Immigration Facts #2
The value of the education of immigrants in the UK labour market who arrived since 2000 and that has been paid for in the immigrants’ origin countries amounts to £6.8bn over the period between 2000 and 2011.
University College, London Nov 2014
Nobody’s saying it, so I have to.
Here we go.
Immigration facts #1
The positive net fiscal contribution of recent immigrant cohorts (those arriving since 2000) from the A10 (“accession”) countries amounted to almost £5bn, while the net fiscal contributions of recent European immigrants from the rest of the EU totalled £15bn.
Recent non-European immigrants’ net contribution was likewise positive, at about £5bn.
Over the same period, the net fiscal contribution of native UK born was negative, amounting to almost £617bn.
University College, London Nov 2014
I was going to write something about the need to for Labour to avoid the politics of envy. But I see Polly Toynbee has done it for me here. A very well-put and well-timed piece.
Medina High – my school on the Isle of Wight
Just today Labour has fallen again into the trap of talking the right’s language. It has announced a policy to make private schools ‘earn their £700m subsidy’ by forcing them to run summer schools and sponsor academies – or lose their business rate exemption. They will not be allowed to remain as ‘finishing schools for the children of oligarchs.’
Whether you like private schools or not (on balance, I do) and whether you like Tristram Hunt or not (on balance, I really do) this attacking approach is wrong-headed. And not just because private schools save the state sector £5000 per pupil, per year. If the argument were about the mathematics of subsidy, the state should be on its knees with gratitude.
But it isn’t about the maths. It’s about them and us. And that’s why Labour’s making a mistake. Because the class divide is poisonous. It is poisonous to our nation. And it is poisonous, above all, to Labour.
Because when it comes to meanness of spirit, the Tories are masters. They thrive on it. They do not believe in collective provision, or shared responsibility, or, fundamentally, community. They believe in small state and small government. They believe in every man for himself (and really, who cares about the women, the children, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the foreign, the uninsured sick?).
The more they succeed in sowing fear and resentment – the more they suggest that the state cannot and should not and will not provide – the more inclined we are to look after ourselves, and not others. And with good reason; if we can’t rely on our community and our state to support us, we must make our own provision. We must put up barriers of protection. We must, in short, be mean.
Tristram Hunt, in his article here talks about “the Berlin Wall in our education system.” But a Berlin Wall is a function of politicians talking the right’s talk of selfishness, class resentment and division. Demonising the lives of others requires, creates and reinforces walls; it does not break them down.
And in an atmosphere where this divisive talk prevails, the Tories will always, always win. Because you can’t out-do the Tories on meanness of spirit. Please, Labour, do not try.
Boris Johnson has been hammered for using IQ to justify inequality.
You don’t need me to tell you in how many ways his attitude stinks.
But, even while you hate his attitude, you might be worrying that the statistics he quoted were arresting.
Here is what he said:
“Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent… have an IQ above 130.”
So – cleverness seems incredibly rare. Only 2%! But not-so-cleverness seems alarmingly common. 16%.
So maybe inequality is an inevitable consequence of the unfortunate distribution of brain cells.
A lot of us are twits. Only a few of us are clever. So only a few get the wealth. It’s nobody’s fault but God’s.
But just in case nobody sets this statistical mischief straight for you, look at what BoJo has done.
At the clever end of the scale, he’s gone 30 points above 100.
But in the other direction, he’s only gone 15 points below 100.
So of course there are more below 85 than there are above 130.
Had he gone the SAME number of points down as up, and chosen to say how many people have an IQ below 70, guess what the number would be?
It would be 2%. The SAME as the number above 130.
This is because the distribution of IQ follows a ‘normal distribution’ – see the bell curve below.
What you need to know is that it is mirror-shaped. There are just as many of us with low IQs as there are with high IQs, and the pattern is THE SAME as you move further from the centre. It doesn’t matter which direction you go, up or down.
What BoJo should have said is:
“Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that just 2 per cent of our species have an IQ below 70, and just 2 per cent… have an IQ above 130.”
In other words, we’re all in this bell curve together.