Public Perception of Immigration
The excellent Observer Blog has an interesting post about a recent MORI survey:
Regular readers of different papers were asked 'what percentage of the British population do you think are immigrants to this country?'
The highest bid came from Daily Star and Sun readers - 26 per cent. Next up, Daily Mirror on 25 per cent, then in order, The Express - 21 per cent; Mail - 19 per cent; Telegraph - 13 per cent; Guardian - 11 per cent; Times 10 - per cent; The Indie - 9 per cent; FT - 6 per cent.
The UK average guess is 21 per cent. And the actual figure? That would be 7 per cent. So as a nation we're only 3 times out of proportion on this one.
Daily Star, Mirror, and Sun readers think that more than 1 in 4 of the country are immigrants? It's interesting both how the more right-wing papers give the impression of more immigration, and how almost everyone over-estimates to some degree.
NP: Entroducing....., DJ Shadow
The last couple of years we lived in Britain we were in an East London suburb which was about 50% White, 40% Asian and 10% Black. My father had to specially ask our local newsagent to carry the Guardian because his clientele were almost all Sun and other tabloid readers. I can imagine why a person in that environment might think there were a lot of immigrants though even by that time (early '80s) most Asians at least were actually British born.
