Giving an insight into the mentality of BBC presenters, Sara Montague grilled Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch on the Radio4 Today programme on 14^th December 2012 about the “integration” of the 7.9 million foreigners currently resident in our country.  Green’s remark that the first step should be to greatly reduce the numbers coming in was brushed aside by Montague in order to concentrate the interview on how foreign immigrants could be encouraged to learn English as a step on their way to being “integrated”.   Has Montague got the slightest concept of what nearly 8 million strangers means in a country (England) of 52 million?

There is an easy answer to the integration question and that is that there should be an end to taxpayers’ money being spent on translations of official documents and interpretation services in town halls and government offices – no English, no benefits.  The money saved should be used to run classes for non or poor English speakers to gain by examination a “Certificate of Competence in the English Language”.  This qualification, which would be valued by employers, could also be gained by native English speakers as an alternative to GCSE in English.  This change would give an unparalleled and rapid increase in English literacy and clarity of pronunciation for natives and foreigners alike.

Sara’s next interview was with an “expert” in vitamin D deficiency in children, leading to rickets.  Even Montague didn’t swallow the absurd claim that 25% of British children suffered or were at risk from this disease.  The claim was padded out with the now standard statistical sleight of hand used by the medical profession by quoting percentages or multiples rather than the actual numbers.  The number of cases of rickets had gone up fourfold in the last 10 years – panic statistics.  In fact the increase in cases of this disease from one a month to one a week is concentrated in Scotland, as you would expect given the low levels of sunlight there (about 1200 hours per year in Glasgow compared with 1800 hours in Bournemouth on the South Coast of England).

But with the usual tortured sensitivity deployed by the BBC whenever a problem in an ethnic minority comes up, neither interviewer nor interviewee alluded to the known fact that the effects of the dearth of sunlight in Glasgow are greatly exacerbated among the Muslim population there by their refusal to dress their young children in short trousers and short skirts.  British parents are now contributing to the problem however by dressing both boys and girls in jeans from about the age of two.  This deprives the skin of those young legs, where vitamin D is made, from getting the benefit of what sunlight there is.  Instead of advising parents to stop covering up their children’s legs as soon as they can walk, Montague ended the piece by endorsing the idea that mothers should “pop round to their GPs” to get vitamin D pills.

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