John Sweeney's Pick of the (Vox) Pops

Pointing

Fans of John Sweeney will want to know that the great man was on Newsnight last night with a report about immigration. 

Before the transcript, here's an exchange from thread below the THE BBC's OFFICIAL FESTIVE FIFTY BIAS TECHNIQUES 2018 post to give it context: 

Sir_Arthur_Strebe-Grebling, 19 December 2018 at 19:55 

bBBC 'news' website today has a perfect example of 37. Our country is swamped by foreign fruitpickers, coffee-baristas and hotel cleaners, but to illustrate the government's new immigration restrictions, the bBBC displays an image of three NHS workers. 

Monkey Brains, 19 December 2018 at 23:16 

Yes, that's a classic technique. Immigration is running at something like 600,000 every year. From when I've looked at the numbers, I've concluded the NHS takes something between 20,000 - 30,000 migrants per annum. But the UK MSM, and the BBC in particular focus on the tiny 3% of migrants who come to work in the NHS rather than the 97% who don't.  

Another technique used in Vox Pop bias is to ensure that the people you interview expressing concern about mass immigration should have clearly evident health problems - ideally find someone on a mobility scooter to voice such opinions.  

John Sweeney had the classic mobility scooter interview in his biased report from Peterborough for Newsnight today. It also started with that other classic trope about the fact we like to enjoy a wide ranging cuisine means we also have to love mass immigration. The greatest non-sequitur ever - proved by the fact that countries throughout Asia like western cuisine but don't allow Europeans easy access to their countries and their citizenship. 

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Emily Maitlis: So what does the country expect - or rather want to see from this immigration policy? We sent John Sweeney to Peterborough to find out.  

John Sweeney: When it comes to migration, who's in and who's out? Does the Government know what we want? Do we? Take a look at the main square and you'll see just how much we love a bit of foreign. Never mind Henry VIII, look below him. Pizza Express, that's Italian. Another pizza place. Yorkshire Building Society, I'll give you that. Next door, Nando's, Afro-Portuguese. Next door, the HSBC, the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. Over there, McDonald's, American. Folk in Peterborough are happy that companies from around the world come here. But what about people? All the brouhaha around Brexit may be blinding us to some simple facts. Polling says that people who voted leave are less worried about Europeans than non-Europeans coming to Britain:  

Vox Pop 1

Vox Pop 1: Well, I'd like to see more European workers here than the others on the Indian continent, like.
John Sweeney (to Vox Pop 1): Why is that?
Vox Pop 1: They seem to fit in more with the English way of tradition, sort of thing.   

Vox Pop 2

Vox Pop 2:  There's that many people 'ere now that the systems just can't cope. At the end of the day, I'm not racist one little bit. The only thing that I object to is, like, when I want to go... I've paid into it all me life and I 'ad to pay into it, it's not voluntary, but now I get put back of the queue.   

Vox Pop 3

John Sweeney (to Vox Pop 3): Brexit will mean, you would say, that the number of Poles, Romanians, whatever, would go down. Does that worry you?
Vox Pop 3: Yes, of course it does, because they provide our economy with a very mobile, very efficient and very cheap form of labour and if that form of labour disappears and we substitute it with domestic labour, which is less efficient and more expensive, then that's going to lead to wider inflation and higher prices.
John Sweeney (to Vox Pop 3): Are you a professor of economics by any chance?
Vox Pop 3: I'm a teacher of economics. (LAUGHTER.) 

You might not pick this up on the street, but these are the numbers: In the 12 months to June this year, three-quarters of the increase of the immigrant population was down to non-EU countries. The country sending the largest number of migrants to the UK is China, followed by India. Lots of businesses say they'll struggle without European workers. But not this one. After Newsnight hid the lost Ark in this warehouse, Harrison Ford eat your heart out, we asked this storage business how they are placed: 

Jarred Lester, Operations Manager, Big Web Warehouse: I don't have particular huge concerns about losing a great deal of the Eastern European options. I think really everything is supply and demand and one of the problems that this industry and, say, the fruit picking industry has had is that they've decided that it's low-wage jobs. Now, people saying that British workers won't do it is just rubbish. Really, it's supply and demand and, you know, people will pick fruit for £10 an hour. People may not want to do it for £6 an hour. 

Today, the Government was notably fuzzy on both numbers and salary levels for wannabe migrants. Leave voters may not get quite what they wished for.