With almost indecent hast Jonathan Portes rushes forward to embrace the OBR's recommendation yesterday that we need seven million more immigrants over the next fifty years:
http://niesr.ac.uk/blog/migration-and-public-finances-long-run-obrs-fiscal-sustainability-report#.UelZWI3ItzM
All the classic Portes tropes are present - the dancing-on-pinhead arguments; the dazzling array of whooshing lines on graphs; the threats dressed up as reasoned academic points; the all-pervading tone of intellectuals-talking-to-intellectuals over the heads of the little people they are discussing; the smug confidence that he can demolish the opposition with his devastating fusillade of stats shot off like a Stalin's Organ; above all the fanatical absence of doubt.
What you will not find in his article is any humanity and any comprehension of what his mad arguments will mean for ordinary people who will have to live with this on-going flood.
Nor will you find any commitment to democracy, and the idea of gaining democratic consent to fundamental changes before they are implemented.
That is why Jonathan Portes and the people like him will ultimately fail (although they are likely to do a lot of damage to society before they do fail)
http://niesr.ac.uk/blog/migration-and-public-finances-long-run-obrs-fiscal-sustainability-report#.UelZWI3ItzM
All the classic Portes tropes are present - the dancing-on-pinhead arguments; the dazzling array of whooshing lines on graphs; the threats dressed up as reasoned academic points; the all-pervading tone of intellectuals-talking-to-intellectuals over the heads of the little people they are discussing; the smug confidence that he can demolish the opposition with his devastating fusillade of stats shot off like a Stalin's Organ; above all the fanatical absence of doubt.
What you will not find in his article is any humanity and any comprehension of what his mad arguments will mean for ordinary people who will have to live with this on-going flood.
Nor will you find any commitment to democracy, and the idea of gaining democratic consent to fundamental changes before they are implemented.
That is why Jonathan Portes and the people like him will ultimately fail (although they are likely to do a lot of damage to society before they do fail)
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