United Kingdom Archives - Page 4 of 7

Migrants’ Rights Network: #MigrantsContribute! promises an active campaign to advance positive arguments for migrants

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales insight: Another excellent posting by Migrants’ Rights Network on how immigrant communities challenge politicians who spread lies and reinforce prejudices about migrants. We need such a campaign in Finland.

Writes Don Flynn:

#MigrantsContribute! is a social media-style name for a campaign that aims to bust into the mainstream with its core message that, far from being the unwelcome border crossers looking for a free ride so often presented by unscrupulous politicians and headline writers, migrants come to the UK full of hope and expectation that they will have the opportunity to contribute fully as fully rounded people in British society, and not merely exist as dehumanised factors of economic production.

___________________

Don Flynn*

We have now entered the final twelve months of the longest general election campaign in British history. That so, it is good to hear that migrant community groups are working together to get messages across to the population about the positive case for migration.

The report from our friends and colleagues at Migrant Voice about the representation of the viewpoint of migrants in the mainstream media makes shocking reading. We are supposed to be right in the middle of a ‘grown-up’ conversation about immigration and its impacts on life in Britain and yet in 77% of the coverage of this issue the people most directly involved in the business of migration do not even get a look in.

With these facts as a backdrop, the news that the initiative is being seized by a group of people from migrant communities with a project aimed at elbowing their way to a more prominent position in the public discussion is very welcome.

#MigrantsContribute! is a social media-style name for a campaign that aims to bust into the mainstream with its core message that, far from being the unwelcome border crossers looking for a free ride so often presented by unscrupulous politicians and headline writers, migrants come to the UK full of hope and expectation that they will have the opportunity to contribute fully as fully rounded people in British society, and not merely exist as dehumanised factors of economic production.

The first public presentation of plans for #MIgrantsContribute! was made by Tatiana Garavito at the national conference Stand Up To Racism held in London last Saturday. Tatiana is the director of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service and the current holder of the Young Woman of the Year Award, given each year by Women on the Move.

Her arguments in support of #MIgrantsContribute! are set out in the blog featured in MRN Migrant Pulse. She explains how people from migrant communities are “upset” when they hear how political parties are “prepared to use lies and distortions about migrants, which are far from the truth, to gain votes and encourage a hostile response to migrants.”

The campaign will be making use of an array of messages aimed at countering these negative images of migrants, setting out facts about all the things that they bring within them, aside from their desire to work and get on in life.

Supporters of #MigrantsContribute! have moved quickly to set up a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account. In the next few days it will be launching the #MigrantsContribute Manifesto. People who want to sign up to the campaign will be invited to submit ‘selfies’ showing their support for the initiative.

Watch this space to follow developments with #MigrantsContribute!

Read original story here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

*Don Flynn, the MRN Director, leads the organisation’s strategic development and coordinates MRN’s policy and project work. He is a regular and sought-after speaker at conferences, seminars and lectures on behalf of MRN.

What would you see if you looked in Jussi Halla-aho’s eyes?

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Plans to give the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* a facelift and turn it into a mainstream party took another step in that direction when the new chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformist (ECR) group of the European parliament, MEP Syed Kamall, was satisfied with PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho’s explanation for his conviction for ethnic agitation.

What else could Kamall say after the PS and far-right Danish People’s Party, which have two “MEPs with criminal records,” joined the ECR?

If Kamall looked Halla-aho in the eye, what feelings would it raise among those migrants in Finland that the PS politician has insulted? What about Finland’s Somali community? What about the regular Immigrant Joe who works hard and pays his taxes in Finland but has to deal with the daily suspicion and discrimination that is reinforced by politicians like him?

Should they look him in the eye too and ask when this cat-and-mouse racism will stop.

If I looked in Halla-aho’s eyes I would probably see a troubled politician who is trying his hardest to justify the racism he wrote about in the past. His balancing act it living with the ghost of his past.

Here’s another big gamble that the PS and Halla-aho are talking in light of recent events. By trying to appear more mainstream, it’s the voters who will decide at the end of the day if they like the changes no matter how many times anyone looks Halla-aho and the party in the eye.

Read full story here on YLE in English.

In Halla-aho’s words about the ECR: “They wondered a little bit about how something like this [writing he got sentenced for] could have brought a conviction.”

In Kamall’s words: “I sat down with him when I saw that issue reported, I looked him in the eye and I said ‘tell me about this…I’m satisfied by his explanation. Once again we are looking to parties that are looking to reform, we are looking for people…we don’t look at the past, we want to look at where we’re moving forward.”

Kamall said that if the Finns Party want to be a mainstream party and he’d be happy to help them with such a task.

Kamall is the same politician who justified the Danish People’s Party (DPP) membership into the ECR. He was quoted as saying on the Financial Times:

“The Danish People’s party is on a political journey. It now has a policy of controlled immigration and disagrees with those on the left who would allow uncontrolled immigration and benefit tourism.There is a clear distinction that the left-wing media often fails to make between a party that wants to control immigration and one that seeks to demonize immigrants. The DPP is the former.”

Possibly the MEP and head of the ECR should ask those migrants, Danes married with foreigners, and Muslims if the DPP doesn’t demonize migrants. The answers he’d receive could be highly revealing.

These types of statements by a Conservative Party MEP shouldn’t surprise us since they generally agree with the anti-immigration and anti-Islam stances of parties like the PS and DPP.

Thanks to the rise of an anti-EU and anti-immigration party, the UKIP, the Tories have preferred to mimic Nigel Farage’s message instead of challenging it. It’s the same story that happened in Finland before the PS’ historic election victory in 2011.

The United Kingdom has under Tory Prime Minister David Cameron become a more hostile place for immigrants in the form of giving space to intolerance through Go Home campaign and fear-mongering about hordes of Romanians swarming to the United Kingdom.

If you want to find out why Cameron has become so anti-EU and anti-immigration, all you have to do is look at Nigel Farage’s UKIP, which became the first party apart from the Tories and Labor to win an election since the early twentieth century.

The Tories are not a friendly party to migrants, which explains why the ECR has no problems with admitting xenophobic parties like the PS and DPP to its ranks.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Migrants’ Rights Network: £18,600 income requirement – pricing UK workers out of a family life

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Ruth Grove-White*

New research by MRN shows the uneven impacts of the minimum income requirement across the UK, and calls for change towards a fairer system for family migration.

A few weeks ago, we were contacted by a lady called Margaret, who lives in South Wales. Margaret has worked for the past decade as a legal secretary for a private solicitors firm, earning £13,500 a year. However, her salary is not considered adequate in order to sponsor her Tunisian husband to enter the UK, and so they are living apart for the foreseeable future.

In Margaret’s view, the rules are unfair. She is in stable employment, lives with family so has no housing costs and has low outgoings as the cost of living in her area is low. Margaret says

I’m doing a respectable job, but am now being told that my salary is not enough. It’s just so difficult to find work at £18,600 in my area. It doesn’t make sense because we could both live with my parents when he comes here, and Mohammed wants to work, and pay taxes, too. But if I leave and go to Tunisia, we will never be able to come back together. In the meantime, we are kept apart and are unable to start the family that we planned to have together.

Margaret is not the only person whose earnings are too low to meet the rules and be with her husband. 47% of the working population are reportedly unable to sponsor a loved one, on the basis of their earnings. Because £18,600 is considerably higher than the national minimum wage (approximately £13,200 per annum at a full time rate), some people, like Margaret, are in full-time employment and still fail to meet the rules.

But, crucially, where you live and work in the UK is a significant determiner of your ability to live with a foreign partner. New research by MRN, released today, shows that being able to live with your non-EU spouse is now essentially subject to a postcode lottery.

The research reviews Office of National Statistics earnings data for employees across the 632 parliamentary constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales. It finds that, in 74 British parliamentary constituencies, less than 50% of employees have a gross annual income at or above £18,600 per annum. That means that more than half of workers living in these areas are effectively priced out of having a family life with a non-EU national.

Workers in parts of the North West and South West of England, as well as across Wales, are particularly likely to be affected due to lower than average earnings in those areas. By contrast, the ten parliamentary constituencies with the highest average earnings are all based in London. Someone living and working in Putney, in London, is effectively more than twice as likely to be able to meet the rules than a worker residing in Blackpool South.

Since July 2012, a number of MPs have raised the issue of the regional disadvantage felt by some trying to meet the family migration rules. The Government has resisted calls for a regionally varied income requirement, and largely refused to acknowledge the uneven impacts of the rules across the UK. But surely the solution is for the Government to reduce the income requirement to a level that can be realistically reached by workers across the UK – with the level of the National Minimum Wage seeming like a sensible place to start. In addition, widening the income sources that can be used to meet the rules would allow families to reflect the full range of resources available to them in their applications.

Currently, many of the families affected by the rules are anxiously awaiting the Court of Appeal judgement on the MM & Ors legal challenge. This is an important case, but we understand that any outcome from the legal challenges, even in the best case scenario, is unlikely to be felt before the next general election.

In the meantime, the mounting evidence that the bar for family migration is prohibitively high needs to reach a wider set of parliamentarians who are more generally disturbed about the widespread disadvantages faced by the UK’s lower-income workers. It is critical that this wider group of MPs and peers, and other potentially supportive stakeholders, are drawn into the public debate about these rules.

Over the coming month, as we build up to the second anniversary of the family migration rules and the Court of Appeal judgement is issued, there will be renewed attention on this issue. If you are interested in campaigning, please put 9th July 2014 in your diary as there will be a parliamentary meeting from 10 – 11.30am in Westminster – you can sign up for that here. In addition, there will be lobbying and campaigning activities organised by MRN, JCWI and Britcits, and others across the Divided Families campaign.

Let’s work together to make the case for political change on this critical campaign.

To download the report click here [PDF].
MRN has sent copies of the report to the MPs of the 74 constituencies listed in the report. We would encourage all who wish to, to take the opportunity to write again to your local MP, enclosing a copy of the report. Please click here for a template letter. We strongly advise that you adapt the letter according to your personal circumstances – and please do let us know if you get a response.
Sign up to receive updates from MRN by registering on the We are Family website here.

Read original story here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

*Ruth Grove-White is MRN’s Policy Director, responsible for developing the network’s responses to Government policy and legislation, leading on MRN parliamentary work and supporting the Director in representing the organization.

Financial Times: Finnish and Danish MEPs “with criminal records” join Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s group

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Migrant Tales

While some speculated that the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and the Danish People’s Party (DPP), both with MEPs with criminal records, would be given the cold shoulder by UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, the opposite happened, writes the Financial Times.

The two MEPs with criminal records are PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho and DPP’s Morten Messerschmidt, who was convicted in 2002 for claiming that cultural diversity was linked to rape, violence and forced marriages.

Writes the Financial Times quoting Mats Persson of the Open Europe think-tank said:

This will raise the eyebrows of many in Europe who thought the Danish People’s party in particular wouldn’t pass the Tory party’s blush test…The good news for the Tories is that they’re on course to become the third largest party in the European Parliament. The risk however is that they drive reform-minded liberal parties straight into the arms of the big federalist block in the EP [European parliament].

PS chairman Timo Soini expressed satisfaction about being accepted into the ECR.

“Fifty-five MEPs have joined so far this group [ECR],” Soini was quoted as saying on YLE. “This group is in practice bigger than the Left and Green group [European United Left-Nordic Green Left].”

The PS and DPP used to belong to the Europe for Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group, with far-right parties like the Slovak National Party, whose leader said that the best policy for dealing with the Roma is “a long whip in a small yard.”

With parties like the Lega Nord – formerly an EFD member – joining Marine Le Pen and the PS and DPP the ECR, the interesting matter to watch is if UKIP’s Nigel Farage will be able to get the seven parties and 27 MEPs are needed to form a group in the European parliament.

Read full story here.

Another interesting question to ask is why Cameron permitted two anti-immigration parties with MEPs with criminal records to join the ECR?

One answer is that Cameron and his fellow conservatives in the group don’t care too much if a politician has been sentenced for ethnic agitation or has issues with racism. Taking into account the Tories’ anti-immigration rhetoric that has grown recently due to the growth of the UKIP, this is nothing strange.

The PS’ entry into the ECR puts the party well into the conservative, populist and far-right camp.

Migrants’ Rights Network: Is a new Immigration Bill to be announced in the Queen’s Speech?

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales insight: Events in the United Kingdom resemble a self-fulfilling prophesy for white English and an ever-worsening and ever-hostile place for migrants and visible minorities. The treatment and approach to immigration of Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is shameful. It reveals more cowardice than sound judgement.

The worst matter in the United Kingdom isn’t migration, but parties like the UKIP, Conservatives and Labor that feed the country’s self-fulfilling prophesy. Scapegoating is easier than sound leadership.

________________

Awale Olad*

The ‘hostile’ Immigration Act 2014 was indeed a flagship piece of legislation and we are, it seems, set to see a second tough immigration bill announced in the Queen’s Speech this coming Wednesday.

The first Immigration Bill, which became an act in May 2014 after a long battle with Conservative Backbenchers who believed it was not tough enough on EU migrants, introduced new measures that reduced the appeal rights for migrants, access to private housing, ability to access driving licenses and bank accounts, and new powers to strip the citizenships of migrants the Home Secretary deems unworthy of British citizenship.

Now, however, rumours are circulating that Iain Duncan Smith, the Work & Pensions Secretary, will team up with Home Secretary Theresa May, to introduce a short new bill that aims to respond to the United Kingdom Independence Party’s (UKIP) recent popularity in the European and Local Elections, where they topped the vote in the UK.

According to the Telegraph, the new measures in the bill will include extending powers on deportation and targeting EU nationals who are not employed, discouraging businesses from solely employing EU migrants, reducing the ability of unemployed EU migrants claiming benefits, and a new ‘wealth test’ that will ban migrants from new poorer EU accession states from entering the UK.

Theresa May is also set to lock horns with David Willetts, the Conservative universities minister, as further measures in the upcoming bill continue to drip out into mainstream media. May wants to stop international students reuniting with foreign spouses/partners in the UK, moreover, the Home Secretary will introduce greater sanctions on universities whose foreign students disappear, and allow for immigration officers to have greater access to universities who they suspect to have bogus students.

The last Immigration Bill was meant to be the most accelerated piece of legislation since the Coalition came to power in 2010. Starting its Commons stage in October 2013, the Bill was meant to receive Royal Assent by the beginning of this year but was slowed down by Nigel Mills’s amendment to stop Bulgarians and Romanians from entering the UK in 2014. The amendment received almost one hundred Tory backbench backers and stalled the legislation’s progress in parliament.

Given the scare UKIP delivered to the mainstream parties at last week’s local elections by campaigning primarily on the impacts of EU migration in the UK, a response from the Conservative Party would seem apposite. However, Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and their current election coordinator, has said that the Liberal Democrats will block the bill if it is not to their taste.

This new bill will certainly have EU leaders looking closely at the proposed measures although the government will be at pains to point out that the proposals are consistent with German legislation. The crucial obstacle for May and her colleagues is whether this bill meets the demands of despairing Tory backbenchers who are under threat from a UKIP surge.

Read original story here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

*Awale Olad is the Public & Parliamentary Affairs Officer at MRN, coordinating the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, supporting parliamentarians and policy makers on establishing a cross-party consensus on immigration policy.

The EU elections are a call for migrants and minorities to raise their voices and take charge of their future in an ever-hostile Europe

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Migrant Tales

What does the election victory of anti-EU and anti-immigration parties reveal for the future of the EU, immigrants and minorities in Europe? The bad news is that matters will get worse before they improve, even if these parties didn’t get a clear mandate in the EU elections.

Writes the Guardian:”But not by as much as they did in the past. This was in no meaningful or moral sense a victory for the pro-European parties or for the European project that they cherish and drive. These parties have no sure mandate now…That’s not to say that the popular uprising at the ballot box swept the board. It didn’t, and it is extremely important not to exaggerate it.”

One of the scariest matters concerning Sunday’s result is how anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam parties want to reform Europe. What credible answers if any do they have concerning our ever-growing cultural diversity?

For minorities and migrants in countries like France and the United Kingdom, the election is a clear wake up cal. Placing one’s hope that parties like the National Front and UKIP have credible solutions for our cultural diversity is foolish thinking.

The only ones who will improve the lot of migrants and minorities in Europe are migrants and minorities with sensible Europeans. For that Europe needs a civil rights movement like what happened in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thus not only was the EU political map redrawn, but a new clarion call could be faintly heard: participate and be active or suffer the consequences.

Anti-immigration Europe: The fruits you harvest depend on the seed you plant

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Migrant Tales

In many respects, Europe looks like a region that is running scared with a notable part of its population seeking to support populist, anti-immigration and even neo-Nazi parties that offer no credible solutions to issues like rising unemployment, poverty and estrangement from our political institutions.

If students from a small town in Eastern Finland did a poster advertising Finland, what push and pull factors would they highlight for migrants?

In Finland, some politicians are learning slowly but surely that it’s a very bad idea to flirt with these right-wing populist parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) that are anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam.

In many respects, those right-wing populist political forces they flirted with not only paved the way for a new political landscape in Finland after 2011, but marked their eventual political demise. A case in point is former Social Democrat party chairman Jutta Urpilainen, who flirted with the PS in 2010 with her infamous maassa maan tavalla statement, or in Rome do as the Romans do.

Taking into account the avalanche of bigotry at the time especially after 2008 thanks to the PS and many of its politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others, Urpilainen’s quote was seen as offensive to migrants living in this country. Instead of promoting Social Democratic values like social equality and inclusion, Urpilainen’s statement singled out and victimized non-ethnic Finns.

Another politician the PS should thank for helping them become one of Finland’s four largest parties is National Coalition Party Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, who said before the 2011 parliamentary elections that “debating immigrant issues in this country doesn’t mean you’re racist.”

If politicians like Katainen or Urpilainen think it was fair game to victimize migrants, is it then ok to be a bigot, sexist or homophobic in Finland? Shouldn’t human rights, Nordic welfare state values like social equality, non-discrimination be defended by politicians? Why do they give with their silence and lack of leadership the green light to others to bully migrants and minorities?

A part of the answer to the latter question lies in the fact that migrants and minorities are vulnerable and easy targets with little power in their respective countries. Anti-immigration politicians get their inspiration from apathetic migrants and the mood swings of society that they help create.

The same mistake that the Social Democrats and National Coalition Party committed in 2010 is happening in other parts of Europe like in the United Kingdom. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has become more anti-immigration and anti-EU in order to appease UKIP. He has helped the anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party to grow into a formidable political force that is now threatening his party in the Euro elections.

This video clip UKIP’s Farage when effectively cross-examined by James O’Brien on LBC. Finnish journalists could learn a lot from this interview.

What have we learned from the UKIP and PS cases? One important lesson is not to suck up to the arguments of populist parties that aim to polarize society. Instead of parroting their intolerance, politicians should take part in an open debate with them and expose them for what they are: a sham.

Politicians should answer simple questions like why are racism and prejudice hazardous to society?

One of the examples they could give is the stereotype that women don’t excel in math. How do you think a woman feels as a minority in an advanced math class with other males? Consider the pressure and stress she has to face daily to prove that she’s just as good, if not even better at math, than her male classmates. Think of the power and potential that would be released from that woman if she weren’t a target of prejudice.

Rubén Blades is a famous salsa singer from Panama, who said in one of his songs, Siembra (harvest), that Latin Americans everywhere shouldn’t allow their conscience to die and be careful with the seed they plant because the fruits they’ll harvest depend on that seed.

In the song, Blades states that the seed that needs to be planted are those of affection and humility. They are the ones that will give hope to future generations.

But with the rise of right-wing populist, anti-immigration and even far-right parties in Europe today, what kind of seed are we planting and what will be its fruits?

Pew Research Center survey: Anti-immigration and anti-minority sentiment runs high before Euro elections

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Pew Research Center, a Washington-based “fact tank,” reveals in a survey just before the European parliamentary elections on May 22-25 that anti-immigration and anti-minority sentiment runs in countries like Poland, Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy and Greece.

Euro MEP candidates like Jussi Halla-aho and Juho Eerola of the PS have used anti-immigration sentiment to attract voters. Halla-aho’s visit in February to Lieksa in eastern Finland is a good example of how he promotes anti-immigration sentiment by demonizing Muslims.

Some parties with strong anti-immigration campaigns include Britain’s UKIP, a close ideological ally of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland, France’s National Front, Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

The Pew Research Center survey revealed that an average of 55% of respondents in the seven EU countries said they want fewer migrants. The strongest anti-immigration sentiment was found in Greece (86%) followed by Italy (80%).

If views of migrants was negative, so were attitudes of minorities like the Roma, Muslims and to a lesser extent Jews.

The survey revealed that the Roma are viewed as the most unfavorable (50%) minority with the Muslims (46%) trailing closely behind. While attitude towards Jews weren’t as negative as those towards the Roma and Muslims, they were especially high in Greece (47%), Poland (26%) and Italy (24%).

Still confused about how racist parties like the UKIP are? Check out this video clip below where the head of the UKIP, Nigel Farage, answers some hard questions in the same way that PS chairman Timo Soini did when he was interviewed on BBC’s Hard Talk in 2013.

UKIP’s Farage political views are very similar to Soini’s. Listening to the interview by LBC’s James O’Brien of Farage shows close similarities of how Soini speaks to the Finnish media.

Are politicians like Jussi Halla-aho and parties like the PS racist?

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Jay Smooth offered in early March some good points on how to spot a racist by sticking to the that-sounded-racist conversation as opposed to they-are-racist conversation. The former conversation allows you to focus on what the person said and why what they said is unacceptable. The other one will take your focus away from the issue.

Keeping this in mind, it’s easy to spot racist and unacceptable comments by politicians like Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho and others.

Taking the question a bit further, what does it say about the media, our politicians and society when they forget these racist rants and treat politicians who made them as if nothing happened?

It sadly reveals that if you are a white Finn you can nearly say anything you want about refugees, visible migrants and Muslims and almost get away with it. Even if Halla-aho got sentenced for ethnic agitation, the national media continues to give politicians like him inflated respectability and importance.

Searching for easy targets and scapegoats is a dangerous and slippery slope that some witnessed in last century in Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler and his henchmen were hostile to cultural diversity like some politicians and political parties in Europe today. The more they executed their plans “to make Germany Jewish and minority free,” the tighter the noose around its neck got until it snapped and become lifeless in 1945 with the fall of Berlin.

With European parliamentary elections (MEP) on May 22-25, there’s a danger that anti-immigration, far-right and nationalistic parties will make big gains.

No matter if these parties are from Finland or Italy, United Kingdom or Bulgaria, they lack credible solutions. Many voters will be shocked and disappointed if they ever get an opportunity to implement their policies.

Their negative and hostile stances on immigration and cultural diversity raise an eerie question as well. Considering that Europe already is culturally diverse, how are these parties going to make Europe white again? Are their actions and attacks against minorities going to get ever-merciless? Did Geert Wilders of the Islamophobic Party for Freedom give us a glimpse in March when he ensured supporters that there would be “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands?

The recognition we give people who spread racism, prejudice and hatred makes a big difference. Look at former PS MP James Hirvisaari after he was sacked from the party in October for taking a picture and posting on social media a person making a Nazi salute in parliament.

Hirvisaari, who was sentenced as well for ethnic agitation, became a political nobody and joke after he got the boot from the PS.

Contrary to Hirvisaari, Halla-aho has played his political cards differently. For Soini’s favor and protection, Halla-aho has toned down his racist rants without changing his views on “multiculturalism” and “runaway immigration.”

If you want to spot a politician who sounds racists look at what he or she said. What the person said is written in stone and can’t be denied with the usual “I’m not a racist” defense.

Here’s one of many quotes that got Halla-aho in hot water: “Robbing passers-by and living as parasites on tax money is the national, maybe even genetic characteristic of Somalis.”

In another blog post in June 2008, he wrote that the Islamic prophet Mohammed was a pedophile and that Islam was a pedophilic religion because its prophet had intercourse with his nine-year-old wife, Aisha.

Are these statements racist? Any sensible person can tell that they are because they single out, victimize and exaggerate a whole group of people. These statements weren’t made with the intention to foster healthy debate but to insult and insight ethnic and religious hatred.

Here’s another one by Halla-aho, who states that people from Africa live in the Stone Age and therefore should not live in Europe. One of the pet arguments of anti-immigration politicians is to stress how different people are in order to justify their racism of different groups. Here’s one he made in 2007:

An African who’s been brought to Helsinki from the savannah pollutes no less with his conspicuous consumption than an ethnic Finn. He will probably pollute more because moving from the Stone Age directly to the modern world, he lacks consumerism and eco-conscience, which Westerners have.

If you still have doubts whether the PS makes racist and unacceptable statements, visit The Truth about the True Finns blog and Halla-aho’s quotes (in Finnish) on Wikiquote. Read a long list of racist, homophobic, fascist and neo-Nazi quotes by PS politicians here.

Juho Eerola, who is the PS’ third vice-president, is another MP who has toned down his views. Check out what he said on Hommaforum, a hate site, on July 6, 2010:

I myself am attracted to Benito Mussolini’s fascism, and in particular the economic policy [the country] pursued. Entreperneurship was encouraged but it was under strict government control. Vital large corporations could not be owned by foreign investors but were firmly in government hands. Italy achieved during those times full employment and strong economic growth. We could learn a lot from such a model.

Apart from migrants, visible minorities or gays, the rise of the PS especially in 2011 was seen as a new and interesting addition to the Finnish political scene. Even if the PS are a knee-jerk reaction of voters to ever-growing poverty and social inequality in Finland, what is surprising is that some voters picked a party that is provincial, hostile and scapegoats migrants and minorities.

It’s no secret that the UKIP and PS are close ideological allies in Europe. The Guardian of London published an opinion piece that gave ten reasons why you should not vote for the UKIP. The exact same reasons apply to the PS.

Its stances are bonkers
It has nasty friends in Europe
It’s a magnet for unsavory types here
It has rewarded offense (in the case of the PS it has rewarded party members who have been sentenced for ethnic agitation)
It hates the EU but cashes in
Its MEPs are not actually worker bees
It is vulnerable to special interest as any other party
It speaks with fork tongues
Its only plan is Nigel (or in the case of the PS it’s Timo)
It makes a sensible debate on Europe less likely

Another opinion piece on the conservative Telegraph explains how UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage has taken British voters for fools.

The PS are doing the same thing in Finland. Like their ally in the United Kingdom, both parties may have their victory in the upcoming MEP elections, “but then they will begin the long march back into political obscurity,” according to the Telegraph.

Announcement: 1001Nights | UK tour 2014

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Migrant Tales

TOMORROW NIGHT I SHALL TELL YOU SOMETHING STRANGER AND EVEN MORE AMAZING…

A FAMILY SHOW FOR AGES 6+

1001 Nights collects together some of the greatest folk tales ever told. Here they are re-imagined by Shahrazad – a lively young girl who, torn between her old home in the East and her new life in Britain, re-tells the extraordinary stories of her childhood to her new-found friend, who understands not a single word she says…

Using the things she finds around her, Shahrazad fashions saucepans into crowns, old pipes into enchanted telescopes and a mop into a magic carpet to transport us to a fantastical and imagined world of kings, viziers, and jinns.

This compelling, funny and totally absorbing play wowed audiences at the Unicorn in 2013 and now returns for a UK tour.

NOMINATED FOR OFF WEST END AWARD: BEST PRODUCTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

“An utter delight” **** The Telegraph

“Warmly recommended” The Stage

“If this does not warm your heart then I don’t know what will”
A Younger Theatre

A Transport/Unicorn production

See trailer here.

Devised and Directed by Douglas Rintoul
Designed by James Perkins
Lighting Design by Matt Haskins
Sound Design Helen Atkinson

CAST: SAMANTHA BÉART, KRYSTIAN GODLEWSKI and KESHINI MISHA

Ipswich, New Wolsey 5 – 7 May
Didcot, Cornerstone 10 May
Canolfan y Celfyddydau
Aberystwyth Arts Centre 11 May
Farnham Maltings 15 May
Canterbury, Gulbenkian 16 – 18 May
Folkestone, Quarterhouse 22 – 24 May
Lyme Regis, Marine Theatre 25 May
Oxford, The North Wall 27 May
Manchester, The Edge Theatre and Arts Centre, 29 May
Lancashire, The Boo 30 May
Burnley Arts Centre 31 May
London, Unicorn Theatre 5 – 22 June
Bath, The Egg 27 – 28 June
Norden Farm Centre for the Arts 1 July
Derby Theatre Studio 5 July

To help UNHCR provide lifesaving aid to Syrian refugees, please donate at unhcr.org.uk/syria