Imagined Statistics

          I attended my second U3A discussion group this week, where the chosen topic was Immigration: does it benefit the host nation? Since this is a political hot potato, it seemed best to stick to facts and avoid unsupported prejudices but, although the group was generally agreed about this, only two of us had prepared in advance by acquainting ourselves with statistics. Having been given two weeks’ notice, this must be a very busy bunch of retirees – or else mental laziness is rife and considered acceptable. Still, everyone contributed something and even the 90-year-old man who early on proclaimed that National (military) Service was the answer to all our country’s ills had, by the end, moderated his voice.

          Talking of mental laziness, I can’t claim to be innocent in that department, especially when it comes to statistics. I have been putting off the task of reviewing the budgets of two organisations in which I am involved as a voluntary board member, but this week was crunch time and I had to make the effort and get down to it. Thanks to old-fashioned schooling, I’m not completely innumerate but let’s say I feel fortunate to have lived my adult life with the benefit of electronic calculators. They were introduced just in time to save me from the slide-rule, a device that I found incomprehensible. When, much later, I set up business as a furniture manufacturer, I had no anticipation of the necessity to understand a set of accounts into the bargain. I learned to read them, eventually, but it was the manufacturing I was good at and I have ever since defined “being in business” as the process of making profits, not things.

          I like to think that I could attain a decent level of competency in maths if I tried, the obstacle being not simply that I have no pressing need for it, thanks to computers, but a fundamental lack of inclination. For example, when, one day last week I found myself with a few hours to spare in a seaside town, I did what comes naturally to me: I chose to mooch around, rather than sit and ponder the mysteries of differential calculus. Now, any dedicated moocher will tell you that wandering around aimlessly, though it may appear to the onlooker to be a way of simply passing time, actually involves the invisible activities of observing and contemplating and is, therefore, a form of research. However, my appetite for mooching is sated after an hour or two and the need for action begins to reassert itself. In this instance, action evolved into nothing more ambitious than getting a haircut (it doesn’t always have to be a noble cause) and I determined to try the Turkish barber I had passed earlier.

          Now, an anecdote doth not an argument prove, as I keep telling our discussion group, but I did engage the barber in conversation to establish – to such an extent as polite etiquette would allow – his immigrant status. We were interrupted by his wife and two-year-old son who came into the shop to discuss – in Turkish – some domestic business, but he told me that he is happily settled in England and had been to Istanbul fewer times than I had. I didn’t get to ask him why he migrated, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was to escape the tyranny of Erdogan’s repressive regime.

          The statistics of migration are sometimes surprising (annual emigration from the UK is around 400,000 and the British diaspora is the 8^th largest in the world) and are available at iom.int, among other sources. If nothing else, our discussion group has heightened my awareness of the causes and effects of immigration and the part played by statistics in understanding them, so I look forward to exploring case studies on the topic of our next meeting, National Service (not necessarily military): should it be compulsory for all citizens? There shouldn’t be many attendees who can recount their personal anecdotes on that one.