Daily Mail lowers the bar even further

Even by the Daily Mail's standards, the front page layout for August 23 is singularly loathsome. The headline highlights the fact that over 500,000 foreigners arrived in the UK last year, while almost 200,000 Brits emigrated. The immigrants are tastefully illustrated through a picture of a group of swarthy men milling about. A closer look at the caption shows that these are supposedly Bosnian men waiting to try to get asylum in the UK, though how the Mail knows this, or whether the men actually succeeded in their asylum quest, is not disclosed. In other words, they may not actually be among the offending 500,000.

On the right hand side is a picture to portray the leavers: surprise surprise, it's a perfect nuclear family who reportedly left the UK in 2004 to move to Bordeaux. Oddly, their family name is Dannreuther, which suggests that at some stage they or their forebears were on the other side of the ledger!

Even the Mail's most blinkered readers know that while some immigrants may be asylum seekers, the roll-call also includes Roman Abramovich, Bill Bryson, Terry Gilliam, all the hard-working East Europeans who are keeping the economy moving, and a lot of young French men and women looking for a more congenial place to make money. And while some of the emigrants may be picture-perfect middle class families, a lot of them are seniors looking for a bit of sunshine in their old age, and some are tattooed chavs who just want somewhere warmer to eat their fish and chips.

The Britsh have always claimed the right to move around the world. I myself have lived and worked in two countries outside the UK: Barbados and Canada. I would have been appalled if there had been some snivelling fascist at the Toronto Star or the Barbados Advocate that wanted to deny me the opportunity, but I'm happy to say that there wasn't.

Is there a silver lining to this? Oddly, yes. I haven't read all of the Mail readers' comments on this story, but to my surprise and pleasure, the first two took issue with the Mail's spin on the statistics, and strongly defended liberal migration policies. Maybe this is just the on-line readership, but it's something.