Friday 20 April 2018

Driverless Windrush Headlines


The media really must do a lot more to clean up their headlines:


I have no idea how many driverless cars there are on the roads, but whenever one is involved in an accident it makes headline news. Over the last few weeks there seems to have been a spate of news reports concerning cars with drivers that have ploughed into groups of people or into people's houses - incidences totally unrelated to terrorism. It does make me wonder whether driverless cars are any more dangerous than cars with drivers. Granted there will be far fewer driverless than driven cars, but I'd be interested in a statistical comparison. When all's said and done, there can be myriad causes for road accidents and they're not all attributable to the driver (or non-driver).

Regarding the Windrush debacle - having listened to someone who worked in the immigration department during the time the decision was taken to destroy landing cards, I believe this is simply an administrative SNAFU and everyone is too busy searching for a political scapegoat, rather than focusing on correcting the situation. The lady I heard on the radio maintained that an operational decision was made to destroy excess paperwork and the Windrush documents simply got caught up in the process, without any ministerial knowledge. A classic case of the law of unintended consequences coming into play.

I heard Michael Gove on Radio 4 yesterday morning assert that the UK was the most immigrant-friendly country in Europe. He may be correct from an immigration policy perspective (we don't seem to apply any of the rules we're meant to have - hence Brexiteers' xenophobia), but certainly not from the point of immigrants themselves, according to Statista / Gallup. We come 38th in the world, with at least 3 European countries ahead of us (click to enlarge), if not more.


It's also rather strange considering poll after poll has shown immigration to be the number 1 concern for the Brexit vote. Immigrants and xenophobia drove the whole thing and Brexiteers are desperate to hide that by clutching at any straw that diverts attention from immigration, even if the argument is beyond their comprehension or debunked.


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