The Czech’s in the post

“I never!” Ah, the good old innocent days when a small child believed all he had to do was deny outright any wrongdoing and hope the trail of crumbs leading from the cooling cake all the way to his jammy lips would be ignored. But we all grow up and in doing so we either become models of propriety, realising that if we always tell the truth it’s easier to stick to the story, or else we become much better liars.

Of course, sometimes a white lie is kinder than the truth: “He wasn’t good enough for you”, “Business is down, we’re going to have to let you go”, “The judges were biased – you should have won!” but most of us know where to draw the line. And we also know that to repeat a lie in the face of all evidence to the contrary is borderline madness. And yet we’ve actually come to expect it from our ‘elected representatives’.

It always takes an expensive academic study to prove what people have known for years. And for years, parts of the country have been crying out for help because they have been inundated with aliens. The government’s response for over a decade? The accusatory, “You must be racist.” And even now, in the face of an official report that grudgingly admits some partial truths they still feel they have to maintain the simple lie that immigration is unremittingly good.

The report admits that the rise in immigration was largely due to deliberate Labour policies designed for political gain and has resulted in the no-skilled, low-skilled job market becoming 'saturated' by foreign workers. Wages in these sectors are now down considerably on their pre-millennial levels. Approaching ten percent of our population is now foreign-born, apparently, and many towns struggle to cope with housing, health and other public services. The truth is that low-skilled immigration has benefited some business disproportionately, but has had far greater impact on the nation as a whole.

Fit, working age, native Britons have been displaced to become entirely dependent on benefits. Many Brits in work are being kept afloat by tax credits, other benefits and costly public services that far exceed what they pay in taxation themselves. And benefits are paid to low-paid, thus minimal tax-paying migrant workers and their families who – quite rightly – take advantage of their EU rights and lap up the roast beef of Merry Olde England. This isn’t just a regional issue, as the Home Office likes to paint it, this is a national crisis.

And yet while, for years and years, ordinary people have pointed out these obvious truths the response of governments of all colours has been to maintain the lie that immigration into Britain is a net financial benefit. That’s like glibly pronouncing the climate of planet earth to be benign while people perish in floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, tsunami and landslides.

What? No, it's always been like this...

When will the liars get it that this is not an economic issue, but a political one? Not a question of averaged-out figures but of specific, destructive, localised effects. Like the housing market; while the average numbers say there’s a boom, in many parts of the country there is the opposite. And talking of maintaining a lie; David Cameron still thinks we believe he will give us a fair referendum. The cheque’s in the post you say, Dave?