When the Sun bigs up Dubai

"It's dark and cold in (enter name of foreign country). London is like Disneyland - I earn three times more a month in the UK than in my own country. Why would I want to go home?".

Aren't those immigrants turning a bit cheeky? Except that I doctored the quote. That was a Brit, an expat in fact, talking about her god-given right to live in a foreign country.

"It's dark and cold in Britain. Dubai is like Disneyland - I earn around three times more a month here than in the UK. Why would I want to go home?"

The irony, of course, is that the above quote is part of a centre spread in today's Sun aimed at championing Dubai- a match made in heaven if you consider that the tackiest paper in the world is bending over backwards to prop up the tackiest place on the planet.

Look at the headline: We'll keep on partying...this place will never go under, accompanied by captions such as IT'S FANTASTIC, IT'LL BOUNCE BACK and FAB INCOME as well as pictures of women in bikini and geezers holding up their booze. Because, for the Sun, that's what Dubai is all about

This is how the piece starts:

"Britain's expats also have a Friday ritual. It begins with a glass of bubbly at one of dozens of all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunches. And throughout the afternoon and evening the booze flows as gyrating bodies dance to pumping house music" [good lord, ed.]

Sipping champagne in 25°C December sun as bikini-clad women play beach ball in the pool, Paul confesses: "There are dozens of these brunches where you can get absolutely slaughtered. It's a fantastic place to be a single bloke. Tuesdays is ladies night in the bars and its wall-to-wall women. Loads of air hostesses are based here".

The articles continues with descriptions of golf, footie and beers, females sipping Corona on the beach as well as a "blonde-haired tanned broker" reporting that "[the other night] the place was packed with Brits all drinking and having a laugh".

Packed with Brits. The Sun itself writes that 100,000 Brits currently live in Dubai. Like we remarked last week, they are not migrants. They're called expats.

Immigration myths (4): "EU=net migration"

The perception is that it's a one-way issue. It's not a problem if the Brits do the same in reverse. Because they're not migrants. They're EXPATS.

Labour aside, the daily negative bombardment about immigration is also centred around the European Union. Widely frowned upon for its unaccountability, the EU is also routinely slammed for allegedly contributing to wild migration patterns into Britain.

Indeed, it is undisputable that being part of Europe has made it remarkably easier for migrants from the continent to seek work and live in the UK. Since a number of Eastern European countries joined in 2004, hundreds of thousands of workers came in from Poland, the Czech Republic and so on.

But as always, the perception is that it's a one-way issue. It's not a problem if the Brits do the same in reverse. Because they're not migrants. They're EXPATS.

When you read that Britain should put up barriers at the Channel, or indeed leave the EU altogether, as often advocated by tabloids and at least one political party (the UKIP), no-one bothers to explain the repercussions it would have for millions of Brits in Europe.

In 2001 around 771,000 citizens from other EU countries (excluding Republic of Ireland) lived in the UK. No doubt the figures went up significantly since Eastern European countries joined. Sadly there aren't any reliable numbers, especially as most are here temporarily. We know that 56,000 people from eight key Eastern and Central European countries went back in the year to September 2008 and the trend continues in that direction.

According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, "a total of around 1 million people had moved from the new EU member states to the UK by April 2008, but that half this number have since returned home or moved on to a third country".

But let's ignore all that and assume that 1 million Eastern Europeans arrived since the 2001 census and never left. That would mean 1.771 million EU citizens currently live in the UK.

Still, that just begins to resemble the number of British migrants to other EU countries.

The figures speak for themselves.

A survey published by the BBC in December 2006 revealed that between 1.7 and 2m Brits live and work permanently in the EU. Spain alone is home to a staggering 761,000 British citizens, and the figures doubled in the last decade. The Brits are "outnumbered as an immigrant population only by Moroccans, Romanians and Ecuadorians", and bear in mind many don't register with the local town halls but still peruse local public services.

The irony is that the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Express all have "printed in Spain" editions available. They are the most popular papers amongst expats, so that many can read about the UK being swamped and taken over by migrants while they themselves can swamp and take over (literally) entire areas in Spain with very little levels of integration.

Many are doing exactly what they believe migrants to Britain are guilty of: living together, owning shops and not learning the language.

About 291,000 Britons live in the Republic of Ireland, 200,000 in France, while 115,000 live in Germany. Many more permanently live and reside in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands and so on. The figures are available here.

So what would happen if the tabloids or the anti-immigration lobby had it their way and the UK decided to erect immigration barriers with the EU? Do you ever hear about it? Would 1.7 to 2m Brits suddenly have to rush to embassies or local councils to apply for work permits, visas and various papers in the hope of being spared illegal status?

And, realistically, would the new British regime back home provide for such massive numbers to return home and place a strain on services, the housing system and the job market?

Brits and accident rates on the Balearics

Why is it that British tourists are so unlucky?

Newspapers are reporting that a 44-year-old plumber from England was involved in a brawl and beaten to death while on holiday in Magaluf, on the south-west coast of Mallorca (more details here).

Aside from the fact that each story should be considered on its own merit, it would be deeply wrong to speculate on a tragedy we know nothing about. What invites some reflection, however, is how some people chose to read the events. For instance on -hear, hear- the Daily Mail.

Some comments were so idiotic that even a number of Mail readers felt the need to highlight how beastly British tourists (especially on the Balearics) behave while holidaying abroad.

Amongst the commenters, 'Mowdiwarp' from Huddersfield writes: "Spanish say they hate the British but by heck they like our money! Wouldn't dream of going back to that God-forsaken country ever again and am quite willing to let the cheap booze and terrible food sellers find alternative ways to earn a living!", while someone called 'nonpc' opnionates: "Isn't the EU wonderful? We are all pals together. I never liked Spain".

Then there's those who complain of a surge of "Brit-bashing" abroad, while others suggest we all "scatch (sic) Magaluf from next years holiday list". Finally, my favourite, 'Derek MacDonald' from Saigon, Vietnam, wonders: "Is this the same Spain that refuses to fight terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan?". Quality.

So let's have a quick look at this alleged 'Brit-bashing'. But, as we do so, let's not even consider that entire regions and islands have been completely ravaged in order to allow millions of 18-30 Brits to play Club Reps on the streets of Ibiza et al. Let's ignore the impact that turning peaceful villages into giant hedonistic dancefloors (remember the old advert "danceathon, drinkathon, bronzathon, partyathon"?) may have had on the locals.

Let's overlook the tons of vomit and piddle exported each year on to the alleyways of the Mediterranean. Let's not reflect on the fact that the word "Ibiza" is no longer a place to visit but has become like a warmer annex to Ministry of Sound. Let's not even consider what would happen if the opposite had been inflicted by "foreigners" upon British cities.

What we'll do, we'll just look at some facts. For instance, the fact that, like noted by Spanish blogger Antoni, it really looks like "the anglosajones have a special inclination for the risks associated with gravity law". In a piece called Siniestralidad turistica ("Tourist accident rate"), Antoni pieces together the staggering amount of Brit-involving accidents on the Balearics, to the point that you wonder if the insurance premiums for Brits abroad hasn't hit sky high already.

An unbelievable amount, and a wholly British exclusive, seems to be associated with falling from their holiday balcony while pissed (see here for an example).

However, there are many other accident types and the clockwork regularity with which they make the news each summer is just breathtaking. There's the British tourists who get done for dealing; those gang raping their fellow tourist; those who overdose after partying; those who stab people in nightclubs; and those who get into more fights, assaults, brawls.

The frequency is unbelievable, as is the lack of variety in the nationalities involved.

So, perhaps keeping things into perspective may be a good idea, and rather than blaming the Spaniards' exit from Iraq for some spoilt British kids not being able to control their liver, knob and repressed selves, some people could do with an honest analysis of why Britain, each summer, is capable of exporting so much barbaric dross.

Happy St George's Day?

A vintage tale of xenophobia.

She was laughing out loud. In her head, she was totally convinced she'd come up with the wittiest comment ever. That was my work colleague, a 50-year-old lady from a certain Northern town.

Proud owner of a second home in Provence, she was moaning about the fact that -when in France- her husband tends to attract people asking for directions. "They always mistake him for a local and ask him where places are", she added.

And then this: "So you know what I'm gonna get him for St George's Day? A t-shirt carrying a massive sign that says I'm fookin English, I don't speak fookin French, so stop asking me for directions!!!

Then another guffaw followed. And another. And then I left the room.

Xenophobia and Remembrance Day

You'd think there's no connection between Remembrance Day and immigration. Not so, according to the Daily Express

For those not sure about Remembrance Day and what it represents, a look at Leo Mckinstry’s piece ("Today, in a nation that has lost its history, the white cliffs have no such resonance") in the Daily Express will just put you off altogether. He makes a dazzling connection between the fact that soldiers sacrificed their lives during WWII and the fact that, since then, Britain has become host to generations of immigrants. Of course, Mckinstry omits to say that people also emigrated to France, Germany, Belgium and many other countries, but perhaps if he did he wouldn’t be writing for the Express.

He wonders why "the union flag is seen as an offensive symbol of xenophobia”. As he rejects that foreign-sounding word, xenophobia, he writes that "our once green and pleasant land" is now "surrounded by foreigners with whom [the Britons have] no sense of mutual belonging or trust" and live in "cities turned into modern Babels full of discordant tongues and wailing mosques". “The very idea of British citizenship”, he adds, “has been rendered meaningless by the twin malign forces of the EU and mass immigration".

However, the Express columnist may be cheered up by an e-mail we've received from a Spanish reader called Gustavo who shows genuine empathy about living in a country "that has lost its history", "swallowed up by mass development" and invaded by “foreigners”.

"Dear Mr Mckinstry,

Please excuse my English but I am a Spanish citizen. I read your article in the Express and I understand exactly where you're coming from. First let me say, like yourself, I am not a xenophobe. However, we too are losing our history. Like many from his generation, my grandfather sacrificed his life during the Spanish Civil war. But if he was alive now I don't know if he'd cheer or weep. All over the country, from Costa Brava to Costa Dorada, through to Costa Blanca and Andalusia, we have been invaded by at least 800,000 (and still counting) Britons. Apparently, they have programmes on their national TV that promote the idea of snatching our property and even building from scratch on Spanish land. That may explain why they arrive in droves, even in winter, and many decide to stay. And I worry if they are bringing disease, because at all hours you can spot them being sick in our once proud and quaint towns.

Our police officers don’t know where to begin because, when they don't get jiggy in the street, those invaders often become very rowdy, fight and smash bottles on each other's head. Like you said in your article, those immigrants have no sense of belonging to our land. None of them bothers to pick up the language apart from the word "cerveza". You mention your "wailing mosques" and I know what you mean cos we have entire towns where clubs full of Brits whack some sort of incessant beat until the early hours of the morning. My grandfather would have mistaken it for an air raid siren.

Even our politicians are gradually becoming foreign. We have local councils where British people are being elected and entire towns where Brits make up the greatest majority of the population. Like you mentioned in your excellent piece, areas that used to be unspoilt and natural are now prey to "mass development". Oblivious to our heritage, many of those Brits do not care if their villas are built in compliance with the law and there have been increasing cases of bribes and corruption. Even though in some parts of Spain we have serious water shortages, those Brits insist on building one swimming pool after the other. Many residents don’t even bother to register with the local council but they peruse our facilities (such as our own NHS) nonetheless. Therefore, you can imagine: local authorities are allocated funding according to the number of people registered, and find it very difficult to cope with the extra burden. Thanks to those foreigners, our public services, to quote one of the expressions you use, are “left in tatters".

The other day I was walking down the promenade in Lloret del Mar and there was a girl handing out nightclub leaflets. I reached out for one but she said "No, not you. You're Spanish". Is this what my granddad sacrificed his life for? The idea itself of Spain is being "rendered meaningless" by all this. Our towns are "losing their souls". Where once my grandfather would have seen a tapas bar, there are now English pubs or Fish& chips shops and McDonald's. What are we going to do, Mr Mckinstry?

Yours sincerely,

Gustavo Lopez Orta"

Wish you were here

The soaring number of Brits arrested abroad

Mid-August. For many, holiday time. Today Sky News reports Foreign Office figures about the soaring number of Britons arrested while on holiday abroad. Over 2,000 Brits were arrested in 2006-07, in Spain alone, mainly for getting pissed and acting like twats.

The emergence of low-fare flights allowed hordes of subhuman scum - those who wouldn’t otherwise dream of leaving their neighbourhood in order to 'stay local' - to suddenly be scattered across Europe, with certain Greek, Spanish and Portuguese resorts being the most popular destinations. The concept is quite simple: you just cut and paste your English town centre's street-vomiting and brawling across to the warm shores of Rhodes, Benidorm or the Algarve.

On several occasions we wrote of many Brits' subconscious post-colonial attitude. Indeed, to some of them, foreign soil is fair game and acts of bravado take an even more extreme dimension. Otherwise they wouldn’t be 'avin a laff, would they? The Polish city of Krakow became one of the first cities where the local authorities decided that they'd had enough of the Britons' pre-nuptial machismo and started to ban stag parties from bars and clubs across the city. "You see them groping girls, dancing nude, smashing up chairs and vomiting", were some of the complaints from local residents.

The same phenomenon had occurred in Dublin in the late 90s, when hordes of Brits ready to party round the clock started to flood the Irish capital on a weekly basis. The mess only abated when local authorities, tired to mop up the debris left by the fun-loving Brits decided to enforce a ban on single-sex parties in pubs and clubs in the city's district of Temple Bar. It was estimated that the thousands of British men were putting off other tourists, costing the local trade £57 million each year.

More often than not though, the bit of fun turns into horror. According to the Foreign Office, consulates are constantly bombarded by requests for help following stag or hen nights gone wrong. Half of the requests for assistance involve lost or stolen money, a third involved illness or injury and a quarter concerned arrests mainly for being drunk and disorderly. Overall consulate figures show that 3,900 Britons die abroad each year, 4,200 are taken into hospital and 6,000 are detained in foreign prison, at least in part the consequence of drunken and yobbish tourism.

In The Guardian, Andrew Anthony summed it up wryly:

"Nowadays, in the streets of capitals across mainland Europe, you can find young Britons emptying both their bladders and stomachs. They say that the youth of today lack beliefs, but these are men and women who are fully committed to the cause of alcoholic annihilation. They will simply not rest until they have relinquished all control of their motor skills".

Post-colonial TV

Can you imagine Cornwall hosting 760,000 Greeks, all speaking their own language and not picking up a single word of English? And a national TV programme promoting that.

Does British TV reflect British society? Judging by programmes like BBC Two's Living In The Sun, presented by Nadia Sawalha, then the answer is yes. That is, if you agree that British society will never be able to shed their post-colonial attitude. No, don't just utter 'fuck off'. Think about it.

Don't we live in the era of "we're-being-swamped" and "they-all-want-to-cum'ere"?
So how would you feel if there was a daily programme on, say, Greek national television actively promoting hundreds of thousands of Greeks setting up shop and snatching land, property, businesses in Britain? Those hundreds of thousands would then peruse local public services and demand bilingual schools. There would be a national outcry, no question.

But this is what Brits are doing in Spain, and Living In The Sun is direct proof. Entire areas are already the almost complete monopoly of English-speaking people. Of course, it's perfectly allowed, and the advent of the European Union has made it a lot easier, but I'm sure you'll appreciate that the same would not be tolerated in Britain. Can you imagine Cornwall hosting 760.000 Greeks, all speaking their own language and not picking up a single word of English? The irony is that many expats leave home because "England is just not English anymore". Only last year, an all-expat party ran in the local elections near Alicante demanding bilingual schools.

And that's the most amazing thing about Living In The Sun. There isn't even the slightest focus on issues of integration and the most they show about Spanish culture is the usual all-English sangria-based yipee-gals-wow party and, of course, the sun. It's just about how those Brits will get on with their properties and how they add a swanky swimming pool to their recently purchased Spanish home. The area may have serious water-shortage issues, but those Brits have to have their swimming pool. It is their god-given right.

Of course you would answer that "at least us Brits are law-abiding". Not always. The Spanish authorities have complained that many of the Brits' houses are built illegaly and with little or no respect for the environment. Also, reports abound of British residents who, true to their customs, angered the locals with loutish drunken behaviour. These are dubbed the "por favores" because that's all the Spanish they bother to speak. After all, when they colonised India, how many Brits bothered to pick up the local language?

Never their fault

The seats magically self-dismantle, missiles throw themselves at the police and fireworks decide to self-combust.

22 March 2007: Man Utd play their Champions League away leg in the French city of Lille. Disturbances follow and Manchester United end up with a 15,000 Swiss francs fine for the improper conduct of their fans at the game, "which included the setting-off of fireworks and disturbances at the entrance to the stadium".

'Course Utd fans complain that the police were heavy-handed, brutal and barbaric.

4 April 2007. Having raeched the quarter-finals, Man Utd take on AS Roma. Their away leg at the Stadio Olimpico is also marred by fights and other ugly scenes. Again, Man Utd and their fans complain that Italian police were "thugs in uniform", that never before had they endured such bad treatment, etc etc.

5 April 2007. UEFA Cup quarter finals. Tottenham play their away leg against Seville, in Spain. Guess what? As riot police charged, Tottenham and their fans complained that it all happened for "no reason", that their behaviour was exemplary, and that Spanish police were ...you guessed it..."heavy-handed".

It's never the English's fault. The seats magically self-dismantle, missiles throw themselves at the police and fireworks decide to self-combust. It's the locals, the police, the weather, the turnstiles, the heat, the cheap beer, the local press, the chemical composition of the air, any excuse but the English fans themselves.

Incidentally, no other quarter-final match across Europe involving teams from any other nation be them from Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain or other, was the theatre of "ugly scenes" and "heavy handed police".