immigration

It has emerged that government ministers are considering taking drastic steps to try and reduce immigration to the UK- a negative advert campaign. The plan would be to emphasise everything that is bad about Britain to try and encourage possible immigrants to stay living in their own countries.

Apparently, in the words of one minister, such a campaign would "correct the impression that the streets here are paved with gold". The measures would be aimed especially at Bulgaria and Romania, where changes in law at the end of this year will allow free immigration from these two new EU countries.

Whilst this is probably just an easy news story and pretty unlikely to ever happen, in true British style it has spawned a whole host of mock advert suggestions. News sources from the Guardian, to the Huffington Post have been asking the British to create their own self-deprecating posters about the bad bits of the UK.

Ranging from the weather, to the drinking culture, and back to the weather, some of them are pretty funny. However, there have also been some genuine adverts over the years playing on this idea.

Below we've gathered a selection of some of the best real and fake adverts questioning the greatness of Britain, all with their tongue very firmly in their cheek:

One of the hottest topics on the higher education agenda at the moment, is whether to include international students in the immigration statistics for Britain. Currently they are included, but there is a growing list high profile figures arguing that they shouldn't be.

Watch the BBC report below to get an idea of the arguments for and against. What do you think? Leave your comments below. 

More than 450 colleges in the UK have been banned from teaching foreign students, as part of new visa restrictions introduced by the government. As part of a plan to reduce immigration to the UK, there has been a crack down on bogus colleges set up simply as a way to for fake students to get visas.

For years there have been hundreds of colleges offering internationals an easy way into the UK through fake courses that allowed them to claim student visas. However, earlier this year the government announced that this abuse of the immigration system was to be put under scrutiny.

Licences Revoked

Of the 450 colleges affected so far, almost 400 of them failed to register with the new inspection system and so lost the privilege of recruiting international students. The rest either had their licences revoked or suspended due to a variety of misdemeanours. Common problems were colleges that were unable to show records of student attendance, or that they had checked the students' qualifications. However, one college could not even provide a list of enrolled students or a timetable of classes.

Every week we bring you a round up of all the student news from the past week, as well as the trends hitting the web at the moment. This week's includes criticisms of the student visa changes, a singing Finnish street band (pictured above) and searching Google with your voice...