Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019 Page 19
QQQ
ITTLEJOHN
[email protected]AS IT’S a Bank Holiday weekend, I’ve
no intention of banging on at length
about Brexit. I’d just be wary of hailing
Merkel’s and Macron’s alleged
‘concession’ over the Irish backstop as
some kind of great leap forward.
The backstop is what Alfred Hitchcock
called ‘The MacGuffin’ — an essentially
irrelevant device to keep everyone in
suspense. It was dreamt up purely todivert attention from the real plot —
stopping Brexit in its tracks.
Getting rid of the backstop doesn’t make the
rest of Mother Theresa’s dismal, defeatist
Withdrawal Agreement any more palatable.
The EU are not our ‘partners’, they are our
rivals and they remain determined to screw
us into the ground.
No deal is still better than what else is on
offer, backstop or no backstop.T
HeRe are lies, damned lies
and statistics. And then
there are the official
immigration figures.
Depending on who you believe,
migration to Britain is falling dramatically. Or,
alternatively, it’s still increasing at
unsustainable levels.
According to the Office for National Statis-
tics (ONS), a net 59,000 people moved here
from europe last year. That’s the lowest
number since before the referendum.
But immigration from elsewhere swelled the
population by 226,000. Confused? you’re
supposed to be.
At the same time, it was revealed that the
influx from eastern europe in the eight years
leading up to the 2016 Leave vote was under-
counted by 300,000. So when we were told
that net immigration had ‘peaked’ at 343,000
in June 2015, it wasn’t true. The actual figure
was much higher.
How much higher? your guess is as good as
mine. The authorities haven’t got a clue.
It might have been 300,000, as they claimed
yesterday. It might have been three million. As
Groucho Marx almost said: ‘Who do you
believe — the Government or your lyin’ eyes?’
Walk the streets of any of our large cities and
the changing demographics and crowded
pavements, roads, buses and trains areLies, damn lies — and
migration statistics
blindingly obvious.
So is the critical shortage and
high cost of housing, caused in
large part by the demands of our
burgeoning immigrant popula-
tion. The official figures are about
as kosher as those illegal ‘find
the lady’ card games run by
Romanian crooks in London.
When it comes to sleight of
hand, Romanian gangsters have
nothing to teach those responsi-
ble for recording the number of
immigrants settling in Britain.
The simple fact is that for more
than two decades, ever since
Labour’s 1997 landslide, the
Government had no interest
in counting them all in — let alone
counting them out again.
The main method of measuring
immigration was a slapdash
system of asking a small sample of
foreign nationals arriving at ports
and airports whether they
intended to stay in Britain, and
for how long.A
ND, er, that was it.
Nobody bothered
checking whether any of
these people actually
left. The official immigration
figures are at best guesswork and,
at worst, downright lies.
yesterday, the ONS reluctantly
put its hands up to undercounting
by 300,000 from 2008 onwards. But
it conveniently overlooked the
fact that the problem dates back
another four years to 2004, when
Tony Blair — unlike other eU
leaders — threw open our doors to
unlimited immigration from
the new eU ‘accession’ states in
eastern europe.
None of this is in any way to
criticise those who sought to make
a new life in this country and, in
the case of hard-working Polesand others, have made a huge
contribution. What this is about is
the deliberate dishonesty of
politicians and civil servants
entrusted with telling us the truth
about immigration.
For instance, although the ONS
claimed yesterday a net 59,000 eU
citizens settled here last year,
something called the Annual
Population Survey — based on a
much larger sample — reported
that the actual increase was almost
double that, around 100,000.
Sounds nearer the mark. But,
frankly, who knows?
There’s nothing new in any of
this. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks
on America in 2001, the thenCommissioner of the Met Police
told me there were probably
250,000 people living in London
who the authorities knew
absolutely nothing about.
His guesstimate was based on
the increasing number of foreign
nationals being arrested by
Scotland yard on everything from
driving without a licence, to
aggressive begging and suspected
terrorist offences.
And that was 18 years ago.
Goodness knows how many
have slipped under the radar
since then.
No doubt if I’d put that figure to
ministers, they’d have dismissed
it as ‘anecdotal’ and, therefore,unreliable. But I’ve always trusted
anecdotal over official statistics.
For instance, the best measure
of the real scale of immigration
came in an article for the Mail on
Sunday written three years
ago by an anonymous asylum
tribunal judge.
His (I’m assuming it was a he)
findings were based on evidence
from the sewage industry.
The judge wrote: ‘The
discrepancy between the official
figures and what is actually going
down the pipes shows there are
more than a million more people
in London than are legally
registered, and another half a
million or more outside thecapital.’ The answer, my friend,
was flowing round the U-bend.
I can remember writing at
the time that the Government
should employ a team of frogmen,
trained in Bog Snorkelling, to
flush out illegals.
either that, or sub-contract the
immigration count to Dyno-Rod.
This may be considered
somewhat flippant. But, as I am
constantly reminded, it’s almost
impossible to parody anything
these days.
Around the same time, I wrote a
spoof Shipping Forecast, with
immigrants crossing the Channel
on a variety of inflatables — from
lilos to Del Boy-style sex dolls.
I should have known better.J
UST this week a man is
believed to have drowned
off the coast of Dunkirk
attempting to reach
england using a lifebelt fashioned
from plastic bottles.
The Tories promised to cut net
migration to the tens of thou-
sands. That was quietly ignored
when ministers realised it wasn’t
achievable while we were still
members of the eU and legally
committed to free movement.
They did say they’d restrict
immigration from outside europe,
but that wasn’t true either.
Now Conservative ministers say
they plan to introduce tough new,
post-Brexit border controls.
No doubt, if this Government
survives, there will be official
statistics to prove that, as a
result of the new regime,
immigration has fallen to its
lowest level ever.
Me? I’ll go on believing my
lyin’ eyes.PRUE LEITH has been drafted in
by Boris to overhaul the
catering in NHS hospitals. It’s
not the first time she’s been
asked to improve the food in a
failing nationalised institution.
Prue was called in 40-odd
years ago to revamp the limp
cheese sandwiches in British
Rail buffet cars.
I seem to remember a press
conference she gave alongside
the then public face of BR, the
disc jockey and part-time
hospital orderly Jimmy
Savile. Perhaps he could have
helped Prue fix it, if he wasn’t
still dead.
Anyway, good luck to the
Great Lady as she takes on the
boiled greens and rice
pudding culture in our
hospitals and attempts to
bring in a bit of Bake Off
pizzazz. She’ll have to mind her
language, though. Soggy
bottom has an entirely
different meaning in the NHS.SOMEONE called
Jameela Jamil has been
hogging the headlines after
claiming that A-list climate
change hypocrite Meghan
Markle is only being
criticised for using private
planes because she is black.
Look, I know I should pay
more attention, but who is
Jameela Jamil — and why is
anyone taking any notice of
her? Mind you, I’d never
heard of Meghan Markle,
either, until she married
Prince Harry.THE latest piece of climate
change lunacy from MPs is
that we get rid of all cars by
2050, even those powered by
electricity. It’s just another
example of a ridiculous
hair-shirt gesture designed to
appease the deranged
ecomentalist lobby. What’s
frightening is the way in which
so many otherwise sensible
people seem to have bought
into the ‘green’ racket, after
being bombarded daily withever-more hysterical climate
change propaganda. A made-
up survey this week claimed
that 85 per cent of the British
people now ‘fear’ the terrible
consequences of global
warming. No, they don’t.
But even if this survey is half-
true, it only goes to prove the
wisdom of G.K. Chesterton’s
observation: ‘When people
stop believing in God, they
don’t believe in nothing,
they believe in anything.’Dial M for Merkel