Sensible migrants v. stupid drunken Brits

The Guardian (who else?) has an interesting piece on an LSE study that suggests some types of crime are reduced in areas with a lot of European immigrants.

Places that had attracted large numbers of eastern European immigrants enjoyed a "significant fall in property crime", a category of offence that also includes theft and shoplifting. The report, to be published later this year in Harvard University's Review of Economics and Statistics, also found that the relationship between the arrival of thousands of foreigners and levels of violence was "close to zero and insignificant".

This is not surprising. Well, not to me. I've fallen victim to violent crime just twice in my fifty-odd years, and on both occasions it was down to assaults by drunken Brits. I have never met a foreign-born person who was mildly impolite, let alone menacing.

My elderly, working-class parents are - sadly, but predictably - half-brainwashed by the right-wing media line on immigration. Yet the only occasions they have ever had to call the police in their entire lives have been to deal with very obviously white British neighbours indulging in vandalism, burglary, incessant loud partying etcetera. I've given up pointing this out.

Other choice quotes:

"Most violent crime is associated with affluence. Most immigrants are not affluent so it's not surprising that immigration has no impact on that large proportion of total violence which is a function of affluence."

"Globalisation through the internet, through media images has meant that there is a greater intolerance to violence. There is more of a global acceptance that inter-personal violent crime is something that we should not be engaged in."

"Historically, people who move from one nation state to another are the kinds of people who are more entrepreneurial. Far from coming to live off benefits, the people who tend to want to move are the ones who want to get a job and get ahead," he added.

While I don't find the second point entirely convincing. What about all the callous imbeciles posting videos of cruelty to people and/or animals on YouTube? And what about mental violence, such as online bullying? But the other points are well-taken. 

Meanwhile, here's another UKIP candidate you wouldn't want to live next door to. You just know what kind of neighbour this guy must be. The more we find out about UKIP's band of patriots, the more obvious it becomes that these ranting arseholes represent a far worse social problem than any number of Romanian migrants. (Even if the Romanians were all vampires.) Can't we make UKIP candidacy a criminal offence? I'm sure if we banged them up, levels of drunken thuggery in our cities would plummet overnight.

You're supposed to Sieg Heil with your right hand,  you unutterable racist fuckwit

UPDATE: To be fair, the chap in the picture above claims he was not giving a fascist salute and that racist remarks attributed to him are down to Facebook hacking. He claims police are investigating. We shall see.