Remember the so called “shocking news” from the right wing media about the level of immigrants in our towns and cities.
Guess what - all lies.
“The right-wing press got itself in hot water this week over a deeply misleading statistic that claimed one in twelve Londoners is an undocumented migrant. It was originally published in the Telegraph, but was uncritically re-printed and repeated across the entire media ecosystem from the Times, to the Mail to GBNews.
The claim, as many Londoners could immediately tell, is completely false. The study in question, commissioned by Thames Water, included immigrants with Indefinite Leave to Remain and tourists among the supposed irregular migrant population. Furthermore, it put that inflated figure into a deflated figure for the population of London of around seven million, instead of the nearly nine million it actually is. The resulting findings obviously have no credibility at all.
But the wild claim did what it was supposed to. You can see the purpose of it in the Telegraph’s very own sub-heading: ‘New research adds to fears over borders and increased pressure on public services’. You bet it does: exactly as it was intended to. As the IPSO complaints, corrections and withdrawals roll in, we know the number of people even clocking the corrections at all must be a tiny fraction of those reached by the original headlines.
Baseless scaremongering about undocumented migrants is a tactic copied directly from the Trump playbook by the British anti-migrant right. They are keen to promote a “mass deportations” agenda just like his. But deportations are no answer to the real problem of undocumented migrants in this country, and as usual the alternative, workable and humane solutions are not getting anything like the same airtime.”
By-line Times
Don’t allow them to push a Trump agenda.
