Tuesday, January 29, 2008 

Express-watch: Soft touch journalists.

Once you're on a relative roll, why bother to stop? The four previous Daily Express front pages have all in some way focused on immigrants and migrants, each with their own lies and distortions, so they seem to have decided to at least bring the total up to 5.

Screaming "SOFT TOUCH BRITAIN", the Express claims that migrants are now claiming £21m in benefits for their children that are back in Poland. Thing is, I've looked for the statistics that the story is apparently based on, and I can't find any that have been released in the last couple of days that are relevant, unless I've missed them somewhere. There's none on the HM Revenue and Customs website, which the Express claims issued them, the National Statistics site, or the Treasury website, so I can't check on their accuracy.

This however isn't by any means a new story. It's been rehearsed twice before, back in September last year, then raised again in December, presumably when the last new statistics were released. The only difference is that the figures keep rising, again because the immigrants who have came over here are becoming more aware of their right if they're paying tax and making national insurance contributions to claim child benefit and also tax credits. Last time this was raised by the tabloids I emailed the child benefit office themselves, who despite taking two months to reply, explained that the EU rules governing such benefit payments mean that the state in which the claimant works in, whether they're a citizen or not, is responsible for providing the benefit. In other words, if you or I had children and left them here while we went to work in Poland, we'd be able to apply for their equivalent of child benefit, which the Express helpfully explains works out at roughly £10 a month. Our scheme, which is more generous for obvious reasons, works out at £18.10 for the first child a week, and another £12.10 for every other sibling. Doubtless the more rabid newspapers in Poland, if this were happening there, would be demanding immediate changes also.

Anyway, let's have a quick look through the more salient or dubious points of the article:

The huge drain on Treasury coffers provoked outrage, with warnings that the sum is bound to rocket even higher as the latest figures from HM Revenue and Customs do not include child tax credit.

To put this into perspective, around £90bn is spent each year on the NHS. £21m is hardly a drop in the ocean in government spending.

Senior Tory MP Andrew Selous, Shadow Minister for Family Welfare, said: “This shows there is a need for a serious reassessment of this aspect of the welfare state. “The Government still refuses to answer how much child tax credit is paid to migrant workers whose children live abroad. “It has shown no leadership or political will in trying to sort out this issue. We want this money spent on dealing with child poverty at home.”

The same thing the Tories said last time. I took the liberty of previously working out exactly how much the money would be worth to each child if it was directly redistributed to the number of children living in relative poverty. It would have amount to slightly less than £5. Even with the increase this time round, it's hardly going to change their lives.

The explosion in child benefit claims follows fresh evidence that the mass influx from Eastern Europe shows little sign of slowing down. A record 1.3 million Poles travelled to Britain last year, six times the figure before Poland joined the EU.

Err, except these figures are based on the tourist figures, not the immigration figures which detail those who have applied for a national insurance number so they can work here.

Polish official Agnieszka Zablocka, from Gdansk, told the BBC that Britain operates a “pay now, check later” welfare system.

Actually, the onus is on the Polish themselves to check that the children exist, under the EU rules, although applicants can be required to present the birth certificate of the child. Perhaps Zablocka ought to get on with those checks?

Little of the above really matters though. The article's job is already done. Rather than contributing to the economy, regardless of what they're taking out in benefits that any other taxpayer would also both demand and expect, with previous figures suggesting that 84% of migrant workers were not claiming any benefits whatsoever, with tiny numbers on unemployment benefit or income support, immigrants are variously raising the crime rate, taking money away from our children, training children to rob us so they can build palaces back in their own countries, and err, not spending enough when they come here on holiday. The only real question is what the Express would do if the government were decide tomorrow to shut the borders completely. Probably suffer a collective nervous breakdown.

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1/29/2008 09:26:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 05, 2007 

Scum-watch: More thieving migrants and an eulogy for Andy Hayman.

It's been a few months since the last figures showed that immigrants from eastern Europe were supposedly bleeding the exchequer dry with benefit claims, so it must surely be time to resurrect them once again. After all, the Sun has to find non-news stories to fill the paper when it can't be bothered to report on small things like Iran being declared not to have a nuclear weapons program:

MIGRANTS claim £1.4million a month in child benefit for kids living ABROAD, shocking new figures show.

The cash is given to 18,000 workers from new EU countries, without any checks on if the children actually exist. The number of East Europeans pocketing the handout soared by almost a third in just three months, the latest figures show.


Happily, when the Sun last flagged up this heinous outrage, I emailed the child benefit office and despite them taking the best part of two months to reply, I did finally get a very helpful explanatory response. Here it is in full:

Thank you for your e-mail of 17 September about Child Benefit. Your e-mail has been forwarded to HM Revenue & Customs and I have been asked to reply. I apologise for the delay in doing so.

You ask if foreign workers are entitled to claim Child Benefit for their children, even if they do not reside with them in this country.

The main purpose of Child Benefit is to support families living in the United Kingdom. In this regard, the general rules for this benefit do not provide for them to be paid in respect of children who reside outside the United Kingdom. However, these general rules are supplemented by the co-ordinating rules in European Community Regulations which the United Kingdom has applied since it joined the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973.

The Regulations protect the acquired social security rights of European Economic Area (EEA) workers and their families moving within the Community. The Regulations have detailed rules that determine which social security scheme a worker should contribute to, and which State has responsibility for the payment of family benefits. In general, it provides that the worker pays into the social security scheme where the work takes place and that State is responsible for the payment of family benefits. If entitlement to family benefits arises in more than one Member State, the Regulations contain priority rules to determine who has responsibility for paying. More detailed information relating to these Community rules can be found in leaflet SA 29 “Your social security insurance, benefits and healthcare rights in the European Economic Area”, published by the Department for Work and Pensions and available from its website at www.dwp.gov.uk/international/sa29. Similarly, the thousands of UK nationals who live in another EEA country also benefit from these rules in a wide number of areas.

The vast majority of Eastern European migrants, who were the subject of recent media publications, are in employment, paying UK taxes and National Insurance contributions and in many cases in hard-to-fill jobs in sectors with high levels of vacancies.

When a claim is made under the EC Regulations, there are long-standing checks in place to prevent fraud. For example, the relevant authorities in the family’s country of residence are required to confirm the identity and address of the children in the claim. In addition, the person claiming can be required to provide the original birth or adoption certificate of the child in support of their claim.

I hope that you will find this helpful.

This immediately demolishes the Scum's spurious claim that there are no checks that the children actually exist. Secondly, it makes clear that anyone living in any current EU member state while their children live in their "home" country can claim that country's equivalent of child benefit on the exact same basis, similarly without the children actually being present.

The Sun article accordingly doesn't deign to mention that only those paying national insurance are entitled to claim child benefit. They're contributing to the economy and are just as entitled to claim the benefits available to "us" as anyone else. The simple fact they're foreign automatically means this is "shocking".

Last time round the Sun introduced the notion that the fact that 200,000 more British children are living in poverty is somehow related in any way whatsoever to the fact that 14,000 migrants are claiming child benefit, with the disingenuous Tory Philip Hammond following up. This time Hammond just jumps straight in:

 Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Philip Hammond said: “About 3.8million British children are living in poverty yet Gordon Brown is siphoning off more than £320,000 per week to children abroad.”

Shall we do some elementary maths? £320,000 x 52 weeks = £16,640,000. Divide £16,640,000 by 3,800,000 and you get 4.3789473684210526315789473684211. In other words, if we took all the money back from the Poles which they are legitimately claiming, and redistributed it between those children, each could look forward to having an early Christmas present of £4.37p. Don't spend it all at once kids!

Going on:

HM Revenues and Customs said: “Under EU rules, an EU national working and paying compulsory contributions in one EU country can claim child benefits for their family resident in another.”

Which is a more concise and dumbed-down version for the Sun readership of the email I received.

Naturally, the good burghers of MyScum are enraged by this insult to the English working man, although one or two do dare to suggest that this is actually only fair. JanJud is representative:

It's an absolute disgrace, the working man is being taxed to death to pay for children that have no right to anything from the British Taxpayer. This Government are totally incompetent & corrupt, this throwing money down the drain must stop. British families can't even get housing, yet immigrants can!!!!!

And where does JanJud hail from? Err, South Africa.

I read a far more interesting fact in one of today's Grauniad articles on the Nimrod crash. The cost of operations in Iraq, despite the draw down in troops, is estimated to come to £995m, a rise of 2%. You decide which is more of a burden on the humble British taxpayer.

Elsewhere, the Sun is mourning the loss of Andy Hayman. Says crime editor Mike Sullivan, previously featured here, here and here:

THE resignation of Andy Hayman is a sad day for British policing.

...

Unlike others, Hayman fell on his sword and for that he must be praised.

I obviously cannot condone any wrong doing but he was respected and admired by grassroots police officers.

Andy Hayman was one of the good guys and our police force is a weaker force without him.


One has to wonder if Sullivan's sadness might be related to the "unique" relationship between the Sun and the police. Rebekah Wade has previously admitted to paying officers for information, while the stories which were so horribly wrong about Rochelle Holness and Janet Hossain were likely sourced on information from the police. Last week, when Harry Redknapp was arrested, the photographers from a certain newspaper had turned up at the same time as the police did, which might just suggest the two were in cahoots. The newspaper? The Sun.

Finally, this. Fucking this:

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12/05/2007 09:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 17, 2007 

Scum-watch: More benefit bullshit and other stories.

Proving that you can never have enough of a good thing, today's Scum returns to Saturday's theme of the Polish stealing all our benefits:

MIGRANTS from the new EU countries are claiming at least £250,000 A WEEK in UK child benefit — even though their kids still live abroad.

Sounds a lot on the face of it, doesn't it? Let's delve in further:

Child benefit — designed to help out parents with food and clothing bills — is worth £18.10 a week for the eldest child and £12.10 for each other child.

Tories last night calculated that if each migrant claims for just one child the annual bill to UK taxpayers would reach £13million — or around £250,000 a week.


Right, so in other words we're talking about peanuts in relation to the annual sum that is paid out in benefits as a whole, not to even begin bringing in the annual government expenditure as a whole.

Skipping backwards for a second:

Around 14,000 workers, mainly from Eastern Europe, are legitimately receiving the handouts, official figures reveal.

And there is NO requirement for them to send the money home to their families.


Oh, so instead of sending the money back as most eastern European migrants do, which is nearly universally the reason they come here to work in the first place (either that or to make enough to take home at the end of their stay) they're instead presumably going to be spending it on the lash or waste it in other ways. Completely unlike our own citizens, of course. Nice inference there, Michael Lea.

But the true cost is likely to be far higher depending on how many children each claimant has. The findings come after separate figures showed that 200,000 more British children are living in poverty than a year ago.

Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Philip Hammond, who uncovered the figures, said: “Child benefit is a vital weapon in the fight against child poverty. So why is Gordon Brown sending thousands of pounds every week to children who don’t live here and who may never have visited the UK?”


Way to connect together two completely unconnected things. Presumably those 200,000 more children who are living in poverty already have parents' claiming child benefit; if not, then they ought to be made more aware of their right to it. What both the Scum and Mr Hammond are trying to construe is that it's somehow the fault of the relatively tiny amount of migrants who are claiming child benefit that our own citizens are becoming destitute. This isn't just nonsense, it's potentially dangerous nonsense. The tabloids in all these articles scaremongering about the benefits that temporary migrants are claiming never so much as mention the inconvenient truth that the amounts they're claiming back are far, far outweighed by the tax they're paying to the exchequer.

Thing is, I agree with the basic premise of the article. I don't think that migrants who haven't brought their children with them to live here shouldn't be able to claim benefit for them. It's a loophole that ought to be closed. The article doesn't just provide the relative context though, it uses it as an excuse to further bash migrants, and even if it doesn't do it completely openly, its inference by comparing the increasing poverty among children in here, as if the sum of £13 million would go anywhere near tackling the 200,000 increase is that they're taking our money at the expense of our people. It may be more subtle than usual, but it's still the same familiar poison.

The figures will embarrass ministers, who had claimed migrants were likely to be young men with no interest in handouts.

Seeing as 84% of migrants from the eastern European countries are claiming no benefits whatsoever, it would seem that the ministers are in fact overwhelming correct.

Sir Andrew Green, of think tank Migrationwatch, said a Pole claiming for three children would earn more in UK benefits than the minimum wage in his homeland. He said: “It is ridiculous that the taxpayer should finance child benefit for children that have never set foot in this country.”

Seeing as "Sir" Andrew Green has more than a tendency to talk out of his nether regions, I decided to check. The Polish monthly minimum wage is 936 Polish zlotys, which works out at roughly £171. Child benefit for 3 children works out at £169 a month (1 GBP = 5.44506 PLN, from xe.com), so no, a Pole claiming for 3 children wouldn't quite earn the Polish minimum wage for simply coming here and working while claiming child benefit. Remember the figures we're talking about here. Just how many of those 14,000 claiming child benefit are going to have 3 children? For argument's sake, let's say a third of those have 3 children and are claiming child benefit at £169 a month or £2,030 a year. The cost to the taxpayer would be £9,471,980 a year for those roughly 4,666 claimants. If we then say that another third have two children and the last have just one, that would be at a cost of £7,327,486 (£1,570 a year) and £4,391,639 (£941) respectively, adding up as a total to £21,119,100. Say we close the loophole, and seeing how the Tories are suddenly so concerned about child poverty, redistribute the money saved directly to those 200,000 children. They'd get £105 each, which sounds reasonable, until you also cut it down to a rise in child benefit per week. That'd be a real rise of slightly over £2 a week. I'll say again: this is a loophole that must be closed, but this is a relative drop in the ocean compared not just to government expenditure as a whole, but also to the amount paid out in benefits every year. It doesn't make it any less wasteful, but it's also worth getting it into perspective.

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “This makes a mockery of our welfare system.”

Much like Matthew Elliot's organisation makes a mockery out of all of us actual taxpayers.

Moving on to the Scum's leader:

HUMAN rights laws are endangering millions of lives. They make it impossible to fight terrorists on our own soil.

That’s the startling confession by John Reid.


Oh yes, that's right, because the 21/7 plotters haven't been imprisoned for life, have they? Neither have those who were arrested during Operation Crevice, or indeed those arrested for last year's alleged "liquid bombs" plot, or even the student today convicted for threatening to blow himself up, amongst other offences. Reid would instead love to have been able to have locked up "terrorist suspects" indefinitely without charge in our version of Guantanamo Bay, struck down by the law lords (although their decision was not actually binding), and to have imposed round the clock control orders, also ruled to be unlawful as they amounted to house arrest, but neither would have done anything to prevent any of the plots which have been either broken up or in the case of 7/7, succeeded, as none of those involved had been targeted by either.

This Sun's argument is so ridiculous that it could only have came from either John Reid or a Murdoch tabloid newspaper hack, which is unsurprisingly where this came from; Reid's laughable but despicable call for the very piece of legislation which protects us from numerous abuses of power, not to mention the one that is likely to help the survivors of 7/7 to seek an independent inquiry into what went wrong on that day, was in yesterday's News of the Screws. The Screws' website is hopeless, and doesn't appear to have it up anyway, so we'll have to rely on a BBC report that suggests Reid's article said the following:

"Too often we are fighting crime and terrorism with one hand behind our back."

Where have I heard that before?

The 28-day detention limit has left them working with one hand tied behind their backs, cops’ leader Ken Jones warned yesterday.

Would you believe it was in a Scum leader column?

Today's continues:

For years, The Sun has demanded the Human Rights Act be torn up.

When Mr Reid was Home Secretary he defended it. Yet all the time he knew it was putting the nation in peril.

Why didn’t he act when he had the power, and the Prime Minister’s ear?

How many more ministers are hiding the facts — and waiting until they quit to tell the truth?


In actual fact, this is unfair to Reid. Back in May he threatened to derogate from the European Convention of Human Rights after three men who had been on lighter control orders had fled, presumably to join the insurgency in Iraq. Why Reid has gone the whole hog now though is obvious - if he even wrote the article in yesterday's Screws, he most certainly got paid for it - and by the very "news organisation" that is now why oh whying over his previous reticence.

Finally, there's nothing like some good old fashioned Scum humbug:



A 12-YEAR-OLD girl has caused a storm by modelling at one of the world’s largest fashion shows.

Maddison Gabriel wore a string of revealing outfits after being crowned the face of Gold Coast Fashion Week in Australia.


And for all those paedo-pervs out there that are the scourge of modern life, the Sun has kindly reproduced a photograph of Maddison wearing one of those revealing outfits: a bikini. No real surprise though: the Scum, where hardly a day goes by without a sex offender's wicked deeds being reported to the outraged nation, failed to report last week's news that FHM had published a photograph of a 14-year-old girl topless without her permission. As Peter Wilby suggests, it may just have something to do with the fact the Sun too fears being caught out in a similar fashion.

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9/17/2007 06:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

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