Steve Coogan 5 Jeremy Clarkstwit 0

Britain's top comedian slams Top Gear bullies.

You may have heard about the recent (minor) stir caused by Jeremy Clarkson the school bully and his two sidekicks Richard Hammond and James May with their latest round of embarrassingly lazy, xenophobic and unfunny comments.

After preying on the disabled and the blind (ha ha bet your sides are splitting), homosexuals and prostitutes, sweatshop workers and various nationalities that aren't the B-R-I-T-I-S-H (to be uttered in a proud, low-pitched tone), this time the three idiots decided to pick on the Mexicans.

However, the best answer to the current wave of testosterone-fuelled Clarksonite brand of bullying dressed up as "the-right-to-a-bit-of-fun" came from legendary comedian and Alan Partridge-creator Steve Coogan.

His article for today's Observer is just spot-on. Especially when he refers to "the regular defence you tend to hear – the tired line that it's 'just a laugh', a bit of 'harmless fun'" and to "the current "'postmodern' reaction to overzealous political correctness, [...] a licence for any halfwit to vent the prejudices they'd been keeping in the closet since Love Thy Neighbour was taken off the air".

The hysterical reaction to Jack Straw's words

The left's own version of tabloid hysteria?

It says something when you have to think 150 times before writing a blog post because you fear your words may be misinterpreted and land you into trouble.

By now, you will be probably aware of the stir caused by Jack Straw's words in the wake of the recent conviction of a gang of nine men for the vile grooming and raping of 26 teenage girls.

In particular, the former Home Secretary was criticised for saying that there is a "specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who target vulnerable young white girls" and that "[W]e need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way".

The Labour MP for Blackburn added that: "These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically. So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care... who they think are easy meat".

Now, I'm hardly Straw's biggest fan, but I find some of the reactions to his comments verging on the manic, and it's a shame as they all come from some of my most favourite bloggers: from accusations of "Nazi racial profiling" and "smearing ALL pakistani men" on Liberal Conspiracy to the baffling "Jack Straw's sex fantasy about dark men and white girls" by Madam Miaow, "Jack Straw's scaremongering" on Pickled Politics and "generating double standards" by Chris Dillow on Stumbling and Mumbling.

So here's some thoughts on the issue:

1. Hysteria

Bear in mind that Straw was particularly careful to also say that "Pakistanis, let's be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences", adding that "overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders".

He shouldn't have bothered. He got likened to a Nazi before you could even utter the word.

This is the disturbing aspect. No matter the disclaimers, the specifications and the carefully weighed words. The same people who, on the left, rightly criticise the tabloid press for whipping up hysteria and frothing at the mouth, are guilty of the same knee-jerkism and are quite happy to throw cries of "RACIST!" and "NAZI!" and "DEHUMANISING PAKISTANI MALES!" at the drop of a hat.

2. Religion and culture, not race or nationality

Jack Straw made one mistake. He was too restrictive with his reference to the word "Pakistani". Religion here matters way more than a specific national heritage.

And, in fact, the chief executive of charity Barnardo's implied it when he said that "[his] staff would say there is an over-representation of people from ethnic minority groups among perpetrators - Afghans, people from Arabic nations, Pakistanis. But it's not just one nation".

Race and the colour of the skin has got absolutely nothing to do with it. Sure, there will always be some racist dunce trying to exploit the issue to make up for their lack of brain cells.

But it would be criminal if we let them deflect the core problem (and that's where too many people on the left go postal the moment you even mention it): the culture of misogyny that is rife amongst certain Muslim communities.

It is a deeply-ingrained culture of misogyny, and nothing else, that still allows the scandal of an estimated 17,000 women a year who are victims of honour crimes, including murder. It is a deeply-ingraned culture of misogyny that makes it possible, according to government figures, for 300 school children a year to disappear for the sake of forced marriages. It is misogyny and its ideology of oppression that makes it possible "to force young girls – some so young that they are still in push chairs", in the words of Yasmin Alibhai Brown – "[to be] covered up in hijabs". And that's just in the UK.

But who will speak out for them if simply raising the issue will land you accusations of "tarring all Muslim men with the same brush" and "the Ku Klux Klan [too] lynched black men in the Deep South"?

Like Johann Hari wrote two years ago, "[I]nsulating a religion from criticism – surrounding it with an electric fence called "respect" – keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. The smart, questioning and instinctively moral Muslims – the majority – learn to be silent, or are shunned (at best). What would Christianity be like today if George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell had all been pulped? Take the most revolting rural Alabama church, and metastasise it."

3. Red herrings and whataboutery

I find it deeply counterproductive when bloggers like Chris Dillow, someone I've always admired and respected, feel the need to write: "You wouldn’t ask the “white community” to look into itself if a white guy commits a sex crime, so why ask the “Pakistani community” to do so if a Pakistani does so".

I don't know why Dillow decides to drag "colour" into the debate, so let's just focus on his actual statement. Now, since no comparison is possible between "white" and "Pakistani" (white being a "race" encompassing anybody from Moldova to Iceland and "Pakistani" being a nationality), let's stick to the words "English community" or "British community" to see if they are ever "asked to look into themselves" in the face of problems or specific crimes.

The answer is yes. Older readers may recall the humongous debates and soul-searching that took place at the height of football hooliganism across the 1980s and 1990s.

There were literally thousands of political statements, opinion columns and sociological analyses written to dissect what was being dubbed "the English disease" and the term is still used to these days whenever UK football supporters behave like troglodites (see this and this, for instance).

Of course you do get some people shouting that "it's not just the English!" and "what about the football violence that also takes place in Holland, Italy and Turkey?", but most people understand that exercises in whataboutery and hyperbole will do little good.

Or take the tons of analyses written on the "British drinking too much", or what the government dubbed "the distinctive characteristic of the British drinking culture", its violence and aggression.

So, yeah, "the English" or "the British" have been asked to do some soul searching when it comes to certain problems. And rightly so. Bring it on. If there is a specific problem that is prevalent within your own society or community, what good does it do if you just drown it out with cries that "it's not just us!" and "AAAAARRRGH!". If you really cared about your own "community", why would you make "it also happens elsewhere" and "talk to the hand" the core of your argument?

As a person of Italian heritage, if there's one thing I find most grating is Italy's persistent shying away from an honest analysis of the Mafia on the grounds that it "hurts Italy's image" and "it doesn't do Italy any favours" and "not all Italians are in the Mafia".

And you don't need a degree in sociology and criminology to conclude that the biggest beneficiaries of sweeping cultural problems under the carpet are the perpetrators of said problems.

4. The actual issue

Dillow is right to produce the hard figures about sexual offences (for instance the fact that in Lancashire "4.163 per 10,000 white Brits were arrested for a sex crime, compared to 0.44 Pakistanis"). Once again, Straw said it himself that "overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders".

However, Straw also referred to the specific issue of gangs grooming teenage girls for sex. And, in that case, out of 17 cases since 1997, 50 out of the 56 men convicted were Pakistani Muslims.

It was Manzoor Moghul, chairman of the Muslim Forum who said that "Offenders are under the misapprehension white girls are easy prey. The way they dress, their culture, makes them easy pickings". And it was Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth organisation, who said to the BBC that "[t]here are some Muslims who think that as long as these sex gangs aren't targeting their own sisters and daughters the issue doesn't affect them" (see here).

Not regarding girls from different religious or ethnic groups with the same respect granted to their own sisters or mothers is a vile practice. It is not racist to say so.

Daily Mail race obsession gets worse

Are you British but not white? The issue is really bothering the Daily Mail.

The right-wing rag is widely known for its routine pieces on "Britain to become mega overcrowded by 2030/2040/2050 [select year at random]", "migrants rob jobs and steal packed lunches" and "'too many immigrants' warns objective anti-immigration think tank", generally based on a selection of myths and half truths.

But in an article appearing in today's edition (complete with trite picture of a crowded city street, yawn), the poisonous tabloid goes one step too far in emulating BNP literature.

"White Britons 'will be outnumbered' if immigration continues at current rate", is the appalling headline, a classic piece of scaremongering based on a number of quotations from one Professor David Coleman of Oxford University.

The academic, as quoted by the Mail, seems to be especially worried about skin colour, drawing a clear dividing line between white and non-white Britons.

Which is what makes the article particularly obnoxious: the "concern" no longer being just about non-British people outnumbering British people, but about people of a certain skin hue, which is exactly the kind of game the BNP has been playing for years.

Do we really - in 2010, while you'd have thought this kind of shit died out decades ago - do we really have to remind the Daily Mail and Professor Coleman that many people are as British as the Queen even though their skin colour may be another?

Are they aware of how appalling it is to place under a "different" category millions of people who may have been British for generations and are still made to feel alien (as if their Britshness was not quite the same or, worse, something to resent altogether)?

For the record - and needless to say the Daily Mail makes no mention of this - Prof Coleman is not an objective source, but the co-founder of right-wing lobby group Migration Watch, an organisation known for its cavalier use of statistics when issuing those press releases that make up half the content of the Daily Express and other UK tabloids.

In the past, Coleman also became the focus of some controversy for its connections with the Galton Institute, formerly known as Eugenics Society (see here and here for details).

The appalling Daily Express

Sean McCormack challenges the latest outburst of xenophobia coming from Britain's tabloids.

[This is a guest post]

It's not often I do any sort of writing anymore, and its a hell of a lot longer since I did anything politically motivated but something in the past few days just hasn't sat right with me.

Look at the picture and take a minute to think of exactly what that frontpage headline says and what they're getting at. Got it? Good.

Now I reckon most if not all of the people who read this post will think the same thing.

The Daily Express is implying that in the near future, one in five people in Britain will be non-caucasian. And just to make sure that their dear readers' anger is pointed in the right "ethnic" direction, take a look at the photo that accompanies the online version of the story.

You see that don't you? It's two women covered head to toe in the dreaded niqabs. And just to hammer home the point that these horrible ethnics are going to be taking over, one of them is pushing a pram. Probably with a terrifying little brown baby inside that will take a school place from a good Christian white child.

Now obviously the Daily Express likes to do this sort of thing. When its not talking about how house prices and single mothers killed Princess Diana and abducted Madeleine McCann, its talking about foreigners. And the way it talks about foreigners is getting worse. Some headline examples we've had in the past few months from the Express and its sister paper the Daily Star:

"The BBC puts Muslims before YOU!"
"Keep Out! Britain is FULL UP!"
"Strangers in OUR OWN COUNTRY!"
"Foreigners take ALL new jobs in Britain!"
"Foreigners take 90 PERCENT OF ALL NEW JOBS!"
"Foreigners take 85 PERCENT OF ALL NEW JOBS!"
"Foreigners take 70 PERCENT OF ALL NEW JOBS!"**

Basically if you're not a white, British, Christian, straight person, the Express and Star have got it in for you.

The reason yesterday's headline got me thinking though was that it sits an awful lot closer to home for me, and many many of my friends on Facebook.

The Daily Express takes its figures from a study commissioned by The University of Leeds. Now I know for a fact that no department in any university would be OK with a newspaper turning a study into out an out racism, but especially so because Leeds is a very open and welcoming environment. The amount of multicultural and multilingual societies at the uni is really impressive, and a very good thing in my opinion. So I delved a little deeper.

It turns out that the report clearly states that the biggest rise in any "ethnic grouping" (horrible term imho), is going to come from white/caucasian immigration from Australia, Ireland and the United States.

Notice something those countries have in common? English speaking. And this something that MIGHT happen by 2051.

It's not a prediction, it's a population forecast, and as I learnt from my geography lessons at school and in uni, population forecasts are horrendously unreliable.

Did you know the British population was widely forecasted to have reached 80 million by 2010? Thought not. Yet funnily enough the Express doesn't mention this until the very end of the article, something which most Express readers will miss thanks to the headline and accompanying photograph screaming at you that those horrible brown people are going to get us.

On a personal note, after reading the article it turns out that I'm also one of the dreaded "ethnics". Yep. Seriously. I'm one of those people who've come over here and stole your jobs, benefits, women, cheese etc. My grandparents are Irish, therefore that makes me an ethnic minority. Funnily enough, the Express seems fine with that.

**Over a period of about 6 months they kept changing their minds.

Breaking news: Spanish test for British 'expats'

Britons who want to marry people already in Spain must pass a Spanish language test.

Spanish language tests are to become compulsory for expats wanting to join their husband or wife in Spain, it was announced yesterday.

People who are married or engaged to a Spaniard or a Briton already living in Spain must prove they have 'conversational' Castellano before they can settle in the country.

The test will become part of the marriage visa application process later this year. Last year, 38,000 immigrants were granted spousal visas lasting two years. Another 21,000 were given the right to stay indefinitely.

Ministers hope the change will help combat bogus marriages and ensure new arrivals integrate into Spanish society.

In 2003, it was estimated that the number of Spanish properties owned by the British was 600,000. Figures from 2007 indicated there were 761,000 British residents in the country, most of them highly concentrated in pockets (urbanizaciónes or newly-built developments) where English has become the main language.

To pass the test, applicants will have to be able to speak, read, and write Spanish as well as a seven-year-old at primary school.

Home Secretary Maria Teresa Mayo said: "This is only the first step. We are currently reviewing Spanish language requirements across the system with a view to tightening the rules further in the future".

In the wake of rising problems, expats will also have to prove they can support themselves financially and that their relationship is genuine. If they comply with all the requirements, they will be issued with a two-year visa.

Don Andrés Verde, chairman of think tank Cuidado Inmigración España, said: "This is an essential step forward if new spouses and partners are to play their full part in our society, but the level of Spanish specified is at the very bottom of the scale. It will have to be moved up before long if this measure is to be effective".

[From El Correo Diario, a right-wing Spanish paper]

The 'siege mentality' of nationalism

The tabloids are unable to deal with patriotism without turning hysterical: the equivalent of an aggressive pisshead unable to handle his drinks, convinced that they're all looking at him funny.

Why can't people just be proud of their country and their flag without having to turn their nationalism into a brain-dead Neanderthal-like fetish based on paranoia and "siege mentality"?

Like clockwork, with each World Cup or Euro Championship comes the urban myth based on some grand anti-English design or some hollow conspiracy theory whipped up by tabloids for the populace to consume.

The fact is, an alarming number of Brits are happy to be treated like imbeciles the moment there's a whiff of international football in the air.

And so you may have heard of the current uproar surrounding the myth that police are trying to ban England football shirts and flags in pubs and public places during the World Cup.

The rumours appear to have been kickstarted by (make a wild guess) the Sun when they published an article under the header "Bid to ban England tops in World Cup pubs".

Anyone with more than a brain cell would have detected that the headline had nothing to do with the facts. The article itself refers to none other than "suggestions" sent by the Met to a few pubs in Croydon with a history of football-related disturbances. Just a couple of non-compulsory tips about hiring security staff and introducing dresscode restrictions (see Tabloid Watch for a better analysis).

Yet the frothing at the mouth took no time to kick in. Several Facebook groups (see here, here and here for a sample) were set up before you could even utter the word "idiot" and, like dogs who've just been ordered to sit, lie down, bark and run, people started spewing up disturbing amounts of online rage, working themselves up against not just the "PC brigade" and "elf & safety" killjoys, but also immigrants (see this delightful group called "if our england tops am banned your sari should b2")!

And yet police forces up and down the country have been stepping forward to dispel the myth. Staffordshire police said that "there is no truth in [the rumours] whatsoever", while West Midlands Police denied that there is any directive whatsoever about a ban. A spokesperson dismissed the rumours as "nonsense".

But, no. That's not enough. The Sun seems to be unable to show its "patriotic" credentials without having to whip up more imbecilic siege mentality. They just can't do it, can they?

And so the tabloid decided to produce the headline Ooh-arr ya? Cornish ban England flags. Except that no such thing ever happened in Cornwall or elsewhere. The Sun just concocted the headline on the basis of a Facebook group comprising 55 people and a quote from a man representing the minute Cornish separatist movement. That became Cornish ban England flags. You can only imagine the outrage amongst Sun readers.

Today the Daily Mail joined in with the words "Clampdown: Workers are increasingly being banned from flying England flags", based on two stories about a private refuse collection firm in Liverpool and taxis in Canterbury not being allowed to wave flags for visibility reasons. Nevermind the taxi firm made it clear that "[they] have been fully supportive of [taxi drivers] wearing England shirts", the Daily Mail insists it's a "clampdown on public patriotism".

Again, siege, threats, bans, enemies, paranoia: the equivalent of an aggressive pisshead unable to handle his drinks - as he works himself up that everyone's looking at him funny.

Daily Mail: Shock! Queen is by blood the least British leader

Revealed: The United Nations that make up Queen Elizabeth

Despite her Anglo-Saxon name and her official role as sovereign of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth territories, Queen Elizabeth II is the least British leader in the United Kingdom.

As a great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth II bears lineage from a number of ethnicities, including Arab, Armenian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, and Swedish.

"The Queen has many international influences in her family", said an insider to Buckingham Palace, adding that "Her Majesty also speaks French quite well".

Her husband, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, was even born abroad (!) - on a Greek island called Corfu'. Philip's father was none other than the Prince of Greece and Denmark and his mother lived in Germany and Greece. He's fluent in at least three languages and he can also speak Greek, so much so that it is said that the Queen Mother did initially frown upon her daughter's marriage.

Queen Elizabeth’s cosmopolitanism even extends to one of her translators and interpreters who spent significant time in foreign countries to study languages.

When the Daily Mail approached Buckingham Palace, official spokespeople played down her international background.

When it was pointed out that her husband is not really English, the reply was: "Well, biologically...yeah. But the Queen was born here, brought up here, went to school here, and she feels very proud to be British".

For saddos with no grasp of irony: This post is a parody. Get a grip.

Official: BNP launch their own dailies

It's a point we've remarked on time and again. A token negative adjective or two won't hide the fact that some British tabloids are doing some sound propaganda work on behalf of the BNP.

There is nothing new in newspapers or tabloids displaying political affiliation. The Mirror does it for Labour and the Telegraph has long-been known for its clear Tory sympathies.

Never, however, has the consonance between a party's narrative and the newspapers been so worringly clear.

In the run-up to the election, both the Express and the Daily Mail have increased their rate of bombastic anti-immigration stories. They're churning them out and recycling them one after the other, several each day, fitting exactly within the BNP's own narrative, nevermind the token smallprint that the BNP are "vile".

Today must be one of the most blatantly obvious examples.

While containing at least four negative stories (most of them grossly inaccurate) about foreigners, the EU, Muslims and "the immigrants", today's Mail is running an editorial titled Playing into the hands of the BNP. Sure enough, they call the far-right party "vile" and add that "[A]mong them are bigots with criminal records for inciting racial hatred and carrying offensive weapons".

But then, discussing the BNP's rising profile, the Mail remarks that:

"Of course, the explanations are not hard to find. In part, the BNP's success reflects public disgust over the Commons expenses scandal, which tainted every established party. But isn't it also a deeply worrying sign of voters' despair over finding a voice in the political mainstream for their legitimate concerns over mass, unrestricted immigration? Indeed, by seeking to close down debate on this highly sensitive issue, hasn't the political establishment played into the BNP's hands?"

The irony is unbelievable. The consonance between the far-right's party and the Daily Mail couldn't be any more obvious. Basically, they're ugly, but they've got it spot-on on immigration (as well as more) and they're the only party who are talking about it. Just like we do.

For three days now, the Mail's website has sported a story about the NHS, Muslim nurses and crucifixes. The BNP's own website gave it exactly the same angle.

More, this morning's main story for the BNP is the words used by the Daily Mail's own Melanie Phillips in an article published for an Australian newspaper.

Taking shots at the Tories, Phillips -as quoted by the BNP- writes that "millions of conservative voters have been brutally abandoned" and that "[T]his great swathe of Middle Britain wants a halt to immigration, the restoration of the powers of self-government ceded to the EU [...] and an end to the onslaught on British national identity and morality through politically correct reverse discrimination against majority values".

You bet that, to a BNP reader, that will sound familiar. It could be one of their own leaflets. Which is why the article was promptly picked up by the BNP's website.

The Express are no better. Their massive front page headline says STRANGERS IN OUR OWN COUNTRY. As usual, it's based on a blatantly distorted reading of statistics. Even though the rate of foreign pupils in English schools ranges from between one in seven to one in ten, both the Express and the Mail choose to spin it as "English-speaking pupils now a minority", as they selectively refer to 1,500 schools only.

It's like having the headline ASTON VILLA FANS LARGEST GROUP IN BRITAIN NOW only for the article to then reveal that figures are based on football fans in the West Midlands.

For all the trite protestations that it's a "taboo subject" and that the debate is "closed down", distorted immigration scare stories are now a daily feature of Britain's biggest tabloids - presented with relentless regularity to a minimum of 3 million readers everyday.

In the meantime, the BNP can only be extremely grateful.

Xenophobia in the UK Press

Have you ever thought, just by chance, what a foreign visitor would think if, one morning, they decided to flick through Britain's papers?

Do you think the country would come across as a vibrant, open, outward-looking Great Britain or, instead, as a fearful, paranoid, xenophobic Little England?

A new blog, "Press Xenophobia- Recording anti-foreign rhetoric in the UK Press", has just been launched. Its aim, to keep a record of how British tabloids and newspapers refer to people who were not born on British soil, the notorious foreigners.

For instance, take a look at today April 8, 2010.

Starting with the Independent, a so-called quality paper, there's a story under the headline Foreign doctors' poor English is killing patients, say MPs.

To glance at it, you'd be excused for thinking that Dr Harold Shipman came back reincarnated as a German speaking locum, but no. Those "foreign doctors" (note the plural) killing "patients" (note the plural) is none other than a single unfortunate mistake from 2008, when a German locum prescribed a patient ten times the correct dose of morphine.

Then, of course, comes the roll call of tabloids, each feasting on the day's most distorted piece of news. Just look at the headlines.

The Sun: Migrants take every new job. The Express: 1.7 MILLION NEW JOBS AND 92% GOES TO MIGRANTS as well as the vile SO HOW CAN WE IMPROVE YOUR LIFE, MR MIGRANT?

On to the porn rag par excellance, the Daily Star, fine purveyors of news and current affairs. As you dodge a "baby vixen" and a "brunette babe having fun", here comes the headline: FOREIGNERS COME FIRST, with the added info that "Britain's immigration policy is a mess".

Finally, creme de la menthe, the Daily Mail, claiming that 375% of all jobs, houses, portions of chips and bus tickets went to rabid dog-owning transgender asylum-seeking migrants.

Click here for more about 'Press Xenophobia'.

Exactly the same rhetoric as the BNP

Since election day was announced, the Daily Mail has gone completely apeshit.

Britain's worst tabloid has literally been acting like a male dog smelling a bitch on heat. If you've ever owned a dog, you'll be familiar with their all-over-the-place, erratic, hormone-fuelled behaviour as they scent a menstrual female dog.

Their main story today is a 'Best Of' of Daily Mail myths and half-truths as dished out relentlessly in the past few years (like this or this). The language, the rhetoric, the one-way perspective is exactly in line with the BNP's own "literature".

Let's start with the headline: Labour's betrayal of British workers: Nearly every one of 1.67m jobs created since 1997 has gone to a foreigner.

As you plough through the piece, in typical Daily Mail fashion, there is no sign of where their figures come from. There's a mention of Tory MP Damian Green and then a sudden leap to unspecified "ONS figures", with repeated distinctions made between "British-born" workers and "foreign-born" workers.

The article rings fishy on so many levels.

The tone, for one thing, in which foreign-born workers are by default treated as some kind of dangerous and intrusive alien species. It's as if they didn't pay tax or as if many didn't carry out day in and day out the most menial, physically unpleasant, lowest-paid jobs in the country that most Daily Mail readers and their kids wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

Imagine being a foreign worker in Britain. Waking up every day to go to work amidst the constant media barrage suggesting that you're doing something wrong or you're simply not wanted.

In Daily Mail-world a "foreigner" can't do no right. They're damned if they're unemployed and they're damned if they work their ass off. In Daily Mail-world, quite simply, we don't like you here - or as Edward from the League of Gentlemen would have said, "local shops for local people, there's nothing for you here".

Let's leave all that aside. The headline is misleading, because after a quick online research, it emerges the Daily Mail are simply distorting figures that appeared yesterday on The Spectator online. The numbers mentioned by Fraser Nelson's paper were exclusively about the private sector, and not all jobs, as the Mail's headline suggests.

And yet research published earlier in the year indicated that 57% of the jobs created in the UK since 1997 have been in the public sector. Out of 2.24m jobs created since 1997, 1.27m were in the "wider public sector".

In 2007, the Statistics Commission published similar figures (link here, see page 9): about 2.1m new jobs were created in total between 1997 and 2007. 1.1m went to "foreign nationals" and 1 million to "UK nationals", suggesting that most public sector jobs go to UK-born people.

That paints a radically different picture from the Daily Mail's hysterical article. Instead of "an extraordinary 98.5 per cent of 1.67million new posts were taken by immigrants", the figures point to just over 50 per cent.

And if you live in the UK and speak to friends, family and colleagues or simply look around instead of soaking up that bilefeast of a paper, you will simply notice that it's not true that 98.5 of every new job created went to "an immigrant". Just think about it.

And put it into perspective, out of a total workforce of 28.4m, in 2007 there were 2.1m foreign nationals employed in Britain and 26.4m British nationals.

But chances are this won't be the angle chosen by the Daily Mail to present any of their "stories". It just wouldn't peddle enough hatred.

Belfast: what excuse now for racism?

The thugs who hounded immigrants in N.I. confirm the futility of trying to appease racism.

Disenfranchised working class? An unsympathetic government? Cheap shots at 'chavs' on TV? Threats to their jobs?

What can possibly be said now to excuse, or even better 'understand', the cowardly attack against Romanian immigrants carried out over the course of a week by a racist mob in Belfast?

The comments section of this article on the Daily Mail website is an indication of the up and coming culture of 'blaming the victim' (see pic above). And comments like this one left by an Independent reader show the depth we are plunging across Europe.

Those 115 people fled their homes after being repeatedly targeted by violent mobs singing Combat 18 slogans. Most amazing, some of the reaction has been on the lines of: "what were all those immigrants doing there anyway?", which is no different from the braindead logic of "what the hell was she doing wearing a miniskirt at 3am, no wonder she got raped - except applied to an even bigger and more sinister scale.

Click here for a better analysis of the recent wave of xenophobia.

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.

The half-truths about the Lindsey strikes

Every day thousands of foreign workers are squeezed for profit while no-one notices. But the one case that caused mass hysteria was based on a lie.

It is now official. The claims that caused the wave of mass xenophobia and the series of walkouts at Total's refinery in Lindsey last month were based on a campaign of complete mis-information. Tabloids and newspapers alike were keen to spread the rumours that "foreign workers" at the refinery "were undercutting locals".

It is true that thousands of foreign workers in Britain are indeed paid below the minimum wage, exploited and kicked about by gangmasters and ruthless profiteers. But the same press who couldn't normally give a monkeys' got all worked up with indignation over the wrong case.

Three examples. In the Mirror, Brian Reade wrote about his "mate Dave" priced out by foreign workers brought over to the refinery "to cut costs". Sue Carroll thought it was a given that "at Lincolnshire's Lindsey refinery, Italian and Portuguese labour continues to be hired on the cheap". In the Telegraph, Philip Johnston used that word again, "undercut", prophetising that "The sky is now darkening with chickens coming home to roost".

For a whole week, the opinionmeisters egged on each other, and the people would read and get exceptionally wound up. Except, British press-style, nobody bothered to check the facts. In the words of David Aaronovitch in the Times, it was a load of "fabricated fear and loathing".

Two days ago, the arbitration service Acas concluded its independent inquiry into the Lindsey controversy and found that the wages the "foreign workers" were paid did not undercut British workers. Now, don't expect the papers to have that on the front page.

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"