Richard Littlejohn blats on

He sits alone in a booth next to the window in his local Florida branch of International House of Pancakes, napkin tucked into his collar, cutlery clutched in his sticky fists.  A pink dribble of jammy spit runs down the centre of his chin as he rocks back and forward in his seat.  A waitress's smile disappears as she passes his table, giving it a wide berth to avoid the splats of half-chewed batter on the floor.

Foreign worker scare stories - it's hard to kill what's already dead

They're back. They're not learning to eat horses rather than immigrants though.

Another foreign worker scare story has risen slowly from the mortuary slab and started shuffling toward us, its insides slopping past its floppy dead genitals to splat on the cold tiles at its feet. Tomorrow's Daily Mail headline story is 'Labour's betrayal of British workers: Nearly every one of 1.67m jobs created since 1997 has gone to a foreigner', and the Express has '97% OF JOBS GO TO IMMIGRANTS'.

They're really not for reporting the news

If there's a central point to this blog, something I constantly bang on about almost to the point of barking it at whoever's sitting next to me on the tube so they clutch their bag a bit tighter and shift their weight in their seat, trying to get as far away as possible without making visual contact with my boggling eyes; it's that papers, especially the tabloids, don't exist to report the news.  They exist to crowbar events into pre-existing narratives and create propaganda by trying to disguise editorial as information.  I bang on about it because it's true.  The voices tell me.

At least the Mail recycles

And it's not just Richard 'Smellyface' Littlejohn, whose column this week, 'Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Darling' in which he hilariously parodies a conversation with Alastair Darling by setting it in Dad's Army bears a striking resemblance to a 2007 column in which he imagined a conversation in the style of Dad's Army called, er, 'Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Darling'. Well done, Smellyface. You earned your next trip to IHoP with that one.

Recycling old, old figures and pretending they're new, with MigrationWatch, the Express and the Mail

Sometimes, when you're a plank like me who spends a lot of time examining tabloid rubbish, coming back to look at the papers after a long break can be a bit confusing.   You've seen everything before, especially when you're looking at immigration scare stories.

The same themes are covered, with the same actual numbers with quotes from the same boring talking heads.  It's like a racist Groundhog Day.  If Punxsutawney Phil sticks his head out, 'IMMIGRATION IS OUT OF CONTROL' and if he doesn't, 'IMMIGRATION IS OUT OF CONTROL'.  Yuck.  When do I get to punch the twat trying to sell me something I'm not buying?

What happens when new immigration figures don't warrant scary headlines?

The latest immigration figures are in, and as I covered in 'Let's get ready to rumble!' they're not as scary as the tabloids would normally like. More foreigners leaving, more UK citizens staying, fewer foreigners arriving, lots of Polish people leaving, lowest net migration in years. So what to do? Print celebratory headlines? Print cautious headlines welcoming the relevant drops and rises and hoping they continue, or even heavily implying that they wouldn't?

Umm. No. Here are today's front page headlines from the Mail and the Express. (Below the jump).

Let's get ready to rumble!

New migration stats have been released today. See all the figures here if you like Migration Statistics Quarterly Report.

Usually, the Mail is all over these like chocolate-flavoured-coating on a choc ice, but here are some things that won't make any headlines (below the jump):

Who needs superpowers to know the Mail will distort positive immigration numbers?

Run for your lives! It's black people!
Not many people in my real life know about this blog, and I write it under an anonymous pseudonym. Trying to right injustice anonymously and secretly, taking little personal credit for my actions - it's a bit like being a superhero but with less kung fu, jumping off buildings and tight-wearing. Well, less of the first two anyway. (Thanks very much, I'm here all week...birthdays, weddings, bar-mitzvahs...).

One of the people who do know who I am and what I do on this blog is my brother-in-law. The other day he mentioned a study that showed how immigrants don't jump housing queues and how it was getting a lot of coverage in the news. He thought papers like the Mail would have to admit the existence of a study that contradicts its line, since it had been covered everywhere else. That should at least be encouraging, right?

But wait! My Crackers-sense started tingling! "No they don't," I said, "They'll either ignore it or take some out of conext quote to make it look as though the report says the opposite." So imagine my lack of surprise when I saw that the report, which had been publicised by a press release headlined 'Research finds no bias in allocation of social housing' had been reported by the Mail with the following headlines:

'One in ten state-subsidised homes goes to an immigrant family'
and
'How ten per cent of State housing is taken up by immigrants'

depending on where you look on the Mail website (brought to you by James Slack's sidekick, Steve Doughty).

English is a second language for 1 in 7 pupils. In primary schools. In England. Oh, and nearly half of them are in London.

Hi everybody! My second post has been up on MailWatch for ages with the headline 'Population growth and density. Should we be as frightened as the Mail wants us to be?' go and have a look.

I wrote this for MailWatch, but I don't want to hog the front page over there all the time, so I'll post it here first. I'll cross post it later. Enjoy!

Remember - they go up pretty easy

I know - I'm supposed to be on a break, but:


Cue the music:

Let's carry on 2008 with a good immigraton scare story!

Back in January, I covered the Mail's 'It's official: England is the most crowded country in Europe' by showing how the article actually said England was set to become Europe's most crowded country - by assuming that populaion density in Holland wouldn't grow at all after 2005. You can see the post at 'Let's start 2008 with a good immigration scare story!'

Now, eight months later, we have 'It's official - England is the MOST crowded country in Europe, thanks to immigration' Why, it's almost as if the Mail recycles stories.

It's not quite recycled, though. This new one takes actual population density figures for 2008 rather than just estimates for what it might be. So that's alright then. The headline must be true. Case closed.

But wait a minute! What about the figures for Holland? They're from 2008 right?

Sadly, no.

The paper is comparing England's 2008 figure with three year old Dutch ones. Its excuse is that because Dutch opulation density fell by 2 between 2002 and 2005 (although I have no idea what the source is for this, since the UN puts Holland's density as growing by 10 between 2000 and 2005), it must still be dropping.

Back in January, I looked at the UN's World Population Prospects site to do some calculations. Checking how Dutch population density would change between 2005 and 2010 shows it rising to 397 - not remaining steady or falling.

It's not possible to check figures for England on the UN site, but checking the UK shows a rise from 248 to 253 between 2005 and 2010. The Mail article actually quotes 253 as being the current population density of the UK.

Now, the written answer from statistician Karen Dunne (that the Mail says it bases its figures on) isn't yet available on the Parliament website, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction for when it is available.

I predict that when we get to see the actual figures, we'll see that they're based on th UN prediction for 2010, which would mean that England is still behind Holland and the story is a load of made up nonsense.

In the meantime - all those figures in the article's funky graphic? Based on 2005 figures, giving the impression of a higher difference between those countries and England than there actually is.

But hey - when have we ever been able to trust anything the Mail says about immigration?

White shite

On one of the menu bars on the right, there is a list of topic labels I give posts to make it easier to find things on the same subject. Look at it. Gaze upon its superfluous beauty.

One topic is 'Deja Vu', which covers most of the stories we have seen before. I'm not just talking about the stories that fit the overarching tabloid narratives, but stories that get recycled every now and again, ususally when new sets of virtually identical figures get released every three months. One story that pops up a lot in this category is the one of how loads of people are leaving the UK as loads are coming in - the implication being that people are leaving because these people are coming in.

Here's one from May this year: 'Over 200,000 Britons fleeing the UK each year as record 160,000 foreigners are granted citizenship'

Here's one from November last year: 'Half a million migrants pour into Britain in a year, but 200,000 leave'

Here's one from this time last year: '196,000 out, 574,000 in: Record numbers leaving Britain for new life abroad - as immigration to UK soars'

On Friday, I posted (with a crappy link, natch - sorry people) about Anton Vowl's coverage in 'Prove it, you lying racist bastards' of the latest incarnation of the story, ''White flight' as more than 400,000 Britons head for a new life abroad'

'Wha...?' you might think, doing a comedy double take (maybe gobbing out a bit of tea or something - whatever floats your boat), 'but that means the number of white people leaving the country is more than double the total number of people who left last year!'

Except, as anyone who read Anton's take will realise, no.

Whereas the paper's technique last year was to only count the number of British citizens leaving the country for a year or more, while counting the total number of people arriving (including returning British citizens) to make it look as though there's a horrible flood of swarthy people, the technique this year is to count every single person leaving the country for a year or more and pretending that all of them are white. Something that it only dared to imply by using figures for British citizens last year.

That's quite something. Last year, not a single mention of the fact that there were 189,000 non-UK citizens leaving the country, but this year they're counted as 'British residents' to lend some weight to the bullshit claim of 'white flight'.

And that's not the only change in tack over the last year. It seems that the paper's previously masterful use of innuendo to say things without saying them is on its way out.

Last year, the paper managed to imply that nice, smiley white people were leaving while swarthy foreigners were arriving with brick-subtle juxtaposition of pictures. It also only alluded to 'white flight', being incredibly careful to qualify the usage, by saying:

The middle class are increasingly moving out of towns and cities in southern England in a phenomenon known in Whitehall as 'churn'.

The relocation to suburbs and rural areas is similar to the 'white flight' that emptied American cities in the 1960s.

However, the exodus here includes successful ethnic minority families anxious to escape the growing tensions of life in big towns.

See. Not white flight, but similar. It involves successful ethnic minority families. We're not racist, but look at these pictures.

This year, we're not just talking about a localised issue of people leaving urban areas that's a bit like white flight, we're connecting the dots for you and calling the number of people leaving the country 'white flight', even though quite a large number of the people leaving are not white. But we're still not racist. Here's an article about how black people stab white people.

I'm pretty sure the Mail has been getting more brazen recently, relying less on its readers to join dots. Comparing '196,000 out...' with 'White flight...' shows this pretty clearly. While the first version gives the paper the opportunity to claim that it's only addressing the problem of numbers of people and race isn't an issue, the current version makes this far more difficult. The paper is actively drawing the attention of the reader of the race of the people leaving the country, and pretending lots of people who aren't the race the Mail wants us to think they are actually are, but that's familiar Mail territory.

Last month, the Mail published a set of figures that showed that the vast majority of young victims of knife crime are of unknown ethnic origin in 'Over half of young knife suspects are black, Scotland Yard figures reveal' with the words:

Yet in the overwhelming majority of reported cases of knife crime involving young people, the victims are white.

The figures were 222 for white, but 292 for 'not stated'. The only explanation the paper offered for this is that the victims were black gang members who didn't want to be identified.

Last week, the Mail on Sunday reported about the murder of teenager Nilanthan Murddi, making as much as it could of the possibility of the murder being related to a turf war between Sri Lankan gangs. The suspect, as the paper revealed in the story, was white.

It subsequently emerged that Murddi was alleged to be the victim of a racist crime, rather than Sri Lankan gang violence. I've blogged about this a couple of times, but the upshot is that the paper hasn't bothered to report this development in the paper version. It has updated the version of the article on the website, but, bizarrely had made it impossible to find in searches a reader might commonly use to find it, such as the victim's full name, or the words 'racist murder'.

It seems that this non-white knife murder victim is not worthy of space in the dead tree version of the paper when he can't be connected to gang violence. And, remember, black victims don't state their ethnicity because they're gang members.

This apparent ditching of the paper's more subtle approach is great for the BNP. Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook has included the Mail's table from the black knife crime story on his blog. The party has been using the infamous Mail picture from immigration stories like 'Half a million migrants pour into Britain in a year, but 200,000 leave' on their website. Today, Barnbrook has a video on his blog quoting from the London County Council's book of remembrance about how those in the 1914-18 war stood firm in the agressor's path to attack the inclusion of a statue and words of Nelson Mandela in the Assembly Hall (connecting him somehow with WWI Germans), and to attack a statue remembering the abolition of slavery. (Who are the aggressors here, black people? Lefties? We're not told, but probably a combination). Mandela, obviously is not a literal aggressor against Britain. But then, immigrants aren't literal invaders, either. Which didn't stop last Friday's headline in the Express, a paper that will shunt rightward with the Mail in its attempts to out-Mail it, whatever the paper does.

Will things get any better under the inevitable years of tory rule in front of us, as the papers try desperately to attack the government for not being right wing enough?

Doubt it.

Yeah, I thought it was you!

The story I covered in yesterday's 'Haven't I seen you somewhere before?' was just the opening shot in an anti-immigration scare story salvo in the Mail. Today we have:

'1 Million more Britons in just three years as immigration fuels biggest population boom in a century'
'One new British passpport is handed out every three minutes'
and
'More than 200,000 Britons quit the country each year for a new life abroad'

At least two are spectacularly dishonest and, curiously for a paper that complained about the 'mountain' of stats released yesterday, cover six month old figures the paper reported on last November.

'1 Million more Britons in just three years...' starts as it means to go on - with a massive lie in the headline. Yesterday's 'Persons granted citizenship United Kingdom 2007' shows that the number of Britons added to the population by migration in the last three years is less than half the headline's claim - at 480,355. The 1 million figure is the figure for net migration of non-British citizens in the last three years, which will include people on temporary stays of a year or more, from November's 'Emigration from UK reaches 400,000 in 2006'. These people aren't now Britons - they're the other Daily Mail demon - 'foreign nationals'. This story isn't news - it's just been added to create a connection with the number of people granted citizenship and a rise of a million furriners in three years.

'One new British passport is handed out every three minutes' covers the same figures as yesterday's 'Over 200,000 Britons fleeing the UK each year as record 160,000 foreigners are granted citizenship' but adds an extra bit of spin by doing the 'each minute' calculation. This is just farting around for scaremongering's sake. You could do a similar calculation that said 'One foreign national leaves the UK every three minutes' and it would be just as accurate and tell you about as much. (In fact, it would be more than one every three minutes, but let's not split hairs, eh)?

Not to be outdone, 'More than 200,000 Britons quit the country each year for a new life abroad' includes two big whoppers in the headline. More than 200,000 left the country in 2006, but less than 200,000 did in every other year since 1997. That's whopper number 1. Whopper number 2 is the 'for new life abroad' since some of the 200,000 will be returning at some point. 81,000 Britons returned to the country in the same year. Again, this article is based on six month old figures that appeared in the paper last November.

It's fine to use older figures for context, but basing two entire articles on them as well as heavily relying on them in another is a bit much. Especially if the paper in question moans about the 'mountain' of stats released in one day but ignores two whole reports in three out of four articles about the same issue.

But of course, the paper isn't about reporting the facts, or about giving us an honest appraisal of what the figures might mean. It's about trying as hard as it can to make us think that immigration is a terrible, terrible problem that will be the doom of us all. The paper starts with its conclusion and fits the evidence to it rather than the other way around.

It isn't racist or xenophobic to examine what impact immigration might have on the population - including the immigrants themselves - and try to come up with decisions that minimise negative effects on everyone involved. It's not even necessarily xenophobic to argue for limits and restrictions on the numbers. What is xenophobic and does border on racism is muddying the waters by artificially exaggerating the numbers and negative impacts to scare people, or to misrepresent the nature of migration to make temporary changes look like permanent ones. The Mail does this all the time.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

I've mentioned before that papers like the Daily Mail don't exist to report the news, which is what most people imagine that newspapers exist to do, but to ceaselessly push a few unchanging narratives that their editors imagine their readers want to read. Instead of accurately reporting on published studies or newly released statistics, the papers distort and adapt them, until they're made to fit in with the pre-existing narratives the paper has already prepared.

Of course, one big story the Mail tells over and over is that immigration is out of control and a bad, bad thing. Within the bigger narrative is a smaller one that implies that British Citizens are leaving in droves and being steadily replaced by foreigners.

There's another example of this today, in 'Over 200,000 Britons fleeing the UK each year as record 160,000 foreigners are granted citizenship'. You don't have to be a genius to spot the implication that Britons are leaving the country because of the new citizens. That's what the word 'flee' does.

As we'd expect from a story that appears under the byline of James Slack and Steve Doughty, what appears below the headline twists and misrepresents figures in order to bolster the misleading impression created by the headline. Regular readers (all three of you) will probably be familiar with most of these from Mail classics like last November's 'Record numbers of people are leaving the UK as more immigrants arrive', or last August's '196,000 out, 574,000 in: Record numbers leaving Britain for new life abroad - as immigration to UK soars' - but here's a quick rundown of the techniques this new version uses to fool people. The two main sets of figures we're talking about are 'Emigration from UK reaches 400,000 in 2006' and 'Persons granted citizenship United Kingdom 2007'.

Comparing apples with oranges
The difference between this and earlier permutations of the same story is that it compares the number of people settling here permanently with the number of UK Citizens leaving the UK for what is probably a much shorter stay. Already, this distorts things quite a bit.

Lying by omission
The paper conveniently neglects to tell us that while over 200,000 UK citizens left the UK in 2006, 81,000 returned from visits abroad of 12 months or more. The net total is a loss of 126,000 UK citizens for a period of a year or more. Quite a lot less than the number of new citizens. Doing this means the paper creates an impression that is exactly the opposite of what the real figures actually show.

It also leaves out that the number of people applying to become citizens has also risen in the last year. This means the reader will never find out that the number granted citizenship rose by 7% while the number actually applying rose by 8%. Zanu Liebour haven't just made it way more easy for people to get citizenship.

Lying about what the real figures show
After setting up all this, the paper says:

The rising rate of emigration meant that nearly 1.6 million Britons left the country to live abroad between 1997 and 2006.

This is rubbish. Just over 1.6 million Britons left the country for a period of at least 12 months. Not to live. Between 1997 and 2006, 979,000 returned to the UK too. That leaves around 700,000 that have actually left the UK not to either return or be replaced by other Britons returning. Instead of there being 400,000 more Britons 'fleeing' the country than foreigners becoming citizens since 1997, there are actually around 500,000 fewer.

Misrepresenting Government measures
The article says:

The increase in the number of passports being given out comes despite Government attempts to make it harder for migrants to 'earn' the right to live here permanently.

Were the measures introduced purely to make it harder for people to become citizens, or to make sure that those who did met certain standards?

The rest of the article introduces other unrelated figures to help pile on the impression of an avalanche of new information emerging about the avalanche of foreigners invding our tiny island. It says:

The mountain of statistics released today also contained bad news for the Government on asylum.

This conveniently neglect to mention that half the 'mountain' of statistics it has used up until this point are six months old.

Assigning non-existent sinister motives to the statistics' release
This follows on from the implication that there has been a 'mountain' of immigration statistics released today (there have actually been three reports). The article says:

The Home Office opted to focus on a fall in the number of arrivals from Eastern Europe, revealed in yet another statistical release.

Here's the Home Office Press Release section. There are no press releases from today, and only two from Monday. Neither focuses on Eastern European migration. The only way the Home Office has 'opted to focus on' a fall in the number of applications (not arrivals) from Eastern Europe is by releasing them at all. And since they came underneath a 'mountain' of other stats, they can't have been focussed on.

General hyperbole
People are 'fleeing'. There's a 'mountain' of statistics released by the government. The number of people being granted citizenship has 'surged' by 7% (the number actually applying has surged by 8% as well - but the paper leaves that bit out).

That's about it. I do like the way the story crams three reports into one article and attacks the government for releasing a 'mountain' of statistics, as if they all need to be covered right now because the paper never regurgitates old figures and presents them as new. This is the third time the paper has tried to make the same point in nine months, but it still claims to be troubled by the sheer number of new statistics it has to deal with.

It's so badly done, I wonder if it's self parody.

How the Express and Mail include figures released months ago as new

There's a technique hacks use when they want to reheat old stuff and present it as new. It's quite a simple one. It's called 'pretending the old figures are actually new'. Or 'lying'.

Our friend James Slack has provided us with a couple of examples. In February he gave us 'More than 860 immigrants enter Britain EVERY DAY - and two-thirds come from outside EU' that reheated three month old figures, and last summer we got 'A fifth of crimes committed by immigrants', which said:

Foreign nationals are now responsible for more than one in five crimes committed in London, police figures revealed yesterday.

When the paper had reported the exact same figures six weeks earlier.

Today, proving that the Express likes to outdo Slack's distortions, we have 'Knifing and shootings up as murder rates soar', which says:

Shocking statistics released last night show a 14 per cent increase in murder and manslaughter in England and Wales between 1998 and 2007.

So - some statistics were released on a Sunday - that is shocking - especially as:

The figures, supplied in Parliamentary answers by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker, emerged just days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed the Government was winning the battle against violent crime.

They were revealed in a Parliamentary answer that was given on a night when Parliament wasn't sitting? What the...?!

In reality, Vernon Coaker took part in a debate last Thursday about crime in London, and answered a written question about knife carrying. In the written answer, he refers to figures revealed three months ago when the Home Office published 'Homicides, Firearms Offences and Intimate Violence 2006/07'. Eagle eyed readers will spot that these are the exact same figures the Express used to scare its readers about the number of dirty murdering foreigners we have on our shores a couple of weeks ago.

Coaker doesn't contradict Jaqui Smith as the paper implies, saying this in the debate about crime in London:

It was interesting that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) would not go back to 2002-03, but used 1998-99 as his baseline. The reason is that there was a different way of counting crime in 1998-99. Let me go through the figures, just as the Metropolitan Police Service has, from 2002-03 to this year, which are all counted in exactly the same way, so that the people of London know exactly what is happening. Between 2002-03 and this year, there was a more than 20 per cent. reduction in crime. There has been a reduction in the total number of murders in London since 2002-03 of 17.5 per cent, and a reduction in the total number of knife-enabled offences of more than 30 per cent. during that period. The year-on-year figures from the Metropolitan Police Service also show considerable reductions in crime. We need to ensure that the people of London know about these reductions, not because we want to be complacent or because the job is done, but because we want to move forward on the basis of facts.

More importantly, he doesn't refer to any of the figures the Express does, saying only this in the written answer:

Available data from the Homicide Index relate to offences currently recorded as homicide where the apparent method of killing is ‘sharp instrument'. Between 1997-98 and 2006-07 police in England and Wales recorded 2,333 such homicides, 635 of which were recorded by the City of London or Metropolitan police forces. These data cannot be broken down to a more local level than police force area.

And that's it. The paper has pretended that Coaker has contradicted Jaqui Smith, and pretended he's mentioned figures he actually hasn't, all so it can crowbar in some alarmist statistics.

As for the figures the paper chooses to focus on and imply come from Vernon Coaker - they're not much good. Lots of cases from last year will still be going on, and some of these offences will end up being no longer classified as homicide. There are caveats all over 'Homicides, Firearms Offences and Intimate Violence 2006/07' pointing this fact out. As an example, in 2005/2006, there were 769 cases initially counted as homicide, with 44 of those ending up being counted as something else. A similar number this year would show the lowest number of homicides since 2000/2001.

In 2006/2007, 757 were initially recorded as homicide, compared to 729 in 1997/1998, which is a much smaller gap than the one the Express gives us. That's because there were 121 cases that ended up not being counted as homicide that year. In fact, the number of cases initially recorded as homicide is at its lowest since 1999/2000. We have no idea how many of those from this year will turn out not to be homicide. The paper is going on and counting them all anyway.

And why? Because it's not trying to report the news or tell its readers accurately what is going on in the world. It's trying to create a specific false impression to scare them. Remember, kids. 'News' doesn't mean 'news' when we're talking about newspapers.

Slack's back!

There's something bizarrely comforting about reading a James Slack immigration article in the Daily Mail. A bit like putting on a pair of old slippers that the cat's weed in. They're nice and familiar and comfortable, but they smell of cat's wee. You know what's coming in a Slack immigration article, but you know it's not going to be nice.

This Saturday saw him get away with the article 'Now the Lords is forced to admit that each migrant is only worth 28p A WEEK'. See, the headline's so comforting - we know it's going to sound indignant and outraged. In this instance though, the paper really should be sounding quite chuffed. In January 2007, another Slack headline was ''Migrants bring only 4p a week in financial benefit', says report', so you'd expect pleasant surprise at finding out they contributed at least seven times more than the paper originally thought. But it's not the job of Mail hacks to do anything other than be negative about immigration.

Let's get this out of the way first. The headline has left out that the 28p per week is 28p a week more per member of the entire population than everyone else. It's what you get when you divide the extra contribution of immigrants to the economy by sixty million and then again by fifty two. You'd get a low number like that for just about any arbitrarily defined group. People with curly perms, or blue eyes, say. You'd get a low number doing the same calculation with nurses. If the Mail was consistent with its logic (I know, it doesn't have any in the first place) it would also be calling for doing away with nurses.

*UPDATE* While I was actually typing this post, the headline has changed to 'Immigration has 'no positive effect' on Britain, finds landmark report'. The opening few paragraphs have also been changed to beef up what was originally there, hanging things more on comments by Lord Turner. That only alters what follows a little bit, but bear it in mind.

On to the article. One of its central claims is impossible to test at the moment. It says:

But the most in-depth study of its kind by a parliamentary committee will conclude this is not the best measure of the policy's success or failure.

In a blow to the Government, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee will say on Tuesday that the amount migrants boost the economy per person - rather than overall - is far more relevant.

The report isn't published yet so it's impossible to check. The paper gives the impression that it will be published tomorrow so I'll look at it then, but for now, I'm familiar enough with how the Mail treats the contents of reports to be sceptical. It's entirely possible that the report follows up that statement by pointing out that the per head contribution of any relatively small group will be pence per week. I don't think the paper will be a massive indictment of immigration, since the Mail can only find this one tiny thing it's negative about.

Going past that, it's possible to look through the rest of the article and the padding in it to test its honesty. Especially after having looked at so many earlier articles, which makes it possible to see what a lot of this one is based on.

For starters, there's this:

Experts say this shows only a tiny net contribution to gross domestic product, worth as little as 28p per week.

Note the 'as little as', which dismisses higher estimates. Professor Coleman (co-founder of MigrationWatch and Daily Mail immigration darling) claimed the figure was 50p in 'Academic hits back in migration row' in the Telegraph at about this time last year.

Further on, the article claims:

This has to be balanced against the enormous strain they place on schools, hospitals and other series - valued at almost £9billion.

This is a reference to Slack's earlier article 'Influx of immigrants 'costs every UK household £350 a year'', based on a submission by Professor David Coleman to the House of Lords Committee. A quick point-by-point rundown of what was wrong with that article:

1. The figures in David Coleman's evidence includes a big disclaimer that says, 'For many of the items discussed below it is questionable how much of the cost should be attributed to immigrants or to their descendants, and how much to the indigenous population,' and another that says, 'These different estimates should not be added to make a total. They are preliminary and some categories may overlap with others.' Slack arrived at his total by adding the estimates together, despite disclaimers saying he shouldn't and telling him why he shouldn't.

2. Slack's version of the figures include numbers for the cost of treating immigrants with HIV and the cost of immigrant crimes. Coleman's do not. They only include figures for 'minority populations' connected to those things. Slack has just changed the wording to make the figures look better.

3. Slack rounds up a figure of £3.08bn to £4bn, adding close to an extra billion to the total he shouldn't have been adding together in the first place. He almost makes up for it by rounding down another from £31m to £3m, but the total should still be £7.9bn. He's casually added an extra billion pounds here.

There's more on that article in 'Still worried about Professor Coleman' and 'Coleman's figures. Again.'

The rest of the article just goes over the fact that there has been a Committee examining evidence about the benefits of immigration from people both pro and anti, with the Mail slant we've become accustomed to as the paper overplays the anti's hand. For example, with this:

But critics of government policy have long argued that simply judging the success or failure of Labour's open- door migration policy on their contribution to GDP is short-sighted and misleading.

The use of the term 'open-door' is the typical bit of tabloid hyperbole we know and love. The second part of the paragraph/sentence there is the second bit. The government does not 'simply judge the success or failure' of its immigration policy on their contribution to GDP. The Home Office evidence is here on the Parliament website. It's 43 pages long, and includes way more than a mention of the contribution to GDP. It even includes over a page about the contribution to GDP per head.

Then we get the usual guff about what Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch infamy, has been saying. Obviously without mentioning that his original estimates of GDP per head were out by quite a big factor and based on figures that were only supposed to cover Eastern Europeans. Or that the co-founder of MigrationWatch put the figure at more than 12 times his original estimate.

This is followed by another mention of Coleman's figures. remember, they should never have been added together in the first place. Note the 'at least £330million to treat illnesses such as HIV' which refers to a figure in Coleman's evidence that doesn't actually refer to immigrants, and Slack changed to say that it did.

The article ends with a quote from a critic of the government's immigration policy. In a shocking finding, he doesn't like it much.

All the techniques here are familiar. We're obviously going to see the opposition to the Mail's arguments misrepresented and belittled and critics referred to as 'experts' while their opposition aren't. But the references to misleading figures from the paper itself are things you might not notice if you hand't read what has come before. The paper sets up its position on the matter like this - misleading article referred to by another misleading article and on and on.

We should be grateful that the paper's dropped the 4p claims by now, I suppose. Which makes me ask the question again - does Slack know how poor his reasoning is, or does he genuinely believe it? If you're prepared to add figures together and change what they're supposed to refer to, why would you drop another figure that has turned out to be misleading?

*FURTHER UPDATE* The article keeps getting changed and beefed up. Apparently, the Committee reveals all this stuff 'today', which suggests the story won't make the dead tree version until tomorrow since the Economic Affairs Committee says it won't be published until then. I'll be checking back to see how much the article changes and how much extra nonsense gets injected. The 28p a week figure has already gone (only referred to in comments that might also disappear), Slack's name has disappeared from the byline and all the references to Coleman's 'nearly £9bn' have gone. Slack's still included with a link from journalisted.com

Warming up old food

And why it's important to pick a new name if you're a crackpot organisation

The Daily Mail has a habit of taking old stories and serving them up as fresh, usually when the paper has a bit of its agenda to push. Most often, these are stories that have already appeared in the Mail, but today there's a three week old story from the Telegraph on our plates, and boy does it smell.

In the Telegraph, the story was 'Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'' (2 February). Now that some poor work experience kid has been made to do a 'write this in your own words' exercise, the article has become 'Muslim medics refuse to roll up their sleeves in hygiene crackdown - because it's against their religion' in the Mail. The two are virtually identical, using mostly the same examples in the same order, the same quotes and the same hyperbole to exaggerate the extent of the problem, such as it is.

The hyperbole starts right there in the headlines. Why say 'medic' instead of doctor or surgeon, or both? Because the stories aren't about doctors or surgeons, but medical students. Having medical students raise objections to exposing their forearms during their studies, where they'll have to comply or fail, is rather less worrying than actual doctors or surgeons refusing to expose their forearms and actually risking people's health. As ever, the truth would make a bit of a crap headline and a decidedly tame scare story.

Both use similar techniques to exaggerate the numbers of occurrences. The Telegraph says:

Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections...

and the Mail says:

Medics in hospitals in at least three major English cities have refused to follow the regulations...

So this has happened in several training hospitals in at least three cities. 'At least three' is tabloid language for 'three'. Apparently, three Universities have mentioned that some of their Muslim students have:

raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam

if you read the Telegraph, or:

objected to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands and removing arm coverings in theatre, claiming it is regarded as immodest

if you read the Mail. The work experience kid must have been in a rush when they hit that sentence, eh.

Exactly how many students are we talking about though? Both articles open by talking about Liverpool and then go on to mention Leicester, Sheffield and Birmingham. I know that makes four cities and I said there were three, but there's a reason the paper said 'at least three' and not 'at least four' when they have four examples. See, after opening by talking about Liverpool and then going on to mention the other three cities, the Mail reveals:

A Royal Liverpool hospital spokesman said they had experienced issues of Muslim staff not sanitising their forearms with alcohol gel although this had now been addressed.

And a little later:

"A number of female Muslim students had approached the University of Liverpool to ask if we would provide facilities for them to change their outerwear and Hijab for theatre scrubs.

"We were pleased to accommodate this request and these facilities have now been incorporated."

So, it looks as though there's no problem anymore.

Both articles are vague about how many staff are involved in all four places except Sheffield, in which:

Sheffield University reported a case of a Muslim medic refusing to "scrub" because it left her forearms exposed.

according to the Mail, and:

Sheffield University also reported a case of a Muslim medic who refused to "scrub" as this left her forearms exposed.

according to the Telegraph. It may be the case that both papers have had the work experience kids in, since the Mail has the extra information about Liverpool and the Telegraph doesn't. Possibly because the Telegraph kid ignored that bit of the wire release.

So we have one person in one city and one possibly solved case in another. But what about the other cities? How many students have refused to scrub properly there? The Telegraph has this about Leicester:

Minutes from a medical school committee said that "a number of Muslim females had difficulty in complying with the procedures to roll up sleeves to the elbow for appropriate handwashing".

Having difficulty with something isn't the same as not doing it. If students had point blank refused to roll up their sleeves and actually not done so, don't you think that would have been mentioned in the minutes? Me too. So that's Leicester out.

The Mail also has this:

Some students have said that they would prefer to quit the course rather than expose their arms, but hygiene experts said no exceptions should be made on religious grounds.

Luckily, the Telegraph lets us know that the students who'd rather quit are only from Birmingham. It also has this quote:

Dr Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said: "To wash your hands properly, and reduce the risks of MRSA and C.difficile, you have to be able to wash the whole area around the wrist.

"I don't think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally."

which is clearly the source for the Mail's 'but hygiene experts said no exceptions...' bit from the sentence quoted above. There aren't any direct quotes from any University saying that students had refused to scrub properly and been allowed to carry on, putting patients at risk.

So, there's not really that much of a problem here. Since we have no direct quotes from any of the Universities that says that female Muslim students had refused to scrub properly and been allowed to get away with it, it's likely that what's happened is something a whole lot less worrying than either paper is leading us to believe. My money is on some female Muslim students saying they'd rather not scrub in front of men if that could be avoided, but not refusing point blank to do so, with the possible exception of the ones in Birmingham who said they'd rather leave the course.

Presumably there's more than one female Muslim medical student in Sheffield, and definitely plenty from everywhere other than these four cities, so this is clearly something that concerns a small minority. And if Dr Mark Enright is right, no exception will be made for these students.

But - both stories include quotes that suggest this is not a minority concern, from the Islamic Medical Association. Who are they, then? 'Is there a doctor in the mosque?' from the Graun's Comment is Free section gives us an idea. It seems to be made up of a couple of nutjobs whose only web presence is this badly formatted and poorly written word document, which gives no clue of how many members they have, reveals they've only ever produced one book 'Al-Dhabh: Slaying Animals for Food the Islamic Way', which is pretty clearly not medical, and two booklets. On any other subject, would a group like this ever be treated seriously by the Telegraph?

Ah, the usefulness of having an impressive sounding name while spouting what the papers want to hear. Seems to have served the Islamic Medical Association as well as it has MigrationWatch, The Campaign Against Political Correctness and the Taxpayer's Alliance. It got them favourably mentioned in the Mail's 'Muslim and Jews join gay-laws protest', because they like homosexuals about as much as the Daily Mail.

If the Islamic Medical Association are after more coverage, I'd suggest slagging off the Polish.

Why has this story appeared now, and not three weeks ago, when you could make at least a half-hearted attempt to cal it news? So that there's a companion example to go with ''Sharia law will undermine British society,' warns Cameron in attack on multiculturalism'.

It seems that when the paper needs to back up an attack on multiculturalism and scare its audience about Muslims, three week old stories that weren't good enough when they first appeared suddenly acquire urgent importance.

Maybe nobody replied to offers of money for anonymous horror stories about Muslims.

Or maybe the paper couldn't bribe any Muslims into doing anything it could complain about.

Who can say?

MIGRATIONWATCH AND CHURNALISM

THREE months ago, the Office of National Statistics released migrations stats for the UK in 2006 in a regular press release.

The release included some quite comprehensive figures, one of which is that net migration of non-British citizens was 316,000. Total net migration was 191,000 because of the high number of British citizens who left the country in 2006.

At the time, the Daily Mail covered this in 'Half a million migrants pour into Britain in a year, but 200,000 leave'. See the reference to the 316,000 figure in the headline? The article also says this:

Overall, there was a gain of 316,000 foreign citizens and a loss of 126,000 Britons.

So, it was clear three months ago. Net inflow of 316,000 non-British citizens. Got it.

So how is this story, reported yesterday, news? 'More than 860 immigrants enter Britain EVERY DAY - and two-thirds come from outside EU'. Hang on, doesn't that work out as...I dunno...316,000 every year? It also says:

Official statistics reveal that the immigrant population has leapt by almost 2.4million since Labour came to power a decade ago.

They were released as the Government faced accusations of "fiddling the figures" after claiming the number of migrants from outside the EU was over half.

The figures show an increase of 316,000 immigrants - or 865 a day - for 2006 alone, the latest period for which figures are available.

As should be pretty obvious, these figures haven't just been released as the story implies. Instead, they're three months old and the paper already reported them.

The story claims this:

The figures were broken down by the Office for National Statistics in a bid to settle the row over where the bulk of new arrivals are coming from.

This is simply not true. The article doesn't reveal until 24 sentence/paragraphs in, but the row was initiated by MigrationWatch. It says:

The conclusion follows months of arguments between the Government and the Migrationwatch pressure group.

I wonder why this little nugget was buried so far down.

Whatever the reason for such a burial, the MigrationWatch website includes this press release about some correspondence with the Statistics Commission and the ONS, which this article is based on. The letter MigrationWatch first sent to the Statistics Commission is dated 17 December, over a month after the figures were released. The figures weren't released 'as the Government faced accusations of "fiddling the figures"', but a month before the accusations. The conclusion didn't come after months of arguments, but before them.

There's more fiddling by the paper on top of that. It says:

Normally, the focus is placed on "net migration" - the difference between the number of all people arriving in Britain, and those who are leaving.

The total - which was 191,000 in 2006 - includes British citizens returning from long-trips abroad or who are emigrating.

As a result, it masks the dramatic changes in the foreign population.

But once Britons are removed, the full details of the unprecedented wave of immigration from overseas is laid bare.

Rubbish. There's no other way of saying it. If the focus of the ONS was only on net migration, why is the title of their November 2007 press release 'Emigration from UK reaches 400,000 in 2006'? Why does the second paragraph, after the opening elaborates on the 400,000 figure, say:

Continuing the pattern of recent years, just over half of long-term emigrants (207,000) were British citizens.

Because what the paper is doing here is manufacturing an outrage about immigration statistics that isn't justified. None of the figures are new. The originals didn't focus entirely on net migration - the very title of the press release that included the figures was based on total emigration, not net, and the opening separates the figures for UK citizens who left the country. The comprehensive figures include all the breakdowns MigrationWatch was after. Presumably, Slack knew this, since they were used to create an outraged article using them three months ago by his sidekick, Steve Doughty.

So, what of the claims that the Government were caught out fiddling because they claimed that more than half the immigrants to the UK were from outside the EU?

The Statistics Commission confirms that this is actually the case, and even the Mail's interpretation of what the Commission said says is this:

When they [British people from the number of EU citizens] were removed, the percentage of new arrivals from non-EU countries was 68 per cent.

The controversy, such as it is, is not over the fact that Liam Byrne said the number of non-EU citizens coming to the UK was over half, but the level at which it was over half.

But what of that claim? That 68% of immigrants are from outside the EU? Looking back at the MigrationWatch press release and the letters between them and the Statistics Commission, we can see that there was actually a joint reply to MigrationWatch, including a contribution from the Office of National Statistics. The verdict is not unequivocal support for MigrationWatch.

The Statistics Commission says there are two ways of looking at the figures, and if you want to remove British Citizens from the EU figure for net immigration, then MigrationWatch's method is better than the Government's for doing that. But the Govermnent look at things in a different way, and the Commission doesn't say that's wrong in and of itself.

What it does say the Government is wrong for doing is using net migration to measure its figures. It offers an alternative to find a more accurate picture - of not using net migration at all and using total inflow instead. The Commission doesn't say that UK Citizens should be dropped from this measure and only uses an example including them.

The ONS says outright that net migration figures should not be used at all, and points out that MigrationWatch's revised figure of 68% is subject to the same problems as Liam Byrne's figures because it's based on net migration. It also includes an explanation of why MigrationWatch's interpretation of how Liam Byrne's figures were arrived at is wrong. He didn't add UK citizens to EU ones. This is the explanation:

If there had been a net inflow of zero, rather than 89k, for non-British EU citizens, the resulting overall net inflow would have been 96,000 (48% less).

The actual revised figure from the Statistics Commission (which uses total rather than net migration) is 58%, not 68% as this article and MigrationWatch's original letter suggest. So although the Commission agrees that Byrne's figure shouldn't have been based on net migration figures and therefore wasn't accurate, the revised figure it suggests in its place is closer to Byrne's than MigrationWatch's.

Back to the Mail article, which also says this:

In a parliamentary debate, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne claimed only 52 per cent of migrants to the UK were from countries outside the EU, such as Africa and the Commonwealth.

But the independent Statistics Commission said this figure included Britons returning from long trips abroad, such as backpacking holidays.

This is just a lie. The letter from the Commission says nothing of the sort.

The article here is claiming that some of the people in the ONS figures recorded as coming from outside the EU are actually UK citizens. Not only do the Commission not say this, but neither do the ONS figures. The ONS figures measure the numbers of people migrating to the UK by citizenship - not by the country they're arriving from. If they did, how could there ever be any people counted as coming from Britain? Not a single one of those from outside the EU are UK citizens.

The quotes from Sir Andrew Green, which are lifted word for word from the press release, are of him clearly overstating his case. The Statistics Commission does not agree that more than two thirds of immigrants come from outside the EU. It quite clearly offers an alternative measurement which it calls more accurate that shows it to be under two thirds - a claim supported by the ONS, who state outright that using net migration gives inaccurate results.

What we actually have here is Liam Byrne using the wrong set of figures to illustrate his point, MigrationWatch being given a more accurate figure and ignoring it in favour of a higher figure it has been told is just as inaccurate. If not more so since Byrne's was closer to the revised figure.

The article ignores the second half of MigrationWatch's letter to the Statistics Commission, which is no surprise since the press release ignores it too. Presumably because the ONS points out that the figures MigrationWatch claim are not in the public domain actually are, and that they're technically accurate even if MigrationWatch disagree with the way Byrne used them. Just like how some Mail articles are technically accurate but as wrong as can be in terms of whether they're actually true.

Yet again, the trouble with the truth is that it doesn't make a very good scaremongering headline. Nor does it allow for the paper to pretend limp, three month old figures are recent revelations.

Immigration is a difficult issue to get to the bottom of. It may well be best not to listen to Ministers. The thing is, it's just as bad to listen to MigrationWatch, since they trumpet figures in press releases that they've been told are not accurate. The tabloids do this and then exaggerate things even further. Nice.

Go for the source. You'll find it all there.

The Daily Express continues courting the BNP

Another day, another scare story about another migrant group used to exaggerate problems. This time, it's Romanians.

First they came for the Muslims, then they came for the Polish, then they came from the Romanians...

'Crime by migrants soars by 530%', shouts the subheading on today's front page. A claim that is quickly withdrawn in the article's second sentence/paragraph with this:

Since Romania joined the European Union a year ago, the number of crimes committed here by that country’s nationals has risen by 530 per cent.

So it's only Romanian migrants. Not migrants in general.

That fact doesn't stop the paper saying on its website's 'Have your say' question 'Should migrants who commit crime be kicked out of Britain?' (gee, I wonder if the Express readers are going to say no?):

FOLLOWING the rescue of ten Romanian child slaves from homes in Slough, it emerged that migrant crime has soared by 530 per cent.

I am suspicious of these figures as there is no source given for them, and we don't know the actual numbers. Back in 'More people want to MURDER us in our BEDS!' I covered how the Mail used Romanian crime in London to scaremonger about immigration. The rise there was over 530%. It could be that the 530% figure represents the nationwide rise, but I suspect we're only talking about Slough here.

Seriously, how long before the paper openly supports the BNP?

*UPDATE* Thanks to Obsolete in the comments for pointing out the article does say the figures are from the whole of Britain. And for linking to the latest actual crime figures from the BCS and recorded crime in his own excellent post on the subject, which is more than worth a read.

Using those, we can see than in the last six months, 2,540,100 crimes were reported in Britain. The 922 crimes the Express is screaming about represents about 0.04% of total crime. That's around one in every 2,755. The actual 530% rise represents around 0.03% of total crime, or one in every 3,273.

That's worthy of a front page headline.

Scare story checklist

There's a theme developing at the moment, involving how articles get reproduced over and over again as if they're new by the Daily Mail.

Well, via the MailWatch forums (cheers bairy), I've seen that there's a new one to add to the list.

Back last May, I covered a couple of Mail articles in '24% of Polish people want to kill us in our beds!' The two articles I covered were '1 in 4 Eastern bloc migrants wants to stay here for good' and 'One third of all Eastern Europeans want to stay in Britain premanently', both published on the same day, both covering the same figures and both written by James Slack. I'm not sure which story made the paper version.

Either Slack or a sub seems to have been confused, not knowing whether a quarter or a third of Eastern Europeans intended to stay here for good. Luckily, Slack was on hand to let us know the real number a few months later in ''Immigrants here for good': Half of Poles plan to stay in UK'. One of the authors of the study that the article was supposedly based on decided to write in response to Slack saying:

Firstly, the survey had nothing to do with the numbers of Polish nationals in the UK. The aim of the study was to determine their media preferences and willingness to vote in coming elections in Poland. Let me list sentence by sentence the instances of misleading parts in your piece

Which he then does, in fine style. But now the Mail readers all know - half of Poles want to stay here.

Now it seems that the number has slipped back again, with Saturday's 'One in every four Poles in Britain plan to stay for life, says survey'. Don't you wish the guy would make up his bloody mind?

Bairy has done a good job of dismantling this particular house of cards in the MailWatch forums so register to read it if you haven't already. I thought I'd go through it myself by each point on the checklist Slack must have sellotaped to his monitor for whenever he bashes out another scare story.

Does the headline bear any relation to reality?

It says that 1 in 4 intend to stay forever, and the story claims to be based on does include a table that says that 144 out of 636 respondents said they didn't intend to return to Poland, so on the face of it, the headline is accurate.

How about the article itself, is that telling the complete truth?

Check. Of course not. The main lie is one of ommission, which is coupled with this line:

It followed an admission from Britain's consul in Warsaw that the current record levels of migration - which have seen more than 700,000 Poles arrive in only three years - may continue.

This gives the impression that we're talking about Poles that arrived in Britain after Poland's accession to the EU, especially when you consider that almost every other Mail story about Polish migration is about that.

But this story isn't. According to the survey this story is based on 172 of the 636 (or 27% of) respondents to the survey had arrived prior to May 2004. This is significant as the longer someone has been in the country, the more likely they are to have decided to stay. Plus, prior to May 2004, the nature of migration to the UK from Poland was different. Those who came to the UK then and are still here are likely to have intended to stay for a longer period in the first place, since the type of seasonal migration that's possible now wasn't possible then.

Also, if a significant number of Poles decide to go back to Poland after a short space of time, then it follows that most of the people who arrived in the UK prior to 2005 or 2006, or even 2007, will have gone home. So asking people who have already decided to stay will necessarily skew the results towards those who don't intend to go back to Poland swiftly, since those that do will already have left. But this is more of a criticism of the survey itself than the Mail article.

Have there been any contortions done with the figures?

Check. Slack tries to apply these figures to the 700,000 Eastern Europeans he claims have arrived in the UK since 2004. As regular readers will know, the 700,000 figure he uses is already exaggerated as it includes everybody who ever applied to the Worker Registration Scheme, including those who never arrived and those who's applications were rejected.

On top of that though, can you think of a problem with the idea of using findings from a survey that questioned only people who remained in the UK (and not anyone who returned to Poland) and then trying to apply it accross the board to every Polish person who ever applied to come to the UK?

That's it - lots and lots of Polish people will already have gone home. You can only get an accurate reading of how many Pole in the UK these figures apply to by measuring people who are currently in the UK, not everybody who applied to come here, even the ones who didn't ever arrive, and those who have already left. So when Slack says:

Based on estimates from the Home Office's worker registration scheme, that would mean more than 160,000 Poles and their families staying for good.

He's talking rubbish.

The story also says:

The report also found the majority of Poles were not over-qualified for the jobs they are taking in the UK, amid reports of graduates working in factories or stacking shelves.

Some 65 per cent of respondents said they were working in jobs matching their qualifications.

Meaning that 35% are. That's a greater number than intend to stay here - the number this very article is using to claim that predictions that the majority of Poles will go back to Poland are wrong.

Has the dodgy 700,000 arrivals figure been parroted as if 700,000 people are still in the UK?

Check. See above.

Has the story sufficiently played about with quotes to create a false impression?

Check. It says this:

Received wisdom in Whitehall was also that, after the initial influx, the vast majority of Poles would return home.

Okay, that's an unattributed opinion rather than a quote, but if this story's headline is right, then the received wisdom in Whitehall is correct. 75% intend to go back to Poland.

Has there been a quote from a Tory MP?

Unfortunately not. Slack is slacking.

Has MigrationWatch been bigged up?

Check.

Is the quote from the Home Office left until the very end of the article to make it look less trustworthy?

Check.

So, Slack's managed to miss two checkpoints for creating a really good scare story - the headline and a dunderheaded quote by a Tory MP.

He's managed a great Daily Mail contradiction though, which is a bit of a bonus. Back in April, Slack bashed out another outraged screed about immigrants being able to vote in UK local elections in 'A million immigrants can vote next month'. In this one, he doesn't like the fact that none of the Poles in the survey voted in the same elections, using it as evidence of poor integration.

Of course, the guy should be able to report on new studies whenever they're published, and confirmation bias will mean he won't thoroughly check whether each study holds water, but does he have to present each as if they're new and further muck around with figures and quotes?