CENSORSHIP IN THE LOCAL WIGAN MEDIA

First you need to go here and read this. More importantly, you need to scroll down and read the comments. The censored comment – No.4 – was the first half of my single comment, which started in 4, and was continued in comment No.5.

http://www.wigantoday.net/wigannews/Asylum-seekers-numbers-fall.4435516.jp

Assuming you have read the entire thing in the link, and so know what this is about, here is the complete comment I posted; what’s above the dotted line is/was the censored comment No.4:

“Ahhh - I see everyone misinterprets the numbers. Nobody asks the question: "WHY is the number of asylum seekers falling?"

So in 2003 there were 921 of them, and now there are only 433. So everyone just assumes that they are all going away again? Sorry to tell you: wrong! And many more came since 2003, too.

The process:

1. You illegally enter the country. (International treaties say you must seek asylum in the nearest safe country ... which means that unless you originate in that circle of European countries on the other side of the North Sea and the English Channel, then we are not your nearest safe country. Hence, illegal entry)

2. You apply for asylum.

3. Asylum is approved (or exceptional leave to remain is granted). Usually.

Step 3 means that you are no longer on the list of asylum seekers and move onto the list of either refugees or those otherwise granted exceptional leave to remain. Both of those things mean that the list of 'Asylum seekers' has reduced. It does not mean the people concerned are not still here, as implied by this story in the paper (and story it is - and a misleading one at that - either deliberately or through ignorance of the process. I wonder which?)

I wonder how long it will be before this comment is removed?

As soon as it goes up, I'll take myself a screen-grab ... just so I will later be able to prove on my local shared blog what is and isn't allowed to be said in the Wigan media. I do know the Wigan BNP was refused access to place a full-page advert at the latest council elections in two Wigan newspapers because a mention in said advert of the plight of the Tibetans was considered unacceptable. I always used to think that the main purpose of the media was to inform. I later came to believe that its purpose is to mislead. Stories like this one, without adequate - or indeed any - explanation of the process relevant to the story only serve to confirm that my later view is nearer correct.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In conjunction with this story should also be told the figures for the changes in numbers, in Wigan, of people granted refugee status and those granted exceptional leave to remain. I'm willing to bet that as numbers of asylum seekers go down, the other categories go up - and stay up.

Also: the private sector is responsible for housing asylum seekers, with central government grants. Who becomes responsible for their housing once they change status as detailed above? And who pays? And are they then still only on £39 a week, or 'subsistence only'?

Is this comment a "Hate Crime", Mr Elliot 'Wigan and Leigh Hate Crime Co-ordinator' Brown? (I have screen grabs of your last contributions to these comment columns, so this time please be a little more careful with what you say. Try a little less gratuitous offence this time. And I hope you have taken some grammar lessons since then).

Mr Brown? “

Censorship in action. Doesn’t comment No.5 in the Observer make a lot more sense now?

So: is comment No.4 more “offensive” than comment No.5? No, of course it isn’t. So why was it censored?

The problem with comment No.4 was that I was explaining to people how the media and politicians use sleight of hand (sleight of language? Sleight of thought?) to fool ordinary people into thinking that things must be getting better, so maybe the Labour party/government/council isn’t so bad after all – maybe still worth voting for. And maybe the immigration problem is cooling off. After all:look everyone, the number of asylum seekers is tailing off – there is an end to it after all.

Most people don’t look any deeper than that. Most people don’t ask that crucial question: Why are the numbers going down. After all, there just seems to be more and more immigrants in the town centre every Saturday. But it must be tailing off because “the paper says so”. So the elites succeed yet again in fooling we proles. I’m not criticising anyone here; this is a perfectly normal way of thinking, especially given the impoverished education we’ve been raised on for the past 20-30 years.

Every time I see sleight of hand like this being practiced by the politicians and media, I will point it out. And I can do that. They made a mistake with me: they let me get a proper education (well, the last Tory government did). They let me go to a quality university in my late thirties (Uni. Of Wales, Bangor) as an undergraduate, where I got good Honours in Psychology. So I do know a little about thinking and behaviour. While I was there I did two years’ of Philosophy, including logic, which means I can detect the tricks involved in deceit, and am able to point them out. I also studied a full year of Linguistics, so know a little about Language and how it’s used. In addition, did two years’ Statistics to well past ‘A’ level, and Philosophy of Science.

Then I went to an even better university (Uni. Of Birmingham, Edgbaston) as a postgraduate student, where I studied Cognitive Science (calls itself the Science of the Mind, but in reality is the science of using knowledge of the mind to program computers to do clever things). Students of other subjects thought we were a bunch of weirdos – they were probably right. We studied: the mind, the brain all the way down to molecular functioning level, memory, more philosophy, more logic at a higher level, more linguistics, computer science – a whole tangle of stuff that we had to integrate.

A potted history of Morg’s education – not bad for someone who officially left school with nothing (stopped going at 13 and got a job in a bakery) at 15 and immediately enlisted the day after leaving. Smart move – Enlisted as an aircraft technician apprentice … what are known as ‘Trenchard’s Brats’, or ‘Halton Brats’. So by the end of my teens I was a qualified aircraft Instruments and Electrical Tech. Over years of work I found myself forced to learn about Nav. systems, Radio etc. Basically, if it is touched by electricity, it’s mine, including just about everything in the cockpit.

So, despite being raised a prole and getting almost nothing out of school, Morg is no one’s fool. I’m not saying the politicos and media will never pull a fast one on me, but they will have to work harder at it than the Wigan Observer did with that asylum seekers article. What a load of tosh it was.

The Wigan Observer (and group) is the paper that refused to allow the BNP to run two full-page ads at last May’s council elections. The excuse they gave was our reference to the plight of the Tibetan people as they are being colonised by China.

Wigan Observer group, we are monitoring you (as you no doubt monitor us). Let’s have less bull shall we, a bit more factual reporting when it comes to political matters, and full explanations of what’s happening when you cite numbers like the dodgy set in that article. Stop treating the native Wiganers like the fools Elliot Brown thinks they are. Every time you do that, and we see it, we’ll correct you first in your own comments. If you delete the correction, we’ll correct you here on this weblog. Between myself and Lanky, on this weblog we can muster an education and life experiences that most of your people can only dream of. You watch the BNP, the BNP watches you. We are not a party of knuckledraggers, as usually portrayed in the media.

If anyone wants a copy of the screen grab I took of that entire Wigan Observer page, if you don't know me and require PROOF that I'm telling the truth here (which includes the comments before the censorship, and after it), just email me via my "Contributors" button, and I'll send you a copy by return email.

Morg