"Immigrants are not to blame for the housing crisis"

Check out this excellent article by Peter Apps (former Inside Housing magazine). Powerful factual arguments that is a million miles away from far right fake news. 

"As the far right march through the streets of Britain, it is worth reminding ourselves that one of their favourite arguments is a fiction

It has been a scary week in Britain with news websites filling up with images of burned cars, smashed shop windows and angry young men in hoodies in running battles with riot police.

Like most people in the country, the scenes have surprised me. Yes, I could have told you there was a bubbling anger and an increasingly vocal, increasingly scary far right making its presence felt online and off.

But I did not think we were as close as we were to real-life violence on our streets and it does not leave me feeling particularly good about where we are going to go in the coming years, especially if someone like Robert Jenrick (an increasingly expert practitioner of dog-whistle politics) gets to become leader of the opposition.

As has been the case whenever the far right has raised its ugly head out of the miserable pubs, gentlemen’s clubs, golf courses and Reddit threads where it usually lurks, housing is a place it wants to turn the conversation.... Subscribe to Peter’s Substack

Pete is trying to make his journalism pay, so if interested in finding out the truth about immigration and the housing crisis then please subscribe.  It starts from £3.50 per month. But you can read the full article here Immigrants are not to blame for the housing crisis (substack.com)

There is no real link with immigration and rising housing prices. 90% of new social tenancies go to UK citizens not recent immigrants. 81% to white families (in line with the general population).  

Immigrants are amongst the victims of the housing scandal not the cause. That lies fairly and squarely with the previous government's housing policy. 

Free immigration advice if you are a UNISON member

 Hat tip Greater London UNISON - Need at least 4 weeks membership before you can get advice

UNISON Free Immigration advice for members; Non UK EU citizens have to apply by end of June 2021 for settled status

 

Immigration advice for UNISON members

If you’re a migrant worker from a country outside the UK and need advice on immigration issues related to your work situation and right to work in the UK then get in touch.

UNISON provides free immigration telephone advice to UNISON members who have come to work in the UK from a country outside the UK. We work with the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) to provide this support.

If you have been a member of UNISON for more than four weeks and need immigration advice and information, please call UNISON Direct at 0800 0 857 857. Your contact details will be passed on to a JCWI adviser who will call you on Tuesday, between 10am and 4pm.

When calling UNISON Direct, please be ready to give your full name, contact phone numbers and your UNISON membership number.

https://www.unison.org.uk/get-help/knowledge/vulnerable-workers/migrant-workers/

Crying girl on the border

The winners of the World Press Photo 2019 contest have been announced, selected from over 78,000 photos taken by 4,738 photographers.

Warning: contains images that some may find distressing.

The winning image is by John Moore showing Honduran toddler Yanela Sanchez crying as she and her mother, Sandra Sanchez, are taken into custody by US border officials in McAllen, Texas, USA.

The photo was taken in June 2018 and is entitled Crying Girl on the Border.

Moore, a senior staff photographer for Getty Images, said: "I think this image touched many people's hearts, as it did mine, because it humanises a larger story.

"When you see Yanela's face, and she is more than two years old now, you really see the humanity and the fear of making such a long journey and crossing a border in the dead of night."

After the photo was seen all around the world, US Customs and Border Protection confirmed that Yanela and her mother had not been among the thousands who had been separated by US officials.

But public outcry over the controversial practice resulted in President Donald Trump reversing the policy on 20 June.

Has Labour betrayed the Working Class?

I am not really into so called "betrayal politics" but recently I had a disagreement with someone over the cause of the relative decline in support for Labour by some white working class voters.

East European Immigration was given as the reason.

I argued that immigration policy is important but the main reason why some white and black working class people feel that Labour is no longer their Party is that they think they have been betrayed.

There used to be a compact in this country that if you were went out to work you would get a decent job with decent wages.

At work you would be treated with respect by your employer and protected if you became unemployed or sick. You would be able to afford good quality housing to bring up your family. Now, for decades we have had a decline in real wages, privatisation, often rubbish jobs that only pay a minimum wage, reduced employment rights, zero hour insecure contracts and completely unaffordable rents and house prices.

If you lose your job or become sick you are treated with contempt and as a sponger by the state.

The right wing media and UKIP racists whip things up by blaming "Johnnie Foreigner" for all these ills but the real blame lies elsewhere.

The solution has little to do with immigration.

I missed the Jeremy Corbyn "New Economics" conference today but it is about time that Labour promised to tackle inequality, build 100,000 Council homes per year and create high skill, high value and secure jobs.

( Picture of Aneurin Bevan visiting newly built Council homes in 1949).

Cake - The banker, the tabloid reader & an immigrant

This is so, so true. There are a number of versions of this anecdote and this is one of best I have seen.

Hat tip Cleveland Watkiss via Facebook "The System In A Nut-shell.#2014".

"...And you complain that your neighbour is an immigrant?"

Your car is German.
Your vodka is Russian.
Your pizza is Italian.
Your kebab is Turkish.
Your democracy is Greek.
Your coffee is Brazilian.
Your movies are American.
Your tea is Tamil.
Your shirt is Indian.
Your oil is Saudi Arabian.
Your electronics are Chinese.
Your numbers Arabic,
Your letters Latin.
And you complain that your neighbour is an immigrant? Pull yourself together.


(hat tip the wonderful Mary Locke)

God moves in mysterious ways: Craig joins Kippers

Great post by Forest Gate blogger Martin Warne about the former leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance, Alan Craig, who has joined the far right UKIP.

As Martin points out in his 2010 General election manifesto amongst the many "bonkers" and "unpleasant" things he said about gays and Muslims Craig also pledged to:-

"Strangers into citizens
We would tackle discrimination and embrace the talents of asylum seekers, as many successful asylum applicants are highly trained and dedicated individuals. It makes no sense to leave them on the scrapheap, unable to use their professional skills to provide for themselves, their families, or contribute to the British economy.
[Asylum] applicants will be treated as if they were British citizens with full access to state support and the right to work.
We will tackle the problem of illegal immigration by an amnesty that brings irregular workers into mainstream society, paying taxes.

A time of jubilee for the world
Aid will be given in grants and not loans and not tied to poor countries opening up their markets to powerful multinationals from rich countries.
We want the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries to be cancelled in full without strings attached.

I wonder how this will go down with his new mates in UKIP down the boozer on a Saturday night?

My own family immigration story

Picture is of Labour Leader Ed Miliband, speaking today at the Airbus aircraft factory in Broughton, North East Wales.

In a major speech on immigration, Ed (the son of immigrants) made it clear that "We will never again turn our backs on people who are worried about immigration. But neither will we turn our back on the rest of the world."

He also said with regard to wages, terms and conditions  "We need to stop a race to the bottom between British citizens and workers coming here from abroad".  I think that no-one can really disagree with what Ed said but perhaps he ought to make it a little more clear that immigration isn't always a bad thing and has been part and parcel of British life for generations.

My father use to work in that factory in Broughton as an aircraft electrician. He was born and brought up in Scotland and came down to North Wales to find work.

When I was growing up in that part of North East Wales in the 1980s's the male unemployment rate was about around 33% due to the closure of local steelworks and textile mills. Being not technically minded, I had little choice to move out of North Wales to find work. For the last 26 years I have lived and worked in London.

My brother-in-law was born in the East Midlands and is an aircraft technician. He has worked as a  contractor in the same Broughton factory, off and on, over the years in-between other contracts with Airbus in France and Spain. His son is currently working in oil exploitation off the coast of South America.

While I think that we need to have honest and more open debates on immigration we also need to recognise that most of us, especially in London, are immigrants in one way or another.

Illegal immigration began in 1492

Now I don't know if this story is really true (see caption) but it made me smile (and I hope it is).

I was once told in London that I should go back to Wales and  stop stealing an English born person's job (it was intended to be "funny").

I replied only when he goes back to his German Forest.

Hat tip Facebook.

Chris Byrant MP at West Ham Immigration Debate

Yesterday evening West Ham Labour Party and our MP, Lyn Brown, hoisted a debate on Immigration with the Shadow Minister responsible, Chris Byrant MP.

This took place in the courtyard of the Old Town Hall, Stratford, Newham.

Immigration is a sensitive political subject which the Labour Party has I think on the whole, a proud record.  Yet we were clearly punished over our policy in the 2010 election by some parts of our core vote. The Party has vowed to learn from this while not forgetting our values.

Newham is probably the most diverse borough in the UK and West Ham Labour Party reflects this. So it was fitting that Chris should spend an evening listening and debating with Party members on this key subject.

Chris started by saying that during the last General Election  he was asked questions on immigration that he did not know how to answer. While he won't enter into any "dutch auction" with the likes of UKIP, he understands that there is genuine concern about immigration and that this concern has nothing to do with racism.

The UK have had massive benefits from migration and he is not going to spend all day apologising for the last Labour Government, since we did many great things such as the longest ever period of  economic growth but we made mistakes - such as not stopping bogus collages and not restricting the right to work in the UK for new EU members - and we need to admit this to voters.

Chris attacked UK companies such as Tesco who have been quite happy to sack British workers in order to employ cheaper East Europeans on insecure and temporary contracts.   They exploit all workers for profit regardless of the damage they cause to society. Chris finished by making it clear that the vast majority of British people are not racist but they just want things to be fair.

Chris then spend over an hour on a open Q&A with all members of the audience. Everyone who wanted to ask a question or make a comment did so.

My question to Chris was that as a West Ham Councillor during a recent surgery I had a family from an immigrant background come to see me about a serious housing issue. During which a serious complaint was made about all these "foreigners" who just arrive in this country and get "given" homes immediately. While I challenged their "facts" I think that the real problem is the unfair and insecure employment practices in this country that allow such inaccurate views to be given credence.

During the last Labour Government, the Corporate tax dodgers at Amazon were given government grants to build a huge new warehouse. Yet they employed no workers on decent terms and conditions, only exploited agency workers from East Europe.  In the past when we had fairer employment practices, immigration had not been quite the issue that it has now become. This exploitation of all workers is now a cancer in our society and can only be addressed by fair wages and employment for all.

Chris did a terrific job holding his own amidst a mass of questions and comments often strongly put. He answered them all I think with honesty and at times humour.  This was a great debate for us in West Ham and I hope Chris will take back something from us as well to contribute towards the National Party discourse.

Hat tip for some of the pictures in collage to various #WesthamCLP Facebook friends. Click on collage to bring up details.

How wrong public opinion can be on key social issues

Hat tip Redbrick "A fascinating paper published yesterday by the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London – The Power of Perception - reported on a survey undertaken by Ipsos MORI which ‘shows just how wrong public opinion can be on key social issues’.

1. Teenage pregnancy: on average, we think teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates: we think that 15% of girls under 16 get pregnant each year, when official figures suggest it is around 0.6%.
2. Crime: 58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.
3. Job-seekers allowance: 29% of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs £74.2bn).
4. Benefit fraud: people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100.
5. Foreign aid: 26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top 2-3 items government spends most money on, when it actually made up 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education in the UK (£51.5bn).
6. Religion: we greatly overestimate the proportion of the population who are Muslims: on average we say 24%, compared with 5% in England and Wales. And we underestimate the proportion of Christians: we estimate 34% on average, compared with the actual proportion of 59% in England and Wales.
7. Immigration and ethnicity: the public think that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figures are 13%. Even estimates that attempt to account for illegal immigration suggest a figure closer to 15%. There are similar misperceptions on ethnicity: the average estimate is that black and Asian people make up 30% of the population, when it is actually 11% (or 14% if we include mixed and other non-white ethnic groups).
8. Age: we think the population is much older than it actually is – the average estimate is that 36% of the population are 65+, when only 16% are.
9. Benefit bill: people are most likely to think that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save most money from a list provided (33% pick this option), over twice the level that select raising the pension age to 66 for both men and women or stopping child benefit when someone in the household earns £50k+. In fact, capping household benefits is estimated to save £290m, compared with £5bn for raising the pension age and £1.7bn for stopping child benefit for wealthier households.
10. Voting: we underestimate the proportion of people who voted in the last general election – our average guess is 43%, when 65% actually did.

Mathematics by Hollie McNish

This is so very, very good. Please click, look, listen and maybe learn.