What did she say to provoke the response?

"The Labour leader was meeting voters in Rochdale, when he encountered Duffy, who peppered him with questions about immigration, the national debt and tax in front of television cameras."

apparently she asked some questions

She asked questions about immigration. Questions he didn't want to answer.

History:For the last 13 years the gov'ts policy has been to allow in any migrant. They try to say it improves the country by pointing to doctors and programmers and other clever people who come here (and they're right, it does), but they also had a policy of letting in economic migrants (AKA spongers) who bring nothing of value. They get given a roof over their heads and the dole and child benefit and other cash benefits they just wouldn't get in their own country, or in any other European country for that matter (which is why they queue up in France in order to get over here). Oh, and of course they'll be Labour voters. Meanwhile, anyone who disagreed with the gov'ts immigration policy was called a racist. Any time anyone questioned them on immigration, they were called a racist. Any time anyone made a statement about immigration that didn't call for more of it they were called a racist. Brown-the-Inert was just following that theme.

I've watched the videos, and for the life of me I can't understand why he went right back to talk to her. Surely it looks much worse to go back while the press is still all there and the woman is still hot from being insulted.

I do love how that babe dropped an f-bomb in while talking to the Prime Minister. That kind of casual swearing might have been half the story if it had happened here in America.

@SpeakerToAliens:

"For the last 13 years the gov'ts policy has been to allow in any migrant"

That's Daily Mail bullshit, and you know it.

+1 Jamie99uk

@STA

To have a sensible debate on immigration, you need to split things down into the 4 categories of immimgrants (which neither side is willing to do). So

1. Immigrants from the EU - freedom of movement across borders, but even then UK put limits on some of the new countries. Not allowed to vote in UK General elections. Pretty much seem to prop up a lot of sectors.

2. Asylum seekers - after a spike around 1998-2003, back down to levels seen under previos Government (around 20000 per annum on the last figures I could (quickly) find). Not allowed to work, until a successful asylum application. Not exactly the numbers needed to swing an election, even if they all voted, and voted for one party. And the UK has a legal (and IMHO moral) responsibility to take some people fleeing genuine persecution.

3. 'Legal' immigrants. Points system now in place. Will it work? I don't know, but it feels like an improvement. Can be argued that this group is essential to the NHS (there are a lot of 'foreign' doctors, nurses and midwives). Can/will they all vote - don't have any idea on that. Nor does anyone else, unless they do a proper poll.

4. Illegal immigrants - can't vote. Can't get benefits. Many work in the 'black' economy. And we have no real idea of how many there are. Includes all the overstaying Aussies, Saffers and Kiwis (one of whom has to work in any bar (joke))

The strategies for managing all 4 of these groups should be different. But to say the policy has been to 'allow' in any immigrant is disingenous and stops any proper debate.

Oh, and on the GB comment - daft for saying it and forgetting he was miked up. Pretty sure they all say the 'wrong' thing in private - we all do.

Most telling thing for me is that although the Sun (virulently anti-Brown) has an exclusive interview with her, they aren't printing it - best guess is that she has said she'll still vote Labour.

Pete U +1

The Sun is a piece of shit anyway.

My economics teacher said what Brown did with the banks was great and he was glad France copied him.
Btw I red that the French are the first immigrant population on UK.

@chamois.... but then there are many of us Brits (me included) living in France.

Jamiet99uk -99. You're wrong. Stop reading the Grauniad and do more proper research.

@Chamois - The Sun is a standard G2 type star. What's wrong with it?

@Chamios - Brown "forgot" to order the banks to give (viable) loans to companies using the same criteria in 2008/09 as they had in 2007/08. They said "Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. No problem." when he offered them the (taxpayer funded) loans, but he didn't have a legal way to enforce the agreements. He could and should have made the agreements water tight. Many businesses have failed and many many people are unemployed now because of that amateur mistake (staff levels where I work are down from 240 to 80. That level is dropping to just 70 on Tuesday!).

@Hammac - My brother lives in Spain and owns a bar there. The thing about Spain (and most of the other European countries) is, if you turn up as a migrant (legal, illegal, European, South American, Asian, whatever) and ask for a hand out, all you'll get is directions to the nearest soup kitchen. You can't claim benefits *at*all* until you've paid employee taxes for at least 5 years and you can't claim a pension until you've paid in for at least 15 years. If you come here you'll get a damn sight more than you'd get given anywhere else. That's why they're all queuing up in France to come here.

@Pete U - You missed one.
5. Economic Migrants. People with no useful skills who just want the free handouts they'll get over here that they won't get anywhere else. Treat them as in 4. below.

1. Immigrants from the EU - if they have a skill we can use then fine, otherwise they can go home.
2. Genuine Asylum Seekers? Welcome. Come in. Stop worrying. You're safe now. You're free. But note: the word you missed off from your description was "Geniune".
3. Legal Immigrants (with a skill we can use)? Fine. Welcome. Come in. Here's your Tax return; please fill it in promptly.
4. Illegal Immigrants? Ship them home/back to the country they came from (France) as soon as they're caught. They want to appeal through the courts? Fine. Like the USA and Austrailia and other countries, they can only appeal against deportation from overseas.

@Speaker

Nope - 5 is a combo of 3 and 4. Hopefully (although I'm not sure how well it'll work) the points system will reduce the number of 3's who get in.

I agree that we should do more about illegal immigrants - one is to toughen up our border controls (like LDs propose). The challenge is to find the ones that are already here, often working for low wages, under the control of criminal gangs. Becuase as illegal immigrants, they get no benefits.

And good luck with #1 - EU freedom of movement means that you cannot do anything about other EU residents coming here.

@ hammac : I don't know how old you are but in France most of the brits are retreated.
@SpeakerToAliens : they just use calumny and exaggerations to attract readers. Example with Ribery sex scandal when they talk about "kid hooker", as if he was a pedophile. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2939261/Franck-Ribery-in-kid-hooker-quiz.html)

Of course I respect the elderly but they are a very different kind of imigrant because they don't work (so at least nobody can complain they steal jobs), and because most of them live in isolated countryside.

I found I was wrong about French imigration in UK, only 13th while Ireland is first and India second. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_the_United_Kingdom) Weird knowing the GDP per capita in ireland is far better than in UK.

@SpeakerToAlien : you cannot blame Gordon Brown for the crisis : England built its ecomony on finance, now you face the consequences.

Whatever happened to that nice Mr Blair? He wouldn't go around calling people bigots whilst reducing Labour support to below its core vote.

The immigration question as posed by Mrs Duffy and others is quite easy for politicians to answer IMHO. Gordon Brown should have just said that our government has successfully negociated with the other members of the EU that Mrs Duffy; her children and grandchildren and all other British nationals can travel to, live and work anywhere within the EU. It is only fair that if British Citizens have those rights that other citizens from the EU have reciprocal rights. I don't think I have ever met anyone who wants their freedom of movement restricted.

I think Nick Clegg has an interesting idea about immegration, ie an amnesty. I don't necessarily agree with it but at least he seems to be thinking about what to do about people who have already made it here. DC and GB are strangely silent on this issue. They have coherant policies on future immegration, but not a word on the illegal immegrants that have already set up home here.

And the 'amnesty' proposal isn't the blanket one the media would have you believe. Although how you prove that someone who isn't in 'the system' has been here for 10 years, worked and has no criminal convictions is a fair question.

Ireland's GDP numbers are a little bogus. American multinationals engage in what is called transfer pricing to shift earnings to Ireland from the US to avoid taxes. There have been years in which Ireland supposedly exported a greater dollar value of stuff than their economy produced. Last year, I actually ran some of the numbers for Ireland with two coworkers and the per worker productivity numbers in a handful of industries are just ridiculous. If those handful of industries were really that productive the entire population of Ireland would shift into those industries and the multinationals would enormously expand employment, but the employment numbers haven't moved that much recently. Most actual drug manufacturing in the world is done in Ireland along with a lot of software publishing. For tax reasons almost all of the profits then appear on Ireland's accounts when the real work (the development) was done in New Jersey, California, Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern India, etc. The money then only nominally resides in Ireland as it is invested in Europe. But no country can run 13+% trade surpluses consistently without there being some monkey business in there. Even Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Kuwait and Norway do not run that big of trade surpluses.

I always wondered to what degree the UK might be understood in the way we look at say Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Nothing personal against y'all for that comparison, but there is a phenomenon call the Dutch Disease. Back a few decades ago the Netherlands was the first country to tap the North Sea, for Natural Gas, I think. And they sold it to the other European countries. But they had their own currency, pre-Euro, and it appreciated. Their terms of trade and real exchange rates move relative to their neighbors and their trade became dominated by energy exports. The energy industry was labor light.....lots of capital for a few workers, who reaped the benefits. Eventually the tradeable sector of the economy withered; it could not compete with imports. So the economy shifts and the great mass of people end up in services, serving the small number of hyper-productive people in the export industry. The Government naturally responds by trying to transfer wealth by providing more and more services to everyone, increasing taxes and further hurting general productivity. It is the general explanation for why resource rich countries can become poor. Clearly the Netherlands did not suffer from the kind of problems associated with the Nigerias of the world but they still saw the problems.

Now substitute Financial Services for Natural Gas and I wonder to what degree the last few decades in the UK look similar. The UK is at around 50% of GDP being Government spending. I don't think it is unreasonable to say rising inequality from the City drove the increase to a certain degree. I think the City by itself is like 3% of UK GDP as of a few years ago. For 640 acres of office space to register on National Accounts seems weird to me. That percentage has to be almost entirely export services. I also presume the areas surrounding the City are probably similar.

Over here we occasionally get some of the "Broken Britain" stories (binge drinking, rising crime, domestic violence, illegitimacy, etc). To what degree is that kind of anti-social behavior possibly driven by the lack of productive employment. The number of Brits who can work in Investment Banking is limited and I'd expect the employee profile to be heavily foreign. Everybody else is left with non-tradeable jobs....bars, hair salons, government work, distribution, being servant to the hyper-productive foreigners, etc.

Also didn't Sarkozy say that London ranked among the largest cities of France because of the huge number of French emigrants?

"@SpeakerToAliens:

"For the last 13 years the gov'ts policy has been to allow in any migrant"

That's Daily Mail bullshit, and you know it."

Anyone from the EU is allowed to enter Britain. Outside-EU is controlled.

Sorry, Ghost - what's your point there... Are you agreeing with me, or with the Daily Mailisms of Sender-homeOfAliens?

some 66 year old women are biggoted. What is your point?

on the Ireland GDP thing - the point in that UK immigration thing was that Living in the UK born in Ireland is the highest because ireland has for decades had a much lower GDP (ignoring the effect of reducing corporate tax which encouraged many US bussinesses to movethe European HQs here, a well know government policy of the late 80s and 90s) For decades many many irish people emmigrated and most went to the UK. There is relatively little recent movement as far as i can tell.

The French kid said he was surprised the Irish were number one since Ireland has a higher GDP per Capita. That was what I was replying to. It is certainly a recent phenomenon and might not be that accurate. Immigrants by definition live human lifetimes and reflect a continuum of conditions.

@Pete U:"5 is a combo of 3 and 4"! How did you work that out?

@Pete U:"EU freedom of movement means...",
@Ghostmaker:"Anyone from the EU is allowed to enter Britain. Outside-EU is controlled."
Joining the EU was a big mistake. Nothing good (enough) has come of it to make it worth the cost. I know Brown et. al. says its ok because there are lots of us over there too, but the us over there can't claim benefits over there while the them over here can and do. That's why they're so keen to come here.

@Chamois4:"They just use calumny and..." They're newspapers and they're trying to sell copy by dancing along the thin line between justified public interest and the our extreme libel laws.

@Chamois4:"you cannot blame Gordon Brown for the crisis" I can blame him for the amateur-hour way he let them pull the wool over his eyes when he tried to handle it. We, the Tax Payers, bailed them out but they wont bail us out. If he'd taken them by the metaphorical scruff of the neck and given them a good shake (and maybe let one bank fail, so the others knew he really meant it) they'd have jumped into line and been lending to businesses using fair criteria instead of starving them of funds to feed their own greed/profits and forcing good businesses to shrink or close (Do I have an ax to grind? Yes. Were I work we've reduced our staff levels from 240 to 80. By Tuesday that number will have dropped to 70! Thanks Gordon).

Jamiet99uk +1 for Sender-HomeOfAliens.

I don't mind anybody coming here, living here, paying taxes here, provided they've got a skill we need, but coming here just to claim benefits they wouldn't get in their own country, benefits paid for out of my taxes, that just doesn't work for me.

"Joining the EU was a big mistake. Nothing good (enough) has come of it to make it worth the cost. I know Brown et. al. says its ok because there are lots of us over there too, but the us over there can't claim benefits over there while the them over here can and do. That's why they're so keen to come here."


I agree that the EU is a terrible idea, but not for the reasons you give. I rather think that the economic cost and loss of sovereignty & representative democracy are just abominable. I am aware of no benefit that couldn't have been replicated by a free trade agreement.


@Jamiet, I was pointing out that 80% of immigration is not controlled in the way you seem to pretend. So yeah, I was disagreeing with you.

"The French kid said he was surprised the Irish were number one since Ireland has a higher GDP per Capita. " - i'm not saying that your analysis of Irish GDP is wrong, just not as important as the historical factor (the figures quoted were not immigrants this year and country of origin - which would have made a difference)

"but the us over there can't claim benefits over there while the them over here can and do." - i have seen Polish people over here (in Ireland) claiming social welfare - and being told that they can't claim it once they go back to poland (except the benifit for paying their PRSI contribution in Ireland)

Don't forget those who are working legally are paying tax. I don't know how welfare claims differ across the continent, but i don't think you do either.

I don't know how welfare benefits compare, but at least in the US you do see migration that one could reasonably say is response to welfare incentives. There is a Black academic, who used to be at Berkeley, who frequently uses a counterexample to attack the "poor urban Blacks are inert things acted upon by circumstances incapable of doing anything to improve the situation" rhetoric. At some point back in the 70s or 80s, Wisconsin changed its welfare rules making benefits more generous. A measurable number of quite poor, public housing project Blacks in Chicago picked up and moved to Milwaukee. This required spending money to pay transportation costs and finding some place to stay for a not insignificant amount of time to establish residency and get on waiting lists to get into public housing, which was then overwhelmed by unexpected demand. Then they went right back to living a sedentary life on welfare again. Not surprisingly, Wisconsin became the incubator for American Welfare Reform. the guy at Berkeley (?) used to love using that incident whenever faced with someone who claimed poor urban Blacks lacked the resources to follow jobs to suburbs or to different cities as the working population frequently does in America.

It's interesting to see how the immigration problem is viewed in GB. You even get the same accusations of racism because you just want some reform with more realistic controls and limits.

I'd say she probably is a bigot. I mean... honestly I really don't fault Brown for saying what he thought of her in private. Especially with her going on about "but what about all these Eastern Europeans?"

Well I don't know what about them? I mean come on. She did strike me as a bit.... bigoted lol, though I don't know if I would have used as many words.

@Speaker - I said 5 is some of 3 & 4 because your definition of 'economic migrants' fall within either legal or illegal immigrants (as asylum seekers can't work, and EU migrants don't fall in this category). So it's a subset if you like.

@TGM - one 'benefit' that couldn't be replicated by a free trade agreement is the ability to have influence over the regulations. I would point out the country that complies most tightly to EU legislation is Switzerland. Another would be PDOs etc. (i.e. you can't call something Parmesan, or Wendsydale, or a Melton Mowbray pork pie, unless it meets certain criteria, including where it's from, and what's in it)

Now, I would agree that the whole thing needs serious reform, and that a lot of the legislation is based on the lobbying of concerned businesses rather than good science, evidence or keeping things simple (hence it took ~17 years to agree on chocolate - but without that agreement, UK manufacturers would not have been able to export chocolate to Europe without substantially changing the product). To say nothing good comes of the EU is to take the media spin at face value.

@Pete U: Nothing good *enough* comes of the EU. It isn't worth the price we pay.