Economist Prof. Steve Fothergill has said he was “sacked” by Sheffield Hallam University after writing a paper that criticised U.K. immigration policy for allowing large numbers of jobs to be taken by foreigners. The Telegraph has the story.
Prof. Steve Fothergill said his contract was terminated by Sheffield Hallam University after his paper found that half of the jobs in former coal mining areas were taken up by migrants.
He alleged that bosses at the university told him they were unhappy with his paper and subsequently did not renew his short-term, part-time contract.
Prof. Fothergill accused Sheffield Hallam of launching an “assault on academic freedom”, alleging that the university “simply didn’t like the conclusions we came to”.
Sheffield Hallam University denied that there was “any attempt to suppress the research project or its findings”, adding that the academic was on secondment there.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Prof. Fothergill, an economist specialising in urban and regional development, said: “I was told there was an issue with the quality of the academic work, which is nonsense – the paper is a very thorough evaluation of the numbers.”
His paper, which explored employment growth in former mining areas in England and Wales in 2011-21, found that almost half the jobs created had been filled by foreign workers.
It concluded that given the substantial “effort, energy and funding” ploughed into these areas over the decade to regenerate local economies and communities, the outcome was a “poor rate of return”.
It suggested that the high numbers of jobs going to non-U.K. workers could explain why “vast numbers” of coalfield residents – 590,000 in the autumn of 2023 – were on out-of-work benefits.
The paper also suggested the need to “better regulate migration to the U.K., to bring down the numbers so that more of the benefits of local regeneration feed through to local residents”.
But the academic claimed that days after an article was published in October referencing the research, he was called into a meeting at the university’s Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research and told that the university was unhappy with the piece of work.
Prof. Fothergill claimed his short-term, part-time contract, which he said had been renewed consistently since 1992, was terminated.
He said he had run the study past half a dozen very senior academics around the country for their comments.
“These are leading professors, in Cambridge, Birmingham and Newcastle, whose views I respect. No one came back saying ‘Oh no Steve, you’ve got this wrong’,” he said. “They were all saying ‘Wow, this is rather shocking in terms of the numbers’.”
In a series of emails seen by the Telegraph, the Director of the university’s Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research said that while there was no suggestion “that the data are wrong or your conclusions cannot be substantiated”, the study had “not been presented in a way that is sufficiently robust academically to substantiate the policy conclusions it draws and the language that is used to propose them”.
It said the report “fails to engage critically with wider debates around migration” and uses language which is “at best a little careless and at worst will be seen as offensive or inflammatory”.
Worth reading in full.
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For many people the truth is like kryptonite and they will avoid/ignore/reject any evidence which threatens to pierce the bubble of delusion in which they protect themselves and their world view. Inconvenient facts must be avoided at all costs. These people are everywhere. They often, as in this case, react with hostility when somebody challenges their inner narrative and exposes the holes in their hypothesis, and this evidently applies across all contexts.
Meanwhile, in Denmark, the Danes are getting tough with foreign law-breaking douchebags, who forfeit their rights to any human rights as soon as they commit a crime, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately we know whose side the human rights lawyers will be on;
”The Danish government has announced plans to abolish the so-called ladder system, a framework that limits the deportation of criminal foreigners based on the severity of their crimes and their length of stay in the country.
The move is part of an effort to streamline deportations for all foreigners sentenced to unconditional prison terms, ensuring stricter measures against those who commit crimes in Denmark.
Currently, the ladder system allows for deportation only in cases where the severity of the crime corresponds to the individual’s length of stay in Denmark, with additional provisions for violent and sexual crimes. Under the new proposal, any foreign national sentenced to an unconditional prison term can be deported, regardless of their time in the country or the length of the sentence, unless doing so would violate Denmark’s international obligations.
Immigration and Integration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek emphasized the importance of the reform in a press release published last week.
“Unfortunately, foreigners in Denmark are overrepresented in the crime statistics and too often commit serious crimes — such as those related to gang activity. We don’t have to deal with that.
The hammer must fall even harder.
“Therefore, we want to tighten the rules so that we can get even more criminal aliens deported. Every criminal alien who is deported by Denmark is a victory for the legal community and a victory for our country.”
https://rmx.news/article/denmark-tightens-deportation-rules-for-foreign-criminals/
“When facts become hate speech, the truth is an arrestable offence” —Katie Hopkins 2014.
Denialism. There’s a lot of it about. Bound up with egocentricity, because it doesn’t matter how much contradictory evidence is put forward, the person will never accept that their theory has been disproven and holds no validity, not due to stubbornness but because of their fragile ego.
Hmm … nobody ever changed his opinion just because it didn’t make any sense. That’s pretty much a universal truth about humans.
Go Denmark. And this is where we find the stats about the criminality of immigrants, that are undoubtedly similar in our country.
I couldn’t care less about his third rate academic colleagues at a fourth rate university being offended. What concerns me is understanding why immigrant workers got the jobs and natives didn’t?
A bit like housing, then, one could say.
That’s a good question
My guess is a combination of work ethic, being prepared to work for low wages, working in family or ethnically closed businesses such as restaurants, and generally being better qualified (obviously these factors apply in different quantities to different subsections of the immigrant population, and some immigrants who are unemployed possess none of these qualities).
Supply and demand does surely apply to labour, but equally it’s not a zero sum game as more economically active workers also means more economically active consumers.
My main concern with immigration is culture not jobs.
There are some cultural aspects that have an economic impact: white flight from the UK caused by immigration, the cost of crime which some immigrant groups commit at a higher rate, impact on productivity of DEI hiring. The question is would U.K. have been more or less economically successful (GDP per capita) if we had retained the ethnic composition we had at the end of WW2?
I should add that any consideration of immigration and its effects needs to take into account successive generations born in the UK to immigrant parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on.
This man was granted asylum in Greece but still risked his life crossing the Channel to come to England. I do hope Victoria’s next question was ”How did you manage to afford 3000 Euros when you were living in a tent?” But this just illustrates perfectly the pull factor with the UK. People are already in safe countries, such as all the migrants in camps in France, and yet as long as the UK remains the softest, most cushiest destination for migrants in all of Europe then they’re going to carry on making Britain their final destination. It’s why they pass over so many safe countries, because it’s not about being ”safe”, it’s about making it to ‘El Dorado’, Great Britain. If the dodgy Channel is the only obstacle they’ll carry on risking it. Why else would they not be satisfied with just staying put in mainland Europe?
“I had Asylum in Greece, but as I mentioned nobody wants to live in a tent”
And there you have it… He had asylum granted in Greece, but paid €3,000 to cross the channel illegally because he wanted to come to the UK.
This man is an economic migrant.”
https://x.com/addicted2newz/status/1868248831936077990
And you’ve had 900 more arrivals in the last week;
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats-last-7-days
Indeed almost all migration is in my view economic or cultural or both. Some come here because of the generous benefits, others because it’s easy to find work and career prospects are probably better than in the rest of Europe, and because of the language – they are much more likely to know English already to an extent than German. I also think we’re probably culturally more welcoming than other countries. Also some come because the UK is or seems freer, socially and in other ways. I do find it a bit puzzling that some communities that have ended up here seem to dislike us and our values – at least large sections of them – why come here then? But perhaps they have an invader mentality.
Anyway, it was a huge mistake to start, and we should stop completely now. It may already be too late.
It has not been a success story. Bringing I. Carribean immigrants has helped with the collapse.
How much money has been wasted on translating documents into the host of foreign languages the immigrants speak instead of telling them to simply learn English? There is much to dislike about the French but their Gallic shrug if you do not speak French is to be admired.
Yes, extra help in schools too.
In many lower grade jobs, when you already have a large proportion of immigrant workers it is often easier to recruit more of them …. for language purposes.
A guess would be that immigrant workers were more interested in them because they couldn’t get benefits instead. At least, that’s the legal situation. Reading’s horde of professional beggars is probably the most ethnically British community in town.
CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL—–In order to work for government you must at all times adhere to government agenda’s. Otherwise you will be removed. So what we end up with is institutions full of government lackeys scared of their own shadow unable to speak freely on any politicised issue. ——-Question climate change dogma with facts and reason and it is tatty bye to you. Speak of the economic consequences of mass immigration and hey Adios Amigo
As far as the “University” is concerned, he committed a Thought Crime. So they’ve “Gulaged” him.
Fascism – the complete control of all social-political-personal matters. Gulags might well be a reality in the near future for wrong-thinkers.
It said the report “fails to engage critically with wider debates around migration”
In other words, Professor Fothergill failed to take into account the claim that more immigration might not always be an improvement is extreme right-wing and that research substantiating it must not be published for wider political reasons. Such decreed Sheffield Hallam university administration on its important mission to protect the public from learning about legal but harmul facts.
Leftist scum inhabit large swathes of academia. Time for the trials to be held, and long prison sentences awarded.
Sounds like Professor Fotgergill has a very strong academic and intellectual record combined with a generous measure of common sense. Perhaps he should consider standing for Reform in one of the worst affected areas!
Isn’t this illegal?