News for the terminally slow

I bet you thought that the press of the 21st century was far too sophisticated to try to push clumsy World War II style propaganda, or that today's readers were far too savvy to fall for that kind of shite.

BZZT! WRONG! Here's the Sun with 'Killer Wales armed with bayonet'.

Bullying and smearing

In 'More bullying? Surely some mistake?' I spoke a bit about how I thought claims in the Times and the Daily Mail that one of the 7/7 bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, had attended the Markazi seminary while Aisha Amzi's father was headmaster were a bit fishy. I said at the time that I thought the claim was the result of a mistake, confusing the name of the seminary in Dewsbury with a similar sounding one in Pakistan. Whether or not this is true, we'd all do well to remember that the press are more than capable of being complicit in far more sinister and deliberate smears.

Back in July, after the dodgy Forest Gate raid, there were a couple of attempts at smearing the two men whose house was raided by police. The first was the revelation that a large sum of money had been found at the address. That turned out to be not as odd as it might have seemed, because Islam can be said to prohibit the accrual of interest, so investing in a bank would be out of the question. The second, much nastier claim was that images of child pornography had been found on computer equipment at the address. Obsolete has more in depth coverage of this, but the short version is that the CPS have dropped the case, in what amount to very suspicious circumstances. The important thing from the point of view of this blog is that it's highly unlikely that the Sun will ever cover the dropping of the charges, and the men will continue to be connected to child pornography in the minds of its readers. As far as whoever is responsible for this is concerned . . . bingo!

*UPDATE* Thanks to Obsolete for pointing out that the Sun have covered the charges being dropped. They mention the money, make allegations of benefit fraud and draw attention to other allegations against the brothers, but they mention the child porn charges being dropped at least.

There was a similar smear of Jean Charles De Menezes earlier this year, involving rape allegations.

Back to the case of Aisha Amzi's father's alleged connections to terrorists, and we see the claims repeated in today's Daily Express story 'Hard line cleric had told banned teacher to wear veil in class'. This paper's claim - buried this time in another incredibly shoddy piece of journalism - is far less strong than the one in last week's Mail:

Last week it was revealed that suicide bomber Tanweer was believed to have been a former pupil of the hard-line Islamic seminary run by Azmi’s father Dr Mohammed Mulk.

Remember that the Mail said the connection had been reported many times and never denied. Here, the Express says it was revealed last week. Remember that the Times said he attended the seminary. Here, the Express says he was believed to have. Which one is right?

Of course, the Express has covered its arse in case the other papers ever have to retract their claims. It was revealed last week that Tanweer was believed to have attended the seminary. The Express have made no positive claims that Tanweer did attend the seminary. Doesn't speak much for the paper's confidence in the claims of the Times or the Mail, does it?

I've still not found any reference from before 21 October. I haven't heard from either the Times or the Mail about references. Surprised?

So, the allegations have spread, whether they're the product of a stupid mistake or a deliberate fabrication. Given the mosque's reluctance to speak to the press, we're unlikely ever to find out and the PCC are highly unlikely to uphold a complaint from anyone not directly involved. Great, eh?

Again - if anyone's aware of any coverage of Tanweer attending the seminary that originates before the Times' 21 October article, please say so in the comments.

Compare & Contrast

All the front page images I've used come from Mailwatch.

More from the swivel-eyed little fishies

More craziness from Melanie Phillips this week in her diary entry 'Britain's eyes stay veiled'. I'm not going to go through the whole thing this time, for fear of straining my bottom lip from stuffing my tongue behind it and shouting at my monitor. So here are the two most glaring idiocies:

Yes, there have been some attacks on Muslims which are totally reprehensible. But does that mean the subject of Islamic extremism is to be totally off limits? In any event, such attacks are just as likely to be the result of frustration with the failure to address the problem; or (as Phillips himself also observed) the entirely separate influx into the country of East Europeans who are — dismayingly — deeply prejudiced against black or Asian people, and would be so whatever may or may not be said in public about them.

So, Muslims are attacked because people are frustrated with not being able to address the problem of Islamic extremism because Muslims won't allow them to. In other words, it's Muslims' fault that they're attacked. Nice one. And it's immigrants doing it anyway. Racist much?

Next:

Ugly? Bullying? ‘A trial of one particular community’? Surely, it’s those who draw attention to Islamic extremism who are mostly on the receiving end of ugly bullying. Any mention of ‘Islamic terrorism’ produces instantaneous denunciation as an ‘Islamophobe’, racist, bigot and all the rest of it — backed up by the implicit threat of violence, a state of affairs which started with the fatwa against the life of Salman Rushdie. As a result, the British media are now so cowed and intimidated they refuse to publish much vital discussion about Islam, to the terrible detriment of free and vital debate.

Question for Melanie Phillips: If the media is so cowed it's not possible to criticise Islam, howcome you've got a job? You say, "There is a huge problem of Islamic extremism in Britain, very little is being done about it, and until Straw’s comments about the veil it wasn’t even discussed." Presumably, you're aware of the book 'Londonistan', the sole purpose of which is to discuss Islamic extremism. You know, the book you wrote. How was that book released a few months before Straw's comments if it wasn't discussed?

The idea that the media is too cowed to criticise Islam is an idiotic confection. I mean it as a serious point - if it was true, Melanie Phillips would be out of a job.

In itself, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, I suppose.

More bullying? Surely some mistake?

I had started to type up a quick response yesterday to the further bullying of Aisha Amzi by the Mail in their article 'Veil girl's father may have met 7/7 bomber'. In it, I would have said much the same as I did in 'Just when you thought there was no lower to sink' about how the links are only alleged and very tenuous indeed, and pointed out the need for the Mail to deny the very thing it implies with the article because it really does have nothing. There would have been a reference to someone dancing naked on a table with a flower sticking out of their bum as well, so you've lost out there.

I thought the article sounded a bit fishy, though. To go, in the space of a couple of days, from a gingerly asserted possibility halfway through the article (which was primarily about another bomber) that Shehzad Tanweer might have possibly perhaps maybe visited the Markazi mosque to an assertion that it has been widely reported that he attended the seminary seemed a bit of a leap for me. Especially as the seminary is primarily for 12-16 year-olds (although most stay on and it's not unknown for pupils to return). So I thought I'd check a little bit into this claim:

His attendance at the seminary has never been confirmed, but it has been reported many times since the July 7 attacks and has never been denied.

thinking I might find that it had only been reported many times on hate sites, or by the sort of professional Islamophobe like Melanie Phillips or Daniel Pipes that I could scoff at, but not much else. I was also prepared to be proved wrong, and find out that it was all over the place that Tanweer had attended the seminary but I'd just missed it. I wasn't expecting to find little but tumbleweeds.

All I could find after hours of searches for possible combinations of relevant words was one reference from the Times, which appeared one day before the one in the Mail, in an article called, 'How bombers' town is turning into an enclave for Muslims'. The article has one offhand statement that Tanweer attended the seminary, without any reference to a source, or mentions of the claim being widely reported.

What I did find though, were a whole load of references to Tanweer attending a seminary in Pakistan called the Markaz-e-Dawa seminary. Now, I can't help thinking - Markazi and Markaz-e sound pretty similar. Is it possible that there has been some mistake here? Has the Times reporter confused the two seminaries and included the statement without checking, and the Mail based their article on what they read without checking? This sort of thing is not unheard of.

Back in 2003, the Telegraph reported that a school in Tower Hamlets had banned hot-cross buns from its Easter menu, and suggested that they'd been replaced with naan bread. The article even included a picture of some schoolkids tucking into some good, old fashioned hot-cross buns. The trouble was, once the story was investigated further, it turned out to be completely false. The council involved stated that they'd never actually served hot-cross buns at Easter, so the idea that they'd been banned was totally specious. Who knows where they got the naan bread idea from. The picture had been achieved by the photographer nipping up the road to buy some from a bakery.

By the time this was discovered, the story had been covered by other papers and columnists, reported as true. These papers, as well as the Telegraph, had to issue apologies retracting the story, but it had already taken its place in the great 'PC gone mad' mythology, along with the idea that nobody's allowed to ask for black coffee and that manholes have to be called 'person-holes'.

You can still read the story on the Telegraph website, and there's no mention on the page that it has been retracted, no mention that it wasn't true, and no link to the apology, which you can only see on the site if you know where to look, or open one of the search results for 'hot cross buns' that doesn't actually mention hot cross buns until you click the link.

The Daily Mail still reported this story as true earlier this year - even though it was proven false and retracted three years ago.

And let's not forget that only a few days ago, the Mail included a column by Melanie Phillips that repeated a completely incorrect story from the Sun. You can read more about the Sun story at Ministry of Truth, Pickled Politics, Clive Davis and Obsolete.

So, this sort of thing does happen. Something gets misreported somewhere, the shonky report gets picked up and reported in other places and it becomes accepted wisdom that it's true. Except it's not. It'd be pretty bad if this story became part of the accepted history, especially as it seems to have become a stick to bash Aisha Amzi with.

I have emailed the home news editor at the Times and the news editor at the Mail to ask for references and point out I think there might have been a mistake, but I'm not holding my breath. I kind of hope they do get back to me and prove there hasn't been a mistake - because it won't exactly speak very well for the country's press or the current anti-Muslim climate if there has. If anyone stumbles across this (and one or two people have stumbled across the blog, so there) and does have some other references, I'd like to ask that they stick them in the comments so I can have a look at them.

If I'm wrong, I'll stick a correction at the bottom of this post, so nobody's in any doubt I've made a mistake.

Withdrawn!

Anyone who's watched cool American crime dramas on TV, where lawyers battle it out in the courtroom in front of a bemused jury, knows the slick, crafty lawyer's trick of saying something dodgy and then blithely saying, 'withdrawn,' before they get told off by the judge. We know it's a crafty lawyer's trick because the jury have already heard the comment and can't unhear it, and the lawyer - especially if it's the bad guy's lawyer - knows that too. That's why they said the thing they withdrew in the first place.

The tabloids use this weaselly trick all the time. The form it takes when they do it is that they'll make some kind of outlandish claim in a headline, and then bury the truth in the text of the article, often in quite a confusing way.

This pays off if there's ever a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about some crazy headline. You can see this in the PCC's defence of the complaint about the 'Bombers are all spongeing asylum seekers' headline I posted about in 'Daily Express headlines worth the paper they're written on?' The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom says:

[the PCC] pointed out that: ‘While the Commission had previously censured newspapers for front-page headlines that have been insufficiently clarified or qualified by the following article – particularly by text that appeared within the body of the newspaper – it did not consider that that this example raised a similar breach of the code. The terms of the headline were clarified in the body of the article on the front page – that the two men had previously been "given sanctuary" by Britain and had therefore been involved in seeking asylum – and the Commission considered that readers would not have been misled as a result’. However, as noted above, the article itself, as well as the headline, claimed that the men were asylum seekers.

So, because the article somewhere says that the people concerned had been given sanctuary, the PCC claims that it's okay to incorrectly label them asylum seekers in the headline. I found this out at first hand earlier this year, when I complained about the article 'Free housing for asylum seekers from the EU' on the grounds that there is no such thing as an asylum seeker from the EU. The PCC defended the paper by saying that because the article says that the people it refers to have been granted asylum, it's okay to call them asylum seekers in the headline. (It shouldn't be. The PCC's own guidelines say, "an “asylum seeker” is someone currently seeking refugee status or humanitarian protection," and people granted sanctuary are not doing that).

This, "withdrawn!" tactic has been used to great effect recently. The Mail has alleged terrorist connections where there are none and the Express has created a completely misleading headine concerning the costs of the case. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned a made up figure that appeared in a Mail headline about the number of kids who speak English as a second language.

There are problems with allowing newspapers to use this tactic. The main one is that people might not read much more that a headline if they're skimming. And in the case of big, front page headlines, most people won't read past the headlines at all if they're not going to buy the paper.

Also, let's not forget that a paper's readership is likely to share the paper's political views and biases. So if a paper says two contradictory things, a committed reader is likely to accept the paper's implication as true if it fits with their preconceived ideals. A reader who already thinks there's an immigration crisis is likely to accept inflated figures over actual ones.

Journalists are trained to write articles with the most important information up front precisely because readers are unlikely to penetrate too far into an article. So, when the Mail ran the headline, 'Schools overwhelmed as 1 in 5 speak English as a second language,' it's incredibly unlikely that the editor didn't know that most readers wouldn't get as far as the very last paragraph, where the paper mentions that the actual figure for secondary schools is 1 in 10. It's also highly unlikely that he didn't know that separating this information from the figure of 1 in 8 for primary schools by 24 paragraphs would make it difficult for readers to put the two together and realise just how far from the true figures the headline was.

So papers are pretty much given carte blanche to make up any old rubbish they like as long as the correct information is included somewhere in the article - and they can make that information as difficult to pull out as they like. They can even use the same misleading information as the headline in the article itself - both the 'Free housing...' and 'Bombers are all spongeing...' articles both called the people involved 'asylum seekers' within the text of the story.

The legal system (in the US at least) allows for lawyers to withdraw a statement because there's really nothing else they can do if they've said something wrong without meaning to. We think the lawyers who do it are weaselly because we know they're taking advantage of that rule to deliberately say something they know they shouldn't. Newspaper editors clearly know when their headlines are misleading. If the true information is buried somewhere within the article, they clearly know what that information is. That's why headlines (and articles, for that matter) like the one in my last post are so nasty. The journalists and editor all know there's no connection between Aisha Amzi and terrorism - that's why they say so in the middle of the article. And yet they still run an article implying one, with the headline 'Veil teacher link to 7/7 bomber'.

They know that a fair number of readers will either not get as far as the 'no suggestion that Miss Amzi or anyone else in her family have any connection with terrorism' sentence, or not give it their full attention. Not to mention the sentence that states how unlikely it is that Ms Azmi visits the mosque anyway - which directly contradicts its earlier statement about Ms Amzi playing a key role at the mosque. And they also know that the paper's readers who already think of Muslims as being connected to terrorism will believe the implication rather than the disclaimers.

Like the weaselly lawyer who knows that they've already planted the idea they've withdrawn in the jury's mind, the paper's editor knows they've already planted the idea the facts contradict in their readers' mind.

Just ask yourself this. Would a paper that was at all interested in telling its readers the truth do this?

Just when you thought there was no lower to sink . . .

You can trust our friends at the Mail to do just that for us. While their partners in bigotry across at the Express are urging the UK follow the lead of some Arab countries in what can only be a surreal about face - the Mail is busy alleging connections between Aishah Azmi and terrorists.

In 'Veil teacher link to 7/7 bomber', the Mail goes to extraordinary lengths to invent a link between Aisha Azmi and one of the 7/7 bombers, and then, within the very same article, denies the very link it has set up. Words almost fail me.

See, apparently, the bomber 'is said to have' attended the same 3,000 person capacity mosque that Ms Amzi's family worships at, and has a school attached that her father was headmaster of. That's it. That's the extent of the link. It'd almost be weirder if two or three Muslims from the same area hadn't at some point visited the largest mosque in the area. The Mail knows this 'link' is nothing but bullshit, so it covers its arse from being sued to Kingdom Come by saying:

However, there is no suggestion that Miss Azmi or anyone in her family have any connection with terrorism. [...]

As a woman, Miss Azmi is more likely to pray at home than attend the mosque, although it does have a room reserved for females.

But this doesn't make things alright. Not by a long shot. Even though the paper says there's no link between Ms Azmi and terrorism, it clearly wants its readers to infer one - otherwise why bother printing this story? Without the implication of this kind of link, what has the paper got? Why say she played a major role there when it was her father who did, and she might have never even been there? Two or three Muslims from the same area might have visited the largest mosque in the area. That's all it's got. In short, it's got nothing. A non-story. The only thing that makes the thing worth printing is the implication of a connection between Ms Amzi and terrorism. That's why it's there, and that's why the headline mentions the link between her and the bomber.

This is the lowest any paper could ever sink. There can be no lower. Question for John Reid: who's the bully now?

Daily Express headlines worth the paper they're written on?

The Express are a dab-hand at producing headlines that bear a very limited relation to reality. They famously ran the headline 'Bombers are all spongeing Asylum Seekers' after the failed bombings of July 21 last year - even though the identity of only two of the four bombers were known, and neither were asylum seekers. They got away with that, too. Today's headline (left) is a fine example.

The important word in that headline is the word 'costs', especially as it follows the word 'loses'. It gives the impression tha the case has been lost and has cost £250,000. But this impression is entirely false, as the article itself reveals:

Earlier this year, her lawyers battled with counsel for her
employer, Kirklees Council, in a five-day hearing. The total costs for legal bills so far could top £50,000. [...]

The lengthy hearings and appeals that would follow could easily cost £50,000, a bill that would be matched if she were to be granted permission to go to the House of Lords. [...]

"If she goes all the way to the European Court then the total costs in this case could be very large, it would not be unreasonable to say £250,000," said employment lawyer Clive Howard. [Emphases all mine]

So, the case hasn't cost £250,000 - it just might. Perhaps. Maybe. In the future. If she does something else, and it costs as much as possible. And you'd only find that out if you read past the headline and on to the next page of the report, which you wouldn't do if you were just walking past the newspaper rack. More people do that than actually buy the paper or read it - so the Express has managed to create a false impression in the minds of the majority of people who read this headline. Hurrah for honesty!

There's also no way to see how Clive Howard came up with his figure, as the numbers the paper mentions only add up to £150,000. Interestingly, in the Guardian's coverage of this case, the figure for legal aid so far is estimated as £10,000 - so the Express' figure 'could' be five times as high as the actual figure.

To go with the false impression created by the dishonest reporting of figures, we get to see some nice Express prejudice. 'Veil case teacher [sic] costs us £250,000'. The veil case teaching assistant is British, was born in Britain and pays her taxes. So why not just say 'costs £250,000'? (Adise from it being a dishonest way to use figures?) Because without that 'us' qualifier, you can't imply that she's one of them and not one of us.

The treatment of this case, both in the press and by politicians, has been nothing short of appaling. I'd need to know far more about the actual specifics of the case before I made up my mind about whether or not Mrs Azmi would be able to do her job while wearing a veil from a practical perspective, but I do know that it's dead wrong for Government Ministers to comment on ongoing cases, and for papers to whip those comments up into a frenzy of criticism and attack against a group of people - and to carry on doing the same after the woman has lost the case by, say, exaggerating figures on their front page headlines. More on this at Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar - which mentions me! Which is nice - but you should read it because it's good.

Great stuff about Melanie Phillips

Steven Poole at Unspeak has some fantastic stuff about Melanie Phillips. It's funnier and better written than mine. Read it here and here.

Ah well, it might be funnier - but does it mention potatoes or swivel-eyed fish?

I think not.

Double standards? Not in the Mail, surely?

More on the BA cross lady from the Mail in 'BA worker in 'cross' necklace row faces disciplinary action'.

Of course, the stuff I said in 'Odd one out' applies here. Turbans and scarves are not jewellery, so it's no surprise that they're not included in rules about jewellery. It's not a requirement of Christianity - even Coptic Christianity - to wear a visible cross, but it is a requirement of Sikhism to wear a Kara bracelet. But this is pretty academic, because according to the BBC:

"British Airways does recognise that uniformed employees may wish to wear jewellery including religious symbols. These items can be worn, underneath the uniform."

It's perfectly possible to wear a bangle under a buttoned sleeve. So, I'd like to see evidence that Kara bracelets are allowed to be visible before I accept that they are. And even if they are they're different because there a requirement of those that follow the religion.

The interesting thing about the Mail's position (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the press) on this issue is that it is completely the opposite to one it's taken before. Earlier this year, the paper was completely unsympathetic to another female who faced disciplinary action over her choice of religious attire and pretty much said she could bog off somewhere else where it was allowed.

The difference? That was a Muslim.

The arguments the Mail used at the time can easily be applied here. (I've republished my old comments about that case. Lucky you, eh? Just look in the March 2006 folder):

• They argued that uniforms are a way to promote a sense of belonging, so she should adhere to the uniform rules. Ditto here.
• They argued that she wasn't discriminated against because she could wear other forms of Islamic attire. This woman can't be discriminated against because she's actually allowed to wear a cross.
• They argued that the girl wasn't discriminated against because she could enrol in another school that allows a jilbab. So this woman can't be discriminated against as she can get a job somewhere else that allows visible crosses.
• They argued that the girl was to be blamed for the people lining up to defend her and the money it would cost, whereas this woman is feted for the people lining up behind her, and no mention is made of how she'll finance her prosecution.
• They argued that a rule in favour of the girl would have been a disaster, as schools would not be able to have uniform rules anymore. Strangely, the argument that airlines will not be able to choose a uniform for their staff is absent here.
• They argued that if the girl was allowed to wear the jilbab, other girls might be pressured into wearing it too. Again, we have no argument that women will be pressured to wear visible crosses.
  

Most of these arguments can also apply to the girls and their chastity rings. Especially the last one.

Now, I argued that Shabina Begum should be allowed to wear a jilbab, but I don't necessarily argue that Nadia Ewedia should be allowed to wear a visible cross, so am I being as one-sided and contradictory as the Mail? Obviously, I'm going to say no, aren't I? But here's why.

Nadia Ewedia hasn't been told not to wear a cross because it is a cross, but because it is visible jewellery. Shabina Begum was told not to wear a jilbab because it was a jilbab. There were supposedly other forms of Islamic dress that she could have worn (this isn't strictly true though. The shalwar kameez, which she would have been allowed to wear is not specifically Islamic dress), but this specific one was against the rules.

I am not sure that Kara are allowed to be worn visibly by BA or the school stopping chastitiy rings, but even if they are, to the Sikhs who wear them (which is the majority), to wear one is a required part of being a Sikh. To say that employees or pupils are not allowed to wear one is discriminating against these people.

For Muslims who wear the jilbab, this is a required part of their faith, backed up by passages in the Qu'ran and Hadith. From Wikipedia:

Some modern Islamists insist that the contemporary jilbab and the garment described in the Qur'an and the hadith are exactly the same, and that the Qur'an therefore requires the believer to wear these garments.

To say that pupils at a school are not allowed to wear one, you are specifically discriminating aginst these Muslims. Especially if other forms of Islamic dress are allowed, and especially if those forms of dress are not specifically Islamic.

While Christians might like to express their faith by wearing a cross, or express their vow of chastity by wearing a ring, there is no part of Christian doctrine to say they must. To say employees or pupils can't wear one is not discriminatory in the same way. But the important thing is that crosses are allowed to be worn by BA, just not visibly. Whether or not Muslims and sikhs are allowed to wear turbans or scarves is irrelevant because neither are actually items of jewellery.

I don't actually give a stuff either way if Miss Ewedia is allowed to wear her cross visibly. The important thing is that this paper is showing its hypocritical treatment of Christians and Muslims, and that its arguments, both in favour of Miss Ewedia and against Miss Begum, are appalingly bad and designed only to reinforce its prejudices and those of its readers.

Odd one out?

I find myself a little bit scared of the current mood in the press and in government, if I'm honest. It seems to be open season on Muslims, with stories like the godawful Melanie Phillips column in 'Like shooting swivel-eyed fish in a barrel' appearing all over the place. Crimes blamed on Muslims even though they're not comitted by Muslims. Ignorant pronouncements about attire worn by a teeny tiny minority of Muslim women popping up all over the place, with even the Prime Minister joining in saying someone shuld lose their job for dressing a certain way. First of all, I wonder what our attention is being diverted from with all this. But secondly, I'm scared that so few people seem to recognise the naked and irrational hatred that sits behind the 'debate'.

So, we clearly need a stupid song to lead into the taking apart of one of these stories from our favourite reactionary rag.

Two of these kids are playing together
Two of these kids are kind of the same
But one of these kids is doing her own thing
Now it's time to play our game
It's time to play our ga-haaame!

I'm going to mention three objects and you have to pick the odd one out? Ready? Here goes.

• Ring
• Scarf
• Bracelet

That's right! It's the scarf as it's not a piece of jewellery! But this simple fact seems to have eluded those fine upstanding journalists of integrity at the Mail in the article, 'School bans Christian chastity ring but allows Muslim and Sikh symbols'. From the article:

Millais School in West Sussex has banned the silver 'purity rings', arguing that they fall foul of the school's no-jewellery policy, which only allows pupils to wear simple single stud earrings.

But the school has been accused of double standards as it allows Muslim pupils to wear headscarves and Sikh pupils kara bracelets as a means of religious expression.

Headscarves are not jewellery. End of. So why are they included in the article? Because if they weren't, there'd be no way to attack Muslims with this drivel.

And drivel it is. See, no Christian denomination or sect of any kind include the wearing of a chastity ring as a requirement. But from the Wikipedia article on Kara:

The Sikhs were commanded by Guru Gobind Singh at the Baisakhi Amrit Sanchar in 1699 to wear a steel slave bangle called a Kara at all times. This was one of five articles of faith, collectively called Kakars that form the external visible symbols to clearly and outwardly display ones commitment and dedication to the order (Hukam) of the tenth master and become a member of Khalsa.

There's your difference right there. BZZZT! NEXT!

The worrying thing is, that's the only mention of the Kara or Sikhs, but it's not the only mention of Muslim headscarves, even though they're not bloody jewellery. We get:

Rev Brown, 78, a retired Church of England vicar said: 'The ban is totally discriminatory, compared with the way Muslim girls in that school are treated, they are allowed to wear head scarves, symbolising their faith.

Rev Brown is full of crap, for the reasons outlined above. School rules say no jewellery, scarves are not jewellery so they're not against the rules. Also, I wonder whether the guy ever even knew that Kara bracelets were allowed or was even bothered. But without mentioning Kara bracelets, the difference between scarves and ring would be too obvious.

I do find the inclusion of Sikhs in this article, and in their other article about the BA cross lady worrying. As well as Melanie Phillips' extra bonus inclusion of Hindus in her column. In including Sikhs and Hindus along with Muslims, who they've long demonised, the Mail are now widening their outrage net to include more brown people. Here, we can see their 'it's not racist because Islam is a religion and not a race' start to slip.

Scary times.

98 percent of Express readers ignorant tossers

Like shooting swivel-eyed fish in a barrel

Melanie Phillips' column in the Mail is always good for a laugh. Well, I say laugh - I mean 'look at with raised eyebrows and a mouth formed into an O of astonished terror - like watching a schoolbus full of children drive over a cliff'. Taking apart her column is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I'm going to do it today because, well, I likes a bit of fish, dun't I?

Yesterday's column opens with a nice little bit of water-muddying to create an argument. She says:

Suddenly , Britain seems to be developing into a cultural and religious battleground.

She supports this argument by setting up three things that have undeniably happened and pitting them against confected strawman arguments as the opponents on the 'battleground'. (Notice also that none of the dodgy opposing army in her made up battle are of the calibre of Government Ministers, so the battle would already be one sided, even if the opposing army weren't made entirely of straw, which it is).

First of all, she says, "British Airways is being sued for religious discrimination after it required a Christian woman employee to conceal her cross while permitting other faiths to wear turbans, hijabs or Hindu bangles." which confuses the actual issue and makes it look as though the woman was told not to wear a cross because it's a cross. This is rubbish. She was told not to wear a cross because it's jewellery, and visible jewellery isn't allowed without permission. Wearing a visible cross is not and has never been a requirement in Christianity in the same way that turbans, hijabs and Hindu bangles are for some Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus - hence their not being exempt. Next!

Secondly, she says, "This echoed the controversy earlier this month when the BBC agonised over whether newsreader Fiona Bruce should wear a small cross on a chain in case it might cause offence." What controversy? I never heard about it. Anyway, Fiona Bruce wasn't told not to wear her cross, although the matter was apparently discussed by managers, and she decided to remove it herself.

She carries on with a paragraph that includes a few weird statements that come from that special part of the atmosphere that you can only tune into if you have a Melanie Phillips potato, colander and tinfoil hat:

How can Britain have arrived at a situation where it is seriously argued that a class of children who don’t speak English as their first language should be taught by a shrouded woman whose expression they can’t see and whose voice they can’t even hear properly — while the BBC thinks that wearing the symbol of Britain’s established religion might be offensive?

Quick answer - it hasn't, you bozo.

Longer answer - class of children who don't speak English as a first language? The entire class? Where? Voice they can't even hear properly? How's that then? Got any actual evidence for either of these claims? Thought not. Got any evidence for how the BBC thinks about the matter of wearing a cross, beyond knowing that some execs thought it was a bad idea? Didn't think you'd have that either.

Next:

The source of this confusion is a profound loss of national, cultural and religious nerve. The Christian values that once defined national identity have simply collapsed[...]

Now she's just being silly. I mean, really. Christian Head of State (who is also head of a Cristian denomination), Christian Prime Minister (Christian by law, by the way), largely Christian cabinet, Christian Bishops given automatic seats in the Lords, blasphemy law that applies only to Christianity, majority Christian population - and yet Christian values have collapsed. The who in the what now?

Next:

Those who defend the Muslim veil are grossly misreading the situation. It is not some picturesque religious garment equivalent to the often curious attire worn by members of other religions.

Who's said the 'picturesque religious garment' thing and when? Nobody, that's who. I wonder if Phillips has ever met an opponent who wasn't made entirely of straw.

Next part of that paragraph:

It is associated instead with the most extreme version of Islam, which holds that Islamic values must take precedence over the secular state.

This is just bonkers! Has she forgotten that she herself was arguing that an explicitly religious definition of national identity should take precedence over the 'secular state' just one paragraph ago? Why is it only extremist when people think Islamic values should take precedence over the state, but not when Judeo-Christian values should? She has also clearly forgotten that the UK is NOT a secular state. It's explicitly Christian, as outlined above. Or is it that in the Phillipsosphere, 'secular' and 'Christian' are interchangeable?

Next:

Only a small minority of British Muslim women choose to wear this veil. But unlike other religious attire, it is thus inherently separatist and perceived by some as intimidatory. That is why it is unacceptable.

It's separatist because it's worn by a minority? That's what the 'thus' suggests, but it can't be that, because only a small minority of British Christian women (a minority of one, as far as I'm aware) feel it's necessary to their faith to display a cross, but they're not being called separatist. Or pehaps the 'perceived by some as intimidatory' is the important part of the sentence. In which case, Phillips presumably thinks people who wear hoodies or have visible tattoos are separatists.

Away from the Phillipsosphere and in reality, the actual women in question here were attending constituency sessions with their local MP, thus participating in the democratic process and not actually being separatist, or assisting in a class in a Church of England school, thus participating in wider society and not actually being separatist. In fact, I can't think of a better example of integration than the latter. You know someone holds an irrational prejudice when they can state a view that is directly contradicted by actual evidence.

Next, we get to see why it is irresponsible and devisive for Government Ministers to make the pronouncements they have over the last few weeks:

Belatedly, there seems to be a dawning recognition in Government of the extreme danger into which British society has been placed both by the doctrine of multiculturalism, [...] Hence Mr Woolas’s remarks, the show of ministerial support for Jack Straw [...]

If Government Ministers spout Islamophobic drivel, extremist right-wing anti Islamic nutjobs will think their views are justified, as evidenced here.

Next:

opinion polls reveal that between 40 and 60 per cent of British Muslims want to live under sharia law[...]

Which opinion polls are these, and what definition of 'sharia law' were they using? Are the poll respondents using the same definition? See, the Qu'ran is much like the Bible in that its text can be interpreted in different ways, so sharia law to some will mean a different thing than to others. A bit like how Phillips wants our society to be more explicitly Judeo-Christian without wanting adultresses to be stoned to death (I presume). The next part of the sentence about areas of cities becoming sharia enclaves is just an unsupported assertion.

I'll skip the next paragraph, because the one following it is so priceless:

Faith schools would be forced to turn away children of their own religion in favour of others who would significantly dilute the cultural and religious identity of the school. And can anyone really see non-Muslim parents being forced to send their children to Muslim schools where — as one Muslim headmaster has already declared — non-Muslim girls would have to wear the hijab?

Right, so, you're a separatist if you're a Muslim who assists at a Church of England school, but you're not if you argure that 'the cultural and religious identity' of faith schools should remain undiluted by separating them from people of other faiths. I think my Melanie Phillips hat needs a coathanger or something, because there is no way I could ever see how actually arguing that people should be separated from one another is not separatist, while actually mixing with another culture is separatist - no matter what you're bloody wearing.

Next:

But the problem lies deeper still. It is not so much separatism as a desire in some quarters to Islamise Britain.

Read that again. Islamise Britain. Now play some creepy music in your head when you read it. Islamise Britain. Scary isn't it? I feel I should say why this is stupid just for form's sake. What quarters are trying to [cue the creepy music - maybe the background music from the old Crimestoppers adverts] Islamise Britain, and are they capable of it? Women wearing the niqab make up about only 5 percent of Muslim women, who make up roughly 1.5 percent of the population, I'd say maybe not, since that translates to about 0.075 percent of the entire population.

Next:

Mohammed Abdul Bari, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, has said explicitly that he wants to encourage Britain to adopt Islamic traditions, including arranged marriages, and can’t see any reason why anyone should object.

Arranged marriages aren't just an Islamic tradition, you maroon. It amazes me that someone can argue so vociferously for the adoption of one set of religious traditions and at the same time demonise someone else for doing the same thing with their set of religious traditions. Aside from arranged marriages, what 'Islamic traditions' are Mohammed Abdul Bari arguing should be adopted? Are they that different from Judeo-Christian ones? Let's see, shall we? From the actual interview on the Telegraph website, we can see he said:

He thinks that non-Muslim Britons would benefit from having arranged marriages and espousing stronger family values; they would also do well to stop drinking and gambling and to follow many of the teachings of Islam.

Ooh. Scary. Espousing stronger family values and stopping drinking and gambling. That's controversial.

Next:

Unsurprisingly, the MCB is now accusing ministers of being ‘Islamophobic’.

Yes, unsurprisingly. Because they fucking are.

Now, remember the next paragraph, particularly this sentence:

Certainly, it is vital to prevent the demonisation of all Muslims.

Because when she goes on to say:

The recent disturbances in Windsor sounded an urgent alarm. The Muslim owner of a dairy in the town applied for planning permission to turn it into a mosque and Islamic centre. Although the council turned down the application, locals say the owner ignored this and extremist worshippers regularly turned up in the dairy to pray.

She clearly thinks she's not demonising these Muslims by calling them 'extremist' for praying. And when she says:

Trouble flared when a 15-year-old non-Muslim boy was attacked outside the ‘mosque’. When the boy’s mother and 18-year-old sister arrived to remonstrate, they were apparently set upon by people, allegedly from within the building, wielding iron bars and pitchforks.

She clearly thinks she's not demonising these Muslims by completely taking the opposing side at face value and not once wondering whether the Muslims here started an unprovoked attack, en masse. And when she says:

This set in train four nights of disturbances when, according to the police, both white racists and Muslim extremists muscled in and the dairy was firebombed.

She thinks she's not demonising the Muslims by blaming them for being attacked and firebombed.

And that, my friends is bullshit.

Next:

In a further unrelated but disturbing development in the town, four British soldiers returning from Afghanistan were forced to abandon a house they were planning to rent after threats and intimidation by Muslims. And all this in the heart of the Home Counties.

Yes, this would be disturbing. If it in fact happened. The story appears to be made up. From the local paper, we have the story ''No religion was labelled' responsible for vandalism':

REPORTS that soldiers were driven out of a Berkshire village by racists have been disputed by Thames Valley Police. [...] The caller said that the soldiers were not welcome because houses in the road are expensive - around £600,000 - and that the soldiers presence might lower property values. [...] He added: "Inquiries carried out to date conclude that there is no evidence to suggest that this was racially motivated. The MoD has also informed me that Combermere Barracks did not receive any threatening calls from Muslims or people claiming to be Muslims in relation to this incident."

So, in a shocking unexpected turn of events, Phillips believed shonky reports that blamed Muslims without checking the facts. And Muslims are not demonised in a country where national newspapers can publish stories wrongly attributing crimes to Muslims without retracting them.

The next three paragraphs show Phillips yet again argue for religious values to take precedence over the secular in a similar way to her imagined opponents. There is one choice quote here, "Local councils have abolished Christmas as offensive." No they haven't. One local council has started using a different word. Something I think is stupid - but not the same as abolishing Christmas. And that's a move towards the secular values you pretend to revere, you buffoon.

Next:

The most grotesque example of all, however, is surely the proposal to build the largest mosque in Europe on the site of the Olympic village in east London. The most prominent landmark on the Olympic site, it is intended to symbolise Islamic power in Britain.

Really, it's the most prominent landmark on the site, is it? More prominent than any of the sports facilities and stadia? And how does she know it's meant to symbolise anything? Where does she get this from? And saying that plans to build a big mosque are 'grotesque' doesn't demonise Muslims, presumably.

Worse still, it is being funded by the Tablighi Jamaat, said by French intelligence and the FBI to be the most significant recruiters for Al Qaeda in Europe.

I'd like to see the evidence for both assertions. I might dig into it, but it seems pointless to actually make any effort to shoot down this nutjob's arguments when it's perfectly possible to do so without having to.

Next:

And to cap it all, within a mile of the site, the largest church in Europe — the Kingsway International Christian Centre — has been compulsorily purchased and is about to come down.

And it's being pulled down by radical Islamists, is it? Whoops! Didn't think so. It's amazing that someone can say an incident of racial unrest is totally unrelated to wider tensions in the same town while at the same time implying some connection between these two things.

Plus, the KICC is not Church of England, but evangelical. Or, extremist, you might say - if you used the same criteria to describe extremism as Phillips does for Muslims. And there's this from the KICC website:

It is our vision to build a 10,000-seater church building and a four floor office - a state-of-the art facility providing:
10,000 seats for worship; 1,000 place children's church; 600 place teenage church; a counselling and prayer centre; class rooms for Bible School; 100 place nursery; 400-seater restaurant; a fully equipped gym. A place for the total healing of the total man and the total nation. We stand here today to proclaim with confidence that these dreams will come to reality because they are inspired by God.

Presumably, this is not bad.

And, from Wikipedia:

In October 2005 the Charity Commission of England and Wales released its Inquiry Report on the KICC (aka The King's Ministry Trust) [...] On the basis of its initial findings, the Commission concluded that there was serious misconduct and mismanagement in the administration of the Charity and that the Charity’s property was at risk. Ashimolowo acted as both paid employee and trustee of the church against UK charity law and was responsible for approving payments and benefits to himself and his wife, Yemisi. Benefits received included free accommodation for himself and family, a £120,000 birthday party including an £80,000 car, over half a million pounds paid out to Ashimolowo's private companies, which were operated from church property and purchase of a Florida timeshare property.

I would say that I presume Phillips thinks this is not bad either, but I bet eight million dollars she wasn't even aware of it, because for Phillips, Christian is good and to be trusted while Islam is to be feared and checked at every turn. That's not demonisation though. Oh no.

Next:

What greater symbol can there be of the retreat of Christianity and its replacement by militant Islam? This is why the argument over the place of the veil and the cross in public life is so significant. This is not about prejudice or discrimination. It is about cultural survival.

What a fucking load of shit. It's about prejudice pure and simple. I've never read such a poorly argued rant, including so many fallacies and such abundant evidence of prejudice as this. Argung for Islamic values is wrong, but arguing for Christian ones isn't. Saying people should be separated is not separatist, but mixing with others is. Ascribing malign intent to the actions of Muslims while ignoring the corruption of Christians is not demonising Muslims. Ignoring plans to build a massive church while assigning evil intent to plans to build a massive mosque is not demonising Muslims. Do me a favour, you crazy effing loon.

Did I mention they were going to EAT OUR CHILDREN?

In 'The'yre coming to turf us out of our beds and EAT OUR CHILDREN! Parts I and II', I looked at how the Mail used made up or misleading stats about the number of children speaking English as a second language in UK schools to demonise the Polish.

Well, they're at it again in 'English a foreign language in London schools', except this time they're just having a go at foreigners generally. There's only one gratuitous dig at the Polish in this one.

The wording of that headline reveals the prejudices of the Mail as well as anything else in the article. For most Little Englanders who make up the Daily Mail's readership, a foreign language is something they can't speak - so if English is a foreign language to someone it must mean they can't speak it. Or only have the skills enough to try speaking by 'SHOUTING. VERY. SLOWLY. IN. THEIR. OWN. LANGUAGE.' But remember, English was a foreign language for Vladimir Nabokov and it didn't stop him from being one of the best writers in it.

I can't be arsed to check every stat in the article this time, but we know what the Mail does with its stats already. You can bet your arse that the figures they use for 'English as a second language' includes bilingual kids. And possibly kids who speak English as their first language but speak other languages too. See, they don't list sources, so they make it difficult to check the facts. Funny that, eh? Because when you can find them, you sometimes find out that the figure they quote as 3,000 turns out to be just 100.

The language in the text is quite revealing, but only in exposing the paper's tiresome need to exaggerate the level of migration and its effects. As noted at The Ministry of Truth, the rhetoric of racial prejudice has changed very little over the years - certainly since I started secondary school over 20 years ago and someone asked me if it was 'spot the white man' at my school.

We get:

Headteachers are having to accommodate pupils, not just from traditional immigration hotspots such as Pakistan and Bangladesh but also more recent arrivals from Eastern Europe.

A huge increase in students from countries such as Poland is leaving some councils with massive bills to fund extra support such as interpreters.

See the creepy way in which Polish people are inserted again, without figures. Nice that. So we don't know how much this figure has increased over any period of time, or how much of the figure is taken up by new immigrants. Some London boroughs have had the largest proportion of ethnic minorities and people speaking English as a second language for years. Most of these kids are almost definitely British-born, and possibly of British-born parents. Maybe even grandparents too. A large proportion probably speak English well enough to not need extra help, but we have no idea because the paper deliberately doesn't tell us so we get the impression they're all new migrants who can only speak another language properly. Polish, probably. Note also the weaselly wording of 'having to accommodate pupils' too, to make it sound like the pupils need loads of extra help, when we know from before that the actual nationwide figure for the rise in the number of these pupils is just one percent.

Even if the 'English as a second language figures' they use for London are accurate - which I sorely doubt - the article still uses the less accurate figures I spoke about previously in 'They're coming to turf us out of our beds...' in the last paragraph.

What he said

Yeah. What he said.

I saw the headline and just knew the Express story 'No place at school if you're British' would be bollocks. The Ministry of Truth take it to pieces far more than I could ever be bothered to, so click the link to it and read it.

Firebombed Muslims 'Asking For It'

Ah, bugger it. More Mail nastiness.

A dairy owned by Muslims in Windsor has been firebombed. The coverage in the Sun - not always the most sympathetic paper towards Muslims - says this this in the story 'Youths attack Muslim dairy':

A MUSLIM-owned dairy was petrol bombed by youths last night - the final act in a three-night campaign of harassment.

The staff at The Medina in Windsor, Berkshire, have been targetted by local youths, an unnamed worker has claimed.

So, if even the Sun frames this as an anti Muslim attack, we can expect the Mail to have similar condemnation of the people responsible, right? Oh, come on. Haven't you been paying attention? Its version of the story is called 'Race clashes hit Windsor' - note the difference right there in the headline. It frames the situation by saying:

Extra police are being drafted into the Windsor area today after three nights of violent clashes between white and Asian youths.

Gangs have fought battles in the streets using baseball bats and pitchforks. A Muslim-run dairy which wants to build a mosque was petrol bombed.

Okay. Muslims harassed and firebombed, and yet somehow they're equally responsible. Notice the passive voice of the sentence where it says the dairy 'was petrol bombed'. As if, you know, it just happened. By accident or something. And why was the dairy petrol bombed? The Mail says:

Tensions have been growing between residents and the owners of the dairy, who have applied to convert an office building into a mosque for their workers.

Despite a lack of planning permission to use Technor House as a place of worship, workers and visitors have been praying there.

You don't need planning permission to use a building as a place of worship if you just have a prayer room in it. Are we really supposed to believe that these 'clashes' started because locals were concerned with planning laws? Apparently so. It's the Muslims fault they got firebombed.

The rest of the article is pretty sickening. We have a quote from the dairy owner saying there was a petrol bomb attack and the workers were afraid for their safety. The rest of the article is entirely devoted to the attackers' point of view. I can't be bothered to quote all of it, but we're clearly not meant to sympathise with the people who have just been firebombed. Some choice quotes:

Windows of the makeshift mosque and dairy vehicles were smashed. Residents said gangs of Asian youths travelled from Slough to fight the white gang. One youth was reportedly arrested for carrying a 12-inch knife.

Note how this quote implies that the youth with the knife was one of the Asians, when that information isn't clear. There's:

"We have had a couple of fights with this lot before, but now they're taking it seriously. We want them out of Dedworth."

How dare they take violence seriously! I mean, for fuck's sake. Now we're supposed to sympathise with the cock end who says it's the Muslims' fault for taking attacks seriously. We also have:

"On Monday three young lads, about 15 or so, were in Shirley Avenue when the men came out of prayers and attacked them with pitchforks, baseball bats and iron bars," she said. "Whether they were provoked or not I don't know.

"I'm worried that if they allow the mosque things will get worse."

No, love. I'm sure they weren't provoked. Can't trust these Muslims. They'll just run out of their illegal prayer dens and attack you with pitchforks. Without provocation, probably. Give them a mosque and they'll come out with torches as well.

This is followed with:

Other residents said that late-night noise from the dairy was driving them out of their homes and they feared a mosque would make things worse.

Reaffirming that it's the Muslim's wanting a place to worship that are making things worse. Not the people attacking them. They could have just gone with the headline, 'Dairy firebombed as Muslims just ask for it' and have done with it.

It's tempting to take the piss out of the Mail for being stupidly middle-class and obsessed with house prices, and think of Hyacinth Bucket. But when you consider they're capable of taking a story about a Muslim business being firebombed and imply it was the Muslims' fault for praying, you realise they're nastier than that.

How to pretend 100 means 3,000

The Mail again. This time the story is 'Thousands of EU migrants homeless in UK'. I'll be brief.

The story says:

Now Feantsa says [stuff about the levels of homeless EU migrants].

An estimated 3,000 Poles are living rough in London, with "proportionately similar" numbers in Dublin and in Scotland, it claims.

But Feansta doesn't say that bit about 3,000 Poles living in London at all. The Mail has made it up. What Feansta's website actually says is:

The Simon Community reports that at least 30% of people sleeping rough in central London are from Central and Eastern European countries. Similar figures exist in other English cities as well as in Scotland and Ireland.

Referencing the Simon Community. The Simon Community estimates the total number of people sleeping rough in London at just 345. Their Spring Newsletter says:

It is estimated that there are now around 100 Eastern European people living rough in Central London and there are many more hidden homeless struggling to make ends meet.

So that's how. You just pretend. You know Richard Littlejohn's shit catchphrase 'You couldn't make it up'? Yes you fucking can.

They're coming to turf us out of our beds and EAT OUR CHILDREN! Part II

If you haven't read part I, read it now. Just skim it then.

What's this article actually about, if it's not just about how many children speak English as a second language? What's all this business of using stats from areas with low levels of immigrant pupils to exaggerate the scale of increases, omitting total figures to give no idea of proportion and just plain making shit up for?

If we go back to one of the early sentences, we get this:

A huge increase in numbers of students from countries such as Poland is leaving some councils with massive bills to fund additional support such as interpreters. (Emphasis mine),

Oh. Poland. The article is not so much raising alarm levels about the number of pupils with English as a second language as trying to imply that the level is skyrocketing because of new immigration, specifically Polish immigration. The words 'Poland', 'Polish' or 'Poles' are used eight times in this article. Other Eastern European countries are mentioned, but less often and Somalia is mentioned once. What this article is trying to do is create a problem - one in five pupils speak English as a second language - and blame this confected problem on Eastern Europeans generally and Polish people specifically. All the obfuscation, exaggeration and just plain bullshit in this article is geared towards creating a panic about Polish people. That's particularly loathsome when you consider the scare statistic of the headline is totally made up.

You might think I'm being harsh. I'm not. The very first sentence is:

Schools are being overwhelmed by an influx of new Eastern European arrivals as one in five primary pupils now come from ethnic minorities

Remeber from the last post that the levels of ethnic minority pupils aren't that relevant? Well, we can see why the article uses this number. We're supposed to infer from this sentence that the number of ethnic minority pupils has skyrocketed because of an 'influx of new Eastern European arrivals'. First of all, the article ignores the level of secondary school pupils, which is lower. But more important than this is that we know their idea is bollocks, because we have some idea of the real figures from the DfES report. The actual number of 'white other' pupils in primary schools is 2.6 percent. One tenth of the total. We have a good idea of how many 'white other' pupils combined for primary and secondary schools are actually Eastern European from the data from education authorities who use extended definitions for 'white other'. The total number of 'white other' pupils is 75,542. The total 'White Eastern European' pupils is 6,563. If this figure is carried across to the rest of the country, that's about 8.7 percent of 'white other' pupils, or roughly 0.2 percent of the total. Or 1 in 500. This truly horrible article is demonising Eastern Europeans by saying they're responsible for a massive increase in the number of ethnic minority pupils when in fact, even now, theyprobably represent around 1 in 500 pupils. One hundredth of the total of ethnic minority pupils the article quotes.

Now, on to the gratuitous mentions of Polish people. The second sentence is the one above that says, "countries such as Poland". We then have:

At least 27,000 school aged children have arrived with their parents in the UK since ten countries including Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic joined the EU on May 1 2004.

But the local council claims there are at least 10,000 Poles alone living there and it faces a funding deficit of up to £15million due to inaccurate population estimates.

In Ealing, West London, the number of Eastern European pupils enrolled in primary and secondary schools has increased from 810 in 2003 to 1,474.

Meanwhile numbers of Polish speaking pupils alone in primary schools has more than doubled from 205 to 582.

Slough which is spending £90,000-a-year running an assessment centre to help foreign children get admitted into local schools. Two primary schools have had to take in 60 Somalian and 50 Polish pupils respectively in just one term.

By January 2004, 688 pupils from non-English speaking countries had arrived in Slough. This had risen to 888 by January this year, with the main countries of origin including Poland.

Crewe, where Polish children started to arrive, mainly unannounced, last Autumn. Councillor Gwyn Griffiths, a Liberal Democrat member of Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council, accused the government of failing to prepare schools for a possible influx of migrant children.

In Victoria Junior School, Wrexham, North Wales, 11 per cent of pupils speak English as a second language compared to five per cent in 2005. This is due to an influx of Polish workers in the area.

(Emphases there are all mine). So we've got a couple of times where the article says something like 'countries such as Poland' to deliberately single out Poland, and Poland is quite deliberately conflated with Eastern European throughout the article. We're supposed to believe that the real number of children with English as a second language is actually double the official number, all because of the Polish (and other Eastern Europeans).

If you want further proof that the article is more concerned with attacking Eastern Europeans and the Polish than talking about children with English as a second language, look at the quotes about Ealing:

In Ealing, West London, the number of Eastern European pupils enrolled in primary and secondary schools has increased from 810 in 2003 to 1,474.

Meanwhile numbers of Polish speaking pupils alone in primary schools has more than doubled from 205 to 582.

This is possibly the most important couple of sentences in the article. If the paper was really trying to raise concerns about children speaking English as a second language rather than stigmatising the Polish, it could force its point home by mentioning that the level of pupils who speak English as an additional language is actually 50 percent in Ealing. It chooses not to though - perhaps because Southall, an area famous for its large Asian population, is part of Ealing, which makes it more difficult to connect the figure with the Polish. So even though the 50 percent figure is far more relevant to the stated theme of the article, it chooses to emphasise the number of Eastern European pupils and specifically mentions Polish speakers at the expense of being able to ramp up the panic about children speaking English as a second language.

There's a nice bit of dogwhistling with the language here too. The paper uses the term 'economic migrants' twice, and the more common 'migrant workers' once. This does a couple of things. It implies that the migrants are not working, and it links into scare stories about asylum seekers - the term 'economic migrants' is often used to describe the motivations of failed asylum seekers. Here, the paper uses a term that will already have negative connotations for its readers and links to the paper's wider anti-immigration sentiment, something the paper has been doing quite a lot in the last few weeks.

The whole point of this article is to make us believe that a group that represents roughly 0.2 percent of the population is responsible for a massive increase in the number of children speaking English as a second language. That's just nasty. Want to hear the kicker? From the DfES report:

Analysis of international migration data from 1994-2003 by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed that from 1994-2003, migration from the UK to European Union countries (outflow) was higher than the migration from these countries to the UK (inflow), resulting in a net outflow to EU countries over this period.

The only encouraging thing about this article at all is in the comments. There are only three here, which is unusual so it's likely there have been more that have been censored - but two of them aren't exactly typically Daily Mail. We have:

The British are as bad! Ask any Spanish school on the Costas about the British children of all ages who are enrolled by parents more concerned with fun in the sun than the quality of their child´s education.

- Sandra, Alicante, Spain

I am happy to think that these children are getting the help they need. Kids are amazing the way they soak up new languages. Many of the Eastern European kids will not be unfamiliar with the English language and it would'nt be long before they were fluent, I've seen this happen in a matter of months. Anyway, the vast majority of their parents are paying their taxes to this Government, shouldn't their children be helped to get on as well as possible? If they settle here they are future tax-payers themselves. My mother was 6 when she she started school and she knew no English at all. She was terrified and alone and I would not want this for any child. In the great scheme of things we are a rich country. Can we not give a bit of a leg-up to the new EU countries given as how we have plundered their natural resources for decades and now their young people to do jobs people in this country don't fancy?

- Liz, East Sussex, UK

It seems that the Mail readers quite like the Polish immigrants, and this tactic of demonising them seems to have backfired before. Reckon they'll stop trying?

Will they bollocks.

They're coming to turf us out of our beds and EAT OUR CHILDREN! Part I

The Mail again, with a classic immigration scare story. This one's called 'Fury as foreigners come to turf you out of your beds and eat your babies'. No it's not, sorry. It's called 'Schools overwhelmed as 1 in 5 speak English as a second langage'.

This article is a fantastic example of how the Mail creates its immigration scare stories by being dishonest with statistics and by creating links between issues that aren't really as closely related as the paper pretends. The best thing about it though, is that it shows how it pretends to be concerned with a concrete issue in order to demonise a group of people.

How to lie with statistics

First of all, the dodgy statistics. That's quite a claim there in the title. Where did that figure come from? We find out in the text here:

New figures show that one in eight primary school children now speak English as a second language.

And buried in the very last sentence of the article, where few readers ever reach, we get this:

There are also 314,950 secondary pupils speaking other languages at home, an increase of 16,000, representing nearly one in ten students, according to figures from the Department for Education and Skills.

One in eight? One in ten? Combine them and that makes just over one in ten. But the headline says one in five! Surely this proves the headline wrong? It's justification appears to be:

But the figure [of new immigrants from Eastern Europe] is likely to be much higher, with official calculations of the number of immigrants arriving in Britain already massively underestimating the pressure on the communities where they have settled.

So the 'one in five' figure came from the journalist's arse! Hurrah!

The justification the paper uses for making up a new figure - that immigration figures have been miscalculated - doesn't work. First of all, the number of children with English as a second language in schools is calculated differently and by a different government department. Secondly for the justification to work, the number of new immigrants would have to be massive. Enough to double, or even treble the number of kids with English as a second language in the country. And that, my friends, is bullshit!

Now have a look at the first sentence:

Schools are being overwhelmed by an influx of new Eastern European arrivals as one in five primary pupils now come from ethnic minorities.

The DfES report 'Ethnicity and Education', also mentions the 20 percent number for primary school children, but it also gives a number for children who have a language other than English as their first or main language, which is just 6.9 percent. That's about one in fourteen. About a third of the made up figure the headline uses, and a third of ethnic minority figure the paper bothers to quote. The ethnic minority figure doesn't give us any idea of the actual number of children who speak English as a second language, so why quote it? Note also that the 6.9 percent figure is not for children who don't speak English at all, but those for whom English is not their main language.

Just stop for a second to consider how dishonest the paper's use of figures is in just the headline and opening sentence. It says one in five children speak English as a second language - twice as high as the figures it quotes and three times as high as the detailed figures in the DfES report. It then quotes the number of primary school children from ethnic minority backgrounds (ignoring the lower secondary school number) when this number isn't that relevant. An article that starts with a blatant lie and follows it up with a bit of misdirection isn't likely to be that reliable is it?

And that's not the end of it. The article also says:

A huge increase in numbers of students from countries such as Poland is leaving some councils with massive bills to fund additional support such as interpreters.

So we're expected to believe that the number of new immigrants have more than doubled the number of children who speak English as a second language, and that the number of kids who need interpreters has skyrocketed as a result. Probably doubled or trebled as well. This is bullshit too. There is an actual figure that the Mail could have quoted to show the rise in the number of kids who need extra help if it wanted to. The Telegraph has covered this story, with a more honestly headlined (but still not entirely honestly) 'One in eight pupils speak English as a second language'. It includes this undoubtedly shockingly high figure:

The number of children needing extra help has gone up by one per cent over the last year with much of the increase attributed to an influx of families from Eastern Europe.

So the actual figure for the rise in the number of children needing extra help has gone up by one percent. The Mail has made up a figure and used it to imply a truly staggering increase in the number of kids who'll need extra language support - maybe a 100 or 200 percent increase. It could have quoted the actual figure if it wanted to, but it didn't. The actual figure is one percent. How weaselly is that?

Now that we know the paper just makes shit up, we need to be careful of the other figures, like:

In Peterborough, there were just 22 children of economic migrants enrolled in secondary schools in January 2004. By January 2006, the numbers had risen fivefold to 108, representing 0.8 per cent of the school population - up from 0.2 per cent.

At primary level, 34 children of economic migrants were enrolled in January 2004, representing 0.2 per cent of the school population. By January 2006, the figure had doubled to 77 or 0.5 per cent.

First of all, a child of an economic migrant doesn't necessarily speak English as a second language. Children of Australian, New Zealander, American, Canadian and Irish parents could be the children of economic migrants. Some migrants might also only ever speak English to their children, so they grow up with English as a first language. Those who do speak English as a second language might speak it perfectly well, so these figures don't actually help us very much in finding out how many interpreters and special support staff are needed.

Secondly, the paper has also deliberately chosen a town with an unusually high increase in it's migrant workers, possibly because it had a low level to start with. It's even used the town before in one of its other disgusting scare stories, with the headline 'The town the Poles took over'. That headline's real and not a joke, unfortunately.

Next, note the misdirection in the emphasis of the 'fivefold' rise in the number of secondary pupils and doubling of primary school pupils, and the way the article uses a different method to illustrate numbers of pupils from the one it uses in the headline. It doesn't mention the total number of pupils in Peterborough either, because that would give a clearer perspective on the numbers. If the article used the same method to display the figure as the headline, there would be a total of around 1 in 50. It would then be obvious that we're supposed to believe that 1 in 50 pupils are responsible for raising the level of chilren with English as a second language from around 1 in 10 to 1 in 5, and that's clearly bollocks. Also note how we're not given a figure for the number of pupils with English as a second language in Peterborough. I wonder why.

Also, no source is given for these figures, so it's difficult - if not impossible - to actually check them. There are any number of ways to be dishonest here, given that we know the Mail sometimes uses ambiguous language to create a false impression. It would be unfair to set them out without being able to check the figures first, but it would be wise to treat them sceptically until that could be done.

The article moves back to the pretend central theme of English as a second language with its next set of figures:

And in Suffolk, there were 467 new pupils in schools for whom English is an additional language in 2005-6. The majority were from the families of migrant workers.

This represents a 45 per cent increase on 2003-4 at a time when the Department for Education and Skills has slashed funding to support ethnic minority pupils in the region.

Note what's left out here. We have been given absolutely no idea of what proportion of the whole these 467 pupils represent, so we can have no idea, without checking, how these numbers compare to the headline's claim. The Suffolk County Council website states that:

The total school population is just under 100,000

467 pupils out of 100,000 is just under 0.5 percent. The headline says 1 in 5 pupils speak English as a second language. The example it uses of a shocking increase ends up with a total of 1 in 200. Not really justifying the figure it pulled out of its arse much is it? Not really 'overwhelming' either.

It's next figure leaves out the total in the same way:

In Ealing, West London, the number of Eastern European pupils enrolled in primary and secondary schools has increased from 810 in 2003 to 1,474.

Meanwhile numbers of Polish speaking pupils alone in primary schools has more than doubled from 205 to 582.

So we have no idea of proportion. This figure is probably the most significant in the whole article, but we'll come back to it in the next post.

The other figures are used in similar ways. We have a figure from Slough of two primary schools having to take in 60 Somalian and 50 Polish pupils in one term. But we do not know if these children are all brand new arrivals to the country or not, or whether they are new pupils to the schools or not. We're not given a reference to check, so it's all but impossible to find out. We have the familiar trick of not giving a total number of pupils so we can't work out proportions. This figure also gives us no concrete idea of how many of those pupils are unable to speak English.

We have the same 'no total' tactic for figures from Wrexham and the same tactic of using a different method to display figures from the headline. 11 percent of Wrexham pupils speak English as a second language. That's about half claimed by the headline. It also doesn't mention how many speak Welsh, although this is probably quite low.

So, these figures are either made up, dressed up or used dishonestly. This isn't much of a surprise, given that the article itself is an attempt to pretend that the paper's concerned with the number of children who speak English as a second language, when it's in fact concerned with something else entirely. We'll find out what in the next posting. You lucky people.