Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Labour Now Officially Pro-Ignorance.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has accused the Office for National Statistics of "playing politics" with population figures.

He said he was "appalled" at the release of figures showing one in nine British residents was born abroad.

Huh?

Surely the problem with the immigration debate is that it largely takes place in the absence of sufficient factual evidence to support the assertions of either side. If even a dry statistic like this- which doesn't really tell us much in terms of the costs and benefits of immigration - is considered too appalling to reveal then you have to wonder whether more controversial topics surrounding immigration can even be researched, let alone be made public so they can be considered when it comes to setting government policy.

{via Mark Wadsworth}

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has accused the Office for National Statistics of "playing politics" with population figures'.
Probably the most blatant example of pot.kettle.black. we'll see this year.

Nulab are desperately trying to 'clarify' the 1 in 9 figure by saying it includes children born to service personnel abroad, and around 300,000 foreign undergraduate students.

However when the 'immigration is good for the economy' argument was being peddled, Nulab never attempted to differentiate between different types of foreign born workers. By counting tens of thousands of antipodean 'working holidaymakers', and similar numbers of North American, Japanese, German etc businessmen here on secondments, they were able to spew out the lie that 'immigrants' as a whole contribute to our economic success.

It is at least comforting to learn that the ONS is finally showing some backbone, and appears to be getting fed up with the abuse to which NuLab has subjected it hitherto.

Anonymous said...

What they are saying is probably true, but the 2001 census found that around 1 in 12 of the population was foreign born, and that was using the same methodology I think. The difference between 1 in 12 and 1 in 9 is obviously not down to a change in the number of foreign students or children of service people.

Sue said...

I was foreign born but my dad was in the army in the time.. so it doesn't really mean anything!

I think he's just worried it will add to the BNP membership!

Ross said...

"I think he's just worried it will add to the BNP membership!"

I think he's worried Labour will lose votes.