Depends how you look at it

11:38am Thursday 24th April 2008

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HOW different a story can appear from one newspaper to the next. The headline in the liberal-minded Guardian read: "Migrant crime wave a myth - police study." The following morning, the proudly illiberal Daily Express used the same source material to declaim: "Immigrants bring more crime."

While the first headline was small and polite, the second preferred bold capitals, with the word "more" underlined in red. This, presumably, was to ensure that readers of the self-styled "world's greatest newspaper" exploded in apoplexy on the spot.

The report in question was co-written by Grahame Maxwell, chief constable of North Yorkshire, with Peter Fahy, his counterpart in Cheshire. This newspaper's account played it straight, noting that Mr Maxwell had co-authored a report which denied claims that eastern European immigrates are creating a "large-scale crimewave".

A columnist on the world's greatest etc rattled like an over-heated kettle, saying that "like the cheerleaders of Russian communism some of our police chiefs how seem to regard their primary duty as the promotion of New Labour's destructive ideology on immigration".

My, but isn't that an outrageous mouthful. As a columnist on what we can safely call York's greatest newspaper, I would like to congratulate Mr Maxwell for putting forward a sensible view on immigration. His report found that, despite headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among immigrants from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria were in line with the rate of offending in the general population.

In other words, they didn't create the problems, just fitted in with the prevailing behaviour.

That sounds about right to me, but then it would. One problem with all these official reports is that you can take them or leave them, according to prejudice.

Or you can buy the newspaper that casts the world in a light you recognise. So if the world's greatest etc is your preferred choice, you can read safe in the knowledge that any report giving a positive account of immigration will be turned around in a quick-tempered instant.

Another day, another report. This one discovers there is no evidence that new migrants are jumping the queue for council and housing association homes to the detriment of any other group.

That will disappoint those who have clung to all those popular urban myths about migrants stepping over the bodies of proud Englishmen to grab all the freebie benefits they can. All right, I have succumbed to a touch of exaggeration fever; but only a touch.

Perspective gives us all sorts of choices. Consider the three photographs of Gordon Brown reproduced on this page. They were taken on Monday and offer a choice of Gordons: dozing, head-scratching or laughing. Each snatches a moment that can be passed off as the truth. A newspaper fired by antagonism could choose sleepy or head-scratchy, while a more friendly publication could pick happy.

Shown in sequence, they add up to a sort of truth. Shown in isolation, they convey whatever the publisher wishes to convey.

Whichever one you choose, however, you can't avoid concluding that Brown has dug himself a deep hole over abolishing the 10p tax rate. Whether or not he has stopped digging yet remains to be seen.

* POST offices are marvellous, everyone says so. I agree happily enough, although this year I paid my exorbitant car tax via the internet. It was easy, quick, didn't involve queuing and fumbling with certificates, and the costly disc arrived two days later. Perhaps that is the problem facing post offices: eventually, we may not need them.

I am not about to become technologically smug. Trying to apply online for my son's student loan drove me into a hair-tugging rage. Or it would have done if there was any left to tug.