to rise very slowly at a time when house prices are rising steadily. The tax raises around £3.6 billion a year.

We believe that inheritance tax should be abolished. It is not simply a tax on the rich (who can and do employ expensive accountants to come up with ways of dodging it) but affects ordinary families. It is immoral because it forces people to pay tax on their possessions, having already paid huge amounts of tax throughout their lives.

They report that in a poll for the BBC in March, people disagreed by 73-25 percent that inheritance tax was a "fair way" for the Government to raise money. The poll also revealed that over 40 percent of those questioned had had to take inheritance tax into account recently in their own lives.

So, suggest the TPA, people understand the obvious immorality of what amounts to "double taxation"; and it is not seen as a "tax cut for the rich" - ordinary people are being hit by it.

The TPA, of course, love rubbishing talk of how much tax cuts would cost.

It is always dangerous to get into the game of "costing" tax cuts because tax cuts have "dynamic effects" - they create a "rising tide" which boosts the economy as a whole and leads to revenues holding up (look at Australia, Ireland, the US and elsewhere). However, on a "static" analysis, the abolition of inheritance tax would "cost" £3.6 billion - the amount the tax currently raises. Given that the European Central Bank estimates that the British Government wastes over £80 billion a year, the figure is relatively trivial.

So there's an inheritance tax policy - written up in outline, ready to be fleshed out.

That's straightforward as far as it goes. But looking at the strategy of the 2007 comprehensive spending review (CSR) really is occupying the peaks of debate where your gaze should stretch furthest. Chris Giles' FT piece really needs to be read in full, but he suggests that

Britain's long-term public finances problem is simple: there will be no let up in the underlying pressures for rapid public expenditure increases, but government cannot borrow more and the electorate is unwilling to vote for a party likely to put up taxes.

And

The correct response to the challenge is to prioritise areas where tax-financed expenditure is efficient and in most demand - defence, public security, treatment of acute and chronic illnesses, compulsory education and redistribution to the elderly and those genuinely unable to work. At the same time, government should seek to cut unnecessary programmes, increase user charges elsewhere and reduce transfers to non-pensioners able to work.

He discusses how the CSR isn't going back to the first principles a commentator would prefer to see discussed, and concludes

working out the right level of public expenditure is crucial for politics and economics. Both main parties appear to understand the political imperative of keeping taxes low, but neither is willing to consider the obvious question that follows from this: what should government not do in the future?

Departing the EU would not mean showers of goodies for all, so this is a challenge UKIP will have to address if it wants to be a serious political party - the subject of the next post.

Cameron can relax: UKIP is still stuck in the doldrums

That is the verdict of The Business - and who could disagree? Just as Blair could move to the centre because he had no-one to fear on the left, the paper argues, Cameron can also move there because there is no serious opponent on his right.

Euroscepticism - and particularly immigration - "marks out political terrain which mainstream parties see as too downmarket to cultivate", the paper suggests: a view surely at least ten days behind the times.

Polls show that the C2DE voters – the ones who tend to live in housing estates where immigration has made the sharpest impact – are deeply concerned. A full 50% of these voters say they “strongly agree” that “Britain is losing its own culture” and 76% consider Britain “already overcrowded”. The pro-immigration camp (including this columnist) may argue such people are wrong. But they have a vote. And no party in Westminster seems to want it.

The paper suggests none of the candidates for UKIP's leadership has the magnetism or flair of the late and unlamented Robert Kilroy-Silk.

For Tories, it’s a huge relief. Political loyalty in Britain has never been thinner, and a UKIP which had a populist leader and strong centre-right message may have struck a strong contrast to Cameron. The next UK general election may well be decided by just 250,000 votes – so it matters hugely if the Tories are about to face a right-wing rival party. Blair was able to move so far from Labour’s roots because he faced no real contest from a socialist rival and his frustrated party members had nowhere else to go. If UKIP remain in obscurity, Cameron will have the same licence to roam.

But a wild card will still hangs over British politics. There are 17m who did not vote in last year’s election – showing a dealignment, rather than a realignment. They could turn to anyone who manages to strike a message which resonates. The risk is that this leaves space for a genuinely racist party, as exists in Austria and The Netherlands.

The space could be filled by a new party, or scores of local, single-issue parties – a “carnival of the animals”, as one Downing Street strategist calls it. But the Conservatives, for now, can relax: UKIP are showing little sign of threatening anyone.

UKIP, in the words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is "mostly harmless".

Jobseekers' allowance paid to prisoners!

But the department says it's "only" £13m.

UK employers call for “pause” in Eastern European immigration

The FT reports that the Confederation of British Industry, the British Chambers of Commerce and the British Hospitality Association have all called for a “pause” in immigration from Eastern Europe. Susan Anderson, director of human resources policy at the CBI, said: “There is a strong argument to pause for a period before opening up to workers from further new member states, while we learn the lessons from experience to date. Workers from accession countries such as Poland and Lithuania have been welcomed by UK businesses, which have benefited from their hard work and much-needed skills. But present systems for monitoring and controlling migration need to be improved.” However the National Farmers’ Union argue that EU migrants are now less willing to take on low-paid jobs such as picking fruit and argue that there could be labour shortages unless the Government maintains its open door-policy.

These are business bodies looking at their own immediate self-interest. Are they assuming that immigration from Poland has now slowed to a trickle?

In a piece in The Telegraph worth reading in full, David Green of Civitas points out that uncontrolled immigration hurts the poorest in the UK.

Governments are very far from being able to control all the factors that make for high or low wages, but they can control immigration, and allowing unfettered migration to drive down the wages of hard-working people is offering them a shabby reward for their efforts.

And where are the trade unions? It seems that their leaders have been captured by cosmopolitanism and care more for the purity of their internationalist credentials than for the daily bread of their members.

He also points out that immigration has increased the shortage of new housing.

If we picture ourselves as members of a free society organised for the common good, some obligations follow. We willingly pay taxes to ensure that no one who falls on hard times will go unaided, so long as they have done their best to be self-reliant.

But if we expect people who may never earn more than a modest income to work hard if they can, are they not entitled in their turn to ask for a fair chance? Allowing an unchecked flow of workers from overseas is harmful to the members of society who can least afford it, and a more measured system of control is long overdue.

The Labour government is hurting its core voters in order to meet its obligations to the EU. Is this what Labour party members want?

In a letter to the Telegraph Conservative MP Ann Winterton argues that the only way to control immigration is to leave the EU. Yes, of course it is.

Another expensive EU initiative

All too often we come across EU initiatives which will make life more expensive for people and businesses in the EU.

The Sun reports that the EU’s Driver Training Directive, coming into force in 2008, will mean truck, bus and coach drivers will be required to undergo 35 hours retraining and a medical every 5 years.

The rules also require anyone applying for an HGV licence to undergo training before six hours of tests. These will include measuring how “fuel efficient” their driving is.

Firms will be required to pay for the training, which could cost the industry £700m.

And another expensive EU initiative

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has warned that EU proposals to protect road freight transport from terrorist attacks could cost £37bn, and will not increase security. Firms will be required to prove they are “secure operators”, which will mean costly employee screening and auditing. Even those transporting goods short distances within one member state would be affected.

FSB European Affairs Chairman Tina Sommer said: “A founding principle of the EU is the free movement of goods and people. This proposal threatens to put a huge number of firms out of business, put up costs to the consumer and increase red tape on other companies. It also directly contradicts this founding principle of the EU with no tangible benefit. It must be dropped immediately.”

There have recently been reports that Germany is hostile to the proposals.

What's the point of Ed Stourton?

Is Ed Stourton a journalist or a lackey?

This morning he was interviewing a nervous-sounding junior minister about hospitals and PFI. The minister said six schemes had just passed the review. Stourton asked him how many had failed, the minister waffled, and Stourton let it go.

The minister also claimed that the maintenance aspect of PFI was good because it let hospitals get on with what they are there to do. Stourton let this drift by. Does he not read the papers? Did he not see Liam Halligan's Dispatches programme on Monday of this very week which explained how expensive this monopolistic maintenance arrangement is for schools and hospitals? Nurses get sacked to pay their prices.

We expect spin and quarter truths from ambitious ministers. But what's the point of Ed Stourton?

Education ... education ...

Somone has told Derek Clark that some schools are fingerprinting children - "most of which he fears is being done without parental consent", reports Ilkeston Today. Derbyshire County Council say, "No fingerprinting is done of pupils without the consent of parents", and it is hard to see how any parents could remain in ignorance of an arrangement like this.

A Cambridgeshire school was testing a system back in Demeber 2004.

Wouldn't fingerprinting a child without parental consent breach the Human Rights Act?

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UKIP is absolutely right to say that exams should not include coursework. ITV News this evening highlighted how easily it can be bought legally over the internet. And parents will help for free - if they know what to do. This works against pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds - the pupils whom the government wants to favour.

From time to time there is wishy washy talk of improving policing of coursework. Even if the internet loophole were closed - which it can't be - policing parental help is impossible. There are also question marks over how rigorously some schools mark their own pupils.

Coursework can never be a fair test. Scrap it.

UKIP's leadership election - an update

UKIP's leadership election will probably produce a victory for Nigel Farage.

Does this matter?

• David Bannerman has some distinctly bizarre policy ideas, but in this area he is probably the best of a pretty poor bunch. He comes across well on radio, though he is not good on a public platform. However, he is a petulant bully with poor implementation skills, and that should disqualify him - a leader has to enthuse as many of a party's supporters as he can.

  Clearly he will continue to hold office after the election, when he will want to settle scores. But he needs a reasonable score in this election if he is to have credibility.

• David Noakes is an honest man, but a one issue candidate with no communications magnetism. He is not a serious contender, but if he did win, UKIP would consign itself to the political ghetto.
  
  
• Richard Suchorzewski was this blog's original choice. He says he wants to open up communication in the party and make it more professional. All this is sorely needed.
  
  However, he has advocated on Radio 5 an immediate halt to immigration. This policy is bad in substance because it ignores the real world situations of The City, the universities, the IT industry, and UK-based multinationals, to name just a few parts of the UK's economy which would be hit hard by this draconian action.
  
  The policy is also bad politically because it would move UKIP to the right, when UKIP should be stressing that it is a mainstream party.
  
  He is an affable man but evidently prepared to advocate a very right-wing view.
  
  
• Nigel Farage will win by hook or by crook. Dogged by allegations - denied and unproven - of corruption and sleaze, he has been the power behind UKIP's throne while approval of the EU in the UK has grown, and as leader of UKIP's MEPs he has failed to turn them into anything like an effective team, preferring to hog the media limelight, where he performs effectively, rather than train and encourage other party members so that UKIP looks less like a one man band.
  
  He failed in the Bromley by-election, collecting just 8.4% of the votes against a europhile conservative with the help of many canvassers and the expenditure of at least £65,000. He says his main aim as leader of UKIP would be to sharpen up its admittedly feeble campaigning - he cannot see that you have to get the product right first. But many UKIP members hero-worship him.
  
  As well as being a failed leader of the MEPs, he doesn't do vision or strategy or teamwork, has no real interest in policy, and will exert a vicelike grip on the party as he runs it in a top down fashion with the aid of his chosen few.
  
  From the choices available, he would probably be best advised to have David Bannerman in charge of policies, and Richard Suchorzewski as chairman and in charge of organisation.
  
  But this doesn't seem a likely prospect.

After the election, this team would have raised members' spirits, stabilised the decline in membership numbers, and perhaps even reversed the decline on a small scale. But UKIP will continue not producing any serious analysis of the EU or other issues.

Because of his shortcomings, no team under Nigel Farage's leadership will ever build UKIP into a serious political force, and the EU will continue its intrusion into the UK's life.

Trade with Africa

Andrew Mitchell's proposal for a Pan-African Trading Area is unlikely to work, according to Marian Tupy, because "African elites ... thrive on corruption that import duties facilitate".

However, he suggests that the Tories "should declare their intention unilaterally to open Britain's markets to foreign goods and services once they are returned to power".

Aside from benefiting British consumers, trade liberalization would enable the poor in Africa and beyond to help themselves. Moreover, the Tories would show that they are more serious about reducing world poverty than their Labour opponents.

What would the EU do?

It could accept the British decision. That would, in effect, eliminate import tariffs on exports from poor countries throughout the European common market.

Alternatively, Brussels could subject British exports to Europe to tariffs consistent with the European commitments under the WTO. But, Britain is one of the EU's most important and most powerful members. It is also Europe's second largest economy, and a net importer of goods and services from the rest of the EU. A tit-for-tat tariff war would harm Europe more than it would harm Britain. Also, Britain's historical affinity for free trade is supported other EU members, such as the Netherlands and Estonia. An attempt to punish Britain, therefore, would unleash a mighty row within the EU and expose the hypocrisy of those EU governments that claim to want to help the poor countries, but are willing to do little about it.

He thinks - unrealistically - that "trade liberalization could galvanize the public opinion in favor of the Tories' wish to renegotiate Britain's position in the EU".

After all, it is the British consumers who pay higher prices for food, because of the monumentally wasteful (and very French) Common Agricultural Policy. It is they, who pay more money for shoes, because import tariffs benefit the Italian shoemakers by keeping cheap shoes from China out of the European market.

Yes, we know that. But no one wants to give British voters that message. The Tories are scared of high level schisms over the EU, and UKIP doesn't seem comfortable with numbers.

The ground has to be prepared for political initiatives to succeed. And - sadly - no one in British politics is willing to do that.

Even Denham & Field duck the immigration issue

Labour MP John Denham has warned Tony Blair that Britain is not coping with the arrival of up to a million eastern Europeans from countries which joined the Union in 2004, reports the Daily Mail, and is not ready for fresh waves of workers from Romania and Bulgaria.

Mr Denham believes the true immigration figure could be close to a million new arrivals, because the gulf between local figures from the official register and actual numbers of immigrants reported arriving by local councils points to a massive influx which is invisible from official figures. For instance, says The Mail, official statistics suggest 300 immigrants are settling in Slough each year, but town hall bosses there believe 10,000 people have arrived from Poland alone.

Mr Denham said: "The register doesn't include anyone self-employed, and doesn't include those who simply don't bother to register, or students who may be working as well."

The Sun reports Denham telling Blair that

“The day rate for building workers in Southampton has fallen by 50 per cent, £120 to £60, since May 2004.

“Resentment felt by displaced workers is very strong.”

The Sun reports that "In Mr Denham’s constituency in Southampton, 14,000 new foreign workers now make up nine per cent of the employed population".

He warns: “There is increasing hostility in industries where the impact on wages and availability of work has been marked.”

Mr Denham also warns of the strain mass immigration is placing on services such as healthcare, education and housing.

And he accuses Labour of ignoring the problems. He adds: “The absence of any Government acknowledgment or discussion of these issues gives the impression we are seriously out of touch with our core support.”

Mr Denham's conclusion, reports The Mail, is that

"I think the scale of this influx can be handled, but we haven't handled it yet.

"There are a lot of issues we need to work through and understand, and it would be sensible not to allow Romanians and Bulgarians to come here to work until we have done that."

Meanwhile, Frank Field, has said that "Even without any new arrivals there are not enough houses in the UK to adequately house the current population."

The Mail reports Mr Field claiming that if current record rates of immigration continued, it would change the face of Britain. He urged Mr Reid to block Romanians and Bulgarians from entering Britain freely to work next year unless all other EU states do the same.

But both politicians are avoiding the issue that our borders are open to nationals of existing EU countries. They are both intelligent men, so they know this.

They are choosing to concentrate on what they may be able to fix - Romania and Bulgaria - rather than address the underlying timebomb which is the EU. And even then it seems Mr Field would admit Romanians and Bulgarians if other EU countries did.

They are not sleepwalking into danger - they are choosing to turn their heads away.

Failing to confront the enemy within

This is the title of another lengthy editorial in The Business, too long to reproduce here but worth reading in full.

Its central thesis is that "the size, scope and murderous intent of Britain’s enemy within is the most pressing problem facing the country". It deplores that we live in "a country increasingly hated by its own political, media, legal and cultural elites", where "society ... does next-to-nothing to stand up for its own traditional values of decency, responsibility, self-discipline, hard work, respect for others and the carefully-constructed freedoms of liberal democracy".

Great Britain is more vulnerable than most to it because it hosts the perfect environment for extremism to flourish: inept, politically-correct policing; lax laws on the rights of extremists to congregate, plot and spread hatred; a disastrous culture of easy welfare and failing schools; the ghettoisation of immigrants and religious minorities; pathetic border controls....

As usual it scores stylish swipes along the way, especially at Blair (Tony) and Blair (Sir Ian). It proposes that

the British Establishment would be better employed figuring out why it is that Britain has spawned this Islamist enemy within while the United States, perceived by Islamists everywhere as the Great Satan and with a huge Muslim community of its own, has not.

Rightly it notes that

The American experience emphasises integration as the way forward for all immigration groups, even if it sometimes ends up with more of a mosaic than a melting pot. The bien pensant British way is to swamp any thought of an inclusive British culture with an emphasis on multi-culturalism, which has produced a de facto apartheid of ghettos and sub-cultures where extremism now breeds.

And it is right to criticise "moderate Muslim leaders". Their letter last week strongly implied that UK foreign policy should be changed to accommodate British Muslim extremists.

The BBC reported Vince Cable, deputy leader of the LibDems, saying he was worried that, although the letter was "expressed in very moderate terms", there was "a danger it might give some comfort to the kind of people who say: 'Well, change your foreign policy or we'll blow you up'".

Still, we are also told that

Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has called a series of face-to-face meetings with Muslim leaders.

Along with Deputy PM John Prescott, she will say the terror threat will only be defeated if the country is united.

Back in the real world, The Business has described the problem, but failed to offer any programme of action. Perhaps next week.

Comparing websites

Which is better? UKIP's national website or the website of - yes - the West Bournemouth branch?

For the scorpion there is no contest. UKIP nationally has had a committee pondering its site since early this year under the current leadership. It has yet to deliver anything.

Fingerprinting children for passports

This is the latest monthly topic at Let's Govern Ourselves.

Behind closed doors, an EC committee shows signs of deciding that children as young six should be fingerprinted for passports from 2009. The UK governement delegation are providing supportive comments.

Typically, this policy is being developed in secret. UKIP says - absolutely rightly - that this is a subject for public debate.

More here.

UKIP's Education policy

UKIP have launched a new education policy.

It lands some obvious but important hits (e.g. firmer discipline, stop grade inflation, abolish coursework). It proposes what would effectively be a huge 11+ (would that be acceptable to the voters? has anyone asked?), and the case for selection isn't rigorously argued. For example, it talks down mixed ability teaching (good) but doesn't mention setting - surely quite widespread by now - which in principle seems a good idea and also seems to work in practice,

Also (for instance) some points are unclear -

• Without an LEA, what happens to underperforming schools if the local community is listless?
  
  
• How would the vouchers work? - secondary schools only? what if no nearby school wants to take a child? why couldn't schools in demand be allowed to expand, as they are in Sweden?
  
  
• Why one science subject up to the age of 16? Why shouldn't children take O levels earlier if they can? (Our top stream took O's at 14, giving more time in the 6th form.) Why is it better to study one science subject in some depth rather than have an overview of 2 or 3?

Overall, it doesn't seem that the author had a clear idea of the system he was setting out to describe. Other UKIP members ask

• What about further education, what about funding for research, what about the funding of universities, what about nursery education?
  
  
• And what do we plan do with excluded pupils? Chuck 'em on the scrap heap?

Some of the debate revolves around process. Publication of this policy seems to have been rushed. Typos slipped though, and publication short-circuited the NEC. Some UKIP members call for new policies to be stress-tested by a small internal party gathering firing questions at he policymakers before the final policy is put to the NEC (which of course it wasn't).

Was the document rushed out to coincide with the leadership election, some colleagues ask. One might also ask, where do you go in UKIP to get questions answered.

The paper is nicely laid out and makes some important points. But it is not a full education policy for a party which says it aims to develop a broad range of policies.

Lights on across the EU

Should drivers in the EU have to keep their headlights on in daytime? This proposal has just reappeared in The Independent, which discusses issues around cutting accidents, carbon emissions, and low energy bulbs.

But should this be an issue for the EU in the first place? Whatever happened to subsidiarity?

Daytime headlights will save more lives in Sweden in winter than they will in Greece in the summer. So this should be a decision for the individual countries.

But the EU juggernaut rolls on. But not with lights ablaze, in case we notice what it's doing.

Toynbee ducks the main immigration issue

Polly Toynbee writes today that "immigration is now making the rich richer and the poor poorer". The issue apparently is exploitation of migrants, and "a proper inspectorate" would make this much more difficult.

Labour, she writes is "as conflicted on this as the Tories" (though who cares about them).

The unexpectedly high influx of eastern Europeans, mainly Poles (John Denham, the Labour MP for Southampton Itchen, estimates that the true number is closer to 1 million than the official 400,000), has brought benefits. They bring desperately needed skills, from dentistry to plumbing, compensating for Britain's historic failure in vocational training.

She reports the economic case made by the Institute for Public Policy Studies - "migrants are profitable: for every £100 in taxes paid by the average British-born person, the average new immigrant pays £112" (whatever that means). Migrants, she says, make up only (sic) 8.7% of the UK's population but pay 10.2% of its income tax. And immigrant labour depresses wages.

Studies purporting to prove immigration has had no such effect simply don't capture this invisible power. Denham says the arrival of 14,000 Poles in Southampton has cut rates for building workers by half.

As she points out, immigrants tend to accept lower paid jobs. So the rich may get services more cheaply, while the low paid suffer increased competition.

She claims "the door can be shut" on illegal immigrants "by protecting all employees from exploitation and low wages". There should be a new force of inspectors, perhaps privately run and paid by results. "With a clearer work-permit system, employing illegals should attract heavy fines." She even proposes that "supermarkets or others at the end of long production chains should be fined for buying supplies from companies that exploit" - so every firm would have to check for every purchase that no company anywhere in the supply chain had engaged in "exploitation", whatever that is. More regulatory burdens.

Continuing to edge away from the real world, she suggests that "sending back illegal workers" - yes, just like that, we know it's really easy - and fining employers harshly "would abruptly cut off the supply of illegal jobs, deterring new arrivals"! This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how fluid the economy is. Economic activity flows like water, illegal immigrants will always find people ready to provide work at illegally cheap rates who will melt into the shadows as soon as one of Polly's inspectors shows up to inspect their paperwork (yes, right), and at the first sign of trouble the illegals will melt away to reappear somewhere else rather than waiting helplessly to be picked up - especially if they are in the grip of people smugglers.

Toynbee's analysis also ignores the "pull factor", which she notices in her very next paragraph - "there is a precise correlation between the number of people migrating and the difference between wages at home and wages in their destination country".

But by then she's back in the more agreeable territory of Whitehall.

... official opinion is shifting sharply away from Britain letting in Bulgarian and Romanian workers any time soon. (Denham reports that 20% of Moldovans have secretly obtained Romanian passports).

But what about continuing flows of immigrants from Poland and other EU countries? Is there an optimum number for net migration, as John Reid has suggested? And if so, how would she propose to enforce it, bearing in mind that the UK's borders are open to EU nationals?

And it is not just a question of wages. She prefers to ignore the social issues. Immigration is concentrated on the South East, where the pressure is greatest on housing, schools, hospitals, the green belt - and even water. But with Polly's army of wages inspectors, no doubt these problems will vanish too.

The migration issue is first and foremost a question of numbers. How much more agreeable to duck the central issue that the UK has surrendered control of its borders, and pretend that in some way a beefed up wages inspectorate can dissolve concerns about immigration.

"Optimum" immigration level is pure politics

Comment in the FT (subscribers only) points up some flaws in John Reid's proposal to consider an "optimum" level of immigration.

For one thing, having once opened our doors, how can we now regulate the flow of people from other European Union member states - including, but certainly not restricted to, Polish plumbers - coming to live and work in this country? We might deny workers from Romania and Bulgaria the same access, but what about member states where access has already been granted?

Then there are asylum seekers. Would they be included in any system? If so, what would happen to deserving cases once available numbers had been exhausted? If they are not included, wouldn't that further undermine the concept of a limit? The ebb and flow of asylum seekers is by definition unpredictable.

Still, as the writer says, "none of this is to deny that Mr Reid's initiative makes excellent politics".

Indeed. Mr Reid is not stupid, so he will understand fine and well these fundamental flaws in his suggestion.

But just maybe it will take the political heat out of the situation. It doesn't deserve to, though.

Another poor press release from Nigel Farage

Hasn't Nigel Farage been busy putting out press releases lately. More likely he is whipping his staff up to be productive. At least today's effort on immigration is better than the puerile release about the new postal charges. But there's something odd about it. Let's look closer.

"Just look at what is happening in an ordinary town like Reading" said Mr Farage. "According to Reading Council, upwards of 10,000 Poles have arrived in the town in the last couple of years". They are there supposedly to deal with a chronic labour shortage, according to the local Chamber of Commerce.

However, the most recent employment figures suggest that the picture is very different. "In Reading alone, the number of people claiming unemployment benefits has increased by between 38 and 45% in the last year".

Now there's something odd about this comparison. One absolute number (10,000+) is compared with a percentage increase in another number - but we're not told what that other number is.

Looking at the release, you'd expect the increase in claimants to be - what? About 10,000? Think again.

The House of Commons Library source cited does indeed show the increases of 38% and 45% in the number of claimants over the past year in the two Reading constituencies. But what's this? What were the absolute numbers? In one constituency the number of claimants rose by 403, while in the other it rose by 471. A total of 874 in one year, then, after the influx of 10,000 Poles - plus other nationalities? - over two years. That does indeed suggest that there was a labour shortage.

So it is not the absolute increase that is shocking, it is the half truth suggested in a UKIP statement.

There is a strong point to be made here - that Mr Reid's suggestion that the nation should decide an optimal level of immigration is a pointless exercise when your borders have to be open to EU nationals.

But Mr Farage could not resist smudging a strong truth with a political half truth. Is this the standard he and his staff set themselves? Is this his standard of truth for the party he will probably soon be leading?

Evidently so. It is the mark of the tawdry demagogue, not of a serious player at the national level.

An immigration policy with open borders?

John Reid claims to want a mature debate on migration policy - and Frank Field is ready to oblige.

What is the point of calculating an optimum migration policy if the EU forces you to open your borders to all EU nationals?

We look forward to discussion of this aspect in the media debate.

A very poor Panorama on water

Yesterday's Panorama was a shallow and gimmicky programme made by a reporter who is mighty pleased with himself.

His trip to Germany with an empty water tanker - low level tabloid gimmickry - was pointless and insulting and a waste of licence payers' money - and of programme time. There was no attempt to relate profits to turnover (surely a critical number) and the issue of the water companies' bad debts issue was merely glanced at. But they devoted film and airtime to a Yorkshire water leakage problem all of 11 years old.

Panorama is supposed to be a home for quality documentaries. This one would have been quite at home in the Trevor MacDonald slot. There are serious issues but the progamme hardly got to grips with them.

But we can't just blame the reporter. The editors at Panorama must have approved this programme - the last in the series and therefore the one people are likely to remember best during the summer break.

Let us hope this patronising trivialisation is not a sign of things to come when it moves to its Monday slot.

The importance of bias

No apologies for a second post today prompted by the outstanding eureferendum blog, where Richard North continues to run a series of posts about possible propaganda by Hizbollah at Qana.

His colleague Helen Szamuely has now announced they will make an annual reward.

It has been suggested to us that we should have a Walter Duranty Prize for journalists. Duranty, for those who do not know, was the most important of the western propagandists for Stalin and was given a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his reporting from the Ukraine that, unaccountably, failed to mention the effects of collectivization on that sadly benighted area. His other reports were in the same vein. Both at the time and later, when he returned to New York, he made sure that careers of journalists who questioned his accounts were destroyed. The New York Times helped in this endeavour.

Duranty was a particularly egregious specimen but there were many others at the time and later. Some have recanted, others never did. (I have never been able to take the argument, "I know, I was there", very seriously.) ...

EUReferendum hereby announces the creation of the annual Green Helmet Award for the crassest example of journalism being manipulated for the promotion of terrorism and terrorist organizations. The runner up will receive the White Tee-Shirt Award.

Which leads to the thought, maybe UKIP should try to think of some way of highlighting biased reporting about the EU.

It's particularly interesting to read what Helen has to say about Walter Duranty. And the American Edgar Snow allowed himself to fall for Mao's propaganda in the early years, and favourably influenced American perceptions of that coldly ruthless man, who was responsible for over 70 million deaths in peacetime.

Bias can be unconscious. Unconscious bias is probably the more insidious - the writer isn't aware of what he's doing, so he's not trying to conceal anything.

This doesn't work for "letters they wouldn't publish". But it certainly does work for stories which ignore the EU elephant in the room - and there seem to be plenty of those about. I'm sure UKIP's Brussels researchers and the Press Office see examples every week. Members and the general public could also be invited to send in examples.

It would be part of this project to publish this list on the web. In time I suspect it could build into a formidable dossier.

It might also attract support from someone like Lord Pearson, he who bearded the Today programme about their bias in dealing with EU issues.

Richard North's stunning forensic investigation of the Qana pictures is a tour de force. But Helen's historical perspective on Duranty really is a wake up call.

Even in this multimedia age with shorter attention spans, the drip drip drip of biased reporting influences attitudes over time. And the EU are playing a long game.

I'm not proposing a single short, strident protest. I'm proposing a steady, publicised build-up of examples to draw the media's attention to their own (sometimes unconscious) shortcomings, and the public's attention too.

Biased reporting is important. UKIP should take it on, in a long term project.

Read North on Qana. Remember Duranty.

No, it's not the tipping point

Richard North has been running an excellent series of posts about the photographs the media took at Qana, patiently building a case that they were staged. The