Yesterday we had a climbdown by Peter Hain over the number of immigrants holding jobs in this country. He apologised for saying it was only 800,000, when the truth 1.1 million. Today Education Minister Jim Knight announced that the government wouldn't after all go ahead it its plans to seize 5% of school surpluses.
So a little competition for you. What will tomorrow's embarrassing climbdown be?
UPDATE: Well it's happened today. The government now admits the true figure of immigrants holding down jobs in the UK is actually 1.5 million, nearly double their original figure. It makes you wonder what it will be by the end of next month!
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On today's Daily Politics Andrew Neil reported that their researchers had found that even the new revised figure of 1.1 million immigrants is wrong and that two sources have the real figure at 1.5 million. The deceit goes on!
Best guess- The newly announced increases in capital gains tax will not be implemented on small business, in order to try and placate middle england voters
Not having an election.
Gordon's going to tell is it was all a double bluff and he's ready to go. He will tomorrow call a general election for December 25th, and whilst we're all at the polling station we might as well have a referendum on the European (not)Constitution.
You watch - I've put money on it already.
The ideal? A climbdown on the referendum.
The reality (if it does go to three ina row)? Probably something less consequential like Taxcutter suggests.
I thought they had climbed down over charging for bin emptying. But now it seems they have shifted the issue to local level who can now charge.
Is that a climbdown or a flip-flop?
I'm confused.
Maybe we will realise that a cancelled election is a good time to dig up bad news...
What about Swiss Des apologising to Liam Fox for being wrong AND accusing Fox of playing fast & loose with the truth?.
Or Gordon apologising for accusing Cameron of misleading the House?.
Or maybe Gorbals Mick apologising for being a cr@p Speaker?.
Or ..... maybe not !.
This is why Gordon Brown is having so much trouble with his 'vision' - he's dizzy from all the U-turns.
ID cards. Uh, sorry I was dreaming....
Brian Tomkinson - did you see the analysis at the Speccies Coffee House that shows that 2/3 of all of Labours much lauded new jobs have been filled by immigrants. If we've have 1.5 million new immigrants since 1997, maybe 80% of all new jobs have been taken by immigrants??
it seems like desperation,they are pitching out policies like confetti to test the reaction and when its negative its shelved,if Brown wants a positive response he should give us a referendum.
Weasel names blackmailed royal.
I now look forward to weekly PMQs with the same sort of anticipation I used to enjoy as a child looking forward to Friday and 'five-to-five' - It's CRACKERJACK !!!
Did the orange **** include himself in the statistics?
"Dr" Kim Howells what a xxxx. The old Communist miners leader welcoming the Saudi Royal Family. A man who showed no remorse (apart from the worry he might be implicated) following the killing of a taxi driver during the miners strike (no ballot remember)Keep a close eye on this xxxx
The Labour party will admit is has screwed up big time and invite Tony back - all is forgiven.
Someone calling Kim Howells on saying we shared values with the Saudis...
RS
Gordon Brown will apologise for claiming in his recent droneathon to be a champion of freedom. He'll say that he's realised that you can't have both freedom AND a Health and Safety Executive.
don't forget about the PAY AS YOU WEIGH bin tax being hidden....
Looks like it IS going ahead now.
The Minister responsible for immigration will apologise for saying immigrants are all the salt of the earth and working their socks off for the good of Britain and admit that large numbers of them are alcoholics, criminals and benefit cheats.
The climb down over the bins was interesting - the PR guys actually did heir jobs on this one.
You see, Very Important People - senior politicians, senior civil servants, rich & famous etc... have Security Concerns. This mean that they can't have bins full off stuff outside their houses waiting for collection. So, as part of their security setup, they have their bins emptied directly to the dump, every day.
Someone worked out how pictures of policeman taking out John Prescot's bin would play as a front page on the Sun.....
On the Saudi thing - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/graphics/2007/10/30/ixd30big.gif
It will undoubtedly be James Plaiskitt apologising for misleading the Work and Pension Select Committee over the Freud Report into benefit reform.
I’m looking forward to the new climate bill (legally binding one). Should be interesting watching the new eco phoney tories trying to vote it out
Let's face it, this incompetent lot cannot do anything right.
Gordon Brown will apologise for stealing £3,000 from the tax payer for a new suit. He will say he now realises that the taxpayer pays him a handsome salary, generous expenses and provides him and his family with free accommodation and that it was dishonest of him and a breach of trust to take advantage of his position to steal money to pay for his clothes.
Trick or treat thread didnt last very long...hhhmmmmm
It's time for Peter Hain to apologise again. This time for dishonestly/erroneously claiming that the number of working immigrants is 1.1 million whereas the Daily Politics quoted two government sources which state it is 1.5 million.
Dishonest or incompetent?
A combination of both, I suspect.
Yeah... lets give the saudis a kicking shall we. Then lose, Hundreads of Billions of pounds of investments, and upward of a million jobs. Yeah lets... IDIOTS...
Gordon Brown will resign after admitting publicly that he masterminded the coup attempt to depose Tony Blair. He will admit to the guilt he feels about this and state that he recognises that he has no mandate to be Prime Minister.
This country is being so continually and royaly fcuked over by New Labour I don't think the numbers or the climbdowns really matter anymore.
Anonymous said...
The climb down over the bins was interesting
Is that the rubbish bins or the Bin Sauds? Or are they the same thing?
Anonymous said...
The climb down over the bins was interesting
Is that the rubbish bins or the bin Sauds? Or are they both the same?
dsiwdnqqFatty Brown and his entire Cabinet will apologise for their slavish support of Blair's decision to invade Iraq. They will admit that they personally are responsible for the deaths on both sides and the destruction of Iraq. They will admit that their inferior intellects led them to suppose that Blair was doing the right thing.
Ken Livingstone will apologise for bringing the Olympic Games to London. He will say he now realises that we can't afford it, that we don't want it and that hardly anyone will win any medals. He knows it will be used as a cover for illegal immigrants who'll say they have arrived as spectators/competitors/support team and then they'll never go home.
Sir Ian Blair will apologise to cyclists for not considering bicycle theft to be important enough to bother about. He will immediately place the recovery of stolen bicycles at the forefront of Met policing
Iain Dale understands all Tim Ireland's points and offers him an unreserved apology.
According to the BBC's PM programme on Radio 4, it is well over 50% of foreign workers who share the jobs created since 1997 and not 40%.
For the BBC to admit to that, it must be more !
Neil Kinnock will just apologise for everything.
WHERE'S THE TRICK OR TREAT THING?
Was looking forward to that getting ridiculed...
Just broken on Sky: 1.5million
Jacqui Smith, Caroline Flint, Dawn Primarolo and Tessa Jowell will resign and apologise for using PC sentiment to secure jobs they couldn't handle.
WOMEN, KNOW YOUR LIMITS!
Has Iain done a U-turn on the trick, no treats item????
Labour will introduce quotas on immigration.
Gordon Brown in White Tie is a climbdown. Hopefully he will wear it when he explains how the 1.1 million immigrant workers have now jumped by 400K to 1.5 million. You couldn't make it up.
Hats off to Chris Grayling for another exposure on this tarnished Government of Stalin and the Tufty Club.
Gollum announces his intention to restrict voting on English domestic issues to English MPs only*.
Ruth Kelly adds that this has been under consideration for some considerable time and is not the same Union-threatening proposal stolen by the Tories yesterday.
*From January 2046
When is Dave going to explain that the immigration situation is totally unfixable while we are the EU? His silence on this undermines his criticism of Brown and Co.
How about these two, from Adam Boulton's blog... (scroll down to update of 'Bad Day to Bury Bad News')
The Ministry of Justice finally published the figures on violence against ethnic minorities after a delay this afternoon. This confirms the upward trend in incidents.
Meanwhile there was more bad news in another area from the Home Office. In a written answer David Hanson confirmed that 502 Foreign prisoners have been given early release. Mr Hanson said that the released foreign prisoners were "not eligible for deportation".
Figures released yesterday showing that there are 2 Iain Dales have proved to be wildly inaccurate.
Iain Dale now admits the true number is closer to four, double the original figure.
When invited to comment, Iain Dale said "vote Lib Dem" and Iain Dale asked for £250.
A Labour spokesman said the situation was under review and that appropriate action would be taken in due course.
A cull has not been ruled out.
From the Downing Street press briefing this morning:
'Asked if the Prime Minister himself was taking any steps to ensure that cross-Government, there was a review into the way in which such figures were gathered, the PMS said that when the Prime Minister was Chancellor he had taken a number of steps to improve and enhance the system for collating and publishing statistics.'
Caroline Flint was appalling on Channel 4 news, ranting and raving at poor old Jon Snow and coming across like some shifty, half-deranged fishwife.
In contrast Chris Grayling came across as informed, straightforward, and businesslike.
This government really are a disintegrating rabble led by an incompetent, egotistical fraud.
Can we have another u-turn on bin tax?
My prediction: There will be a U-turn on capital gains tax but it will be dressed up in some hideously complicated face-saving formula which will just make more work for tax lawyers.
Remember Gordon's U-turn on fuel tax following the lorry drivers' revolt? He applied new concessions to super-agglutinated mercury-free, custard-enriched motor spirit, or some such nonsense. Nobody understood a word of it, so with one bound he was free. (In his own mind, at least.)
Do Politicians realise that At this rate, with 200,000 Leaving Per year,
1 Million arriving per year and the 200,000 Abortions carried out per year, the Indigenous British People will be minorities in their own country within 50 yrs.
And not a single politician seems to care about this.
British People see theirs and their childrens birthright being given away for £40 a go that it costs for the citizenship test.
A Birthright fought and paid for with the Blood of hundreds of thousands of their ancestors on Europes Battlefields.
And not one single politician bothers to address this...
What was it Jack Straw said, 'The British are not worth saving as a race'
Hate to add some accuracy to this little debate but the 1.1 million figure is the number of workers who are foreign nationals. The 1.5 million is the number of workers who are foreign-born. They are different things - and the 1.1 million figure was given as the answer to a Tory PQ which specifically asked for foreign nationals. Now the 0.8 million figure was pure cock-up but don't twist the rest.
Anonymous, Hmm, funny how every news organisation disagrees with you.
I still think the immigration figures are way too low.
In Gordon Brown's speech in Bangalore whilst he was waiting for Teflon Tony to slip out of No.10, he said the following.
Britain issues more visas - 375,000 - to Indians than any other country each year.
Now that is just to Indians, each year for the past 10 years, add on all the other nations that come and settle here and something tells me that the figure is somewhat bigger than 1.5 million.
http://www.thechilli.com/articles/misc/095_BrownSpeechBangalore.asp
"funny how every news organisation disagrees with you."
No they don't Iain. Read the latest BBC report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7069779.stm
"The Department of Work and Pensions has said the 1.5 million figure refers to all overseas-born people entering the UK to work since 1997. It could, for example, mean UK passport holders born abroad who enter the UK to work."
Or alternatively read Hansard from Monday:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm071029/text/71029w0035.htm#column_753W
Part way down you will find this:
Mr. Clappison: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many (a) UK nationals and (b) foreign nationals were employed in the UK in (i) 1997 and (ii) the most recent period for which figures are available; what those figures are as a percentage of those in employment in the UK; and what the percentage change in each of these figures was in the relevant period. [158012]
You'll see the table in the PQ answer even gives the 1.1 foreign national, 1.0 UK national change figures, so you can work out the bit about 52% of jobs going to foreign nationals.
I should add that while, as the DWP point out, the 1.5 million may include Brits who were born overseas, the 1.1 million figure may exclude foreign-born people who have since acquired British citizenship.
As anyone who has ever used the Labour Force Survey will tell you, the bottomline is that untangling all this is bloody difficult. The survey wasn't designed for measuring immigration, and leaving aside the definitional issues, any estimate from it is likely to be an undercount for many reasons, not least that it's a voluntary survey.
Man in a shed (2.08)... Gordon IS DIZZY??!! You mean the blog is all one big wind up?
What did I tell you!!!!!!
You read it here first!!!!
[See my post at 9.59 PM last night.]
Small businessmen will now receive an exemption from CGT up to £100,000 when they sell the business. [Daily Telegraph this morning.]
Another complication! Another Schedule to the next Finance Act! Another 'loophole' for Trots to moan about! Another bonanza for tax lawyers!
Gordon Brown is like an old lady learning to drive. He will go four times round the block rather than engage reverse gear.
Caroline Flint was appalling on Channel 4 news, ranting and raving at poor old Jon Snow and coming across like some shifty, half-deranged fishwife.
That is because she is one.
People like CF have risen up the cess-pool stepping on everyone and getting their way. Having to explain oneself and admit error and be exposed is not something she handles well. Evasive and poisonous harridan.
As i said in the 2nd post
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cfc1ab38-873e-11dc-a3ff-0000779fd2ac.html
Wanna bet that the figure of 300,000 was taken from a Civil Service brief or internal report which put the revised number of immigrants at between 300,000 and a somewhat higher figure. Hain will, for obvious reasons, have chosen to only quote the lower figure.
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