Channel 4's Seven O'clock News covered the ECHR report which claimed, almost certainly untruthfully, that 'recent arrivals' aren't given priority in the queue for social housing. For a bit of balance, they invited two of The Righteous along, Tim Finch of the IPPR and Housing Minister John Healey.
Both interviewees repeated the mantra that "Asylum seekers are not entitled to social housing, and haven't been allocated any". It may well be true that this is the law, and even that the law is upheld, but that is completely irrelevant.
It is also the law that once asylum seekers have their applications upheld, they are then no longer "asylum seekers" but "refugees", who are perfectly entitled to apply for, and in practice are allocated, social housing.
So ... were they a) telling the truth, b) being deliberately misleading or c) lying? You decide.
The interviews are in this video at 5 minutes 30 seconds if you're interested:
Tuesday 7 July 2009
Semantics, lies & videotape
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8 comments:
Lying.
Technically, at each staqe of the immigrants progress through the 'system', your assumption for each possible choice of answer would be correct!
Anyway, as far as 'immigrants' from the EU - as an EU citizen and having free movement within the EU - how can one of them be a 'refugee' in the strict understanding of the word?
WFW, people from the EU aren't refugees, but they do not get first dibs on council housing, rather the opposite, AFAIAA.
I'm in a generous mood tonight,
B & C.
I heard the interview too. Blood was boiling.
Heard it and would have tuned it out if I hadn't read your previous posts.
Big conspiracy to keep the lid on. Though Snow did ask 'If there's no problem then why British Houses for British Workers."
can't recall the answer.
This is what the media do all the time on foreign matters - & indeed global warming (a round table discussion airing all points as long as all sperakers are anti-Serb racists, warming alarmist or whatever the cause of the day) but they are on dodgier ground trying these lies on local subjects where people have personal experience.
"WFW, people from the EU aren't refugees, but they do not get first dibs on council housing, rather the opposite, AFAIAA."
I know a Spanish girl who got a flat within weeks of arriving. She was a pro single mum though (pro as in that she got paid for being a single mum).
Anon, sure, single mothers get first dibs as well.
So if you're a single mother from Afghanistan with seven children, then the sky's your limit.
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