Continuing the immigration debate

Mark

That last graph is extraordinarily misleading - the right and left scales are completely different. The crossing of the lines gives the impression that foreign-born workers have overtaken British-born workers, but in fact the number of foreign-born workers is substantially below the number of British-born workers. This is a classic "How to lie with statistics" technique, and it's disappointing to see you indulging in it - I'd expect better from someone who is so good at exposing other people's misleading presentation of figures.

To present the figures accurately, they should both use the same scale - which means the graph would need to be much taller, or squashed. Either way, the lines should not cross.

TrevorsDen

Your points are well made and keep needing to be made. You are providing an absolutely essential public service (pointing out Browns economic lies is another).

But on 'cunning plan', yes you are right but Labour are taking maximum advantage of circumstances.

Good point on 'carers' as well.

This is one of the most important bodies of work you will ever do. Its vastly important to the future of our country and needs some eloquent exposition.

paul holdstock

sadly, labour cannot differentiate between governance, and rule.
they never sought/obtained, the electorate's consent to allow more than a million immigrants to move here.
this will inevitably lead to the inexorable rise of the far right.
economic hardship, was the great driver of fascism in germany, italy, spain, in the 1930's.
labour seem to have condemned us to allow history to repeat itself.
however, todays surveillance technologies will allow the fascists a degree of control that previous incarnations could barely even have dreampt about.
what a wonderful legacy blair/brown and co, have left us.

MaryJ

Why is the racial slur "honkey" allowed to be published in this article? Is it becoz they is white? I for one am heartily sick of anti-white racism, even if it comes from other whites who think they are being "trendy" and "enlightened" by denigrating their own.

And why the obligatory obeisance to "cultural diversity?" The jury is still out on whether it is a good thing for society or not; it shouldn't be a factor in immigration decisions.

Hysteria

Fraser - have you plotted your last graph using the same relative scale? By inspection we have a drop from c. 17.9 to 17.8 on the left axis and an increase from 1.4 to 3 on the right axis - so should be possible to see these displayed on the same scale expressed as the change in jobs from the base date (Q1 1997)

I think it would be a pretty dramatic picture

Ken

re: unemployment figures

You may have seen this May piece in LRB by former Blair supporter John Lanchester - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n10/lanc01_.html .

One paragraph is particularly perturbing: "Six hundred thousand jobs have been created in local government in the last few years. Most of them will have to go. And then the really gigantic argument will have to be had, over the public service pensions which are paid for out of current tax receipts."

It would be useful for this outcome, if it is going to happen, to be pinned quickly and incontrovertibly on Brown, the Labour leader who set up more than half a million supporters for the sack.

Fraser Nelson

MaryJ, I was just alerting you to my position - I very enjoy living in a world city like London and plead guilty to being metropolitan, humous-slurping latte-drinker in that regard. I know most CoffeeHousers take a different view, I thought I'd make my own position clear. I must admit, I didn't think the H word was offensive but happy to remove if enough CoffeeHousers find it so.

David Vinter

It has come to my notice that agricultural work done by immigrants in the UK is very racialist. As far as I can see, only white workers are employed.Could it be that the coloured unemployed youth of our inner cities, prefer to be discriminated against rather than do the REAL WORK,that agriculture requires?

Rhoda Klapp

The graph is adequately captioned. Does it come as is from ONS, or only the data? Either way it's absurd to quibble, the caption explains it.

Fraser Nelson

Mark, calm down. What is it about immigration that makes people so intemperate? Dual axes are used to illustrate movement, as opposed to absolute numbers. To me, the graph clearly says "all net new jobs in the UK are accounted for by immigration" - which is starting enough. I genuinely think anyone reading this post is a) smart enough to read scales and b) not stupid enough to think immigrants have the majority of jobs. In case you didn't notice, the top graph deals with that - and shows the share going from 7% to 14%.

Hysteria, yes each line (should) represent 200,000 workers.

Minnie Ovens

As soon as we enter the world of graphs and statistics upon immigration I realise that a giant "con" is coming along.
Hastily, I add, not by Mr Nelson who uses both to underline points of views that he has adopted.
No, it is when the left or Government suddenly use them as an entity that duplicity is at hand.
I really have three points to make.
Firstly, if immigration goes above 0.3% per annum and this continues over a period of years ( so that the immigration population is above 2 or 3% of total) then the burden starts to outweigh the benefit in economic terms.
It also creates social diversity on a very negative scale as well as needing a significant increase in investment in infrastructure to support the population increase.
Secondly, Governments since the war had an ability to monitor the flow of immigrants to suit the British economy and, at the same time to continue ensuring that the ethnic population received the education and opportunities of the economy, whether increasing or decreasing (Look at Norway or Switzerland).
In this, both Conservative and Labour governments have failed badly. They have been cowardly in taking the measures to keep demographics, and therefore immigration, in balance. They have preferred short term, and superficial solutions again and again.
Thirdly, it is obvious that Great Britain can only take a certain amount of population if it wishes to keep a quality of life to which it has become accustomed.
From 1066 until 1948 the largest influx was that of the Irish during the 19th Century when they became 4% of the population for a while ( but this was British/Irish coming to the main island)
Most of the large "waves" of population have been rarely more than 1% of the population.
I, again, quote from David Conway's excellent document "A nation of immigrants" as to how the present government has trampled upon this nation with blundering boots:"
Even the 50,000 Huguenots from France only ever amounted to a hundredth of Britain's total population. And they arrived over a period of 50 years.
Immigration today adds 1 per cent to Britain's population every two years, or more than 5 per cent every decade. Official statistics which reveal that, in 2004 and 2005, net migration into Britain was running at around 300,000 people every year. And that number does not include the tens of thousands who arrive illegally, or who claim asylum, have their asylum claims rejected, but who are never deported."
Not only has Labour, with a lot of help from all of Westminster, completely upset a status quo but they have placed a huge burden on the English people and, as Mt Fraser has pointed out, they are so incompetent and stupid that they believe this has little effect of the country!
Unchecked immigration, a huge ethnic unemployed youth, a faltering economy due not only to world wide recession but also due to a maasive explosion of civil servants and politicians all attempting to saw off the head of the Golden Goose, the private sector, to grab more and more gold.
And so we spiral downwards, rather like the war footage of downed planes until the flash and burn in a field somewhere in Britain.
If only the politicians had not procrastinated and if only they had had some backbone.
Lastly, my apologies for this. It has been hastily writen as usual and has non sequiters hanging about but there you are.

Hysteria

so you can easily dislpay both on the left scale expressed as a change from the base - this would tackle the issue raised by Mark - I think!

logdon

It's not all about statistics though, is it?

Or Digby Jones' unquenchable thirst for cheap labour.

Or Labours insatiable drive for social and national dilution.

It's about the dismantling of a nation.

If proud nationalistic Iraqis and Afghanis can tell us we have no right to be there, I can quite understand their position.

We are told that we are destroying their cultures and religion with a clodhopping western footprint. The Cola and McDonaldising of ancient and established ways of life.

Now I hate to be mean spirited here but isn't this precisely what is going on in reverse in our green and pleasant land?

Do we have the same cultural rights here in Blighty as an Iraqi or Afghan in their homelands?

And has anyone noticed how crowded it's become in the last ten years?

Before global warming, the alarmist scare was overpopulation. Obviously that's now been superceded by Al Gore's desire to reduce us all to quivering jelly and boost his bank account.

Immigration is probably the biggest nation shaper which will affect all.

We need honesty, not bullshit.

Otherwise make way for Nick Griffin as PM.

Fox in a box

Come on Mark. It's hardly difficult to decipher, anyone with a half a brain can see what the graph says, it's quite clearly labelled.

John Page

it means they are more likely to die or reach pension age than work again.

This can't be right either, since anyone is 100% likely to die or reach pension age!

Is the DWP just saying that there's a more than 50% chance (= "it's likely") that they won't work again before they die or reach pension age?

Do they try to put a % on it? Is there a link?

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

"What is it about immigration that makes people so intemperate?"

Well, you're the bloke with the numbers Fraser. Look at them and tell yourself it's good what's happening. A poor trade off for humous and your slurp of latte.

To those of us who put store in staying put and in the benefits of carrying on the traditions and way of life we have inherited, it's perhaps not unduly peevish to balk at the realisation that that way of life is being systematically displaced by an influx of people who at best have no shared interests, and at worst have shown and increasingly show themselves to be inimical to us and what we are.

Or was your question just a rhetorical piss-take?

TrevorsDen

The scales are obvious but it is the scales from the likes of Mark's eyes which need to fall.

The points Minni makes are devastating. We are in the middle of the biggest wave of immigration in our history. And we are making no attempts to monitor or manage it.

The consequences are votes for the BNP and the breaking down of our society. A shocking legacy and indictment from Labour. One of many from what will go down as the worst government in our history.

TrevorsDen

Just listening to a military analyst on Newsnight saying that we need to create jobs for Afghans and get them out of poverty and into a working environment.

Huh. Looking at your graphs we cannot even get our own people off benefits and into work. Gawd help the Afghans if Brown wants to build their country in his image.

Wily Trout

And the effect on the countries losing the workforce that comes to Britain can't be good, even if they some some of the money home. We are draining surrounding countries of their enterprising and industrious workers but also the people who make up their communities: surely that must be damaging.

David Bouvier

As hysteria points out, the graph would be BETTER if you aligned the data series by either (a) showing change from a base, or (b) stacking the lines together, either of which shows how a total increase appears to come from a decline in UK born employees more than compensated for by an increase in foreign born.

Split scales are inappropriate to the message you are trying to make, and require to viewer to do mental arithmetic to mentally compose the better chart, to check what happens when the scales are consistent.

I know it is not your graph, but you might as well submit a post full of bad grammar and typos. It is innumerate, just as the badly written post would be illiterate.

Mark M

Just to carry on what Fraser says to Mark. You have to take the graph and the text together. Also how is he misleading you when he explains his position in the text and then points you to the graph to illustrate the numbers.

The two lines are on the same scale, just the axis are offset to account for the different starting points. The change in the two is the important point.

The fact is that for whatever reason, there are fewer UK born people working in the private sector than in 1997, whereas there are nearly 1.6m more foreign born workers. The graph shows that and is not in anyway misleading.

Mark M

Apologies for the double post, but it is interesting that since the start of 2008 there are nearly 600,000 fewer UK-born workers in the private sector yet the foreign born workers are practically unaffected.

Why should that be the case?

Verity

"...as Mt Fraser has pointed out, they are so incompetent and stupid that they believe this has little effect of the country!"

No, Minnie Ovens, they are not incompetent and stupid. Far from it. They are vicious, destructive, feral and malign.

They know exactly what they are doing. It didn't happen by mistake or through slapdash incompetence. Far from it.