Hi Tony,Regarding the Ian Bell article you shared with us from your "private" connection. Somebody mentioned that the writer is "an extreme right-wing blogger whose nonsense is spread on various race hate websites". You asked if there is a link to his blog. There is indeed. You'll find his personal blog here: http://ianbell.tumblr.comThe article you shared with us, Tony, in reference to the unsubstantiated claim by Marie Anne that 85% of muslims are on benefits, was one of several that Ian Bell has written for the UK's best known racist, fascist party, the BNP, with which I am sure you are familiar.You can see his articles for the BNP listed here: http://www.bnp.org.uk/search/node/%22ian%20bell%22Within that short list is the article containing Ian Bell's assertion that 85% of muslims "live off UK tax payers", which you shared for us (it's also cross-posted on his personal blog). Although for some reason which I still can't fathom you seemed to be under the impression the article was published by either The Sun or The Telegraph.The above information took me less a minute to discover using Google. Also within that minute of searching, I found that one can keep up with Ian Bell's daily utterances on Twitter at https://twitter.com/IanBell1963 I took a look. There, he also professes solidarity with:- violent racist organisation the EDL, whose leader was recently jailed.- a far-right racist football hooligan outfit called Casuals United.- the National Front, the extremely violent neo-nazi predecessor to the BNP (which still survives).- far-right white supremacist party the BFP (British First Party, older than the current BNP)- the CxF (combined Ex Forces), a group of racists/fascists professing to be ex-members of the British armed forces.- the NWI (North West Infidels) a violent racist offshoot of the EDL (not sure why the violent racism of the EDL wasn't good enough for them, maybe they just wanted a better name).That last bit took me a few extra minutes to discover. I'd not heard of most of the acronyms of the specialist violent fascist and racist groups which Ian Bell refers to on his Twitter account. I had to do a bit more googling to work those out.A lovely bunch. I wonder if they're as good with statistics as Mr Bell.On the BNP website, on the page where the article you posted originates, Mr Bell actually includes a list of "sources". Unfortunately, it seems he neglected to add references within the article content, specifying which particular bits of information were from which source (I think the reason for this will become clear as we go on). I had a look through them anyway to see if there was any more insight available into how he might have invented (sorry, I mean "calculated") the 85% figure.Unfortunately, there was not. The first link is to the Wikipedia page on Islam in the UK, the first paragraph of which directly contradicts an important figure he relies on in his article (he almost doubles the 2011 census estimates for number of muslims in the UK). Couldn't work out what info from here was used in the article. The page makes no mention of benefits or living off the taxpayer, so can't have informed the 85% figure.The second link is to a Pew Global Attitudes Project document called "Muslims in Europe: economic worries top concerns about religious and cultural identity". Again, there is no mention at all of benefits or living off the taxpayer that I could find, so this "source" cannot have informed the 85% figure.In fact, I can't say I noticed anything in this document (by an organisation based in the USA, apparently also interested in European views on the USA) that made its way into Mr Bell's article. Not sure why he's listed it as a source. I didn't read it in detail but it looks like a very interesting report. I'd recommend reading it as an example of informed, methodical, statistically robust reporting. Unlike the article you shared with us (although as I say, the Pew document contains nothing about benefits, it's about attitudes and perceptions).In case you find visiting the BNP website too distasteful (it does leave one feeling a bit grubby, I have to say), here's a direct link to the report: http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/254.pdfThe third link is an article in the Guardian from 2009 called "Why Muslim women are unemployed". No mention at all of benefits or living off the UK taxpayer in the article, so it can't have informed the 85% figure. Nothing in the Guardian article makes its way into Ian Bell's article (starting to see a pattern here, I think).The fourth link is to some statistics listed on the site of a charity called 1st Ethical, whose "mission is to empower British Muslims to benefit society through faith-based campaigns". Finally, I found some statistics here that were referenced in Mr Bell's article. This site provides a statistic stating that "28% of Muslims were renting houses from the council or Housing Association, the highest of any group at a value 8% above the national average". This also explains the stilted language of that reference in the Bell article, as he seems to have copy/pasted part of it directly. He did not seem to get the "4% live rent-free" statistic from this page, however (nor from any of his other listed sources that I noticed).Mr Bell's "estimate" of the number of muslims living in the UK is more than double the number stated on this website. Another trend emerging in his reporting, it seems.Oh, and perhaps unsurprisingly, this page makes no reference to benefits or living off the state either, so just like the other sources so far, it seems unlikely to have been used as a source for the 85% figure. It does make references to stats on rates of unemployment. Those stats are sourced from the 2004 Annual Population Survey (Office of National Statistics). Being unemployed doesn't make one a benefits claimant of course, but even if those stats are derived from such a source as the DWP, the rate given there is 15.8%, and from nine years ago.Moving on....The fifth link is to a website called wikiislam.net, a site which according to its "about" page is dedicated to the criticism of Islam, "whilst also allowing pro-Islamic responses in separate articles".The only relevance of this page seems to be as the source for the percentage of foreign prisoners who are muslim, although Mr Bell seems to have altered the range of at least one of the stats.None of this has relevance to the topic of benefits in the UK, though, so cannot have informed the 85% figure. The sixth source listed by Ian Bell is a Telegraph article titled "Britain's coping classes at breaking point". This appears to be the source of his stats on 2012 employment amongst UK muslims. The thing is, it's a bit short on statistics. The article has a sentence which states: "Half of Muslim men and three quarters of Muslim women are unemployed" (it doesn't specify whether these are portions of the working-age population or the population as a whole, or whether any or all of these people are living off the UK taxpayer or family members of working people).Mr Bell helpfully translates this into 50% and 75%, and further calculates an overall figure of 67.5%. Not sure how he got to that figure. I dropped out of A-level Maths and Statistics 20 years ago, but I think that if Mr Bell is basing his numbers on a 50/50 male/female split, his figure should be 62.5% (and that's notwithstanding the fact that the 1st Ethical site suggests the muslim population bucks the general trend in having a slight majority of men at 52%, which would push the average lower again). Hard to believe that somebody with such integrity and credibility as Mr Bell could get his sums wrong, so I'm assuming it's my maths at fault.Mr Bell compares the vague Telegraph's statement to statistics from 2004, taken from the aforementioned 1st Ethical website, which does state that their numbers of 13.5% unemployed (men) and 18% (women) are "as a proportion of the economically active population". Unless the Telegraph figures are too, the comparison is meaningless, but it's not clear.The Telegraph article is the first (out of six so far) of Mr Bell's sources to mention benefits, when it says "Unemployment among ethnic minorities costs the economy almost £8.6 billion a year in benefits and lost revenue from taxes". It makes no mention of the number or percentage of muslims who are on benefits or living off the taxpayer though, so it cannot have been a source used for the 85% figure.Oh, and incidentally, another of Mr Bell's "sources", which we've yet to get to, contradicts the Telegraph's vague and uncited assertions on unemployment quite starkly. It also gives more specific numbers and cites its sources.The seventh and penultimate of Mr Bell's sources is another Guardian article (not sure why he trusts the Guardian, I'm surprised he doesn't consider it a source of liberal lies). The article is titled "Almost a quarter of state school pupils are from an ethnic minority". The article doesn't mention muslims once. Next...The eighth and final of Mr Bell's listed sources is an article in the New Statesman titled "The lost Muslim generation". This article (which is from February 2010) states that unemployment amongst muslims was 16.4% (compared to a national average of 7.7% at the same time) based on figures from the UK Labour Force Survey for the first nine months of 2009. It then breaks those figures down to show the relatively high percentages of young and uneducated muslim youth who are unemployed. Again, it's not specified whether the 16.4% cited is derived from benefits claimants, but even if it was, difficult to see how it supports the 85% figure.I don't know about you, but I'm left wondering exactly where this erudite chap really did get the data on which to base his 85% "estimate".Personally, given his wholesale lack of the usual resources which inform statistic building (e.g. facts, evidence, stuff like that) my opinion is that the true source of his 85% figure is probably his fascist, racist imagination. Which seemed pretty likely from first reading the article after you posted it, Tony, but I suppose it's useful to have examined it a bit closer, in order to be more confident in the matter.I'm actually struggling to work out why Mr Bell even listed and linked to these eight documents. Given that not one single reference in any of them supports even the general thrust of his point, and many of the articles actually contain information which would lead to the conclusion that he's not much more than an incompetent liar.Perhaps he believes that the general readership of the BNP website will see the references and not think it worth following them to check his apparent sources for evidence to back up his statements. Maybe he believes they'll assume that "it must be true" because he linked to "sources". Or maybe he believes his sources back him up, even though they don't. It's all a bit strange.Anyway, looking through all that lot actually did take me quite a lot of time today, and trying to understand the logic of this racist, fascist gentleman has left me feeling physically ill, so I'm off to do something else now.Out of interest, did you find out from your "private" connection why they thought it appropriate to share with you this inaccurate and somewhat meaningless article from a party founded on hatred, numerous members of which have been convicted for terrorism and bombing offenses, and the murder, mutilation and assault of people purely on the basis of their skin colour? Perhaps your "private" connection is ignorant of the origin of the article. You should probably tell them, in case they're still passing it around. Especially if it was one of your muslim friends.
M Duley ● 4768d