The Guardian prints a long op-ed piece by Tanya Gold this morning deploring John Inverdale's description of Ladies Singles winner Marion Bartoli as "not a looker". Inverdale, she wrote, should be sacked.
Sexism in the media is rife, and as Ms Gold was glancing through the papers over her muesli it must have infuriated her to read the following description of former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins - "Pearls, highlights, infinitely loathable face - basically one standard measure of privately schooled posh blonde".
And where was this ad hominem attack printed? G2, page 3.
Monday 8 July 2013
Thursday 4 July 2013
Immigration and conservative bias
The BBC is flagellating itself again over immigration. A BBC Trust report, based on research by Cardiff University, concedes that for a long time the Corporation failed to reflect fairly the views of immigration sceptics. You have to give it credit for trying to find out whether this was true, although I guess that, being paid by all of us to do its job, the BBC has an obligation other broadcasters don't have to try and represent a fair range of views.
But it's interesting to reflect on the words the Trust uses and the evidence put before it to see what they say about the BBC generally, its recruitment policies and the way it views the world.
The Trust thinks the BBC got it wrong because the agenda of debate was "too driven by politicians". The report's author, Stuart Prebble, said that the BBC had too closely followed the Westminster agenda and for many years mainstream politicians had been reluctant to discuss the issue.
I wonder whether that's true. As far as I remember the Tories, from backbench level downwards, have always been opposed to immigration (often for racist as well as utilitarian reasons). But they were simply not given airtime to express their views. No doubt when younger I would have been quite pleased about that.
The BBC did not force governments to be complacent about immigration, but given that it is the window through which most British people view the world, its handling of the issue clearly has some bearing on the climate of debate out of which policy grows. It can't wash its hands of all responsibility.
Former director of news Helen Boaden told the Trust that when she came into the job in 2004 she was aware of a "deep liberal bias" in the way the BBC approached the topic. As I've written elsewhere on this blog, if you mostly recruit from middle-class metrocentric Humanities graduates, you are going to get a liberal bias. It's not complicated.
But I think liberal bias is an expression which tries to thwart meaning just as much as it tries to communicate it. Essentially it is trying to foster the impression of a cultural bias whilst stifling the suggestion that there might rather be a political one. But this is to minimise the extent to which culture fosters politics, and you can see how this works by asking what the reverse of a liberal bias might be. A conservative bias, you might think.
The BBC is very largely staffed by social liberals. "Thank goodness!", you may say. But now go on and try to justify the licence fee.
A former Today programme reporter who gave evidence to the BBC Trust said the Corporation "was damaged by a "fundamental niceness" and reluctance to give offence that stopped it covering a subject such as immigration properly".
I'm not sure this will do. As a former member of the bien pensant metropolitan Left, I would say that it was characterised by a fundamental niceness only for the causes it favours. It exhibits a fundamental contempt for the causes it abhors, for example the views of the provincial Right. And in any case, let's not forget that being nice about immigration meant being horrid to the people who were opposed to it. Whoever the editors and opinion formers were who kept debate about immigration off the air, they chose to whom they wanted to be nice, and their choice is revealing.
As ever in these circumstances, the Trust was keen to stress that it's all OK at the Corporation nowadays. A spokesman said, "We agree it is always vital to guard against unconscious bias or "group think" and will continue do so and we've committed to a number of actions to improve our coverage even further". You would hope this was so. But I've included here some extracts from another BBC Trust report, "From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel".
"Stephen Whittle, former Controller Editorial Policy, pointed to what he called ‘the lack of intellectual curiosity’ in the BBC. ‘It’s monochrome in its thinking.’ He said it wasn’t diverse – in terms not just of colour, religion and culture, but of radical ideas about society. ‘It’s actually about not asking yourself hard enough questions – not actively getting out beyond the comfortable circle in the office in W1 or W12 into where the intellectual debate is happening.’
Justin Webb, the BBC’s Washington correspondent, said the BBC and other broadcasters failed to ask serious questions about why the USA is ‘as successful as it is, why the system it invented works. And, in the tone of what we say about America, we have a tendency to scorn and deride. We don’t give America any kind of moral weight in our broadcasts.’ When Webb was asked about ‘a casual anti-Americanism’, he said he consciously tried to redress it.
Andrew Marr, former Political Editor, said that the BBC is ‘a publiclyfunded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people’ compared with the population at large.’ All this, he said, ‘creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC’.
Michael Buerk said he believed the problem lay with an insufficiently diverse employment policy. ‘Most of the people working for the BBC are middleclass, well-educated, young metropolitan people.’ He said that, although the BBC had made great efforts to widen ethnic and gender diversity, ‘the actual intake of those people has narrowed quite appreciably in terms of age, social category, and education’.
Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, thought that ‘the BBC has in the past been too closed to a wide range of views and we’ve had too narrow an agenda. And I have some sympathies with what Janet Daley says generally about a liberal/pinko agenda at times.’ Mosey, in his time as Head of Television News, had an . . . experience, in the case of a film about census returns in parts of east London, showing that ethnic communities had become the majority. The film included interviews with council officials, members of the Asian community, and one white resident – who pronounced himself happy with his neighbourhood. Questioned as to whether this voxpop was really representative of the white community, the reporter replied with pride: ‘Oh no, we had to work really hard to find him!
When (Jeff Randall) was there, this was not up for grabs. Multiculturalism was ‘a good thing’. The BBC supported it. Don’t take my word for it because, when I complained to the BBC about our coverage of asylum-seekers, this is what I got back from a very senior BBC news executive: ‘Jeff, the BBC internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it, and it promotes diversity. Let’s face up to that.’ Now, does that sound like impartiality to you?"
It's worth asking in the light of the above whether there might be a "deep liberal bias" towards any other issues as well as immigration.
No doubt when From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel came out, the BBC Trust was assuring us that all was well too. The report dates from 2007.
But it's interesting to reflect on the words the Trust uses and the evidence put before it to see what they say about the BBC generally, its recruitment policies and the way it views the world.
The Trust thinks the BBC got it wrong because the agenda of debate was "too driven by politicians". The report's author, Stuart Prebble, said that the BBC had too closely followed the Westminster agenda and for many years mainstream politicians had been reluctant to discuss the issue.
I wonder whether that's true. As far as I remember the Tories, from backbench level downwards, have always been opposed to immigration (often for racist as well as utilitarian reasons). But they were simply not given airtime to express their views. No doubt when younger I would have been quite pleased about that.
The BBC did not force governments to be complacent about immigration, but given that it is the window through which most British people view the world, its handling of the issue clearly has some bearing on the climate of debate out of which policy grows. It can't wash its hands of all responsibility.
Former director of news Helen Boaden told the Trust that when she came into the job in 2004 she was aware of a "deep liberal bias" in the way the BBC approached the topic. As I've written elsewhere on this blog, if you mostly recruit from middle-class metrocentric Humanities graduates, you are going to get a liberal bias. It's not complicated.
But I think liberal bias is an expression which tries to thwart meaning just as much as it tries to communicate it. Essentially it is trying to foster the impression of a cultural bias whilst stifling the suggestion that there might rather be a political one. But this is to minimise the extent to which culture fosters politics, and you can see how this works by asking what the reverse of a liberal bias might be. A conservative bias, you might think.
The BBC is very largely staffed by social liberals. "Thank goodness!", you may say. But now go on and try to justify the licence fee.
A former Today programme reporter who gave evidence to the BBC Trust said the Corporation "was damaged by a "fundamental niceness" and reluctance to give offence that stopped it covering a subject such as immigration properly".
I'm not sure this will do. As a former member of the bien pensant metropolitan Left, I would say that it was characterised by a fundamental niceness only for the causes it favours. It exhibits a fundamental contempt for the causes it abhors, for example the views of the provincial Right. And in any case, let's not forget that being nice about immigration meant being horrid to the people who were opposed to it. Whoever the editors and opinion formers were who kept debate about immigration off the air, they chose to whom they wanted to be nice, and their choice is revealing.
As ever in these circumstances, the Trust was keen to stress that it's all OK at the Corporation nowadays. A spokesman said, "We agree it is always vital to guard against unconscious bias or "group think" and will continue do so and we've committed to a number of actions to improve our coverage even further". You would hope this was so. But I've included here some extracts from another BBC Trust report, "From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel".
"Stephen Whittle, former Controller Editorial Policy, pointed to what he called ‘the lack of intellectual curiosity’ in the BBC. ‘It’s monochrome in its thinking.’ He said it wasn’t diverse – in terms not just of colour, religion and culture, but of radical ideas about society. ‘It’s actually about not asking yourself hard enough questions – not actively getting out beyond the comfortable circle in the office in W1 or W12 into where the intellectual debate is happening.’
Justin Webb, the BBC’s Washington correspondent, said the BBC and other broadcasters failed to ask serious questions about why the USA is ‘as successful as it is, why the system it invented works. And, in the tone of what we say about America, we have a tendency to scorn and deride. We don’t give America any kind of moral weight in our broadcasts.’ When Webb was asked about ‘a casual anti-Americanism’, he said he consciously tried to redress it.
Andrew Marr, former Political Editor, said that the BBC is ‘a publiclyfunded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people’ compared with the population at large.’ All this, he said, ‘creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC’.
Michael Buerk said he believed the problem lay with an insufficiently diverse employment policy. ‘Most of the people working for the BBC are middleclass, well-educated, young metropolitan people.’ He said that, although the BBC had made great efforts to widen ethnic and gender diversity, ‘the actual intake of those people has narrowed quite appreciably in terms of age, social category, and education’.
Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, thought that ‘the BBC has in the past been too closed to a wide range of views and we’ve had too narrow an agenda. And I have some sympathies with what Janet Daley says generally about a liberal/pinko agenda at times.’ Mosey, in his time as Head of Television News, had an . . . experience, in the case of a film about census returns in parts of east London, showing that ethnic communities had become the majority. The film included interviews with council officials, members of the Asian community, and one white resident – who pronounced himself happy with his neighbourhood. Questioned as to whether this voxpop was really representative of the white community, the reporter replied with pride: ‘Oh no, we had to work really hard to find him!
When (Jeff Randall) was there, this was not up for grabs. Multiculturalism was ‘a good thing’. The BBC supported it. Don’t take my word for it because, when I complained to the BBC about our coverage of asylum-seekers, this is what I got back from a very senior BBC news executive: ‘Jeff, the BBC internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it, and it promotes diversity. Let’s face up to that.’ Now, does that sound like impartiality to you?"
It's worth asking in the light of the above whether there might be a "deep liberal bias" towards any other issues as well as immigration.
No doubt when From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel came out, the BBC Trust was assuring us that all was well too. The report dates from 2007.
Wednesday 3 July 2013
Edward Snowden, Barack Obama and Guantanamo Bay
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 I watched the inauguration with my wife and kids. Although Obama was evidently not the Messiah and this wasn't the second coming, it was clearly momentous that the USA should elect a black man.
It struck me then that it wouldn't be a bad idea for America's underclass to grasp that Obama was just as likely to make a mediocre president as any half-witted white Texan, in just the same way as it probably did the women's movement a world of good to discover that Mrs Thatcher turned out to be a power-mad harridan rather than a touchy-feely conciliator. Part of a process of maturing.
And so it has proved. Obama doesn't seem from this distance to have been an absolutely terrible president, at least not compared with whatever Tea Party sponsored lunatic the Republicans might have been able to come up with, and he has of course been hamstrung by having lost control of Congress half way through his first term. But his main skill is as an orator. He probably doesn't write his own speeches, but boy can he deliver. He is a man of enormous charisma and gravitas, who doesn't look half so self-assured when asked to answer a question to which someone else hasn't previously written down the answer.
And then there's this funny business with Edward Snowden. It's as well to be clear about this. I don't think we can criticise the FBI for monitoring British emails. It's called spying. Everybody does it. I hope GCHQ is doing its damnedest to monitor what's going on in the US. The really serious thing is that the FBI appears to be snooping on its own citizens as well. That's where Snowden comes in, and why what he's saying is important. In this country the police and security services can only monitor what we're doing if they persuade a judge to give them permission. At least that's the theory. I imagine it's the same in the States. If the FBI is snooping on its own citizens without permission, as Snowden alleges, some serious rules have been broken, not least in the US constitution.
What is Obama's response to this? Answer, to try and press for Snowden's extradition so he can face trial.
This is not the Obama the liberal half of the US population thought they were electing. It is not the Obama who promised before 2008 that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, for example.
No, it is the Obama who five years on, allows Guantanamo to remain open, its occupants outlaws in the true sense of the word. They are after all beyond the reach of any law - US, Cuban or otherwise - which might be used to assist or condemn them.
It struck me then that it wouldn't be a bad idea for America's underclass to grasp that Obama was just as likely to make a mediocre president as any half-witted white Texan, in just the same way as it probably did the women's movement a world of good to discover that Mrs Thatcher turned out to be a power-mad harridan rather than a touchy-feely conciliator. Part of a process of maturing.
And so it has proved. Obama doesn't seem from this distance to have been an absolutely terrible president, at least not compared with whatever Tea Party sponsored lunatic the Republicans might have been able to come up with, and he has of course been hamstrung by having lost control of Congress half way through his first term. But his main skill is as an orator. He probably doesn't write his own speeches, but boy can he deliver. He is a man of enormous charisma and gravitas, who doesn't look half so self-assured when asked to answer a question to which someone else hasn't previously written down the answer.
And then there's this funny business with Edward Snowden. It's as well to be clear about this. I don't think we can criticise the FBI for monitoring British emails. It's called spying. Everybody does it. I hope GCHQ is doing its damnedest to monitor what's going on in the US. The really serious thing is that the FBI appears to be snooping on its own citizens as well. That's where Snowden comes in, and why what he's saying is important. In this country the police and security services can only monitor what we're doing if they persuade a judge to give them permission. At least that's the theory. I imagine it's the same in the States. If the FBI is snooping on its own citizens without permission, as Snowden alleges, some serious rules have been broken, not least in the US constitution.
What is Obama's response to this? Answer, to try and press for Snowden's extradition so he can face trial.
This is not the Obama the liberal half of the US population thought they were electing. It is not the Obama who promised before 2008 that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, for example.
No, it is the Obama who five years on, allows Guantanamo to remain open, its occupants outlaws in the true sense of the word. They are after all beyond the reach of any law - US, Cuban or otherwise - which might be used to assist or condemn them.
Stephanie Flanders and the wrong sort of growth
At the end of May I wrote the following -
"I've been reflecting on how the news that the British economy grew by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year will be received.
Here's a prediction. The people who criticised George Osborne for failing to get any growth won't shut up. Neither will the people who said there would never be any growth with his policies. They will just start saying something else.
Yes, the Chancellor will have succeeded in stimulating growth, but of the wrong sort. To misquote the Starship Enterprise's surgeon, Bones McCoy, it's growth Jim, but not as we know it."
It's been a wait, but at last on Radio 4's PM programme yesterday a pundit, responding to another positive set of economic figures, said, "The economy's growing, but it's the wrong sort of growth".
The pundit? Step forward Stephanie Flanders.
In case you were wondering, she's the BBC's economics correspondent. Who was at Oxford with (and dated both) Ed Balls and Ed Miliband.
PS A week later here is the Torygraph's Jeremy Warner jumping on the bandwagon - "Unbalanced and unsustainable - this is the wrong kind of growth", runs the headline.
"I've been reflecting on how the news that the British economy grew by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year will be received.
Here's a prediction. The people who criticised George Osborne for failing to get any growth won't shut up. Neither will the people who said there would never be any growth with his policies. They will just start saying something else.
Yes, the Chancellor will have succeeded in stimulating growth, but of the wrong sort. To misquote the Starship Enterprise's surgeon, Bones McCoy, it's growth Jim, but not as we know it."
It's been a wait, but at last on Radio 4's PM programme yesterday a pundit, responding to another positive set of economic figures, said, "The economy's growing, but it's the wrong sort of growth".
The pundit? Step forward Stephanie Flanders.
In case you were wondering, she's the BBC's economics correspondent. Who was at Oxford with (and dated both) Ed Balls and Ed Miliband.
PS A week later here is the Torygraph's Jeremy Warner jumping on the bandwagon - "Unbalanced and unsustainable - this is the wrong kind of growth", runs the headline.
Thursday 27 June 2013
So farewell then Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard, the Australian PM, has been supplanted by arch rival Kevin Rudd, after months of disparagement of her gender, her failure to produce children, her sexual orientation and choice of paramour.
Amazingly, it turns out that Australia is a misogynistic society unprepared for the idea of women taking a prominent role in political life. Who knew?
Amazingly, it turns out that Australia is a misogynistic society unprepared for the idea of women taking a prominent role in political life. Who knew?
George Osborne the mad axeman
Mixed reviews in the press this morning for George Osborne's spending review. The Chancellor is attacked from the right by the Torygraph, which points out that a £11.5 billion cut is only 1.5% of a £750 billion spend, that public spending has continued to rise on his watch and that it remains marooned at on or about 44% of GDP. On the other hand the Guardian is against it too. "Osborne takes the axe to public sector jobs", and "Osborne the axeman" run the headlines.
Delve deeper and some interesting faultlines appear. Dan Hodges, the Torygraph's resident Blairite columnist, thinks Osborne has nailed Ed Balls. "The key part of the debate came in the instant just before George Osborne rose to deliver his reply. . . He couldn't wait to spring back to his feet. . . Despite all the attacks on him and the Prime Minister, why was Ed Balls not prepared to say what he wanted to say, namely that despite borrowing spiralling out of control, Labour wanted to borrow more?"
Hodges thinks that Osborne has manoevered Balls into a corner, where Balls has to choose between accepting Tory spending plans or admit that Labour will spend more and borrow more.
This echoes something I've thought for a year or so now - that it's reasonable to criticise Osborne for lack of growth in the economy, or for borrowing too much, but not both. After all, if Osborne had borrowed less there would have been even less growth.
"Labour's "the government is borrowing too much, we'd borrow more" line means the deficit denial tag is now hung round their neck for good", writes Hodges. "The Chancellor believes the political and economic cycles are slowly moving into alignment. And he also believes there isn't anything Ed Balls or Ed Miliband can do about it".
Boy must he loathe the Brownites.
Amidst the acres of critical coverage in the Graun, the leader column has this gem tucked in right at the end. "The picture that emerged from yesterday's spending review was of a Britain in 2016 that resembles a joyless version of Britain in 2006". Well yes. But Britain in 2006 was a woozy paradise fuelled by economic narcotics. What do they expect it to look like when someone attempts to take the debt syringe away?
Martin Kettle's column is all about the politics. As ever with Kettle - who does at least seem to me to have grasped the seriousness of Britain's economic situation - the real fun is to be had with the comments below. "I've said many times before", writes one cheerful poster with only tenuous links to the reality-based community, "just f--- off to the Daily Mail with your Tory cheerleading".
Osborne's "punitive action will have next to no impact on the deficit", writes Jonathan Freedland. "It's all about the politics". What would he prefer? That Osborne put in place some real cuts which would have an impact?
Over in the Torygraph Peter Oborne is in no doubt about the Chancellor's faults. Doing anything about the national economic emergency "means making the kind of difficult decisions that would throw the Coalition into disarray. . . Everybody knows what needs to be done. But nobody dares to do it. . . if growth does not return, we will soon need a chancellor with the will and the guts to make the big cuts in the major spending departments".
A friend reports a visit to the Courts the other day. Tea could not be provided for the jury after 3 p.m. because of budget cuts. A new Sheriff was being sworn in and everything stopped for the occasion. But although the various dignitaries got coffee, there were no biscuits. Budget cuts. The Department of Justice is going to have a budget cut of 10% in 2015-16 (a bigger cut than the Department of Culture, Media and Sport). It won't be long surely before there is no tea or coffee either.
Meanwhile foreign aid continues to countries like Pakistan, which has a top rate of tax lower than the UK's. And a nuclear weapons programme.
Delve deeper and some interesting faultlines appear. Dan Hodges, the Torygraph's resident Blairite columnist, thinks Osborne has nailed Ed Balls. "The key part of the debate came in the instant just before George Osborne rose to deliver his reply. . . He couldn't wait to spring back to his feet. . . Despite all the attacks on him and the Prime Minister, why was Ed Balls not prepared to say what he wanted to say, namely that despite borrowing spiralling out of control, Labour wanted to borrow more?"
Hodges thinks that Osborne has manoevered Balls into a corner, where Balls has to choose between accepting Tory spending plans or admit that Labour will spend more and borrow more.
This echoes something I've thought for a year or so now - that it's reasonable to criticise Osborne for lack of growth in the economy, or for borrowing too much, but not both. After all, if Osborne had borrowed less there would have been even less growth.
"Labour's "the government is borrowing too much, we'd borrow more" line means the deficit denial tag is now hung round their neck for good", writes Hodges. "The Chancellor believes the political and economic cycles are slowly moving into alignment. And he also believes there isn't anything Ed Balls or Ed Miliband can do about it".
Boy must he loathe the Brownites.
Amidst the acres of critical coverage in the Graun, the leader column has this gem tucked in right at the end. "The picture that emerged from yesterday's spending review was of a Britain in 2016 that resembles a joyless version of Britain in 2006". Well yes. But Britain in 2006 was a woozy paradise fuelled by economic narcotics. What do they expect it to look like when someone attempts to take the debt syringe away?
Martin Kettle's column is all about the politics. As ever with Kettle - who does at least seem to me to have grasped the seriousness of Britain's economic situation - the real fun is to be had with the comments below. "I've said many times before", writes one cheerful poster with only tenuous links to the reality-based community, "just f--- off to the Daily Mail with your Tory cheerleading".
Osborne's "punitive action will have next to no impact on the deficit", writes Jonathan Freedland. "It's all about the politics". What would he prefer? That Osborne put in place some real cuts which would have an impact?
Over in the Torygraph Peter Oborne is in no doubt about the Chancellor's faults. Doing anything about the national economic emergency "means making the kind of difficult decisions that would throw the Coalition into disarray. . . Everybody knows what needs to be done. But nobody dares to do it. . . if growth does not return, we will soon need a chancellor with the will and the guts to make the big cuts in the major spending departments".
A friend reports a visit to the Courts the other day. Tea could not be provided for the jury after 3 p.m. because of budget cuts. A new Sheriff was being sworn in and everything stopped for the occasion. But although the various dignitaries got coffee, there were no biscuits. Budget cuts. The Department of Justice is going to have a budget cut of 10% in 2015-16 (a bigger cut than the Department of Culture, Media and Sport). It won't be long surely before there is no tea or coffee either.
Meanwhile foreign aid continues to countries like Pakistan, which has a top rate of tax lower than the UK's. And a nuclear weapons programme.
Tuesday 25 June 2013
The OECD's hard working migrants
The OECD reported last week that that after the financial crisis a greater percentage of immigrants were in work than native Britons. This is not terribly surprising, because the Government's own figures show that most new jobs created in the Blair / Brown years went to people born overseas. In London the figure is about 80%.
It's easy to work out the economic impact of immigration in broad terms. Immigrants increase the pool of available labour and therefore bear down on its cost (that's why the CBI is so keen on it). Lower labour costs mean lower inflation, which equals lower interest rates.
But lower interest rates mean cheaper debt, which means more debt and higher house prices. A population that's growing faster than new houses are being built means higher house prices and more debt. Higher house prices mean less money available for discretionary spending. A huge amount of Britain's personal wealth is tied up in housing, a misallocation of resources which reduces disposable income and lowers the amount of money available for investment.
Britain is drowning under a tsunami of personal debt and has a chronic housing shortage. Ironically, immigration contributed to that. We would have had a financial crisis anyway, but it wouldn't have been so bad.
But lower interest rates mean cheaper debt, which means more debt and higher house prices. A population that's growing faster than new houses are being built means higher house prices and more debt. Higher house prices mean less money available for discretionary spending. A huge amount of Britain's personal wealth is tied up in housing, a misallocation of resources which reduces disposable income and lowers the amount of money available for investment.
Britain is drowning under a tsunami of personal debt and has a chronic housing shortage. Ironically, immigration contributed to that. We would have had a financial crisis anyway, but it wouldn't have been so bad.
The OECD report has been spun in some parts of the media as showing what a great success the mass immigration of the last fifteen years has been. After all, more immigrants are in work than Britons. But stating the point in those terms rather begs the question, how do we calculate the full cost of working immigrants? The OECD haven't taken into account the British people who would have got jobs if migrants hadn't got them instead.
Of course migrants will marginally increase the amount of economic activity, even if they don't bring any money with them. More people tends to mean higher GDP. But for every migrant that is working, you have to add in not just the extra cost of the services provided to them and their families, but the services and benefits provided to the British person who the migrant kept out of a job.
It's worth remembering that a disproportionately high percentage of the British unemployed will be black or Asian Britons, the children of earlier generations of immigrants. They will in many cases have been displaced by white people from Eastern Europe.
It's worth remembering that a disproportionately high percentage of the British unemployed will be black or Asian Britons, the children of earlier generations of immigrants. They will in many cases have been displaced by white people from Eastern Europe.
For every additional working migrant to be a net economic benefit to Britain you have to show either that they didn't displace a British person, or that even if they did, the net value of their tax receipts is greater than the cost of their consumption of services plus the welfare costs of the British person they kept out of a job.
Those are pretty hard to do. As always with these things, the answer you get depends on the question you ask.
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