It’s an unmistakable fact: Britain is obsessed with immigration. And when we’re not embroiled in a national debate about the level of immigration – usually during periods of economic calm – many still feel the need to insist to everybody else that Britain really needs to have a national debate about immigration.
It really is a testament to the incredibly skillful propaganda techniques employed by Britain’s evidence-free tabloid media that so much of the general public has been convinced to be far more concerned with an issue which all available evidence shows is actually beneficial for the country, rather than the far more detrimental issues perpetrated by those at the top, such as tax avoidance, corruption and cronyism.
As Evolve has previously reported:
Whilst tabloid papers marketed at lower and middle class Britons like The Sun, The Express and The Daily Mail run daily stories about ordinary people playing the system, about single mothers from council estates having numerous children, or about immigrants supposedly getting preferential treatment, these types of publications very rarely run stories about this other, far worse group of scammers.
Yes, despite the fact that this other group of people literally cost Britain’s public purse 100 times more money than we lose through benefit fraud, the majority of the mainstream media do their best to distract the public onto other things – things that inevitably see ordinary people asking questions of their friends and neighbours rather than the rich and powerful.
Tax avoidance and evasion – misdeeds almost exclusively committed by the already-wealthy – cost the UK around £120Bn every year. This is whilst benefit fraud – a crime committed by the least well off in society, and seemingly reported on daily in the tabloids – costs the public purse just 1% of this at £1.2Bn a year. Furthermore, the amount of benefits that go unclaimed by Brits every year actually surpasses the amount of benefits claimed illegally by a factor of 10:
However, since the advent of Social Media and the emergence of new independent media, it has become evident to an increasing number of Brits that, rather than upholding their sole purpose of holding power to account, the majority of the UK’s media is simply being used as a tool by the elite to ensure public anger is directed away from those at the top of the food chain and onto those at the bottom.
Social media truly has broken the hegemony of Britain’s tabloids, and the effects are now beginning to emerge, with a glaring generational gap around immigration being one of the most self-evident.
Very few people around my age (30) seem to be overly concerned with immigration – we were schooled alongside people from all walks of life, and we understand that, no matter what someone’s background, everybody should be valued as much as the next person. The majority of our generation do not see life as ‘us and them’ – it is now simply ‘us’ – that we are all simply human, and we all bleed the same.
Whilst reams of evidence suggests that immigration has been hugely beneficial – both to the country’s finances and in societal terms – many Brits just can’t, for whatever reason, seem to shake that feeling that they simply “don’t want ‘them’ coming over ‘ere”. It really is a mystery. Surely these people’s opinions couldn’t be being influenced by our ridiculously anti-immigration media? Of course not.
Well, maybe. As the following clip from last night’s BBC Panorama programme shows: many Brits, when asked, said they want to see immigration controlled. But, when offered a list of jobs that they wouldn’t allow immigration into Britain for, most couldn’t think of a single one they wouldn’t allow people from other countries in for.
Please do watch the clip right to the end – the final two clips will almost certainly make you want to gouge your own eyes out in sheer frustration:
https://twitter.com/damocrat/status/971482516912836608
Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?
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