British jobs for British workers

A nice piece of reporting in the Mail about those British jobs for British workers on the Olympics site in east London.

Almost a third of the 3,315 workers are not British. Half of them come from countries outside the EU, according to the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA). Yet, is this the true tally?

According to the ODA, one in five of the workers are locals. However, the Mail has discovered that many of these people are really foreigners without British passports.

For, in a sleight of hand, the ODA counts all workers as ‘local’ if they have an address (even one at a bed and breakfast) in one of the five neighbouring boroughs.

Therefore this includes migrant workers who have been in this country for as short a time as a week.

An interesting little statistical sleight of hand, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, in Tower Hamlets (where one in nine is unemployed), it has been revealed by local newspaper the East London Advertiser that only 90 of the borough’s residents have found jobs at the Olympic Park.

Worth reading the whole thing. In essence, we’re being lied to. We’ve got to pay all the taxes to build the Olympic site but almost no Britons are actually getting the jobs. That really isn’t quite what we were told would happen.