Oh My Girl: story suddenly loses impetus halfway through

The story of Oh My Girl being detained at LAX sounds, at first, like something gone terribly awry:

The eight members were travelling to America for an album cover shoot but were detained for 15 hours in customs.

A statement from the group's record company, WM Entertainment, said authorities held them after going through their costumes and props.

"They seem to have mistaken them as sex workers," said a spokesman.

That's quite a terrible thing to have happened, and to be held for 15 hours because border guards thought photoshop props were somehow sex toys (what sort of photoshoot was this?) is outrageous.

But... just as you're about to be outraged, there's this:

The record company also said there might have been an issue with the type of visa the band members presented.

Oh. So it's not so much "immigration mistakes pop group for sex workers" as "band management screws up visa application, attempts to spin story to deflect attention", then.

Linda Rondstadt is pretty much right

Linda Rondstadt grew up in Tucson, Arizona. But she doesn't feel at home there any more:

"There wasn't a fence running through the Sonoran Desert when I was growing up. In fact, when I moved back to Tucson, there wasn't even a fence running through it.

"While I was there, it was building; we just turned around and all of a sudden it was there, this horrible thing that destroyed economies on both sides of the line. I know my own father's business was very dependent on the goodwill and business and trade from people in northern Mexico. We knew their families and went to their weddings and baptisms and balls and picnics, and we had a great time with them. Because my dad had a huge hardware store, and they came up to Tucson (to) do their shopping.

"We regularly shopped in Nogales. It was a wonderful place then, and had beautiful things in the stores and had wonderful food. And when they put that fence up, they cut all that commerce off and that's what creates understanding and awareness of each other and good trade relations."

The thing that will really sting is when she says she likes going to Mexico because, these days, it's more like Tucson than Tucson is.

She also calls out those hollowed-out asshats who gathered to scream abuse at children who had crossed the border:

"We allow Cubans to come in and say that they're refugees. Well, in Cuba — I've been there, you know — people are fed, people are housed, people are clothed. There isn't violence in the streets. Here, people are coming from places where there's just terrible violence. Parts of Mexico that are incredibly violent, and Honduras, which is just unspeakably violent right now.

"These children are just fleeing for their lives, their parents are just sending them out because it's the only way that they have of living — into a terrible, dangerous journey and an uncertain future in the United States that is populated with people that seem to hate them — that's how desperate they are."

Linda Rondstadt: she was right when she suggested Mr Plow might be both a loser and a boozer; she's even more right now.

Roger Daltrey is an angry man

Roger Daltrey has announced that he will never vote for Labour again.

Why, Roger? Is it because a man with three houses voting for a party of social justice might be too much irony for you?

Depressingly, no: it turns out that it's foreign people upsetting him:

I will never, ever forgive the Labour Party for allowing this mass immigration with no demands on what people should be paid.

Didn't Labour introduce the minimum wage which, pretty much, is a demand on what people shou... oh, hang on; he hasn't finished.

I will never forgive them for destroying the jobs of my mates because they allowed their jobs to be undercut with stupid thinking on Europe, letting them (immigrants) all in, so they can live 10 to a room working for Polish wages.

This might sound unlikely, but it turns out that Pete Townshend has been replaced with ten Poles. Shocking.

I could pick Daltrey's argument apart, but frankly, Daniel Knowles dismissed this tired old whinge in the Telegraph pretty comprehensively:

Here's what the Migration Advisory Committee goes on to say:
But this possible displacement of British workers only holds for those migrants who have been here for under five years. Both EU and non-EU migrants who have been in the UK for over five years are not associated with displacement of British born workers. Between 1995 and 2010 employment of such working age migrants rose by approximately 2.1 million. The associated displacement of British born workers was, on our own calculations, around 160,000 of the additional 2.1 jobs held by migrants, or about 1 in 13.
[...]
There are some reasons to worry about immigration. The evidence is ambiguous, but it's not unreasonable to think some foreigners may be coming to claim welfare. There is also a cultural argument, and while I wouldn't make it, not everyone who does is a racist or a bigot; Ed West frequently makes the case convincingly. But while it is reasonable to be worried about immigration, it is simply not true to suggest that "foreigners are stealing our jobs" or that immigration is responsible for unemployment. And those who do, in defiance of the evidence, make me wonder about their real motivations.

Even someone who worries that perhaps foreign people are coming to the UK to get access to cheap-ish prescriptions and IDS' welfare disaster doesn't buy that they're stealing jobs, and wonders if there might not be some sort of other agenda at work here.

But Roger doesn't have a problem with the foreign people he's singling out and unfairly claiming are driving British nationals into penury:

"I've got nothing against the Poles at all but that was a political mistake and it made me very angry and the people who get it in the neck are the immigrants and it's not their fault."

You know the best way to help those people who are given a hard time? How about not standing up and yelling that they're undercutting wages and causing mass unemployment when it really isn't true, Roger?

Interestingly, Daltrey doesn't seem to have a problem with the bits of the EU settlement which made it as easy and cost-effective for The Who to play Paris and Amsterdam as Birmingham and Glasgow.

You know what the immigration debate really needs? Minor celebrities

As if the world wasn't already knee-deep in people who don't know what they're talking about, talking about immigration, we're now being blessed with The Cheeky Girls sharing their insight.

Shall we see what they have to say?

“It’s too easy to claim child benefit and send the money to children back in Romania,” says Monica. “That’s wrong.”

No, Monica. You're wrong.

At the moment, if your child lives in Romania then the most you could claim for would be eight weeks of child benefit, assuming they'd just returned to Romania, although there are some ways to claim a portion beyond eight weeks. But not what I'd describe as being "easy" ways to make a claim beyond that time.

Gabriela adds: “No one should be allowed to claim benefits unless they have worked here for a year.”

It's an interesting idea. And one of those things that doesn't sound unreasonable, until you ask how Gabriela ended up at this 'one year' cut off point. Is that a meaningful, reasoned point she's come up with, or has she just plucked a period of time out of the air?

Monica chips in: “And then they should only be allowed to claim benefits for a year before being asked to go home."

Hang about... someone has worked for a year in the UK, and then - I'd say 'struggled', I suspect the Cheeky Girls would say 'lived large' - been on benefits for a year. That's two years. How do you then decide that 'home' is somewhere else? If you're twenty, and spent ten percent of your life - all your adult life - in one country, how can a Cheeky Girl decide where that person should believe their home is.

Unless what Monica means is that people should go back where they came from. Now, where have I heard sentiments like that before?

Monica then undercuts her own outrage:

“Even during the bad times when our record label went bust we never considered claiming benefits."

Yes. And you know what, Girls, most people are like that. Most people are like you. They're not rushing about to cadge a few quid for doing nothing here and there. They might want to come to and work here; they might want to come to Britain to go on one of our talent shows and build some sort of career popping up on chat shows and the crueller panel games. Why do you think anyone else from Romania would be any different to you?

(Is it wrong to suggest that applying for benefits might be a more honest way to feed yourself than, say, just helping yourself from Sainsburys, by the way?)

But you know what? If you needed help from the state - from the rest of us - you should have asked. Because we're happy to help out. Because we're clever enough to understand that while today you might need a bit of assistance with paying the bills or covering the rent, yesterday you were sharing some of your earnings from The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year through the tax system, and tomorrow, when you find some more work, you'll become a contributor again.

Because it's called sharing. And because even if you didn't claim benefits directly, you benefitted from the way we work together in this country - to provide broadcasting infrastructure and make Never Mind The Buzzcocks; to keep trains running to take fans to signings; to build hospitals and a legal system where someone can make a mistake stealing groceries from a shop but still get treated with even-handed fairness. It's all part of the same thing.

And for two people who have done really rather well out of the State we've all created in the UK to suddenly suggest we change the way behave to anyone who might come later really reeks of hypocrisy.

How have we even had an immigration debate without Roger Daltrey's opinions being canvassed?

Roger Daltrey has a had a wonderful career - a bit of performing in Australia, a bit of acting in America, some fish farming in the UK. He's surely a big fan of the idea that people should be as free to sell their labour wherever as he has been, right?

No, of course not.

Daltrey, now 67, has told how the influx of thousands of immigrant workers from the rest of Europe during Labour’s 13-year reign left the indigenous working-classes unemployed.

The star told how the last government left ‘the British working man screwed like he'd never been screwed before by cheap labour coming in from Europe.’

It's unclear if Daltrey has got his first-hand knowledge of "the British working man" from experiences on his massive country estate, or at his chi-chi London home. Or, possibly, from his other home in America.

He went on: ‘We do need immigration, but surely it should be a level playing field where they can't undercut every working–class bloke in England for their jobs.’

That might sound like an attempt to be reasonable, but really just goes to prove that Daltrey's grasp of economics is a weak as his voice is loud. He seems to be blaming immigrants for being willing to work on a low wage, rather than the employers who choose to pay as little as they can get away with. In fact, Labour did help a little with this - they introduced the minimum wage without which it's probable that wages would have been driven down still further.

It's telling, though, that Roger doesn't want wage rates to be driven up by expecting employers to pay more to everyone - instead, he just wants to somehow have a "level playing field". But given that there's a marketplace in which everyone is already competing equally, isn't what he really asking for is an unlevel playing field?

Still, Daltrey is an equal opportunities blowhard:

However the current Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government were not spared his ire either, with Daltrey adding: ‘The quality of our politicians is tragic.’

I've read this article a couple of times, and can't seem to see the point where Daltrey offers to do any better.

Daltrey also had harsh words for the machinations of the NHS.

The star has long been involved in charity the Teenage Cancer Trust. As a result, he has experienced the workings of the NHS.

He said: ‘You suddenly see the enormity and complexity of it, and the truth that no one wants to accept that there's nobody in charge.

Everyone knows it can't carry on, but you can't touch anything in the NHS because the nurses are in their trench, the doctors are in their trench, the unions are in their trench – it's the First World War.’

It's not enormity - that means 'great evil', you booby. Daltrey's description of the NHS sounds less like a considered opinion and more like someone who has half-read a Daily Mail editorial and then half-downed a pint of Old Peculiar. The problem is not that you can't touch the NHS, it's that politicians can't stop touching the bloody thing. Seriously, there are teenage boys who are better at hands-off than the Department Of Health.

Daltrey doesn't offer any actual definition of what these problems are beyond his broad-brush claims that nobody is in charge, which makes it seem even more likely that he's just churning talking points from the press that he doesn't really understand very clearly.

Still, if he's so sure that politicians are all crap, I look forward to his doing the decent thing and running for office. Maybe then we'll actually get to hear some ideas about how to fix things instead of the moaning of a very rich man.

Gordon in the morning: Take That at the airport

It happens a lot in airports, and the more you travel, the more likely is that it'll happen to you, sooner or later. An immigration officer thinks there's something odd about your paperwork, and gives you a bit of a closer questioning.

That's all that seems to have happened to Howard Donald and Mark Owen when LA immigration sought confirmation that the pair were there for leisure and not work.

To The Sun, though, this is:

Take That stars in US customs shock

Apart from this not being a shock, how shoddy is reporting that doesn't know the difference between customs and immigration? Clearly, this piece must have been filed by some greenhorn reporters who aren't that worldly.

By PETE SAMSON, US Editor, and GORDON SMART, Showbiz Editor

Yes, it turns out that Pete and Gordon have collaborated on this. There's nothing in the story at all - just an everyday, but irritating, occurrence. It's like running a story about there not being any chocolate powder when someone tries to buy a cappuccino.

I wonder what Gordon actually contributed to this story to get a joint by-line? My guess is this bit:

Bandmates GARY BARLOW and JASON ORANGE, both 40, were not on the trip.

Also not on the plane: Lulu; any of Westlife; ex-King Constantine of Greece. The passenger manifest can confirm this.

Buju Banton locked up in Miami

It must be frustrating for Buju Banton - all that time shaking hands with gays, trying to convince people that he's not really as homophobic as his gay-hating music makes him seem, and what happens when he finally turns up in America to play some gigs?

He's arrested on drugs charges and thrown in the slammer.

The Floridian authorities are linking him to five kilos of cocaine, with intent to supply. Let's hope Buju has a plausible explanation, or he might be finding more time to explore how he feels about close personal contact with other men.

Taylor Horn honks "racism" after Liverpool deportation

Taylor Horn - the latest in a very, very, very long line of lightly talented, fairly attractive women given the "next Britney Spears" label - has been thrown out of the UK after turning up at John Lennon Airport to do a promotional tour of the UK without the proper paperwork.

Apparently, it's racism run rampant:

Before preparing to leave Britain the Americans accused the government agency of “underhand” tactics and vowed to take legal action.

Their lawyer has lodged an appeal based on “race grounds”, claiming anti-American bias is behind their deportation.

Hang about a minute. If your paperwork was in order, and you were refused entry, you could appeal on the grounds that the decision was incorrect. Why would the whole "being American" thing be an issue?

This sounds a little more like someone turning up without the papers, and trying to find an excuse to be let in. That's quite high-maintenance. Maybe she is the new Britney Spears after all.

US turn off TV

TV Smith was meant to be playing the US with Jay Reatard from tonight. But US immgration gas thwarted him - and not because they don't want an old punk in their nation; it's just a paperwork snafu, he says:

I'm sorry to have to report that due to problems with US immigration I'm unable to come over for the tour with Jay Reatard due to start today. Despite having my visa approved, delays at the US embassy in London mean it couldn't be ratified in time. I've had quite a lot of feedback from people looking forward to seeing me, so I'm bitterly disappointed to miss the gigs in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and my first ever Canadian gigs in Toronto and Montreal. I hope to come back soon and play for you. The good new is, the way things are looking I'll be seeing the embassy next week and hope to rejoin the tour in Brooklyn on the 2nd July. Keep your fingers crossed...!
Best wishes,
TV

Not quite sure why a US paperwork problem is keeping him out of the Canadian dates, mind.

Dogg wants in

James P writes with news of a would-be visitor to our shores:

After being banned from travelling to Britain following the Heathrow 'incident' in 2006, Snoop Dogg has decided that he rather misses the place, and would like to be let back in. He plans to acheive this by asking his famous friends to try and persuade the appropriate people.

"He says, 'I love London and I'm desperate to come back. I've called David Beckham, Sir Paul McCartney - hell, I want to get the whole of the Beatles to help me get back in... I'd love them all to write to the Prime Minister to change his mind.'"

(As persuasive tactics go, you have to admit "Go on, let me in and I'll bring two of your best-loved musicians back from the dead" does sound tempting).

I must've missed this particular change to the Border controls; Apparently entry to the UK is now based on the same criteria used as door policy at teenage birthday parties. If the letter-writing campaign doesn't get off the ground, expect to see Snoop at Heathrow Passport Control soon, pleading "Is Sir Paul here? That's it, I'm with him! Go and get him, he'll tell you. DAVID!!! DAVID!!! Over here! Tell them, David! How about Calvin, am I down on the list as Calvin? Just check again, would you?"

If Mr Dogg's appeal fails, he plans to return later in the year with a 12-pack of Carling and two litres of Thunderbird.

You've got to admire his plan of letter writing, though. Maybe he should think about a petition of some sort - perhaps he could get Nell McAndrew and Coleen Nolan to organise that. It's just a pity that Radio City have taken over St John's Tower in Liverpool; I'm sure a recreation of the Free George Jackson campaign's greatest moment might have just swung it.

Cars Can Be Blue can't be in the UK

The Cars Can Be Blue UK tour is off: they'd not actually got a work permit and fell foul of the Immigration Official - which led to incarceration and solitary confinement and a not-so-swift deportation.

Sure, they made some mistakes - but the heavy-handed treatment seems a little unnecessary; and it's hard to read the Nate's tale of his experiences without feeling a little ashamed of how this country treats people at its borders.

Cradle To small glass office for several hours

Cradle To Grave have pulled their US tour, or rather, had their US tour pulled, after The Department Of Homeland Security weighed them and found them wanting.

The band have released a press release - although this isn't the first time they've been turned back, having been blocked at immigration in the past because "their name might incite violence" and had visa applications knocked down for a lack of artistic merit.

[Singer Greg] Cavanagh commented: "Contrary to popular belief, the US doesn't welcome all foreign musicians with open arms," he chuckled sarcastically. "We regret to say this, but the tour is over before it even started. Thanks to everyone that worked so hard to bring us down there for the shows we had booked. We'll hopefully have better luck next time and be able to play for all you crazy West Coast metalheads."

We're not sure who might hold this supposedly popular belief that the US welcomes foreign artists with open arms, but you've got to love a metal band which uses the phrase "he chuckled sarcastically" in its press releases. Can you even chuckle sarcastically? What would a hollow chuckle actually sound like?

The band claim that the border patrol failed to listen to them - something, to be fair, that the DHS staff have in common with most music lovers.

Beware of the Dogg

Despite the appeals judge pointing out that the great Snoop Dogg Heathrow fight consisted of him trying to entertain some kids while the police and British Airways staff went in heavy-handed, the government has announced it intends to appeal over plans to let Snoop Dogg come back into the UK. Probably because Brown desperately needs one policy to remain unchanged week to week:

"We maintain that the immigration judge in the initial hearing made a material error in law.

"We will continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe there may be a risk to the public."

Curious they should insist it was an error in law, rather than in judgement, as we're pretty certain the appeal by Mr. Dogg was upheld because the judge didn't think there had been any risk demonstrated, not because of some clever, Alan Shaw style legal arguments from the Snoop team. Does the Labour government really feel that British people would sleep less soundly if Snoop was allowed to take rooms in Hounslow or Havant? Are they that far out of touch?

Morrissey chests up Obama's run

There's a wonderful photo of Morrissey wearing a tshirt picturing him stood next to Barack Obama during his aborted run of London gigs (Mozzer's gigs, not Obama's); apparently it was made for him by one of his hardcore fans.

That might prove a bit of a problem, though, what with Obama's position on US immigration, calling for a "path to citizenship" for all undocumented workers in the country. Oh, hang on, though - Morrissey only objects to immigration into the UK, doesn't he, what with his happy emigration to other nations. So maybe that's alright, then. We'd love for Mozzer to explain, but experience suggests we shouldn't hold our breath.

The t-shirt also depicts Mozzer with a head full of hair, which is presumably to underline the fantasy inherent in the idea of a Brit as a Vice-Presidential running mate.

Morrissey: NME toned it down, says Jonze

When Morrissey's management started complaining about NME's report on an interview he did with Tim Jonze, they claimed that Tim Jonze had emailed them saying:

"Hope you're well. I should mention that for reasons I'll probably never understand, NME have rewritten the Moz piece. I had a read and virtually none of it is my words or beliefs so I've asked for my name to be taken off it. Just so you know when you read it."

The implication being that NME took Jonze's work, and reworked it to make the November interview spawn a monster.

Late yesterday, Jonze posted to the Guardian's website, saying the opposite is true:

So before I continue, there's something that needs to be pointed out. Every single quote attributed to Morrissey is 100% correct, there was no provocation at all, and Morrissey was given a chance to apologise or clarify his views with a second telephone interview. At no point did he back down. Although Morrissey as a person was charming, courteous and (until this point) a joy to interview, I found comments such as "England's been thrown away" and "These days you won't hear a British accent in Knightsbridge" woefully ignorant. I wrote a piece saying that Morrissey - although liberal in many of his views - was using the language of the BNP and Enoch Powell when it came to immigration. In the piece I mentioned that his comments likening the UK to that of "going to Zagreb and hearing nothing but Irish accents" were offensive as they compared British ethnic minorities to tourists. I also said he was being overly nostalgic for a Britain built partly on empire and imperialism and that someone as well travelled as Morrissey had no excuses for such comments.

Yes, he had his name removed from the article - but because it was weakened, not because it was made stronger, says Jonze:

The piece was very critical and NME decided to tone it down, something I didn't agree with. They showed me several rewritten versions, some of which were very soft on Morrissey, one that was quite critical. None had any of my points or arguments in them and none of them were written in my voice. Furthermore, I hadn't even seen the finished version before it went to print (I still haven't seen it, as I'm currently writing this from the surreal surroundings of a beach internet cafe in Thailand). For these reasons, the byline was removed.

Jonze admits that the "byline debate" has been a "PR coup" for Camp Morrissey, although since his email to the management was the spark for that sideline, he can't really complain overmuch. There remains a mystery of why, though, of why he sent that email - as Suzanne points out in the comments on the Guardian piece, it seems a little odd to drop an email to someone along these lines:

"Hey, Merck, I would have written a piece ripping your client to shreds, but the NME is pussy-footing around with it, so I asked my name to be taken off of it. When you see the article, please remember that the NME didn't let me portray what a scum I thought Morrissey was. Have a great day."

It all makes Morrissey's threatened court case seem even more unlikely: can you really complain a magazine ripped you to shreds when the person who interviewed you insists you were being treated with kid gloves?

[Thanks again to Duncan]

If only Snoop could save us

What is responsible for the rise in gang violence in the UK? Apparently, the ban on Snoop entering the country:

"I really wanted to be a voice to stop gang members ‘cause they respect me enough to get into a room with me. By not permitting me they're saying they just don't want me to solve this situation.

"It's not the fans, it's just a few people in white wigs and members of parliament. They got a problem because the judicial law is from the 1800s."

Oddly, though, America - where Snoop lives - also has a problem with gang violence which, oddly, Mr. Doggity Dogg hasn't been able to "solve". In fact, if memory serves, Snoop was unable to stop his own entourage from attacking staff in the BA first class lounge at Heathrow, the reason he's banned from the UK in the first place. Perhaps if Snoop solved some problems closer to home, the white wigs might be more amenable to giving him a chance to try to sort out England?

MTV boots Allen

According to the 3AM Girls - with all the health warnings that go with that - MTV have dropped Lily Allen from this year's awards shows, worried that she won't get a visa:

"MTV were desperate to get Lily and they're furious with her visa situation. They've decided to pull the plug because they didn't want to leave it to the last minute to find out if she could or couldn't make it."

Allen's chances of getting a visa might be receding further. The same piece claims she's hiring lawyers to fight American demands that she take blood and urine tests as part of her re-application process:

A source tells us: "Lily's desperate to fulfil her September tour in the US, which included going to the MTV Music Awards in Vegas on September 9. But it's been much trickier than she's imagined - in particular being asked to take the tests which she considers irrelevant and unnecessary.

"She is determined to fight the system every way she can and that means hiring the best lawyers available."

That'll go down well - the American immigration department are well-known for the way in which they love to engage in debates about the quality of their rules.

We have some sympathy for Allen - the US seems to have replaced the idea of border security with pointless democracy - but much of immigration is "irrelevant and unnecessary", like people born in the last half-century having to pledge they weren't involved with Nazi Germany. But it's quicker and easier to jump through the hoops rather than pissing off the man by asking him to get rid of the hoop. After all, it's not like your blood or wee has anything in it it shouldn't have, eh?

America tells Allen: 'No way in'

The ongoing problems some British acts are having getting into the US has claimed a fairly big name: Lily Allen has been turned back from US immigration.

Suggestions that she'd ticked the box on the Visa form about having been associated with the Nazi war crimes proved to be wrong; instead, it was the pending prosecution for kicking a photographer which led to the revoking of her visa, reports the Mirror:

Lily, who had flown in from Australia for the MTV video music awards launch in Las Vegas, was hauled into an interrogation room. After negotiations with her lawyers Lily, the daughter of film and TV star Keith Allen, was released five hours later.

Although she got off lightly compared with, say, Guardian journalist Elena Lappin, it's still a worry for team Lily - she's due to play another US tour next month; the worry is that that will now be scuppered.

Mystery Jets grounded

Is it just us, or does US immigration seem to be applying the letter of the law a lot more closely for band visa applications these days? The latest of a flurry of bands forced to cancel American dates is the Mystery Jets; apparently Canadians Handsome Furs have also been told they ain't coming across no border - although, of course, they could just sneak across if they were that bothered. What with there not being a big fence at the northern border.

Bez barred from US

The Happy Mondays set at Coachella won't be quite the full deal: Bez was turned back by US immigration. The band have rustled up a statement:

"Because of the tightening of immigration and working visa legislation, Bez was not, unfortunately, able to secure a visa to perform at Coachella this weekend," it said.

"Happy Mondays apologise to all their US fans that they will not, on this occasion, be able to enjoy the spectacle of Bez shaking his stuff for them at Coachella."

The Manchester Evening News is guessing this is down to Bez's drug record, but we can't imagine a drug-bust filter which would allow Shaun Ryder through and capture Bez. It's more likely a work visa thing: "And what is your line of work, Mr. Bez?" is going to be a tricky one to answer, isn't it?