Incoming

The news that 205,000 people have moved to Scotland from elsewhere in the UK within the past four years should be a wake-up call to those who doubted the success of devolution. It's also a sign of things to come, and a warning that we need to act now to develop policies for integration so we can make room for these people, benefit from their skills, and avoid related social problems.

To some of you living in other parts of the world, 205,000 may not seem like that big a number – but bear in mind that Scotland's total population is just five and a quarter million. Scotland has big cities – Glasgow and Edinburgh – but large parts of it are virtually empty, popular with tourists as one of Europe's last remaining wildernesses. In many ways this small population is its biggest strength. Not only does it have ample natural resources, it's really well represented in terms of politicians per constituent. Whilst Westminster increasingly flounders under the weight of the work it has to process, Scotland is a country where things can actually get done, where it's easier for parliamentary activity to keep pace with social change. Individuals have more chance of getting their problems noticed and it's easer for them to contribute their ideas.

Of course, whilst people are coming into Scotland, others are leaving. Nevertheless, net inward migration has risen steeply over the last decade and as far as our relationship with the rest of the UK is concerned, immigration has consistently outpaced emigration during that period. Furthermore, whilst population growth may not be as dramatic as those initial figures suggest, immigration creates its own particular issues, not all of which are tied to population growth itself.

With a birth rate below replacement rate, Scotland has, over the last few decades, been notably more welcoming to immigrants than other parts of the UK. We should be taking lessons from other areas, however, in how easily that can change. Immigration is particularly hard on low-skilled people who already struggle to find employment. If we are to avoid the tensions that have resulted from this elsewhere, we need to (a) concentrate on boosting this part of the economy (not as hard as it might sound in a recession, when building homes and infrastructure can be a good way to kick-start growth), and (b) ensure that incomers are well distributed across the country, avoiding a build-up of people competing for the same jobs in already deprived areas. We need to understand incomers in the same way we understand tourists and effectively market different parts of the country to them, helping them to make informed choices about the available options rather than just being drawn to the bright lights.

Scotland has a particular advantage when it comes to English immigration given the disparity in house prices north and south of the border. It's always easier to relocate if one has money; if one sells a house in England and buys one in Scotland one will have money left over. Of course most people doing this will still be weighed down by mortgages, but they should nevertheless see their disposable income rise, and we need to encourage them to invest that in Scottish businesses as well as spending it on Scottish goods. This financial gain will be important in balancing the initial outlay on integration.

There is one other sizeable group of people moving, or thinking of moving, to Scotland, and that's long term sick and disabled people. Scotland's free personal care has long been attractive to those south of the border, and coupled with the fact that changes in the UK's support system look likely to be resisted up here, it's creating a situation in which many people feel they can't afford not to move. This may worry some Scots, given the potential cost of providing support for a larger disabled population, but it shouldn't need to. Most disabled people can work if they have the right support, whilst others can make different types of contribution to society. The key is to make work more accessible so that support costs are balanced out, if not exceeded, by the tax revenue generated by working disabled people. This is relatively easy to do if approached as a serious social and economic infrastructure project. Making it more tempting for business to take on disabled employees who work from home, for instance, can make a big difference. If the state steps in more quickly to help with the costs of sickness absence (rather than repaying money months later) and if regulations ensure new office buildings have better disabled access, we can all gain not only from the work of disabled incomers but also from an enhanced contribution from our existing disabled citizens.

One thing all immigrants have in common is initiative, and settling in a new country often goes along with a desire to contribute, to make oneself a part of it. Scotland as a nation needs to engage with that. Many of those now arriving are long-absent Scots or have family here and are excited by the emerging sense of nationhood. Others are among those traditionally seen as the old enemy, but want to be part of what's happening here. We need to make sure they're not seen as invaders and act now so this process can provide opportunities for everyone, including Scotland's long term poor. That means we need to start national conversation on the matter now, not wait until we begin to feel overwhelmed.

NOTE: Thanks to Kate Higgins for succesfully clearing up a problem with the stats I originally used in this article. I've amended it accordingly but am leaving it in place because I still think the trend is significant and the issues I've raised here need to be addressed.

The Damage Done

As a journalist, I'm as sorry as anyone to see good people lose their jobs as a result of the closure of the News of the World. But I'm not sorry to see the paper itself go. I hope to see Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs properly taken to task for what they've done. I hope to see a future which has more room for decent publications that respect their staff and readers alike.

In the meantime, having written about the political implications of the scandal, I feel it's important to address an area that has received too little attention in all of this: the human cost of tabloid journalism.

By 'tabloid journalism' I don't mean everything ever written for a tabloid newspaper. There are good people at most of them, many trying to please their readers whilst pursuing a socially responsible agenda. But we all know that there's another sort of journalist - and editor, and owner - involved in the business too. These are the ones I encounter day to day through my work at Trans Media Watch. They are the ones whose victims come looking for help, with nowhere else to turn. Rarely celebrities. Generally just ordinary people whose private lives have been splashed across the pages in lurid detail, along with photos (often their own, used without permission) to identify them to the neighbours. Often they are subject to outright slander but they lack the financial means to challenge it. Their stories are heartbreaking. Some lose jobs. Some lose their families. Some are assaulted in the street. They are the ones paying the price for the "much loved family newspaper".

I'm lucky. I've never been the victim of a direct attack by a tabloid myself. But then again, I find myself thinking, hasn't their presence indirectly affected my life to a considerable degree?

Let me explain.

I've been passionate about politics from a very early age. At fifteen I was a member of the Labour Party; by seventeen I was on its local housing committee, working to ensure social provision for those facing a financial squeeze under Thatcherism. There wasn't much new blood in the party at that time and I was treated as something of a rising star. I was asked if I would consider getting involved at conference, perhaps addressing the whole party. A promising career beckoned.

I walked away from it for two reasons. The first was the Kinnock purges, which, though I didn't altogether disagree with his intent to reshape the party, created an internal atmosphere in which neighbour spied on neighbour; it was deeply unpleasant to be around. But the second, more pertinent today, was that I'm queer.

I realised that, at that time, it would simply be impossible for me to take on any senior political role without being torn to pieces the moment a tabloid found it convenient to attack my sexuality or gender. This was the 1980s, and I inhabited a landscape full of screaming headlines whipping up panic about how homosexuals might harm our children. They were the same reason I daren't hold a girlfriend's hand in public; the reason I would walk around the block twice to be sure no-one was following me before I entered my favourite bar. The thing was, even if I hadn't been afraid of such an attack on a personal level it would still have ruined me politically; it made the whole thing seem pointless. It was broadly agreed that, for all the gradual legal progress that might be made by gay rights campaigners, nobody would ever accept a queer in office.

I'm not so vain as to expect you to reel in horror at the thought of my lost opportunity (I'm not unhappy with the way things worked out for me in the longer term anyway). What I do want to make clear is the far reaching effect that kind of tabloid intimidation had. It curtailed the ambitions of individuals who weren't even on the papers' radar. How much talent did our country lose access to as a result? How many brilliant people - potential sports stars and entertainers as well as politicians - gave up and chose to live quiet lives underneath the radar, wasting their talent, because of what they very reasonably feared would happen to them otherwise?

That's all in the past, you might say. It's better now. But if you spend as much time watching the tabloids as I do you'll soon see that it's not. The campaigns against gay people are less overtly vicious now and are couched in different terms, but they're still there. Attacks on transsexual people are frequent and often try to paint them as paedophiles or other kinds of sex attacker. There may no longer be ugly headlines about black people but we see plenty about Muslims, Poles and Roma people, often followed by stories which rely heavily on fabrication. Disabled people are frequently portrayed as workshy scroungers regardless of whether they're really incapable of working or, in some cases, they actually are in work. And the attacks on people who simply have the misfortune to grow up poor are horrific. This is an industry built on hate.

Sometimes the tabloids get it wrong, misjudging how much hate their readers will tolerate. Attacking the victims of the Hillsborough Football Stadium disaster went too far and cost The Sun the support of a whole city. Jan Moir's Daily Mail piece about Stephen Gately provoked outrage that went far beyond the gay community. Yet day to day, the attacks continue. A Monday afternoon's titillating scandal can ruin the life of a hapless individual who happened to draw the wrong kind of attention. And those who have already been the victims of crimes know that tabloid attention can make it worse, whether they're the targets of phone hacking or rape victims whose experiences have been salaciously detailed opposite page three.

For anybody who has failed to sit up and take notice of this, the way in which the News of the World was willing to treat the families of Milly Dowler, Jessica Chapman and so forth must make a difference now. It must show the contempt in which these newspapers hold those whom they claim to serve. It must, because as a society we simply cannot go on like this. Former News of the World journalists seeking redemption have already discussed several suicides which they believe their stories contributed to. The human cost of this kind of journalism is too high. It is time to stand up, all together, and say that we will not tolerate it any more.