It's clear that some people consider the recent report from the House of Lords on the net effects of immigration as the last word on the subject.

Regular CentreForum contributor, Philippe Legrain doesn't agree.  His piece for CommentisFree challenges the Lords report on no less than nine grounds. He is also not taking any prisoners in tone of the article - for instance, his summary of the membership reads:

"the committee is chaired by Tory has-been John Wakeham and also includes two Conservative ex-chancellors, Black Wednesday Lamont and boom-and-bust Lawson."

Its headline isn't much more conciliatory - "Clueless in the Lords"

Its interesting to note that as Legrain's argument develops through the article it relies more and more on intangible - or at least unquantifiable - factors.  For example:

"Ninth, and most important in the long term, migration stimulates innovation and enterprise, and thus faster long-term productivity growth... But where do these new ideas come from? The exceptional individuals who come up with brilliant new ideas often happen to be immigrants. Instead of following the conventional wisdom, they tend to see things differently, and as outsiders they are more determined to succeed. Twenty-one of Britain's Nobel-prize winners arrived in the country as refugees.

Also in today's news

We haven't looked across the Atlantic for a little while.  A glance at our favourite American election website, electoral-vote.com, shows that the site is now running the feature that makes it so much better than its competition. It takes polls from individual states and projects them to an electoral college vote.  There are problems with the methodology as the polls ask a variety of different questions and at this early stage the polls that the stats are based on are pretty few and far between. Nevertheless, it gives a more convincing picture about how the election is going than most nationwide polls.

The headline figures show that McCain is ahead of either Clinton or Obama at the moment. However, the number of 'barely republican' seats is much higher table when he is pitched against Obama than he is against Clinton.

How these tables shift over the next few months will keep us many of us glued to this excellent website.

McCain vs Obama
Totals

McCain - 324
Obama - 205
Ties - 9

	Strong Dem (142)
	Weak Dem (33)
	Barely Dem (30)
	Exactly tied (9)
	Barely GOP (141)
	Weak GOP (55)
	Strong GOP (128)

Totals

	Strong Dem (74)
	Weak Dem (82)
	Barely Dem (47)
	Exactly tied (31)
	Barely GOP (50)
	Weak GOP (110)
	Strong GOP (144)