AIDS AND IMMIGRATION
Came across this interesting post over on Hibernia Girl's excellent blog...seems like "population mobility" aka the polite euphemism for immigration from sub-Sahara Africa has seen the number of Aids cases in Northern Ireland surge by 300% in ten years! As has been pointed out this is taking a huge toll on public health services and yet, oddly enough, it is rarely discussed by our gutless politicians. Make sure you visit her site to read more on this.
David Vance
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Reader Comments (9)
Strange that the 300% increase figure for Northern Ireland is quoted without the actual figures. An incease from 3 to 9 would qualify.
This is a good example of what I call lazy statistical syndrome among journalists, but usually it works the other way, by quoting an increase or decrease in figures without any percentage to give an overview. Such an example could be "Spending on XXXX up by £5 million" without any reference to what it was last year. If it was £100 million that would be a 5% increase, but if it was £10 million the increase would be 50%. You need both figures to make a judgement, so when only one is presented I'm always suspicious that an agenda is being pursued.
I saw that post, it was interesting.
Great little blog.
No one is talking about aids, because they know if they talk about this it will open up the immigration debate, and they don't want to do that.
Good catch Peter - statistics can be highly deceptive and are easy to play with (manipulate) depending on the result (emotion or objective) you want to achieve or twist.
Peter: Strange that the 300% increase figure for Northern Ireland is quoted without the actual figures.
The figures are here on the Northern Ireland Executive webpage (which I linked to in my post).
There are now ca. 60 diagnoses of HIV cases in NI per year as opposed to the ca. 20 ten years ago.
Statistics - one of the tools of deceptive government! enbles them to fool themselves and attempt to fool us...
An old saying I saw recently,seems particularly apt;
"Study the lies a man tells others, to see how he intends to profit from them!
Study the lies a man tells himself to see how you may profit from him!"
HG
So it's an increase from 20 to 60 over ten years. Why didn't you quote the figures then? Surely it couldn't be because 300% is more sensationalist than the figures themselves, which are tiny as I suspected?
Ernest
Statistics are used by all and sundry in a biased way in order to promote their agenda. This is a case in point. I share HG's concern at the number of immigrants, but let's argue the figures honestly and openly.
I know a marvellously eccentric chap who lives alone on a
barren rockprivate islet off the coast of Scotland.Mrs Dawkins and I spent a weekend there last summer. The population saw a staggering 300% increase. Fancy that!
But I tell you, the Australians know how to deal with all this pesky immigration getting out of hand :0)
Dawkins
If Australia ever "fills up", the planet will probably be supporting a population of 200 billion as opposed to the current 6 billion. Not possible of course, but there are some in Rightworld who will say "So what?" :)
There are now ca. 60 diagnoses of HIV cases in NI per year as opposed to the ca. 20 ten years ago.
Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 04:19AM | Hibernia Girl
Any info on who these HIV cases actually are: origins etc?