Full of crap and racist. Who knew?

Just in case you missed it.

I've said it before, but being able to tell what the tabloids are going to do is a rubbish super power. It's like having a power that lets you eat your dinner.

Earlier this week, some stats were released that were guaranteed to get the tabloids in a lather, and I went out on a limb and said they would get the tabloids in a lather. Ooh, those lathered up tabloids.  Always with the foreign workers and the too many ethnics.

It's Christmas for the tabloids!

Today, two sets of stats are published that may cause much salivating and rubbing of thighs at the bottom end of our low quality newspaper market come tomorrow.

First, we have the May Labour Market Statistics (pdf - via Labour Market statistics at the ONS).  These are always popular, since they can be farted around with to make it look like every new job in some time period or other went to a dirty foreigner.

Here's the sort of calculation the tabloids will make:

	Jan-Mar 2010	Jan-Mar 2011	Change
Total number in employment:	28,726,000	29,142,000	+416,000
Total non-UK Nationals:	2,262,000	2,501,000	+239,000

David Cameron's speech revisited

I started this post as a response to Anonymous in the comments of 'Look who's wearing the Emperor's pants', who asked for an analogy because my statistical analysis is hard to follow. That's fair enough, because it is. In fact, it's so hard to follow that creating the analogy made me realise I'd made a mistake in one of my assumptions about how Cameron's speech is trying to hoodwink with its eastern European figures.

Yes, I did give myself an ironic lolly and call myself 'Lumpy'.

Here's a clearer idea of what's wrong with the figures I looked at in Cameron's speech yesterday. I'll be starting by using barrels and marbles for the easier stuff, and then dropping the analogies for the things that are more dishonest than I'd at first realised.

Did immigrant crime really double in just THREE years?

'Never trust the Mail on crime and immigration' I said last Tuesday in response to the Mail's 'Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years' from the Mail, which was subsequently churnalised by the Telegraph and Express.

And now, thanks to hmallett in a comment on that very post, I have a bunch of links to some of the sources, which means I don't have to make a bunch of FoI requests and wait weeks for the results to find out how much shite the Mail is trying to peddle. Hurrah!

Never trust the Mail on crime and immigration

Some things just don't inspire trust.  An email promising to deposit a million dollars into your account, a designer handbag for a fiver at the market with the glue still drying on the logo, an article about immigrant crime in the Daily Mail.

These stories are usually a bit like foreign worker scare stories.  They're about as reliably accurate as a pissed-up gibbon throwing darts at a board sellotaped to a bucking bronco's arse, but they'll do for something scary.  I've explained why a few times over the years.

Apologies and foregin workers again

Howcome they only take two thirds now then?

Hello people. Light posting at the minute because I've been trying to pull together the Littlejohn post and left one of the books at my mum's a couple of weekends ago. Sorry about that.

Luckily for the time-pressed media blogger about town, a nice regular tabloid bunch of crap has splatted out of the Mail and the Express recently.

Immigration scare tactics. Get Bruce Willis!

When the big hand hits 12...well...I dunno

The 'England is the most overcrowded country in the EU' meme that I looked at in my last couple of posts is just one of many that make up one of the anti-immigration lobby's (MPs, tabloids, MigrationWatch) wider narratives.

Immigration is unusually high in the UK compared to similar countries, we're supposed to believe, and we're about to reach breaking point. We're full up! Something must be done before our population hits 70 million, dammit!

The Low Countries - traditionally highest population density in Europe?

In scare stories about how we should all be trembling under our beds because England is now the most densely populated country in the EU, it's traditional to include a sentence like this:

It has more people per square mile than the Low Countries, which has long been the most densely-populated region of the continent, MPs have been told.

Is England the most overcrowded country in Europe? Dutch figures get fishy

Look at all that land ripe for development

In my last post, I looked at the Daily Mail's most recent immigration stats and promised to look at the figures from 'This very crowded isle: England is most over-populated country in EU' in a separate post. So here I am.

Usually, when the Mail compares England's population figures to the rest of Europe it's comparing the most recent, up to date figures for England with ones for the rest of Europe that are a couple of years old (those have apparently been from the UN before). I suspected the same this time round and contacted the House of Commons Library for the current Mail figures.

Mail immigration headline changes

It's a cherrypickaaah!

Yesterday, exclarotive covered an extremely misleading headline on a story in the Mail. 'Number of immigrants living in the UK long-term SOARS by 20% as a quarter of babies are born to foreign mothers' didn't actually show that the number of immigrants living in the UK had SOARED by 20%, but that net migration - the difference between people arriving in the UK compared to how many left for a year or more - was 20% higher than last year.

A Liddle bit more digging

After digging and digging himself further into a hole earlier in the year, Rod Liddle has returned to the subject of his quickly blarted out racist blog post about black people and violent crime, claiming to have been vindicated by the Telegraph. Hurrah for him! Vindication!

Or is it?

A Home Affairs Editor who could have been refused a job

I've always liked Steven Poole's Unspeak. I'd have liked to have done something similar, but I am neither as clear a writer nor as clever a dude.

I was reminded of Unspeak when I saw James Slack's 'British jobs for migrant workers: Figures ridicule Labour's employment pledge' in yesterday's Mail. (If that headline looks familiar, it's probably because you saw the almost identical 'British jobs for foreign workers: Experts reveal 70% of new jobs taken by migrants' at the top of Slack's similar story last July).

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 sure do grow up fast!

The Mail have been trying to make us frightened of babies for three years, with the first mention of an immigrant baby boom on the Mail website coming in March 2007's 'Immigrant  baby boom puts NHS under strain'.

Last August though, with immigration levels beginning to decrease, the paper needed a new hook to hang its scare stories on, and the baby boom made the front page for the first time in the front page on the left.

Disgraceful fact-free scaremongering from Sue Reid at the Daily Mail

See the picture on the left?  Nice, isn't it?  Cutie little sick kiddie and nurse.  Warms the cockles of your heart.  Who'd look at that and not smile and think, "ahhhhh.  Innat nice?"

The answer is Sue Reid, lazy disgrace of a Daily Mail hack, who in October 2007 offered money and free accommodation in her Fulham flat to Polish people - provided they'd come to London in their Polish registered car and break traffic laws so she could take pictures for a story about how Polish people come to Britain and break the law in their Polish registered cars.  In August this year, she compared the number of jobseekers in some areas in a one month period with the number of migrants in these areas over a whole year to make it look like there were more migrants competing for work in those areas than there actually were.  Class act. 

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?

How to make readers frightened of foreigners with misleading stats

After ramping up the fearmongering about how many babies have been born to dirty foreigners, the Mail continues in its quest to bring you the shocking truth make up scary looking shit to make you frightened of foreigners with 'One out of every five killers is an immigrant'. If you encounter anyone with a funny accent, run for your life!

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):

Straight from the Mail to the BNP

A couple of things set my Crackers sense tingling this week that I wanted to follow up, but didn't have time. Luckily, Jamie Sport has taken apart the laughable Daily Mail investigation that shows there are more dirty foreigners looking for work than locals in 'Mail compares apples with oranges, comes up with bananas' at MailWatch, and MacGuffin has taken apart the scary story about there being one rule for Muslim customers at Lloyd's TSB and another for everyone else in 'Shameless Mail stirs up anti-Muslim hatred' at TabloidWatch.