大象传媒

The war in Iraq will provide a net income to the US and UK, even if the cost seems substantial in the short term.

Any sensible economist who understands something about energy demands of economies will tell you that having a 'friendly' government in Iraq is well-nigh essential for the continued prosperity and wealth of the allies. Whether or not we went to war for oil is a completely different debate.

Shueb

If the latest fiasco over illegal immigrants isn't a cover-up, I don't know what is. And if these people were illegals, how were they paying their income tax and NI contributions? If you ask me, this government has no intention of limiting immigration - illegal or otherwise - and doesn't give a hoot who comes here.

Shueb
The problem with your idea is that this war is and will be Pyrrhic...

Is that *really* all the attention the 13th annual failure by auditors to give the EU's accounts a clean bill of health gets?

It can't have been more than 10 seconds ... one second for each billion pounds we'll be handing the EU per year until 2013, if the European Communities (Finance) Bill currently going through Parliament gets passed.

Meanwhile MI5 complains of being under-resourced, 2,500 post-offices are being closed due to subsidy cutbacks, hospitals are facing cuts, the NHS can't afford life-saving new drugs, the list goes on...

So given these essential public service needs, why are you not making more of this blatant waste of billions of pounds a year to an organisation whose auditors can't even explain where that money is going?

This should be an utter scandal!

Surely MPs who intend to vote to quietly approve this unjustified 60% increase in our payments to the EU budget are hypocrites if they claim locally to be standing up for public services facing funding shortfalls?

When will any UK government ever take immigration seriously!!

This has gone on for too long and clearly demonstrates that there is no immigration procedures in place in the UK. It's not just in the security industry either, it's rife in everywhere. Tap a cleaner on the shoulder at the Tate Modern next time your passing through and ask he / she how's life treating them in their newly adopted country. Go to Marks and Spencers and ask a sales assistant for some travel tips on working illegally abroad, ask a TFL worker what it's like to be embraced by a country where no work permits are required and a Travelcard has more legal weight. Go anyway and you'll encounter a new illegal citizen.

I pity the poor unskilled Brits, the university graduates even, the average UK citizen that has to compete with this situation. Nobody cares about them and the debate is considered too sensitive, too racially explosive, too xenphobic to have. Not one political party has the balls to insist on real effective and fair immigration. Unfortunately, the only party is the BNP.

It is just so laughable that in a modern democratic industrial country, employers have no idea of how to check whether an employee is legally resident in the UK. This is simply not normal, it is an embarassment, an insult to the British people. France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, USA, China, India all know how to implement some kind of system. But no, not us, we just can't figure it out.

We are told on this evening's programme that by a representative of Jackie Smith that she is dealing with the problem. How? By revoking the licences of these individuals. How many have yet to be deported - zero probably - It wouldn't surprise me if we here next year that another 10'000 have since been given employment and Paxman will ask an immigration minister or representative something like 'What's going on ... a year has passed and you've done nothing .. ' and the reply is likely to be ' Oh we tried, but the security companies didn't get the message .. we asking them again to revoke ..'

This is not a Labour problem, the situation has been going on since at least the early 1990s during the conservative government's watch.

And as usual, Newsnight has once again failed to cover this story tonight properly, in the same way that it failed to present its immigration debate last week. I just give up. Nobody cares. Paxman doesn't care. The 大象传媒 doesn't care. Neither the Conservatives or the Lib Dems really care. Immigration Watch doesn't care anymore even.. but one thing is for sure and that's that the illegals will probably get our sympathy somehow when we hear more stories on how they're being exploited, badly treated, abused while trying to earn an honest buck or two in our country by bad old us.

For long enough the mish-mash of humanity that has the multi-faced crust to masquerade as a Government in control, has blatantly declared, not once, but several times that to put a figure on the vast numbers of people with no legal right to even be here, would be anybody鈥檚 guess.

Yet we now find that this composting crop of incompetents obviously has to be well aware of not just the identities, but also the whereabouts of several thousands of the very people who -SHOULDN鈥橳 EVEN BE HERE 鈥� by clearing them to take high security risk jobs: making the case for so doing no doubt on the grounds that the indigenous population won鈥檛 entertain such jobs!

In 1996 a tough new law was passed in the U.S.A with the result that 721,000 illegal immigrants were hunted down and deported during the five years following 鈥� a figure that was 164 percent more than were kicked out in the whole of the previous ten years.

150,000 Mexicans who had illegally crossed the borders purporting to be 鈥榝ruit pickers鈥� were sent packing as were thousands of others. Nor were the Canadians shown any favours and 1000 quickly found themselves heading North.

Considering the on-going success of the operation and taking into account the comparative sizes of the U.S. and Great Britain, the conclusion has to be drawn that calls for such a relatively straightforward undertaking here are being deliberately and treacherously suppressed.

Staring the Nation squarely in the face are the reasons why!

Brussels鈥� directives that all sense of National identity MUST be expunged to meet the requirements of the EU PROJECT, cannot be disobeyed: and the route to this is through mass immigration. But by some weird quirk in the collective psyche of the Nation, people simply fail to recognise the magnitude of exactly what is happening to the remnants of their freedom.

There is far too much conflicting news given to a public that has necessarily limited background knowledge and there are far too many news outlets and bulletins per broadcast channel.
There are hours and hours given to news in general but people are often asked a question and while they draw breath and utter half a word they're either interrupted by a speaker or told there is insufficient time to hear their full reply.
The immigration item gave no back story about how immigrants had been dealt with in the past and gave the impression that the media were playing Eric Berne's game of Now I've got you, you son-of-a-bitch. Due to the EU we probably have more immigration than before in modern times (as opposed to the waves of invaders such as the Romans etc from whom we're all more or less descended). Swapping prejudices won't solve the problem and those who signed the treaties that allowed free movement could explain why so many people have little knowledge of them.
Few seemed to understand the implications of Maastricht and the Single European Act but there was much less fuss at the time yet that is when it should have been clarified.
The news appears to be sliding into a catalogue of complaints and catastrophes though the item about the Aga Khan managed to be a cheerful exception.

Puzzled - you would have 'enjoyed' radio4 yesterday morning. the journalist quite sharply raised her voice as she repeated her irrelevant question, 'has Britian adopted continental drinking culture or not??!!!'. to which the exasperated minister eventually replied 'look, do you want to discuss whether we are like France or do you want me to tell what we are doing to address the alcohol problem in this country??!!'

I detect a considerable lack of understanding that goes beyond the short term politics of what a particular adjective might signify.

That is what most worries me about islam. their intellectuals are not playing games, they are playing to win the ideology of Britain, whereas 'liberal' public spokespeople seem to be playing for the next free lunch.

Could you please forward the interview about Islamic Art? thank you