It was the BBC wot won it for UKIP - and yet...

 I am going to discuss immigration. In the round, in the light of UKIP's success in the European Parliamentary elections. This post is likely to get me into hot water with my Green Party colleagues.

First, nobody can accuse me of being a UKIP sympathiser. I have a well-read post which collects the failings of UKIP and Ukippers. I have been tweeting intensively against UKIP over the election period. My most retweeted tweet : Voting UKIP to get rid of greedy useless politicians is like trying to treat your ulcer by drinking hydrochloric acid. #VoteGreen2014

I have moaned incessantly at the BBC for their blatant puffing of UKIP, and I've signed the 38 Degrees petition calling on the BBC to stop the media blackout of the Green Party. (Have you?)

Yes, UKIP's "success" is down to extraordinary support for, and lack of critical journalistic investigation of, a shambolic single-issue party on the part of the media, especially the BBC.

Yes, UKIP's single obsession, the evils of the European Union, is not felt very strongly as the main issue even by their supporters. Immigration is the issue that motivates them.

And yes, we know that the right wing tabloids have been pumping the immigration issue for years, to give it a salience out of proportion with its impact.

Yes, we know that we are all immigrants when it comes down to it.

We know that immigrants keep the NHS going, that they do low paid jobs that free-born Englishmen would not want to do. (Thus solving the problem of low pay without obliging employers to pay more.)

We know incidentally that the police do not seem particularly interested, considering how easy it would be to identify them,  in catching the "task masters" who are actually slave owners.

Yes, we know that the net impact of immigration on the UK economy is beneficial, (at least until they in turn grow old, and need carers)

We know that net migration is only about 250,000 p.a.

We understand that any one immigrant coming here is one less person living somewhere else on the planet (although if he is moving from a poorer country, his ecological footprint is almost certainly larger as a result of coming here).

We know that the number of British living in the EU almost completely match EU migrants coming here.

And yet...migration is still a problem for our society. Why? Because, with the help of tabloid editors, it stokes the fires of anger and resentment.

It is easy for middle class liberals living in the country to take a tolerant view of immigrants. It is less easy for working class people whose street and community changes rapidly over the course of a few years to be similarly tolerant, especially when they are reading pernicious, inflammatory tabloid stories of immigrants "taking over" housing lists and services.

Yes, the correct response of Government should be to create adequate services across the board. But this is not how this Government thinks and acts.

So the bottom line is that migration generates resentment and anger, and that is a given.
Another "given" is that tabloid journalism and populist politicians trade in emotions, not reality.

If immigration is a problem, they say, it must be stopped. If immigration from the EU is allowed by EU rules, we should leave the EU. Simples.

Viewed in one way, the world is indeed simple. All life forms, including humans, depend on the land for survival. Each area of land can support just so many life forms - so many bacteria, so many fungi, so many insects, so many birds, mammals, and, especially, humans. It is impossible to expand forever into a finite space. The British Isles are a finite space. Therefore we must put an end to our ever increasing human population in our islands.

That is the easy bit. The difficult bit is moving from the present situation of denial and deceit regarding population to a rational framework. The world is a complex system of interrelated forces. It is going to take years before rational thought about this topic becomes mainstream, and even more years before politicians start to act on it. In the meantime, migration will continue, and we have to be realistic and accept it s a given in a modern world where information and transport is easy and cheap.

The bitter paradox is that the tabloid editors who complain most emotionally about immigraton are the self-same editors who dismiss concerns bout foreign wars, foreign poverty and foreign dictators because they have nothing to do with us. But they do have something to do with us, because wars, poverty and dictators cause immigration.

What, in a nutshell, should we do about migration?

1. Offer humane, rapid asylum to those fleeing persecution, oppression political imprisonment and death, followed by effective action against the dictators who cause that immigration.
2. Stop war mongering by UK Prime Ministers 
3. Work against endemic poverty, economic inequality between nations, and the environmental conditions, including global warming, that drive people out of their home countries.
4. Inform the public (through press TV and radio articles, advertisements and posters) in nations that are sending migrants to Europe, of the dangers and difficulties that they face not just in the journey, but on arrival.
5. Informing applicants of the European laws that they will be expected to comply with, and the culture that they will be expected to fit in with.

Of course, there is more to be discussed. But at least we need to discuss it. The Green view does include toleration, but it goes further than the standard left-right dialectic, because as ever, Greens must take the widest possible view. In doing so, it is likely that emotions will be stirred, that names will be called, that Godwin's Law will come into play. We shall see. 

More on this blog: 

The Irresistible Force of mathematics meets the Unmoveable Object of freedom to reproduce

World Food prices

Four posts on population

Green Party Immigration Policy

The Sugar Tax - Yes or No?

The idea of a Sugar Tax is being suggested by Sally Davies, England's chief medical officer.

I raised this in 1996 in my book Bills of Health, and put it to Green Party Conference. It was rejected, by the Handbrake Tendency, on grounds that it would put up the price of home made jam.

Sugar tax is a Pigovian tax that puts up the cost of an item that you want people to use less of. The item becomes more expensive, so people will buy less of it. The proceeds of the tax should be directed (hypothecated) to making better alternatives cheaper. Pigovian taxes are already applied to tobacco, alcohol and oil, although the hypothecation aspect is not well done. 

The problem is that when an item is addictive (as is the case for tobacco, alcohol, oil and sugar) the demand goes down for a short time each time the tax is increased, then bounces back as the addiction re-asserts itself. This is fine from the Treasury point of view, because the tax revenue keeps rolling in, but addiction trumps the idea that putting up the cost alone will solve the problem.

Therefore the tax has to be part of a more comprehensive and holistic treatment of the problem. The tax should remain, its proceeds should be hypothecated (directed) to remediation of the problems it causes, but other measures should also be applied. Carbon taxes should go to support public transport, energy conservation and renewables. Nicotine taxes must go to supporting nicotine addiction treatments, respiratory medicine, and the cost of the fire service. Sugar taxes should be hypothecated to NHS dentistry services, and to making healthy foods cheaper. This is the application of the Polluter Pays principle, which is one of the central elements of green economics.

Corporations that produce addictive products will of course resist any attempt to reduce demand for their product.

The tobacco barons held up the campaign by the medical profession to put health warnings on tobacco by about 20 years.

Only last year the alcohol producers bought off the Tories from introducing minimum alcohol pricing.

The coal, oil and gas corporations are of course waging a highly successful campaign against the findings of climate science.

As for the sugar corporations, they are playing a blinder.

The only battle that the sugar giants have lost is to the dentists. Sugar causes dental caries. Fact.

Sugar probably causes obesity, Type 2 diabetes, strokes, coronary heart disease and some behaviour disorders. But the causality is hotly disputed by the corporations, their paid spokesmen, and by people who have been unknowingly influenced by their propaganda. Some of the proceeds of the tax should go to pay for research into these effects. Why should the corporations get the profits, while publicly funded  research should have to scurry around to find what the effects are?

There is a fair amount of research into the behavioral effects of sugar taxes, mainly centering aroud "soda" - sugary soft drinks. As is always the case with health and economics related research, results vary, but there is an emerging picture that substantial price increases will cause reduced consumption. An 18% tax was found to reduce intake by 56 calories a day, which should cause a 2kg/yr weight loss among the population. Not bad.

It is supposed that product substitution would mean that people would take less taxed "soda" drinks, but might switch to sweet milky drinks and fatty foods. Therefore the sugar tax should happen in parallel with a fat tax, and measures to reduce car dependency and stimulate walking and cycling.

The key card played by the sugar corporations is that it would put up the price of food chosen by people on low incomes, which would be "unfair". As if they cared. This line has been swallowed uncritically by some on the Left, including the Browns (=red/greens) in the Green Party. I had a brisk debate about this a couple of days ago on Twitter with a person who is recent addition to the ranks of the Green Party who has quickly risen to a position of influence. The conversation is here.

He argues that sugar tax is regressive - bears more heavily on the poor - and therefore that it is unacceptable. He accepts though that subsidies should be removed from sugar. This would increase the price of sugar to the poor to some extent, but not by enough to be effective. He would prefer to command the sugar companies to introduce less sugar into the UK market, which would be great if we had a command economy, but we do not. So until the UK becomes a command economy, the Browns in the Green Party will ally themselves with the fat cats in the sugar corporations, defending the right of the masses to live in unemployed poverty and console themselves with sugary drinks until their teeth rot, until they can barely waddle to the table to get their diabetic medication, and until their misery is relieved by an early death.

Great.

Emergency Motion for Green Party Conference on Squatting

This was passed at the Green Party Conference in Bristol:


Emergency Motion for Green Party Conference on Squatting

This Conference deeply regrets the recent action of the Coalition Government to criminalise squatting.

We note that it will evict up to 20,000 squatters, the majority of whom are decent, honest and self-reliant people.

We note that these people will either be thrown onto the streets, or into jail, or placed in local authority temporary accommodation, all of which carry a cost to society.

We note that in the vast majority of cases the accommodation  they have been squatting will mainly revert to empty status.

We note that there are some 60,000 households classified as homeless in the UK, while some 720,000 houses are currently empty. This is an outrageous, irrational and unintelligent way to run a country.

We note that as well as being a waste of resources, empty houses adversely affect the neighbourhood directly (by causing dampness in adjoining terraced houses) and indirectly through the depressing appearance of boarded up houses.

Therefore we ask our elected representatives to do all in their power to implement our present policies of Empty Property Use Orders as an immediate tactical response to the Government's criminalisation of squatting, and also to press for a Land Value Tax as a strategic response to the problem of empty housing.