I did not watch much of the Farage-Clegg debate yesterday, mainly because I felt I already knew what each would say.
I did however see the "read the small print" gaffe, which I thought Nick Clegg got out of quite cleverly and quickly, although not without damage.
Sunder Katwala reviews the debate on the openDemocracy website: http://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/sunder-katwala/cleggfarage-debate
Mr Katwala says in his article: "When Ipsos MORI confronted survey participants, who had significantly overestimated the proportion of migrants in Britain, with the ‘real’ figures the two most popular responses were: ‘I still don't believe it’ and ‘those are the people you know about’. ('I was just guessing' was much less common)."
Here one sees one of the dividing lines between the pro and anti immigration camps.
When Sunder Katwala says "migrant" he means very recent arrivals.
When others (indeed, I would say the majority of people) say "migrant" they mean members of migrant communities who have arrived since the Second World War.
I did however see the "read the small print" gaffe, which I thought Nick Clegg got out of quite cleverly and quickly, although not without damage.
Sunder Katwala reviews the debate on the openDemocracy website: http://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/sunder-katwala/cleggfarage-debate
Mr Katwala says in his article: "When Ipsos MORI confronted survey participants, who had significantly overestimated the proportion of migrants in Britain, with the ‘real’ figures the two most popular responses were: ‘I still don't believe it’ and ‘those are the people you know about’. ('I was just guessing' was much less common)."
Here one sees one of the dividing lines between the pro and anti immigration camps.
When Sunder Katwala says "migrant" he means very recent arrivals.
When others (indeed, I would say the majority of people) say "migrant" they mean members of migrant communities who have arrived since the Second World War.
2 comments:
Thanks for the response. Oxford University have studied this question - who are people thinking of when they say migrants. Only a small minority take the view you suggest is dominant:
"When thinking about immigrants, people in Britain most commonly think about foreign citizens - 62% normally think about non-EU citizens and 51% about EU citizens (excl. British) - rather than people who were born abroad and acquired British citizenship after moving to the UK (40%). Very low proportions of the public have in mind British citizens moving (11%) or returning (7%) to the UK.
Similarly, few people normally have in mind the UK-born children of immigrants to Britain (12%)".
http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/research/citizenship/imagined-immigration/
Mr Katwala, as you know Oxford University and its academics are in receipt of public money. As part of this funding they are bound by the Equality Duty which places a legal responsibility on recipients of public money to promote a positive view of "diversity" and "inclusiveness". Therefore nothing that can come out of that institution on the subject of immigration is reliable. If the Equality Duty required recipients to state the moon was made of cream cheese then I can assure you Oxford University would be telling us the moon was made of cream cheese. Of course being such an eminent institution they are able to mask the propaganda so artfully it can hardly be identified, but it remains propaganda and the corruption of science. It is disappointing that someone such as yourself, leading as you do a thinktank that aspires to objectivity in this area, should be quoting tainted evidence of this kind. We all need to get beyond statistical games and accept that post-war immigration has no democratic mandate. Your challenge is to gain retrospective democratic consent for what has happened (if you can), not indulge in Humpty Dumpty exercises where words mean whatever the Oxford men want them to mean (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was himself an Oxford man and knew how this game was played)
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