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By Phillip Johnston and Toby Helm





 

Politicians are "living on borrowed time" over the unprecedented levels of immigration, a senior Lab our backbencher said yesterday.

Frank Field, the former welfare reform minister and a highly respected party veteran, said present policy was "unsustainable". He is the most significant centre-Left figure to warn about the apparently untrammeled influx of foreign workers and their families.

Ministers say there is "no obvious limit" to the numbers who could come in and maintain that the economy needs migrants to function. But council chiefs said this week that services across the country were finding it difficult to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of people for whom financial plans had not been made.

They also questioned the basis of the Government's approach when Britain had more than seven million people described as "economically inactive".

Mr. Field, speaking to the BBC, said Britain was in danger of becoming a "global traffic station" for migrant workers. He urged politicians on all sides to stop ignoring public concern before the issue was more effectively exploited by far-Right organizations such as the British National Party.

He also said he doubted whether the levels of immigration could be absorbed without dramatic changes to Britain's nature and culture.

"This is the most massive transformation of our population. Do we merely accept this as another form of globalization? That it doesn't matter where you are, or that you belong to a country and have roots? That we are all just following the jobs?"

Mr. Field, the MP for Birkenhead, said people who questioned mass immigration were often accused of "playing the race card" but this was "just another way of closing down debate". He added: "There will be economic gains but I am just rising whether any country can sustain the rate of immigration we are now suffering.

"If we are not careful, we will be transformed into a global traffic station and that is not what most people mean by being part of 'a country. It is only because the BNP are so inept that the debate has not taken off."

Mr. Field said mainstream politicians had to address immigration "before the BNP stumbles on somebody with talent". He said: "We are living on borrowed time. We cannot continue on the assumption that the BNP will present leaders which turn off most voters, even if what they are saying is important."

Since last year's general election, when the Tories promised a ceiling on immigration and Tony Blair pledged a national debate, there had been virtual silence, he said.

But Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, denounced Mr. Field's comments. "There is a fine line between political candour on the sensitive issue of immigration, and downright scare-mongering. In making his remarks in this way, Frank Field failed this test and risks exacerbating precisely those public concerns he is urging us to confront."

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migration watch, said Mr. Field was "astonishingly brave" to raise the issue. "We have for too long ducked a serious debate on the scale of immigration. The Government have done their best to bury the numbers and the Conservatives seem to have lost their nerve."

Since Enoch Powell's dire warnings in the late 1960s, politicians have been reluctant to raise the immigration issue. Last month, Margaret Hodge, the industry minister, said white working-class families in her east London constituency felt so neglected by the Government and angered by immi­gration that they were deserting Lab our and flocking to the BNP.

Britain is experiencing its biggest wave of immigration, mainly as a result of the expansion of the EU in 2004 from 15 to 25 members. The community took in eight former communist nations, plus Cyprus and Malta. Britain, Sweden and Ireland were the only three members not to exercise their right impose limits on the number workers who could enter in t years following enlargement.

When Powell was warning of t impact of immigration in his "rivers of blood" speech, annual net migration was around 70,000. Last year, it was more than 200,000.

Since Lab our came to power in 1997, British citizenship has been granted to almost one million foreign nationals, easily the highest settlement rate in history. More than half were under 34.

Phil Woolas, the community cohesion minister, said: "Of course we need to debate it and listen to the point people make but we need to base a debate on the facts.

"I do not accept that this Government has not discussed race andimmigration."

 

The Daily Telegraph,

Thursday, June 29, 2006

BEREZOVSKY TRIBUTE TO 'BRAVE AND HONOURABLE' FRIEND LITVINENKO

By Jeevan Vasagar

 

The exiled Russian businessman, Boris Berezovsky, paid tribute last night to the "bravery, determination and honour" of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy, who died last week after ingesting a radioactive poison.

In his first public comments on the case, Mr. Berezovsky said he was "deeply saddened" by the former KGB agent's death, and his thoughts were with Mr. Litvinenko's widow Marina, his son, and the rest of his family.

The two men were friends and allies. Mr. Litvinenko spent time in prison in Russia after going public with a claim that the FSB, Russia's internal security service, ordered him to murder Mr. Berezovsky.

Mr. Berezovsky, who made a fortune from cars, oil and the media, is thought to own the north London house where Mr. Litvinenko lived and also employed him as an adviser.

In a statement, Mr. Berezovsky said: "I am deeply saddened at the loss of my friend Alexander Litvinenko. I credit him with saving my life and he remained a close friend and ally ever since. I will remember him for his bravery, his determination and his honour."

Referring to claims that the Kremlin ordered Mr. Litvinenko's assassination, Mr. Berezovsky said he had already expressed his views and now wanted to let the police get on with their work.

An autopsy of the former spy's body will be carried out on Friday under strict precautions to ensure radioactive contamination does not spread and cause further deaths.

Mr. Litvinenko's death on Thursday led to a public health alert after traces of polonium 210, the lethal radioactive substance found in his body, were discovered at a number of locations in London.

Eight people have been referred to a specialist clinic to be assessed for possible exposure to radiation, the Health Protection Agency said yesterday.

The postmortem examination will take place a day after the inquest is opened at St Pancras coroner's court, north London.

Meanwhile Tony Blair said yesterday that no "diplomatic or political barrier" would be allowed to stand in the way of the investigation into Mr Litvinenko's death. At a press conference while en route to a Nato summit in Riga, Mr. Blair said the death was being treated as a "very, very serious matter".

 

The Guardian,

November 29, 2006

Soft News

MORTALITY RATE WOULD PLUNGE

WITHOUT PASSIVE SMOKING

 

By Martha Kerr

 

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Eliminating exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke could reduce the number of deaths related to heart disease in the United States by more than 500,000 over the next 25 years, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.

The risk from passive smoking is currently estimated to be equivalent to actively smoking one cigarette per day, Dr. Kirsten Bobbins-Domingo told attendees of the American Heart Association's 7th Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research, being held this week in Washington, DC.

Using the updated data from the latest National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) and estimates of heart disease risk based on the Framingham Heart Study and other studies, Bobbins-Domingo and colleagues assessed the impact of ending passive smoking, using 2005 as the first year and projecting out to 2030.

Between 15 and 25 percent of individuals report that they are exposed to passive smoke in the home or workplace. Blood samples evaluated for cotinine levels, a chemical marker of exposure to tobacco smoke, indicated that exposure is actually closer to 29 to 43 percent of the population, Bobbins-Domingo told Reuters Health. "More people are exposed to passive smoke than they realize and likewise, the annual heart disease deaths per year (related to passive smoking) are underestimated."

Depending on the level of exposure, Bobbins-Domingo estimated that passive smoking is responsible for between 9,500 and 21,500 coronary heart disease-related deaths annually and between 14,600 and 32,400 heart attacks annually. The lower estimate is based on self-reports of exposure; the higher estimate is based on measurements of cotinine levels in the blood.

If passive smoking were eliminated now, by the year 2030 up to 953,200 new cases of coronary heart disease would be prevented, averting 842,900 heart attacks and 580,600 heart disease-related deaths, she predicted.

"The take-home message is that the burden of passive smoking is very real. This should drive public policy. Passive smoking in public places should be eliminated," Bobbins-Domingo asserted.

"The coasts have been pretty good in adopting these policies. Ten states have a complete ban on workplace smoking… But then there is the whole rest of the country" that is lagging behind.

"A nationwide passive smoking ban would have a dramatic effect," the California investigator concluded. "These public policies can eventually have an effect on personal habits."

 







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