Slop Forensics · Exhibit

I left a sarky one-liner under a friend's post — "was this before you could blame immigrants for everything?" Someone took it literally and started, earnestly, blaming the immigrants. So I went and got the actual numbers — here's who really emptied your wallet.

How it started

It began, as these things do, in the comments under a friend's post. My dig was aimed at exactly that reflex — and someone took it completely straight, and bit.

The reply came back fast: blame all the crap on immigration, it all happened around the same time, straightforward isn't it? With the usual flourishes — calling me professor like it's an insult, deciding I must think all Brits are intellectually inferior, and a parting shot that my immigrant friends are surely globalists.

So I did the boring thing and went and got the numbers. Here's the reply, sourced — sharing it for anyone who cares. (Predicted responses: "yeah, but the brown people" from the flag shaggers, and "I agree, Harry, but you don't have to use the c-word" from everyone else.)

The Facebook comment exchange, with the other person's name blanked out — The exchange. Names blanked — the point is the claim, not the person.

No need to blame anyone — but I know folks love a scapegoat, so let's find the real one. The numbers tell you exactly who emptied your wallet, and it wasn't anyone who turned up on a boat, no matter what the Facebook reels or the Daily Mail tell you.

I'm not disagreeing — Britain is in a poor state. I don't live there any more but visit regularly, and it feels like visiting a dying town sometimes. America's not much better, nor is Germany. That should tell you something. But let's focus on Britain.

British wages have just had their worst slump in about 200 years¹.

£11,000

a year worse off than if pay had simply carried on growing at its pre-2008 rate². 2008? Rings a bell — that crisis was made in the City, not at the border.

So where did the money actually go? Up. To rich folks, not to migrants. Since the 2008 crash the UK's ten richest people have gone from £48bn to £182bn.

+281%

growth for the ten richest people in Britain since the crash — £48bn to £182bn⁴. Funny how that recovery found them, and not you and me, or the folks shimmying up lampposts to put flags there.

And it isn't just the ten at the very top.

1% = 50%

the richest 1% now own as much as the entire bottom half of the country put together; the top 10% hold 43% of everything³.

Between 2011 and 2019 the gap between the richest and poorest tenth grew by nearly half — the rich got £3.5 trillion richer while the poorest stayed in debt⁵. And before anyone says "they earned it": most of that is just asset prices going up, and about 60% of private wealth is inherited⁵. That's not earning anything. It's property getting dearer and wealth expanding — not income.

Meanwhile the blokes you're actually worried about — the ones working nights for fuck all money?

+£340k

what a migrant on average earnings pays in over a lifetime, more than they ever take out⁶ — we don't pay to raise or educate them; they arrive ready to work. And the worst honest estimate of their effect on low-end wages is about a penny an hour⁷.

a penny an hour

versus

£11,000 a year

I know which one I'd be cross about.

And no — I don't think Brits are thick. I think a lot of clever, hard-working Brits got robbed, and then got handed a scapegoat so they'd never look up at who actually did it.

And call me professor like it's an insult, sure. That's part of the maddening brain rot that's taken over the working and middle class in the UK — that being intelligent is somehow a bad thing. Yes, I am a smart cunt. I earn nicely because people pay for my intelligence — but I'd evidently make more if I used my smarts to point the blame in the wrong direction. The irony is you don't have to be particularly smart to spot what's going on, and who's really the problem.

They listen to a prick like Farage pointing at dinghies⁸ — whilst he's fucking them up the arse and getting richer⁹.

It's unendingly maddening to watch from the outside. I can see people I like, whose opinions I used to respect, who are now struggling — and instead of looking up at who did it, they're looking at a boat.

Editorial cartoon: Nigel Farage in a striped 'Look! Immigrants!' Punch-and-Judy booth holding a pint and pointing out to sea at a small boat of migrants, a Reform UK rosette on the booth and a STOP THE BOATS sign below it; behind him two top-hatted men wheel a barrow of money bags marked with pound signs labelled 'Donations — thank you!'; in front, a crowd of England-flag-painted, beer-canned football fans gawp at the boat. — Bait and switch — one of mine, and one of the last things I made before I mostly left Facebook.

Sources

Britain's 17-year wage squeeze — the worst in two hundred years (TUC)
15 years of stagnation: the £11,000-a-year lost-wages gap (Resolution Foundation)
Household total wealth in Great Britain, April 2020–March 2022 (ONS Wealth & Assets Survey)
The UK's richest are getting richer — £48bn → £182bn (Statista / Sunday Times Rich List)
Wealth Gap Risk Register 2024 (Fairness Foundation) · LSE summary
The fiscal impact of immigration in the UK — OBR (Migration Observatory)
The economic impacts of immigration to the UK (CEPR / VoxEU) · BBC write-up
Nigel Farage shifts on two-week small boats pledge (BBC)
Farage earning more than £1m a year while an MP (BBC) · Register of Members' Financial Interests

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