Euro elections results

[policywonk]

Here's one prediction www.predict09.eu/default/en-us/state_analyses.aspx#united

Cheeringly, it reckons that the BNP won't win a seat. Here's hoping.

I'm not sure how accurate self-reported income figures are, nor online-only surveys (as Yougov is). More interesting is that BNP are only party with majority C2DE supporters - so they are most blue collar. Also most BNP supporters are men, and men get paid more than women so their average income will be higher.

The Greens, unsurprisingly, have the highest number of middle class (ABC1) supporters.

It also appears that twice as many BNP supporters read Star/Sun as Mail/Express. Daily Mail is read by UKIP supporters....

Yes I saw that. I always thought the Greens were being a bit optimistic to hope to overtake the BNP when they were behind them before, in the depths of a recession.

They were opportunistic about opposing the BNP - their own profit was their true motive. Considering they didn't get any MEPs in Yorkshire or North West, and in Yorkshire it was particularly unlikely that they would, they should have teamed up with Lib Dems.

The problem with debating immigration is that people don't have the same experience of it.

Guardian journalists probably get a very good deal out of it - they get pleasant, probably degree-educated, Eastern Europeans serving them their crayfish baguettes and vanilla lattes rather than scowling British youths. And when they do up their Islington townhouses, they get a Polish builder in for about 50p/hour who does a marvellous job and they recommend him to all their friends.

And then they go out in the evening to Brick Lane and eat delicious curry before returning to their nicely renovated Georgian townhouses and then going in to work the next day surrounded by people similar to themselves, metropolitan and middle class, busily writing articles about stopping the BNP.

OTOH if you are Joe the Plumber and your rates have fallen 50% before the recession because of foreign competition and now in the recession you can't get work at all, and there's a 5 year waiting list for council accommodation but you see a family of asylum seekers get a house after just a few weeks and the BNP tells you it's because they're Muslims, you might well feel differently.[Actually it would be because people with children have priority, but that's not going to be explained.]

So yes it is rather difficult to debate immigration.

Although many plumbers earn good money these days as decent plumbers are in such short supply.

I think a lot of the more recent immigrants are doing jobs such as bar work and farm work that may have been done by students in the past ....

I'm pretty sure there are lots of Eastern Europeans working in construction.

Re:
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/antiimmigrant-ukip-leader-hires-polish-builders-477314.html

'I'm starting to think that a large proportion of the UK population shouldn't be allowed access to metal cutlery, let alone a ballot paper.'

Yes in construction there are many immigrants, but also in lots of jobs- even in the midst of a recession the factory where my Dad works struggles to recruit Bristish people. OK so the job is rank- Dad cleans out burger and sausage machines- but heck it's a job and it needs doing.

I think there is room for a denbate, it does seem somehow wrong as a system when there are so many unemployed- but equally ultimately these are peopl who need jobs and food like everyone else.

SG - in the Joe the PLumber scenario you describe, the only part that has anything to do with immigration is the employment situation (because, as we seem to agree, the housing aspect - which generates a lot of heat in what currently passes for the immigration 'debate' - is a red herring).

So what we're really dealing with is a dearth of skilled manual/manufacturing opportunities in some areas. This has at least as much to do with economic liberalisation (and a Thatcherite obsession with breaking trades unions) as it does with migration.

If the papers these people read would only tell them the truth, we could begin to have an immigration debate based on facts, not ignorance.

Well no, housing isn't a red herring. Because if you have more immigration you have more demand on finite social housing resources. While the fact is that say an asylum seeking family are not getting social housing because they are asylum seekers, they are getting them because they've got young children, the fact is that had they not come to the UK, there would be more social housing available.

And I don't think it is just about lack of opportunities. there are opportunities, but they are finite. For instance recently I needed a gardener. I could have got various middle-aged English men to come round for about £15/hour, but instead I got the South African immigrant who charged £8/hour.

Absolutely agree that there's too much demand and not enough supply in social housing. Both the Tories and New Labour have made a virtue of failing to provide social housing and/or actively depleting the stocks. It's shameful that this situation has been allowed to develop and cause such dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment. Fortunately, there's an easy answer: build more social housing, using some of the taxes paid by (among others) immigrants.

As to the gardener example, that's just a question of undercutting, isn't it? It's not an immigration issue. Even if we stopped all immigration tomorrow, there'll always be someone willing to undercut. Isn't that market economics?

There's also the very real fact that the agrdener charging £15 just might not get much business regardless of who else is about simply becuase far more people can aford to pay that than double the price: a lower cost will obviously generate extra work.

I've told PW this story before but in my hometown there was a guy who would sit with his teenage daughter on a centra place protesting about 'all the bloody immigrants getting houses and leaving him and his daughter homeless'.

Everyone believed him (and if you didn't you avoided him as he wasn't friendly). A massive stir was amde about these immigrant people.

Turned out the reason he was homeless was he'd just been released from prison for armed robbery and wasn't actually allowed near his daughter.

So very many people just believe the first sob story they hear.