Another month and another set of immigration figures. 672,000 net immigration for the year to June 2023. At least that’s not quite as many people as at first feared. After all, the Mail earlier this week reported that it “understood” from internal Home Office forecasts that the number could be as high as 700,000. “The figure for the year to June is expected to top 700,000, beating the high of 606,000 for 2022, sources said.” Of course, as the piece went on to point out, the final figure from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) is likely to differ from that of the Home Office due to differences in methodology.
What are we supposed to make of the final figure of 672,000? Thank heavens it was only 672,000 and not 700,000 because that would have been disastrous? It seems that is indeed the purpose of the briefing of these pre-official numbers. It is a form of crude psychological manipulation that the Nudge Unit would barely get out of bed for, residing as it does at the more elementary end of behavioural science. Anchoring is a technique that has been used by retailers for years and is why the expensive bottle of wine in Waitrose makes £14.95 seem reasonable. This crude trick has been played in previous announcement cycles this year and will probably be played again by the Government although for it to work, it would help if the anchor number were a good deal higher than the actual one. It appears that more Government creativity is being put into managing our perception of immigration growth than into actually reducing it.
A second stream of gaslighting activity is being performed in parallel by the Left with enthusiastic participation on the part of the BBC. This is more subtle and can be summarised as the ‘Britain-has-always-been-a-nation-of-immigrants’ narrative. The lesson to be drawn from this narrative is that from the dawn of this country’s history, immigrants – black people in particular – have always played a big part and that any suggestion of a recent influx, wave or surge in immigration indicates racism, xenophobia and being self-evidently far-Right.
The latest contribution to the narrative was reported in the Daily Telegraph this week. A study by the Museum of London alleges “structural racism” in 14th century England as being behind a disproportionate mortality rate among London’s black population during the Black Death. This was, it is claimed, particularly the case for women who are described as victims of “misogynoir” (sic). The study does not appear to offer an estimate of what percentage of London’s population during the Black Death was black but the higher death rate is based on comparing the skulls of a sample of plague victims with those of a sample that died from other causes. As the Telegraph points out, this method of identifying ethnicity has a shaky track record. The Roman-era remains known as the Beachy Head Lady were claimed as those of a woman from sub-Saharan Africa but it later turned out that she was from Cyprus.
The BBC hit the news last month for including content material in its 2023 Black History Month programme containing the assertion that Roman emperor Septimius Severus was black. He was born in what is now Libya but was of Italian and Carthaginian parentage. African yes, black no. Like, say, Elon Musk. While this programming has been withdrawn, this and similar claims have been made for a while by the BBC, most memorably in its ‘Been Here From the Start’ video for CBBC’s Horrible Black History dating from 2021. It is still available to watch here. Every claim on the video from Cheddar Man to the Tudors was recently debunked expertly by historian Tom Rowsell.
The BBC, the Museum of London and others would all have us believe that Britain has ‘always’ been a country of immigrants. While it is true to state that immigration has always played a role, it has been pretty modest since the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and subsequently, the Normans. Modest, for century upon century – until this one. Because in the 21st century, as David Goodhart pointed out in his 2013 book The British Dream: Success and Failures of Post-War Immigration, New Labour drastically increased the levels of immigration.
From 1066 until 1950 immigration was almost non-existent – about 50,000 Huguenots in the 16th and 17th centuries, about 200,000 Jews in two waves, and perhaps one million or more Irish over 200 years during most of which time they were internal migrants within one state.
As Goodhart goes on to point out, since 2004:
More people arrive on these shores as immigrants in a single year than in the entire period 1066 to 1950 (excluding the Irish and wartime flows). [italics in original]
So, the latest immigration figures tell us that net migration in the year to June 2023 was almost three times the total immigration from 1066 to 1950. This extraordinary fact gives the lie to the idea of immigration being a continuous and ancient trend. There really has been a dramatic and gargantuan increase. The numbers bear this out.
The Left inverts reality across a number of dimensions in order to mask the truth. As a closing observation, reflect upon how it does the opposite with climate change, which really has been with us from the beginning. However, rather than accept that we live in one of a number of inter-glacial periods across history during which cooling and warming has occurred naturally, climate alarmists have to confect an ever more dramatic narrative of a sudden surge in man-made warming – the term ‘global boiling’ comes to mind. Perhaps we will come to think of this as the reverse gaslight.
Ian Price is a Business Psychologist and author of the Anti-Human Substack. Find him on X.
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We are paying the wages of these despicable arseholes.
The Davos Deviants are taking the world to hell in an EV and useless, grubby leeches like Charlotte are concerned that the dead might be given the wrong pronoun. I strongly doubt that even the bloody dead would G a F about how they should be addressed as the hearse carries them away. Even if they were able.
I am bloody furious that the wan#ers in Parliament can be so conceited as to believe this subject is worthy of discussion even over a cup of tea in one of their subsidised cafes. Is this glorified idiot of a retard not aware how utterly, depressingly stupid she sounds to the decent people currently occupying this country?
And whoever was Speaker at the time this matter was raised should hang their head in shame for the sheer insult this subject and this woman has given to the British people.
Nuke the damned lot of them.
Unbelievable!
Thanks Freddy
Next time, why not say what you really think of them!!
I hope to God such an asinine commentary is not repeated by this lazy, corrupt, idiotic cohort of sheer deplorables, disgracing the decent people of this country.
Bravo, hux!
What a disgusting sign of the times and a shocking indictment of the state of British politicians if they’re even seeing fit to raise such a non-issue and utter bilge in parliament. As if there’s nothing more pressing going on right now, effecting every man, woman and child in society than talking about this complete bloody garbage! Talk about priorities.. 
Thanks Mogs
If there is a bolder, brighter, more in our faces way to confirm how much these rank nobodies could affirm their sheer ignorance I hope I never have to see it.
If there is a more obvious way of ramming their contempt of their employers down our throats we are fortunate to have not yet witnessed it.
Surely to God a more sick and deplorable crew of unemployables could ever be gathered together under one roof.
As a defining moment that surely demands the abolition of this caricature of a parliament and democracy this must be it.
For pity’s sake please let this be the nadir.
Sadly, I think these insane nobody’s can and will sink yet further, in ways we just can’t yet fathom.
Not fit to run a bath, and the US is even worse!
Go go go——-You must have a had a power breakfast his morning. ——That was certainly one of your best and most invigorating tirades my friend
Thanks varmint.
Top class HP!!
Thanks Spycatcher.
Funnier than the “Dead Parrot” sketch. ——–“Can I help you at all?——I’ve come to change me parrots gender”—“But it looks like it might be dead sir”————“Nope it’s alive and just sleeping and he wants to be a girl” ——-“I am afraid your LGBT parrot is deceased sir, it’s gone to meet it’s maker”——“But it wants to wear a dress”——“But how does it know it wants to wear a frock if it’s dead”?
Very good
There is no such thing as a “transgender person”. There are men and women, some of whom choose to claim they are the opposite sex to their actual sex.
Exactamondo. There’s male, female then confused/mentally ill. I think there’s a lot of normalising of mental illness and anti-social behaviour going on nowadays, which would not have been tolerated years gone by. And yes, transsexuals have always been with us and they’ve never been any bother or been plastered all over the news, but it’s like now there’s a new breed and they’re a danger to kids and a threat to society as a whole. Now any old pervert man can don a dress, proclaim he’s a *she* just so he can gain access to the women’s changing room or enter a female sports event. That shit never used to happen. Craziness…
SSSHHHHHHHH ——You will be dragged to the Gender Race Equality Diversity and Climate Gulag
She’s not a looker, and cow dung for brains.
Maybe she will look better dead and she can then go on the Dead People Dating Site.
Why doesn’t the stupid b**ch read new the WHO treaty and amendments that are going to toss away our sovereign rights to the WHO and the cronies that control it and do something about that instead of pissing away her time on stupid delusional crap that affects a minuscule percentage of people and even then is straight out of Alice in Wonderland?
And then they wonder why people’s opinion of politicians is low.
Nice one Stewart.
Such an unfortunate photo suggesting an irreversible brain implant.
I.D.G.A.F who you think you are. You could claim to be a flying unicorn for all I care, but once you impose your views over mine, we will most certainly clash. Guaranteed.
And I won’t crumble.
Much love.
Your lifelong, implacable & impertinent opponent.
GDA
In order to avoid being an outlier in the political class, the Conservative Party will now claim this Labour MP is being extreme. The Tories will propose, instead, a regulator to ensure the corpse cannot make this change less than 2 days nor more than 6 weeks after death and a fee has to be paid. Furthermore, it will absolutely be prohibited to make two changes; only one is to be allowed.
I fear we will all be requyired to change our gender and at that point I’m leaving.
Maybe helpline for the dead where they can be advised best how to look wearing a frock in their urn.
‘course they can. All they need to do is complete form XA96a and the record will be changed forever – or until either one of their children complete form XA96b or their parents complete XA96c. If both forms XA96b and XA96c are submitted then whichever was submitted first will be deemed invalid. In cases where multiple copies of XA96b are completed they will be weighted by the ratio of numbers of children (acknowledged or not) of the deceased to numbers of acknowledged parents.
Of course, if there is a valid marriage certificate it will need to be amended and substituted with a retrospective civil partnership certificate. In its absence any pension entitlements which the deceased accrued will revert to any surviving parents or grandparents or to the deceased’s dog or to the state.
Simple.
Marvellous
This article has disappeared
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/04/ex-whitehall-mandarin-led-premier-league-stasi-that-banned-newcastle-fan
What article?
I see no article…
Crikey tof. What’s going on?
A glitch in the matrix…
They’re coming…
Run!
Thank you – I thought I was going doolally (if that’s not offensive to the doolally community).
Methinks the legal department of the Prem might have been in touch.
Looks like it – as per below, article has disappeared from Telegraph.
Look forward to hearing from DS as to what’s going on there.
Yep ——–Toby come clean mate. ——-I notice the article about the Newcastle fan is still there though.
Has the Telegraph article (to which it referred) suffered the same fate?
Good spot – yes!
I would put on her tombstone. Here lies a man with two ar*eholes.
People cannot pay their mortgage or their energy bill. They are being treated like aliens in their own country and our daughters will soon have to wear a headscarf to school. We have men being told it is ok to use the womens loo. We are governed by a political class of WEF and UN lackeys, yet here is a squirming twerp worrying about the rights of dead people. ——-Are there actually any votes in that by the way?
Cool! The bishops can then remember Jesus of Nazareth as a transgender Person of the Trinity, alongside God our Mother, on account of the description of Him wearing ankle-length female attire, ‘tied under the paps’ (Revelation.i.13).
I started a list of things that are important to get fixed. I got to 50 and this still doesn’t make the list!
Brilliant idea. I intend to declare I’m still alive after I’ve “passed” and carry on claiming my pensions.