Immigration

Thursday

Ed West

Modern technology has completely transformed mass migration

I consider myself to be bad at making predictions, but one of the obvious things about the migrant crisis last year was that public sympathy for the Syrians, spurned in particular by the image of the drowned 3-year-old boy Aylan Kurdi, would soon evaporate. A large number of men from war zones moving into an ageing, peaceful and culturally very liberal society presents lots of ‘challenges’, as the Economist might put it; Sweden’s generous immigration policy has already been blamed for an increase in sex crimes against women, so there was a possibility that #refugeeswelcome might be blamed for problems in Germany. Still, the reports coming in from Cologne and other German cities from New

Friday

Douglas Murray

It’s all over for the ‘decent left’, and they have only themselves to blame

Two weeks after Paris we finally have some clarity from the political left. The current stance of their leadership (as expressed in the Parliamentary Labour party) is that while there is no justification for bombing ISIS, there are many reasons to bomb London. On the same evening that Jeremy Corbyn told his party that he could not support airstrikes on ISIS his old comrade (and head of the Labour party’s new ‘defence review’) Ken Livingstone shared his view on Question Time that the 7/7 bombers ‘gave their lives’ in an act of supremely selfless objection to the 2nd Iraq War. Now I know that there are a few people still

Friday

Douglas Murray

Another day, and another terror attack that is ‘nothing to do with Islam’

Another day and another group of men from an unknown religion storm into a hotel shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. This time in Mali. Once again they take hostages. And once again they free only those who can recite the Quran. Of course our Home Secretary Theresa May along with the President and Secretary of State in the U.S. will all say this has ‘Nothing to do with Islam.’ Or as Secretary Kerry said a couple of days back after the massacre in Paris. ‘It has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with criminality, with terror, with abuse, with psychopathism – I mean you name it’. Indeed, so

Thursday

Douglas Murray

France’s civil war…

In the wake of the massacre in Paris, President François Hollande said that France was ‘at war’ — and that it must be fought both inside his country and outside in the Middle East. As the French air force began dropping bombs on Raqqa in Syria, another operation was under way in towns and cities across France: 168 raids in two days. A battle on two fronts has begun. Chartres cathedral is one of the great monuments of western civilisation, but Chartres was also home to one of the Bataclan theatre suicide bombers. A man from the same area died last summer in Syria, fighting for Isis. In Lyon, theraids

Kate Chisholm

French connection | 19 November 2015

It was as if Andrew Marr and his guests on Start the Week on Monday morning were standing on the edge of a precipice with no idea how far they would fall if they strayed too near the edge. Their conversation this week, Marr told us, would not, as usual, be a live discussion but had actually been recorded in Paris on Friday, just hours before the terrible events of later that evening. Their discussion, quite coincidentally, was focused on French history, society and identity as part of a new Radio 4 season inspired by the great 20-volume series of novels by Émile Zola, which create a fictionalised record of

Thursday

Peter Jones

How ancient Athens handled immigrants

Among all the arguments about how many non-EU immigrants we should let in, campaigners are proposing a scheme for private sponsorship of Syrian asylum seekers. The idea of sponsorship for immigrants goes back to Athens in the 5th century bc. Metoikos (literally ‘household-changer’), our ‘metic’, was the category into which any non-Athenian wanting residence in Athens was placed. While having no citizen rights, of which Athenians were very jealous, they did have access to the courts; but they were unable to own property, so were always lodgers, had to serve in the military, pay a metic tax and, if they became wealthy, were liable for taxes on the rich. Most

Deborah Ross

Lush, lyrical, exquisite

Brooklyn is a wee slip of a thing compared to the Bond film, Spectre, and cost $12 million, as opposed to $300 million, but what it lacks in length, budget, pre-title stunt sequences, theme songs, sports cars, exotic locales, babes in stages of undress, villains with master plans, Omega watches, rooftops chases, speedboats and exploding buildings, it more than makes up for with real storytelling and real feeling, which you just can’t create from post-production CGI, don’t you know. Based on the wonderful novel by Colm Tóibín, with a script by Nick Hornby, and directed by John Crowley (who has come up through the theatre, and whose screen work includes

Thursday

The Spectator

The Australian example

For many years, Australia has been turning away boats filled with migrants. From a remove, this looks cold–hearted — a nation built by immigrants showing no compassion for others who want a better life. But it is precisely because Australia is an immigrant nation that it understands the situation: if you let the boats land, more people come. People traffickers will be encouraged, migrants will be swindled, and their bodies will wash up on your shores. Any country serious about immigration needs a more effective and robust approach. Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister of Australia, made that point clearly this week on a trip to London. Delivering the Margaret

Patrick Marnham

France’s new reactionaries

When President de Gaulle was asked to authorise the criminal prosecution of Jean-Paul Sartre for civil disobedience during the Algerian war, he declined. ‘One does not lock up Voltaire,’ he added, unhistorically. In France, ‘public intellectuals’ have a quasi-constitutional status, so it’s not surprising that a furious bunfight has broken out over a handful of philosophers known as ‘les nouveaux réactionnaires’. The new reactionaries do not see themselves as a group, but they defend a common point of view about the causes of France’s diminishing status and influence. They look back on a golden age that started with the French revolution and continued for nearly 200 years as France —

Thursday

Rod Liddle

What the Great British Bake Off really says about Britain

There was an interesting news item on the television the other day. A transgendered chap was hoping to become the world’s first dual-purpose father and mother to a baby. He had frozen his semen before the surgeons came along with their secateurs and staple gun. I turned to my wife and said: ‘One day the chill wind of Odin will blow down from the icy north and cleanse our nation of all purulence and disease.’ She said nothing by way of reply — but a moment or two later announced that she was going to bed, and would be sleeping in the spare room. She had a distressed expression upon her

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

In defence of Theresa May’s immigration remarks

Some politicians and pundits are brewing a perfect storm across Europe. Migrants are heading into our continent illegally in record numbers, and at the same time many politicians and pundits are spending their time trying to deride and shut down anybody who might be concerned about this. Last week I mentioned Angela Merkel’s skewed priorities in spending even a nanosecond worrying about what Europeans are writing on Facebook about this mass migration rather than trying to get a grip on the influx itself. The combination of a historic change in our continent and a simultaneous push from the top to police what the rest of society is meant to say

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Theresa May lambasts her own record on immigration. Why?

What on earth is Theresa May playing at? As Home Secretary she vowed to cut net immigration down to the ‘tens of thousands,’ only to see it increase to a record high of 330,000. A bit embarrassing: the slogans that used to adorn Tory conferences boasting ‘immigration down’ have been quietly removed, and replied by the fictional achievement ‘deficit eliminated’. If I were her, I’d just drop the whole thing. Instead, she chooses this conference to inform us that the immigration she has presided over is bad for Britain, bad for our social cohesion. In her words: ‘When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible

Thursday

Rod Liddle

At least these rioters hate the right people

I was unable to join the violent protests held by Class War at the Cereal Killer Café in London last week because I had to stay at home to supervise our gardener. Yes — I know what you’re about to say. It is indeed ridiculous that one should have to stand over workmen to ensure that they are doing a decent job. But there is a patch of lawn towards the rear of our grounds which the blighters always skimp on, believing that it is too far from the house for us to notice. So I stand down there, with a cheerfully expectant expression, as the surly little man goes

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 24 September 2015

Available for parties Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said that leaving his party to join the Liberal Democrats would be like ‘leaving the Beatles to join a Bananarama tribute band’. Is there such a thing? Bananaruma is a Leicester-based band led by the head of arts at a local secondary school. They advertise an hour-long show, for which they bring their own professional PA system with full lighting show. So far they have had one booking, at the Stamford Arms in Groby on 25 July. Tickets cost £20, including a three-course meal, with a bottle of bubbly thrown in for tables of six who booked before 1 July. Sporting chances

Melissa Kite

Trouble brewing

‘Milk?…Milk!’ rages Nirmal Sethia, clutching the side of the table in ill-disguised apoplexy. ‘If you put in milk and sugar then you have destroyed the taste! Destroyed it!’ I apologise and say I will happily drink my Earl Grey black. The truth is, I don’t have much choice, because I am trapped in a basement near Smithfield meat market with an impassioned tea magnate. I never knew there was such a thing, but there really is. Tea is an art form, you see, and although we Brits think we know quite a bit about it — well, we like drinking it morning, noon and night — we actually don’t know

Thursday

Peter Jones

Livy on immigration policy

In the migration crisis, the EU is currently acting just like the ancients, as if border controls did not exist, though the mass, peaceful migration we see today was not a tremendously common occurrence then. The reason is that in the ancient world, every male was a potential warrior. So in conflict they would either fight to defend their land and, if they lost, be killed or sold into slavery, or they would flee, en masse, as Germanic tribes did into the Roman Empire in the 4th century ad, escaping the Hun onslaught. Since this represented a potential threat, Romans fought off some, but welcomed others, giving them land and

The Spectator

Barometer | 10 September 2015

Old bags The government announced details of a compulsory 5p charge for single-use plastic bags in shops. Plastic bags have only been around since 1960, when they were first produced by the Swedish firm Akerlund and Rausing, later to give the world the Tetrapak. The first store to use them was Strom, a shoe-shop chain whose owner had complained paper bags were too weak. The first plastic bags had cord handles; a design with integral handle was patented in 1965 by the Swedish company Celloplast, which went on to enjoy a decade of monopoly. Places of refuge David Cameron said that Britain would take 20,000 more Syrian refugees over the

Tom Switzer

The Australian way

 Sydney Most ordinary Australians are shocked that our immensely civilised country is reviled in polite society here and abroad, when the world has so many blatant human rights abusers. The latest accusation comes from a New York Times article complaining that our policies on asylum-seekers are harsh, insensitive, callous and even brutal, and urges European nations not to copy them. Yet the policies on border protection of Tony Abbott and John Howard before him should be a lesson to Britain. At the heart of the matter is a firm but fair post-war policy that mass migration is conditional on government control over ‘who comes to this country and the circumstances

Sunday

Alex Massie

The plight of Syria’s refugees deserves more than your good intentions and virtue signalling

I suppose it should not be a surprise that the virtue signalling over the appalling plight of Syrian refugees displaced by that country’s monstrous civil war has now reached fresh heights of absurdity. Nor that some of the press coverage of this dreadful crisis is edging towards a post-Diana level of mawkishness. One front page this morning shouts at David Cameron, demanding the Prime Minister SHOW YOUR HUMANITY. I mean, really. Then, on ITV’s Murnaghan programme this morning, Nicola Sturgeon and Yvette Cooper were asked if they would house Syrian refugees in their own homes. Obviously they had to say yes and we may now expect the same question to be asked of every politician in

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Migrant

Al Jazeera, the Qatari broadcaster, is going to use refugee instead of migrant in its English output. ‘The umbrella term migrant is no longer fit for purpose when it comes to describing the horror unfolding in the Mediterranean,’ one of its editors explained. ‘It has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative.’ Doubts about terminology are not new. ‘Please don’t speak of those arriving in Australia from Britain as immigrants,’ wrote the Sydney Daily Mail in 1922. ‘Call them rather migrants, because to go from Britain to Australia is only to pass from one part of Great Britain to another.’ Perhaps. It