The BBC's pro-mass immigration Home Editor Mark Easton gave his 'assessment' of the "major incident" in the English Channel on last night's BBC News at Ten.
While there are real concerns at the risks these migrants are running and the criminal gangs who are exploiting desperate people, in terms of a threat to the UK, the "major incident", as the Home Secretary has described it, the numbers actually are really quite small. In the whole of 2018, 312 people in small boats were intercepted by the UK Border Force trying to enter Britain. The National Crime Agency makes the point that many more than that are intercepted trying to get into the UK [illegally] at conventional ports, hidden in lorries and vans sometimes specially converted by organised criminal gangs and people traffickers. To give you some idea, in 2016, officials stopped 56,000 people trying to cross the Channel clandestinely. And we know that in the year to last September, 28,000 people applied for asylum in the UK. Now, that actually is still FAR below the number which applied back in 2002, when it was 84,000. And it is also far below the applications comparable EU countries typically receive. In the year to last June, Germany saw almost 168,000 applicants, France 108,000, Italy 102,000. Greece actually saw 40% more applicants than the UK, with a fifth of our population. Indeed, of the 28 current EU countries, the UK comes 17th in terms of asylum applications per head. So, while the sight of small dinghies trying to evade the border force patrols may make people feel deeply uneasy, the impact on our country must really be described as marginal at most.
I think all I probably need to do is to re-post a comment from the open thread:
That said, there's a curious thing here:
I took that transcript from TV Eyes, and TV Eyes followed precisely the subtitles broadcast on the News at Ten. Both the TV Eyes transcript and the BBC One subtitles are the same as the transcript I've posted above - except for one word.
Yes, Mark Easton didn't use the word 'illegally' on BBC One's News at Ten.
Here's a screengrab from the News at Ten.
Didn't the BBC reports talk about these invaders as 'wanting to make a home here'? Doesn't that sound nice and cosy? How does the BBC know their motives?
ReplyDeleteI was watching ITV local news and from the speed and accuracy of subtitles it was clear what we were seeing was not automatic transcription, but ratrat the actual text from the teleprompter script.
ReplyDeleteYes, I've noticed that ITV local news subtitles sometimes run ahead of the story - as if they have been prepared in advance of broadcast.
DeleteThe Chief Ideologue of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the BBC declares the migrant cross-channel invasion to be an ideologically correct event and therefore to be supported by all members of the Party (sorry, I meant BBC).
ReplyDeleteOh, desperate, yes. I've yet to see or hear a media report since 2015 that doesn't use that epithet, even though it isn't applicable to most of those turning up. Talk about lazy, unthinking, and spouting meaningless babble.
ReplyDeleteFor all his eagerness to set the numbers in context, it is a very selective one. Noticeably absent is any reference to the context of the vastly larger number from other avenues of illegal immigration and or bogus asylum claims, and any reference to the fact that the government had a crackdown on abuse of the asylum system when it reached the numbers he gives for 2002. Of course that was a Labour government but perhaps he doesn't think it politic to mention that when Corbyn and the rest are burbling platitudinous drivel.