KHOODEELAAR! No to "pro-imperialist, pro-colonialist Big Business media myths against the people targeted by poverty-creating Crossrail hole plotters”

This page was last edited at 2205 GMT London Friday 5 september 2008

For a second time in the past few months, the Rupert Murdoch-owned ed London times newspaper has SUPPRESSED comments critical of the City of London interests as contained in the pieces published with the by-line of Martin Waller, who ‘normally’ presents himself as the ‘City Diarist’..

There are comments accompanying his latest piece concerned. But not those that tell the truth about the role being played by the Big Business backing media.

We shall go into the details of the role being played by the likes of Martin Waller in boosting the image of the Big Business ...

We shall also look at someone else given a job on the same Murdoch owned Times. That someone else is passable as an almost credible member of what could be called the calling of 'journalism !!!!'. She is Camilla Cavendish. She boasts of having lived - and ‘worked’ - in Bangladesh. And comes across as if she knows Tower Hamlets as a 'resident'.

Here is here latest piece that refers to both [Bangladesh and Tower Hamlets]:


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From The Times mSeptember 4, 2008 Britain 2028: we need ten new cities, please

Our approach to immigration is unsustainable. We must either cap numbers or introduce a tough guest worker scheme


Camilla Cavendish


I came back from holiday in the vast calm of Burgundy to find that the UK will have the largest population in Europe by 2060, on half the land area of France. Sharif told me this while he was doing my hair. He thinks it would be “crazy, darlink, so sweaty, and just not fair”. But he also worries that his Polish builders will go home and leave him with Albanians who are less cute and who have apparently acquired the English tea-break mentality, but not much English.
We have become completely contradictory about migration. We are alarmed by the numbers of people reaching these shores, yet suddenly afraid that they might pack up and leave. Can we afford to lose energetic people who have helped to drive the economy? Can we afford to keep them? How many is too many?
First, the stats. If there is any certainty at all in population projections, it is that a 50-year EU projection is bound to be wrong. So I dug out the Government's 20-year forecast. It's stunning. The Office for National Statistics expects Britain's population to rise by ten million, seven million from immigration. That would require the building of ten big cities. Yet the Government has no plan for housing the numbers it is apparently planning to accept, nor for providing the services they would need. Already, half the babies in London's maternity wards have foreign-born mothers. That doesn't make any baby worth any less. But those of us who have given birth in the capital in recent years know that midwives are dangerously variable in quality and that hospitals are so overstretched that women are being turned away from hospital to give birth on the kitchen floor.
Will a recession empty the wards and leave our dynamic economy bereft of talent? Probably not. The significance of the Polish exodus has been overblown because of the assumption that Eastern Europeans are a majority of those coming here. Yet they have never been. Even in 2004, when the Government opened Britain's doors to the new EU accession countries, of the 940,000 people who came here legally only a third were from the EU. Over the past 15 years more than 90 per cent of legal arrivals have been from non-EU countries.



This gives the lie to the pretence that the Government cannot restrict the numbers entering Britain. The fourfold rise in official immigration in the past decade can be explained largely by deliberate policy. In 1997 the abolition of the Primary Purpose Rule removed the restriction that required applicants to show that they were not just marrying to enter the UK. In 1998 the abolition of embarkation controls ended any effective record of who came in and out. In 2002 the number of work permits was doubled. The Government now claims to have created an “Australian-style points system” to keep out the low-skilled, but it is Australia-lite. Australia sets an annual limit on numbers, then takes those with the most points. The British have no such limit.
Much of our contradictory approach is because while we appreciate the undoubted skills of foreign doctors and builders, we are less enthusiastic about handing out lifetime entitlements to unprecedented numbers of people merely on the basis that they are here, legitimately or not. It is clear that immigration has brought much-needed wealth, ideas and energy into the British economy. It is less clear, over time, how to balance economic benefits against the value of state ones.
The answer may be to decouple the two. There is no cast-iron reason, for example, why immigrants who have been here for five years should automatically acquire a permanent right to remain. Nor is it axiomatic that they should have the same entitlements as British citizens. Many countries with open borders refuse to give immigrants equal rights. When I lived in Bangladesh I met many families whose income came from guest worker relatives in Kuwait and Jordan. During the Gulf War, the sheer number of disgruntled returnees astonished me. For me, the term “guest worker” was flush with imperial exploitation. But these people were just grateful that they could earn. They did not expect additional benefits. They were keen to get back, even to Singapore - which expels guest workers if they become pregnant.
The guest worker concept is unpalatable in many ways. But it may be fairer than shutting people out altogether. The US economist Lant Pritchett has called guest work a liberal solution to the problem of the “irresistible forces of global migration” coming up against the West's “immovable ideas” of nationhood.
I raise the issue because it seems clear to me that our current approach is both undemocratic and unsustainable. When the official figures point exponentially upward - and the official figures are a woeful underestimate because they fail to capture the illegals - we are in danger of stretching the social contract to breaking point. People are getting angry, and they will get angrier if the recessionary tide leaves ever more foreigners claiming benefits here.
The alternative to a guest worker system, which feels more British, would be to offer every legitimate worker equal rights - to benefits, at least, if not to permanent residency. But in this overcrowded island, this will only work if there is some kind of cap on numbers. Come to Tower Hamlets and see people living eight to a room. Spot the secret doors cut into buildings which have been divided up into grim tenements, like the old Jewish ghettos. Many of these people earn below the minimum wage and some are trafficked. It is inhuman. I believe we face a choice: between open borders and guest workers, or closed borders and fewer workers. To continue to pretend that we do not, as recession looms, may prove politically dangerous. The immigration issue is now spatial, not racial. And the fairest solutions may be those that look the least liberal.




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KHOODEELAAR! No to "uneconomic ... Crossrail scam" CAMPAIGN analyis IS vindicated, AGAIN [93]

This page was last edited at 2120 GMT 2220 Hrs UK Time London Friday 5 September 2008:

KHOODEELAAR! No to "uneconomic, untested, unwanted, publicly-costly, publicly-paid-for Big Business-greed-filling Crossrail scam" CAMPAIGn is VINDICATED, again... In the 'reasons' stated in a RAILNEWS web site item about a [admittedly smaller] 'Crossrail' scam in Scotland being unsupported, the KHOODEELAAR! principled analysis as we had been making against the London CROPSSRAIL, has become relevant.....

[To be continued]


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http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/general/2008/09/05-aberdeen-crossrail.html

North-east Crossrail scheme ‘doomed’

Posted: 5th September 2008 | No Comments


First Minister Alex Salmond
PLANS to set up a £200million commuter transport system in the north-east appeared doomed last night after experts said the business case was weak and questioned potential demand.

First Minister Alex Salmond revealed that Transport Scotland had concerns about the Crossrail scheme and transport partnership Nestrans has been advised to focus on improving the existing rail infrastructure.

Opposition MSPs say the news reinforced their fears for the project, which would involve two new stations in Aberdeen serving the north and south and a service between Inverurie, Aberdeen and Stonehaven every 15 minutes.

Nestrans chairman Kevin Stewart said he believed the project, part of a £1billion transport strategy for the north-east, was feasible but admitted Transport Scotland was not convinced.

North East Conservative MSP Nanette Milne said last night it appeared from the tone of the letter she had received from Mr Salmond that the SNP Government was poised to perform a “spectacular U-turn”.

She said this would be a great pity because the project was “vital” in tackling traffic congestion in Aberdeen, particularly at the Haudagain roundabout.

Mr Salmond wrote: “Transport Scotland has had discussions with Nestrans regarding the emerging conclusions from their draft report relating to the Aberdeen Crossrail proposal.

“The initial findings from this study suggested that the business case for this project might be weak.

“It was therefore jointly agreed that Nestrans should focus on identifying the further passenger benefits that can be gained from the existing rail infrastructure.”

Mrs Milne added: “Local people increasingly feel that the SNP are making a spectacular U-turn which will see these plans and the Crossrail project shelved.

“It is now crucial that the first minister and the SNP government clear up the confusion they have caused surrounding the Aberdeen Crossrail proposal.”

Pivotal to the Crossrail scheme is the reopening of Laurencekirk station, but this has been has been delayed until early next year. Plans are also afoot to reopen Kintore station and Nestrans is funding a feasibility study.

Mr Stewart said: “Transport Scotland do not see there being the demand for the project but it may see it increasing when the timetabling of the trains between Stonehaven and Inverurie changes in December.

“We will judge what happens when Laurencekirk opens in the new year.”

A spokesman for Mr Salmond said: “Obviously we want proposals to be as strong as possible to maximise their chances of success when they advance beyond a draft and come forward in final form for consideration by ministers.


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