Drop Another 50p In The Gaslight Meter

The internet is awash in articles making claims that, on the face of it, conflict with the reality we see around us. In fact they're propaganda aimed at making us doubt the evidence of our own eyes.

To put it mildly, I’m not a fan of those annoying slideshows many websites use as filler. You know the things I mean: A series of stock photos, each with some trite comment below, that you’re supposed to flick through by clicking the arrows at the sides. Like any clickbait they generally have misleading titles, and the main reason they exist is to keep people clicking away on a website and boost its search rankings. Horrible things; ignore them.

Yesterday, however, I ignored my own advice. I was looking for a news article on MSN when I spotted a slideshow called “18 Ways Immigration Is Changing the Face of Small UK Towns”. The title seemed so defiantly at odds with British public opinion that, just out of curiosity, I thought I’d take a look at it.

Well, sure enough, it was the usual rubbish “listicle” (I can’t express how much I hate that word) stuffed with generic, and frankly dubious, statements. All of them, of course, were relentlessly pro-immigration. In fact there was no real need to read any of them, because the brief introduction made it very obvious what the direction of travel was going to be. It read, “As you scan through your local newspaper or take a stroll through your town, have you noticed some positive changes? It’s not just by chance; here’s a candid look at how immigration has been quietly boosting small towns across the UK.”

Examining The Claims

Despite the obvious bias, though, I decided to give the writer a fair hearing, and ploughed through all 18 ways in which immigration has been quietly boosting small towns across the UK. I reproduce them here, with a few observations I hope you’ll find informative:

1. New Flavours on Your Doorstep

“Think about the new variety of food available in your local area. Places like Lewes are thriving with diverse eateries, enriching your choices for a Friday night takeaway.”

I took the liberty of pulling up TripAdvisor’s listing for restaurants in Lewes. Of the top ten, six are pubs; TripAdvisor classes five as “Bar, British” and one as “Bar, International”. The Rights Of Man seems to have earned its “international” rating by adding a sprinkle of chorizo or coriander to exotic foreign ingredients like scallops and Suffolk pork belly. Apart from the menu, though, it’s a British pub, albeit a rather nice looking one.

In fact I’d have been surprised if “diverse” and “enriched” immigration-based food dominated in Lewes, because in fact immigration has mostly passed it by. The town is 94.2% white, well above the national average. I don’t really know why the writer picked Lewes as an example of a town that’s thriving with diverse eateries. (Actually I do, but I’ll come back to that later).

In any case, ignoring Lewes, Britain has been “thriving with diverse eateries” for centuries. The country’s first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostane Coffee House, opened in 1810. That actually predates the first chippie by 50 years. There was no need to let in 1,220,000 people last year in the hope one of them might open another restaurant.

2. Jobs, Jobs and More Jobs

“Notice more shops opening rather than closing? In Boston, Lincolnshire, immigrant-owned businesses mean more jobs and fewer empty shops, which helps everyone.”

Funnily enough I read an article about Boston just last week. It described in gruesome detail how the town has been swamped by unskilled migrants, most of whom don’t speak English and go straight on benefits. Locals - especially women - avoid the town centre at night, and “By 9pm, almost the only people in and around the town centre appear to be Bulgarian… Quite what they are doing is unclear, but it seems a fair bet that it involves drugs.”

As for all those immigrant-owned businesses, the upmarket shops that used to line this former tourist destination’s streets have been replaced by “dilapidated, boarded-up shop fronts interspersed with bookmakers, slot machine venues and kebab shops” as well as the inevitable Albanian money-laundering rackets Turkish barbers.

The people of Boston are so delighted at how immigration has helped them that, a month ago, they elected Reform UK chairman Richard Tice as their new MP.

3. Festivals That Actually Rock

“Is your town’s festival scene getting livelier? In Walsall, the annual multicultural festival is a blast, thanks to the colourful contributions of its immigrant population.”

Walsall doesn’t even appear to have an annual multicultural festival. It did have a Cultures of Walsall festival in 2022, to mark the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. This promised “an amazing range musicians and bands” (sic) from “cultures… including Poland, Iraq, Africa and India”. Well, who could face life without Iraqi music?

4. Schools That Aren’t Just Surviving, But Thriving

“Schools in towns like Shrewsbury are seeing new life with children from diverse backgrounds, fostering a dynamic learning environment.”

Shrewsbury’s population is 95% white, and according to the local council, “Shropshire’s strongest migration links are with Telford and Wrekin, followed by Powys.” Telford is twelve miles from Shrewsbury; Powys is on the other side of the Welsh border, but that’s less than eight miles away. I’m not really sure this counts as “diverse backgrounds”. So, again, why did the writer pick Shrewsbury?

Leaving Shrewsbury out of it, though, schools that really have children from “diverse backgrounds” don’t have “a dynamic learning environment” - they have a nightmare. Last year I wrote about how, 40 years ago, I moved to a secondary school plagued by a local Pakistani activist group that caused havoc every time the headmaster tried to scrap the absurd and antiquated system of segregated boys’ and girls’ playgrounds. Well, it’s got a lot worse since then. Schools now have to cope with eight-year-olds insisting on wearing Palestinian flag patches, or gobby teenage troublemakers suing the headmistress - at the taxpayers’ expense, of course - for not providing a divisive prayer room for one religion (I’ll let you guess which one). And god forbid a teacher should show students a cartoon some primitive malcontent doesn’t approve of.

Let’s not even start on the catastrophic effects of having large numbers of pupils who speak English as a second language or, indeed, not at all. These children - and the occasional 30-year-old Iranian “child” - suck up a disproportionate amount of teachers’ time, and the rest of the class suffers in consequence. Whenever you see a glowing news article about “The school with 42 languages in the playground” take a moment to think about the educational difficulties that creates, not to mention the social devastation inflicted on a playground divided into 42 separate groups by linguistic apartheid. If the children of immigrants are speaking their parents’ languages in a British playground that’s a bad thing. It’s divisive and shows a failure to integrate. This “linguistic diversity” isn’t worth keeping. So what if children speak Albanian, Igbo or Yoruba? This is Britain. Those languages are useless here.

5. No More “For Sale” Signs Gathering Dust

“In Margate, new residents are spurring on the housing market, which means your property value might just be looking up.”

Two words: “Housing crisis”.

6. Shorter Queues for Your GP

“Immigrant healthcare professionals in Sunderland are helping to reduce wait times and improve service at local clinics.”

The population of Sunderland is 94.6% white. A trawl through the town’s GP practices suggests the ethnic makeup of Sunderland’s healthcare professionals isn’t too far off that of the general population.

It’s certainly true that Our NHS, Gawd Bless It, Makes You Proud To Be British, relies disproportionately on immigrant labour. This is the consequence of stupid decisions by, among others, the British Medical Association and successive British governments, who between them have imposed draconian caps on the number of places at British medical schools, then set up a perverted funding system that prioritises foreign students for the limited places that do exist. So, faced with a rapidly growing population (almost entirely driven by immigration, by the way) the NHS has no choice but to recruit from abroad. And while we Britons are well known for our delusional worship of the NHS, health authorities in countries like India (average life expectancy: 69 years) and Nigeria (average life expectancy: 53 years) absolutely hate it, because as fast as they can train doctors and nurses to care for their own people, the NHS plunders them.

7. Filling the Gaps in the Workforce

“Essential roles in agriculture and healthcare in Crewe are being filled by immigrants, keeping vital sectors operational.”

The population of Crewe is 94.4% white. It’s an industrial town, ringed by light manufacturing and railway maintenance yards. It barely has an agricultural sector and what it does have is predominantly dairy, livestock and arable farming, none of which rely on immigrant labour.

There’s more to the UK than Crewe though, so let’s just put the “hard-working migrants” myth to bed right now. Immigrants from everywhere in the world except the EU, USA, Australia, New Zealand and - for men only - India, are more likely to be unemployed than native British people.

8. Goals on Goals in Local Football

“Young immigrant athletes are revitalising local sports teams in Blackburn, bringing fresh talent and enthusiasm.”

Blackburn Rovers FC’s current squad includes immigrants from Scotland, Ireland and Wales, with one even coming from as far afield as Iceland. Of the team’s 44 current players, 42 are from the British Isles and 38 of those are from the UK. The team is not, as far as I can see, being revitalised by young immigrant athletes.

On the other hand that’s a professional sports team, so what about amateur ones? Well, there’s Blackburn United (not to be confused with the Scottish club of the same name). This club’s squad appears to be 100% Asian - as are its chairman, all its other officers and its entire executive committee. It’s based in a community centre run by an Asian man for a clientele that seems to be exclusively Asian. In a town that’s still 60.4% white, it strikes me that this team might not be quite as well integrated into the local community as we could hope for.

9. Craft and Trade Skills Galore

“In towns like Carlisle, skilled immigrant workers are contributing to trades, helping to fill a skills gap in local construction and crafts.”

The population of Carlisle is 94.4% white. There appears to be no particular influx of immigrant workers into its construction sector. The local crafts scene is entirely dominated by middle-class, middle-aged white women selling scented candles, and a bloke called Fat Dave who makes ornamental metal things in his smithy. So just like the crafts scene in every other town in Britain, then.

But why did the writer think Carlisle is a perfect example of the benefits immigration brings? Well, I said I’d come back to this, so here we go: She didn’t. She just picked a town name at random and dropped it into one of her generic statements. It’s that simple. She did no research into any of the towns she named; if she had, she might have written something very different. Much more like what I’m writing now, in fact. Anyway, onwards!

10. Fresh Perspectives in Local Politics

“Immigrants who get involved in local councils, like in Oxford, bring new viewpoints and solutions to old problems.”

She’s actually right about this. Unfortunately the “old problems” tend to be things like Palestine, which wouldn’t be a problem here if immigrants hadn’t brought it with them. This year we saw many local councillors, and even five MPs, elected on pro-Palestine platforms. These people aren’t bringing “fresh perspectives” - they’re polluting our society with old, imported hatreds.

11. Volunteer Boost

“Many small towns see a surge in volunteering thanks to the proactive engagement of their new residents, enhancing community projects and local charities.”

The problem is that immigrant-run charities tend to work exclusively for the benefit of the immigrant communities their volunteers come from. What do we get from it? Nothing.

Sikhs are the honourable exception to this; they have a cultural tradition of service that makes them genuine contributors to anywhere they live.

12. Revamped Local Markets

“In towns like Gloucester, immigrants have revitalised local markets by introducing new products and foods, attracting larger crowds.”

Gloucester is 84.9% white, around the national average. This doesn’t seem to have had much effect on its markets, though. A fairly extensive image search turned up one Caribbean food stall, and a table covered in loose spices which are all available from Tesco in a much more hygienic-looking form.

My own small town has a local market every Saturday. I’ve never seen an immigrant stallholder there - and by local standards, “immigrant” means anyone from outside Yorkshire.

13. Boost in Local Tourism

“Diverse cultural offerings and events in places like Harrogate are drawing more tourists, which bolsters local businesses.”

Harrogate (95.4% white) is indeed popular with tourists. It has been for a long time; it became a popular spa town in the early 17th century and remained one until the 1920s. Tourism is still a major part of the town’s economy, and the Visit Harrogate website has a fairly extensive list of local attractions. However these are all things like Beningbrough stately home and gardens, the Royal Pump Room Museum and Stump Cross Caverns - not exactly “diverse cultural offerings”. I can’t find a single attraction on the site with cultural origins outside northern England.

The idea that immigration to Britain is attracting more tourists is, frankly, ludicrous. Tourists come to the UK for its landscapes and traditional culture - the Lake District and Buckingham Palace - not this:

14. Improved Local Journalism

“Immigrant stories and perspectives are enriching local media in Swansea, offering broader viewpoints and news coverage.”

Swansea (91.4% white) does not appear to have a notable amount of immigrant stories and perspectives in its local media. Of course Swansea is the second-largest city in Wales, not a small town, but never mind. No actual small town I can find devotes much local media space to immigrant stories and perspectives either - or, at least, not the sort of stories that we should be proud of.

15. A More Vibrant Nightlife

“The nightlife in towns such as Reading has become more vibrant with new clubs and bars opened by immigrants, creating lively spots for everyone to unwind.”

Reading is 67.2% white, but the next largest ethnic group is south Asians, who don’t tend to open many nightlife venues bigger than a kebab shop, and after what happened in Rotherham they might not be the sort of lively spots we need more of. The third largest group is Black British, but none of TripAdvisor’s top 10 nightspots in Reading hint at any Afro-Caribbean influence.

I went to a great reggae club in New Cross once, but New Cross is in London SE14 and is not by any stretch of the imagination a small town. Small towns do not have new clubs and bars opened by immigrants. Our largest immigrant communities don’t even go to clubs or bars, because they don’t drink alcohol.

16. Renewed Public Spaces

“In Leicester, immigrants are heavily involved in community gardening and clean-up initiatives, which beautify and improve public spaces.”

Leicester isn’t a small town; it’s a city of 374,000 people. It was also the first British city in which the white British became a minority in their own country. This has not made the place conspicuously more beautiful.

Leicester is in fact plagued with rampant modern slavery, violent organised crime and political conflicts imported from the Indian subcontinent.

17. Enhanced Emergency Services

“Towns like Coventry benefit from bilingual immigrants in emergency services, improving response capabilities and communication with diverse populations.”

This is a self-licking lollipop. If it wasn’t for immigration we wouldn’t need bilingual staff in emergency services, would we? More to the point, if we hadn’t added nine million people to our population since the turn of the century, with immigration accounting either directly or indirectly for around 80% of that growth, perhaps our emergency services wouldn’t be on the verge of collapse.

18. More Art and Music Venues

“New galleries and music venues in places like Manchester, driven by immigrant artists and musicians, offer fresh cultural experiences to residents.”

Manchester, again, is not a small town. It’s the fifth largest city in the UK. It does have a lively art and music scene, though, with several world-famous galleries including the Manchester Art Gallery, built by Sir Charles Barry in 1823, and the Whitworth, founded by Robert Darbishire in 1869. It’s also well-known for music, including the Hallé symphony orchestra, the Fairey Brass Band - formerly the works band of the Fairey Aviation Company - and popular artists like the Stone Roses, Oasis and The Smiths. None of this, however, is driven by immigrant artists and musicians.

So What’s The Story?

All the claimed benefits of immigration in this slideshow turn out to be either nothing to do with immigration or just flat-out wrong. Of course this is no big deal; it’s just clickbait, and I’m probably one of the few people who bothered to click on it anyway.

I was curious about it, though. You see, I’ve been a freelance writer for over a decade now, and I know who writes rubbish like this: It’s freelance writers, generally from the bottom of the talent pool. I can safely say that freelance writers rarely write anything unless they’re being paid to, so somebody contacted the author of this piece of dishonest nonsense and asked them to write a list of ways immigration has improved Britain’s small towns. In response the writer threw together some bland, inaccurate statements, poked at a map to choose a few random town names, submitted it and pocketed a fee that I’d guess was in the region of £5. She did get her name on the article, though; she’s called Hazel Scott, but also uses the name Hazel Savage. So, on a whim, I Googled “Hazel Scott immigration”.

Imagine my surprise when I found that, in the last month, no less than eight immigration-related list articles with Hazel Scott’s name on them have appeared in various low-grade media outlets. They include two duplicates - the one I dissected here, from Edge Media, also appeared word for word on LoveLists UK under the title “18 Ways Immigrants Are Breathing New Life Into UK Small Towns”. Other topics included two lists on ways to “improve” the UK’s immigration system (all of which involved making it easier to immigrate to the UK), a separate list titled “The New Face of Britain: Immigration’s Impact on Local Communities” and, just in case the rest of it wasn’t annoying enough, “21 Ways White Privilege Still Exists in the UK”.

We Are Being Gaslighted

Immigration is not, in principle, a bad thing. Immigrants can be a benefit to the countries they move to, as long as they integrate properly, don’t bring unwanted cultural baggage with them and don’t force unwanted change on the native population. I’ve been an immigrant myself, after all - I lived in Germany for 20 years. However, mass immigration on the scale that’s been inflicted on Britain over the last 25 years is not a benefit. Between 2001 and 2021 the percentage of the UK population who were born abroad rocketed from 8.4% to over 14%. In the same period London, our capital city, went from 59.8% white British to 36.8%. In 2022, 30% of children born in this country had a non-British mother.

Understandably, a majority of the British people are appalled at the speed and scale of change that’s been forced on them with no democratic mandate whatsoever. Immigration has become a major political issue; a majority of the British public have wanted immigration reduced for sixty years - but, instead of listening, successive governments have deliberately increased immigration until we’re now allowing in almost 2% of our total population every single year. More people think immigration has been bad for the country than think it’s been good. Voters no longer trust either Labour or the Conservatives to even try to reduce it; the only party a majority trusts on immigration is Reform UK.

And yet, although we can see the negative impacts of mass immigration all around us, someone is paying Hazel Scott to churn out these articles. It isn’t the government; they have better writers and more sophisticated ways of manipulating public opinion. I have no idea who it is, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say it’s some weirdo academic at a third-rate university who went on Upwork or some other freelance jobs site and hired Hazel to educate the proletariat. Yes, random nutters do hire writers to promote their political hobby horses. I’ve been approached by them myself.

So just remember that, when you see someone gushing enthusiastic nonsense about the benefits of rapid, large-scale demographic change, they’re not saying it because they believe it. They’re just saying it because someone paid them to.