Don't confuse me with the facts

The Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith (IDS, or, as Jeremy Hardy entertainingly calls him, Irritable Duncan Syndrome), has this wonderful insight in the Telegraph today:

[Duncan Smith] said that Labour’s failure to help British unemployed people compete for and win jobs had fuelled immigration in recent years.
The last 13 years saw the number of people in employment increase by 2.5 million, he said. Yet today there are around 5 million people on out-of-work benefits.
“So who took all the new jobs? Over half of them went to foreign nationals. This isn’t about immigration. It is a simple question of supply and demand,” he said.
“We had a supply of labour – the unemployed. We had a demand for labour – all the new jobs. But we couldn’t match them up, so we had to import people who could do the work.”

Never mind that all the way back in 2004 the Centre for Economic Policy Research found that "Research for the US and other European countries finds, with very few exceptions, modest or zero effects of immigration on employment and wages of residents."

It is, of course, easier to scapegoat immigrants than to deal with the structural economic problems leading to such high unemployment. But then, did we expect anything less from the Tories?

"I mean, I like kebabs. But now that we've got the recipe, is there really any need for them to stay?"

Appalling racism from the new German interior minister. I mean, it would be awful if anyone said this, but this is the guy in charge of immigration:

In his first press conference as minister, [Hans-Peter] Friedrich said on Friday that Muslims should be allowed live in modern Germany, but he added: "To say that Islam belongs in Germany is not a fact supported by history."

To their credit, a long list of fellow-ministers and other political figures have slapped him down. If I were his boss I'd ask him to resign. But between this and her recent speech on the so-called failure of multiculturalism, it seems like Angela Merkel has decided to gamble on a more populist stance on immigration. It's all very worrying.

Incidentally, for those who aren't getting the reference in the subject line:

England, England über alles...

Most days I spend my time wondering why America can't be more like Europe. Today is not one of those days. From The Guardian:

Huge numbers of Britons would support an anti-immigration English nationalist party [...], according to the largest survey into identity and extremism conducted in the UK.
A Populus poll found that 48% of the population would consider supporting a new anti-immigration party committed to challenging Islamist extremism, and would support policies to make it statutory for all public buildings to fly the flag of St George or the union flag.

Statutory?? It gets worse:

According to the survey, 39% of Asian Britons, 34% of white Britons and 21% of black Britons wanted all immigration into the UK to be stopped permanently, or at least until the economy improved. And 43% of Asian Britons, 63% of white Britons and 17% of black Britons agreed with the statement that "immigration into Britain has been a bad thing for the country". Just over half of respondents – 52% – agreed with the proposition that "Muslims create problems in the UK".

The one thing that I have always found beyond disgusting in Europe is the casual xenophobia of a kind that, in my view, does not really exist in the United States (how do you have xenophobia in a country of immigrants?). But this is shockingly vehement. I mean, "all immigration into the UK to be stopped permenantly"? Really? Really??

U-turn if you want to

Caroline Spelman announces a u-turn on the government's plans to privatize forests in England. Proof that if you fight these people hard enough in an organized way, you can get them to back down. Let's just hope that this is only the first of the government's unworkable policies to fall apart. This gives me hope in particular for a climb-down on Theresa May's draconian, probably unenforceable immigration proposals, which would do huge harm to British companies and universities (as well as to my own chances of getting back into the country...).