Dole we can't afford

There is some interesting data hidden in the latest live register figures today.

There are currently 18,120 people from the UK signing on in Ireland. These are people who do not hold Irish passports, so include Britons but not necessarily Northern Irish people.

There are 3,902 people signing on who come from the old EU15 (minus Britain and Ireland, that is.) That includes French people, Germans, Spanish, Italians, Danes, etc.

There are 40,427 people signing on who come from the EU accession states - Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.

And there are 13,926 people signing on who come from elsewhere.

We can do nothing about the right of EU citizens to take benefit payments from Ireland, even if we cannot afford it.

But these figures indicate that for every Western European signing on (and remember they have had the right to live and work here for generations) there are TEN Eastern Europeans signing on (who have only had the right to live and work here for the past few years.)

And we are apparently paying dole to nearly 14,000 people who do NOT come from the EU.

My question is simply, why?

Your Newsnight

Flagship BBC current affairs show Newsnight is inviting the public to vote on a series of 13 short films of 'citizen journalism', the best of which they will then show on the programme.

Whether you care to vote or not, the subjects are all fascinating, each film is only two minutes long, and every one of them is worth a viewing.

From a poor Cuban woman in a hurricane to the extent of immigration and integration in London and the now infamous video on how cocaine is made in Colombia, all the material on show is diverse, current, important and fascinating.

My vote? It's gone to this lad's succinct and searing expose of the British government's witch hunt against alleged dole fraud: