A typical DM 'story'.

I agree, petallus, that the DM detractors seem to choose their articles rather carefully.

ana

I looked at the Guardian online and couldn't see any mention of Theresa May's statement yesterday. I'm sure there must be somewhere but I couldn't see it. It was quite a significant statement, well trailed addressing the issue of student visas. All the figures reported in the DM & Telegraph were those she gave to the House.

Unlike other countries there is no electronic measurement here, we rely on a random survey of passengers. I think it dates back to the 60s to give us a rough idea of tourists visiting this fair land. When anyone gains entry to this country, tourist, student, there are no checks made to see if they leave.

I hope a few people watched Panorama tonight and saw the impact on Croydon of the economic crisis. It featured four or five stories of white British people, all about to be evicted from their homes. Croydon Council has over 2000 families wanting accommodation - how on earth are they going to cope with a further influx?

The funny thing about this program: if was totally unrepresentative of the ethnic mix of Croydon. I don't know why.

jodi, not the one gillybob flagged up - that was just ridiculous and deserved all the mickey-taking it got!

I don't think entry to the UK goes unrecorded. My passport is computer scanned pretty much every time now. I know this worries some people, but I certainly have no problem with it.

I think they just check that you have a valid passport and that you are legally entitled to enter the country e.g. visas for non EU passport.

I guess it means that they do have the entry data though. I know some people on ex-pat forums worry if they are close to the maximum number of days for tax residency in France or England. (Before anyone gets excited there is not much financial advantage in one or the other, but you have to chose which country and then spend more than half the year there.) if you add in the data from the travel companies who check passports as well, then I think you would have a pretty accurate record. Whether it happens or not is another matter.

sel the Panorama programme was not so much about the housing shortage as about the economic climate. At least two of the four families had their own house with a mortgage and it was repossessed, by the banks.

The Panorama program was harrowing.

It was primarily about the housing shortage in that when people fell on hard times and could no longer pay their mortgages and were evicted, it was extremely difficult for alternative accommodation to be found for them.

Forty years ago they would have been rehoused in social housing in a relatively short time.

Jodi, yes, agreed but it showed the pressure Croydon is under to provide housing. It was a terribly sad. I wasn't sure what the message was, given all those shown were white, British. Croydon is as ethnically diverse as it gets. Again, it's the further influx that's a worry.

I hear there's to be a statement from Ed today admitting Labour got it wrong on immigration - do you think they monitor the Gransnet Boards?

The granny with breast cancer who'd been unable to keep paying her mortgage on her council house reduced me to tears. I don't bank with Barclay's but if I did I'd move my account for sure. What happened to compassion?

Jodi agreed, poor woman. All the people featured were lovely and I thought the parents squashed into the one bed flat were remarkable, lovely children. It was quite heartbreaking. The scale of the problem is enormous, sadly.

Surely this is mainly about the failure of housing policy over the past thirty years. Council houses sold off, failure to invest in new houses, over-development in the south-east and under-investment in the north have all added to the problem.
Since people seeking work will crowd in where there is work, you get huge pressure building up on housing in areas that are already overcrowded.
Bonkers.

Croydon has suffered rapid population growth over the last 10 years most of which is due to immigration.

That is the point I am making about the south-east Sel. The UK depends more and more on service industries and Croydon is in the centre of that.
Mind you it always has been for us. My family ran a pub there in the nineteenth century.

Mamie in some countries you fill in a landing card with contact details, length of stay, address if stay etc. Then you have to fill in a departure card and they record that you have left.
My belief is that the UK just that check documents allow entry and that is it. Anyone know the low down on the IT?
One of my most challenging flights (in terms of trying to stay chilled) was flying back from Perth to NZ. I had had my visa extended to say in NZ with DS2 while he was having chemo. Been to see DS1 etc. I was filling in my landing card, somewhere over the Tasman Sea, when I realised that my visa extension did not allow me to leave NZ and then re-enter.
Midnight at Wellington airport saw me sitting on a seat after everyone else had gone through, while the immigration officer rang the office in the city to check whether I could come in. Fortunately there was a duty officer available and they were tolerant of my mistake and did not send me back to Australia.

I've been away so I've only just read page one and this last page on this post. I think it's already been stated that the DM seems to pilfer stories like this one about the young mother and her children from Closer magazine, I'm not quite sure why girls like her do these sort of interviews because they must know that they will annoy their peers who are having to work/study and don't have a home and an income provided without having ever worked. Clearly it has been published to provoke. Nevertheless, we have discussed all this before on other threads. Personally I think the Daily Express are far more reactionary than the Mail, and it never seems to get the flack the Mail gets. Like others have stated I read a range of papers, many on line and these usually comprise of DM, Telegraph, The Independent and The Evening Standard (London paper) we also take the Times. I'm another who gets fed up with people who label DM readers as fascist/Nazis/devil worshipers, yes they print stories like this so what! They also campaigned to bring the murderers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. Like some of the last few posters, I watched the Panorama screened last night about four homeless people/families. I found all four cases heartbreaking, particularly the lady with cancer, her case was truly appalling in that her particular council, I think Redbridge could not find her anywhere decent to live. Also the family with four children. Why couldn't Croydon Council place a family of six in somewhere larger that a one bedroom flat for heaven's sake, when fairly sizeable homes can be found for large families from overseas, sorry if I'm sounding like a Daily Mail reader but it does occur to me that we need to look after our own citizens who fall on hard times a bit better than this. I will never forgive Labour for allowing so many people to arrive in this country, when we do not have the housing, schools or infrastructure to cope with our now burgeoning population. I live in West London and believe me we have an acute shortage of housing, particularly in the private rental sector. A number of schools in the general area have had to be built to cope with the increased demand for school places. We have a finite amount of space in our small island and I don't know how many more people we can stuff into the overcrowded South East before we grind to a complete halt.

Bananas, I don't think you will find any post from our members which label DM readers as fascists/Nazis/devil worshippers. Some of us happen to believe it is a poor newspaper with a not-very-well hidden agenda of demonising the less privileged members of society. I, for one, have never made any criticism of any DM reader.
This is not to say that there are no other poor newspapers and anybody who wants to mention them is entirely at liberty to do so.

Bananas the immigrants came in large numbers because the economy was booming and was desperate their labour. Same happened in Ireland - but many have now left as their economy no longer needs to employ immigrant labour and skills. It is not their fault if employment grew faster than housing etc.

Greatnan, I admit I was being a little bit over the top, and a little big tongue in cheek, when I wrote fascists/Nazi/etc. what I really meant was that some are a bit sniffy if about DM. That's OK I think if that's how anyone feels it's their prerogative to express that. Whatever paper/s anyone chooses to read, for me, it is not a falling out matter, just a difference of opinion.

greatnan so given your original post, there was no sub text?

JessM, I really don't blame the immigrants and I know loads of them are hardworking, our cafe where we go for coffee is staffed by Eastern Europeans who make the best coffee outside Italy and always with a smile and are quietly efficient, the tables are always cleared immediately, I wouldn't go anywhere else. I can remember being in Little Chefs on occasions when we were travelling to and fro that were staffed by English where they would walk empty handed past tables and I have to say it struck me how badly places like this were run. It saddens me that SOME of our younger generation don't get it. Since being at university and graduating my son has worked in a clothes shop which is staffed by an age range of between 17 - 24, my son is a supervisor here and tells me often of how unreliable many of these employees are, not turning up for no apparent reason, a couple of them having a row on the shop floor in full view of customers, not coming in after a heavy night out. Guess what nationality? English of course. It's not hard to understand how some employers won't employ English, but that makes me sad for the ones that don't have these sloppy attitudes and aren't given a chance. I used to say to my kids when they were still at school "do the teachers ever say that you will be competing in a global world?" and that was a few years ago, it was never mentioned at that time and I wonder if it is now, I just think that our younger generation are not prepared for the world that they are going into. Having said all that Labour's gross under estimate of the numbers that eventually came showed such an amazing lack of foresight, if indeed you can believe that they actually thought that only 13,000 would arrive, as we now know they wanted to change the make-up of the country. Where did they suppose these people would be housed, given that we didn't have enough houses before the newcomers arrived. Or is acceptable to have umpteen people sharing a bedroom or shanty towns springing up as they are in areas of London like Southall?

BAnanas that's the reality not the spin. Sadly. I'd love to hear a coherent answer to the issues you've raised. I presume you would not call yourself racist, for me it's the furtherest thing I can imagine being but, when you live amongst the reality of the Labour open door policy and are lectured by people, for whom there is no impact, are living far away, it quite laughable.

Yes, the immigrants who are here, remain. Not an issue. We love what they have brought, restaurants, shops open all hours, cheap labour,their work ethic, wonderfull. Sheesh, I can eat in a different ethnic restaurant every night of the week and there aren't many that I haven't sampled. Quite interesting on any commuter train out of London, how many languages you hear, seldom English. These are driven people and good for them, we all want to better ourselves.

But our young can't compete. And therein lies the rub. Life is a competition and our young are ill equipped.

I'm not even touching on the stretching to breaking point of resources. it only happens in certain parts of the country but when it does, the tensions created are huge. Such an opening for the far right. Crikey, it's such a threat. Please stop with the multicultural lectures and realise that for those who live it, and indeed have welcomed and enjoyed it, the last ten years have brought many people to breaking point.

We are such a tolerant country and I am proud of that. We have needed immigrants historically. but the muddled thinking of the last decade has lead to the situation we face now. Unrestricted immigration and resources that just can't cope.

Jess the controls on immigration here are a bit of a joke. Unlike the NZ, Australia, Canada, the US etc. Maybe down to our Colonia guilt and then, what we signed up to in 2004 with the EU. Once you're in, you're in, no check to see you leave. The figures from the 2011 census .. well, we've counted the ones who filled in the form.

jopa If you're reading this the lady in question is currently living in LA and making her name as a fashion designer.

Immigration is such a difficult question. Easy to know what should be done when talking about abstract numbers, more difficult when you come down to individual cases. Obviously we can't keep taking more and more people into such an overcrowded island, but at the same time I wouldn't want to see my son's hungarian girlfriend sent home. Immigration has always suited us when we've needed workers. My husband's grandfather walked from Italy to Wales as part of a Government scheme at the beginning of the last century, but I don't know why we can't have the sort of controls that other countries find so easy to put in place.