England's legacy as an urbanised society
The National Statistician Karen Dunnell prompts me to re-open our recent discussion on crowded Britain.
England, her figures suggest, is once again the most densely populated country in Europe.
I say "once again" because our place at or near the top of European population density tables has been maintained for roughly 200 years.
As birth-place of the Industrial Revolution, Britain stole a march on our continental neighbours. English population increased by 187% between 1770 and 1870 while most other European countries saw population increase by only 79%.
The towns of Liverpool and Manchester became gigantic cities as average incomes more than doubled. In 1845 Friedrich Engels noted how in a century the country around Manchester had been transformed from a swamp into "the most densely populated strip of country in England".
Britain was witnessing urbanisation on a scale that the population could barely comprehend. The contribution of farming to the nation's output fell from about half to just under a fifth as the steam-driven factories took over.
And it is our level of urbanisation that explains why it is that Britain in general, but England in particular, has such a high population density compared to other countries. Our industrial endeavours created an urban landscape that has remained unmatched by other nations.
The United Nations Populations Division has a nifty website that allows you to compare the urban-rural ratios in almost every country on earth.
If you look at major European countries you can see how the UK has led the urbanisation table for decades.
URBAN POPULATION (Source UN)
1950 2005
UK 79% 90%
GERMANY 68% 73%
NETHERLANDS 56% 80%
FRANCE 55% 77%
When we talk about population density, we are really talking about urbanisation - a global phenomenon that, according to some clever statisticians, saw the majority of the world's people living in cities on 23 May last year. On that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 apparently exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 rural people.
Now, I mention all this because the discussion about population density has become bound up with debate about immigration. Internal migration is currently the principal cause of population growth in the UK and one of the arguments deployed by those who want greater restrictions on immigration is that Britain (or more specifically England) is already too crowded.
I have written about this before and I know both immigrants and overcrowding inspire deep passions.
The issues, I think, deserve to be separated. Urban centres can thrive on very high population densities - cities like Barcelona have a much higher density than even London. Infrastructure needs to reflect demand but, assuming the extra population generates wealth, this is clearly feasible.
Intelligent regeneration and development has brought many English cities to life in recent years and demand for urban living has seen people clamouring to live in these densely populated communities.
Historically high levels of immigration pose important economic and social questions but I remain unpersuaded that we cannot cope with the extra people. We are and have long been a highly urbanised country, an historical legacy that has helped maintain our status as a global power.
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Is it really true that "...people have been CLAMOURING to live in these densely populated communities..."???
Most people live in cities because they have to, (that's where the work is), but if they had a choice many of them would much rather live somewhere much less densely populated - just look at the high number of second homes in the countryside.
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Unfortunately when issues such as these are looked at in a purely academic way a disjoint occurs between what should happen and what has been happening and will probably continue to happen in reality. I have lived in central london for over 20 years and (in part sadly) decided to move to the US this year due to the continued increasing difficulty of living in London with a young family. I am not against people from other cultures and countries coming to live in London - I love it, but there has to be an increase in the capacity of the infrastructure to deal with it - this is not and has not been happening in a sustainable way and I see no plans to invest in it in a sufficient manner in the future. Many of the nurbanised centres you refer to have the redundant space to redevelop and provide the neccessary infrastructure (principally large brown-filed sites)- although I must say many of the new city centre regeneration schemes have foussed principally on high-end, loft living, aspirational life-style developments with a little social housing reluctantly provided in response to planning requirements. The assumption that the extra population generates wealth is a big one - approx. 80% of earnings from foreign workers in the UK is repatriated and I can assure you (certainly in central London) they do exert considerable pressure on the already creaking schools, hospitals, public transport systems, etc. We considered moving out to a smaller town within 2hrs of London (such as Bath / Bristol/ Warwick, etc.) - but when visiting and discovering the traffic problems were worse than central London with poor public transportation alternatives and many of the smaller local schools were being closed down we gave this plan up too.
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Last year I went to an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London called Global Cities. One of the surprising facts was that almost half of Greater London (46%) consists of open and recreational space. In Los Angeles, only 10% of the city is allocated to green open spaces. In Tokyo, less than 5%.
In his Book 'Who owns Britain?', the author Kevin Cahill claims that less than 10% of land in Britain is urbanised. This claim was repeated in a BBC Two documentary presented by Peter Snow and his son Dan Snow about the very same subject. If this claim is correct, it makes you wonder why we are often told that Britain is being concreted over. Of course, there is a lot of land that is simply not suitable for building, but Cahill claims that 70% of land in Britain is owned by less than 1% of the population!
In 2005, CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) published a report called 'What home buyers want'. One of their findings really sums up our contradictory attitude to urbanisation. It seems we mostly aspire for a detached house with country views from the back garden, and a range of local services on the front doorstep. The local services aren't going to be possible without a sufficient level of urbanisation to support them. In turn, that means, the detached house with uninterrupted views of nature isn't a likely possibility.
Perhaps the real debate should be how we can make urban environments pleasant and desirable places with sufficient space, privacy and peace and quiet for our well-being.
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The problem with this is as it always has been since the indutrial revolution, this country is good at what it does, so as a result people world wide will want to learn and work in the UK. Then go back home to a better life. Its realy no different to picking which school your kids go to if you put aside the social barriers that are involved in us being top of the pile.
We do need to improve public services across all areas not just those that are overcrowded but also in those less well populated to help spread out the population as it grows.
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The issue is not the number of people.
The issue is infrastructure to support the number of people that you have.
for example, you build a new town, and you build the roads, power, water, education systems as well a an new tesco.
That Tesco needs servicing, thus tesco gets a new trucks, employs more people at the warehouse, builds a new warehouse etc, what you do is not just build a new town or tesco, what happens is you add to the infrastructure around it to support it.
So populations might move to the more densely populated areas, but they still add to the non-dense areas in more support structures needed to support the expanding urban areas.
Go out in the middle of the night and take a drive on your local motorway, you will find plenty of trucks using the nighttime to get around, you would not have seen this amount even 10 years ago.
Its also worth pointing out that if we had not joined up with the EU and controlled our own immigration policies/boarder we would have drove up wage prices thus causing interest rates to have been higher than they have been over they past 10 years, mitigating the asset bubble that is causing today's financial problems.
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There is such a thing as Nature Deficiency Syndrome, and urban planning needs to build in green spaces instead of packing the most people into the smallest space. The fact is that the alarm centres in our nervous systems are hard wired exactly the same as a dog or a horse, and if you look at research into stress on animals packed closely together, high levels of urban violence, stress and ill health are suddenly easy to explain.
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Surely (apart from some mini states like Monaco and Vatican City) The Netherlands is still the most densily populated country in Europe? Perhaps not if you bend the definition into 'urbanisation', but most likely if you use densily populated in the 'people per square km' sense? Perhaps I am wrong, but I would not want to lose this status as a proud Dutch inhabitant of the UK, who needs all the stereotypes to make boring conversation in the pub. According to me, England has vast areas of real countryside left in comparison to The Netherlands. Maybe the English should consider making their/my urban environments more attractive so that it does not matter that we have to live in it ;-)
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The BBC is so keen on packing in the maximum number of people! More license fees I guess!
Don't worry Mark - it'll take a few years but I'm sure you'll get your dream of the UK with a billion population - all nice and urban and none of that boring countryside.
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Neat and comprehensive but.. constructing such elegant and intellectual counter arguments in order to dismiss the concerns of the majority is a dangerous habit for the media and politicians.
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Umm didn't we do this one last week? Didn't we have the "you must be racist if you think the country is overcrowded and dont think we can sustain immigration" debate? Didn't we have the "How exactly are we supposed to concrete over the Highlands and Welsh mountains" questions? Didn't we have the "yes I'm sure we can accept more people, however the government will never invest in the infrastructure required to sustain them meaning we continue to do more with less?"
Couldn't you have just reposted to the "old" blog rather than open a new one on exactly the same subject??
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Re: sproutconscious. The Netherlands and Belgium have a higher population density than the UK as a whole. However, about 84% of the people in the UK (51M out of 61M) live in England, which accounts for only slightly more than half the UK's area. Now, the figures on Wikipedia say that the population density of the Netherlands (395/km^2) is slightly higher than England (398/mk^2) and much higher than the UK as a whole (246/km^2). So, I guess the claim is that the actual figure for England is slightly higher than that, now (or that people have left the Netherlands).
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Surely the problem is that we've been far too focussed on being a "global power". Who cares? The reality is that quality of life and health of society do not go hand in hand with ideas of Empire and power. Quite the reverse in fact.
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Extra population brings wealth? I guess that would make Cairo one of the wealthiest cities on earth. I suppose that if you work for BBC you can make up anything and pretty much get away with it....sometimes.
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A great blog Mark. Always been fascinated with statistics and charts, and you've covered some intersting topics and presented the data in a very informative way. Thanks.
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You haven't addressed the point I made in an earlier post: when (not if) world economic collapse sets in, how will Britain feed itself? We can't produce either all our own food or a surplus of something else to trade for food.
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"Historically high levels of immigration pose important economic and social questions but I remain unpersuaded that we cannot cope with the extra people."
Of course you remain unconvinced, Mark. You live in the city. Your idea of a good time is rubbing shoulders with ten million people. You mistake overcrowding for diversity and believe that crime, drugs and violence are the fault of poverty rather than too many people in too small a space. Any behavioural anthropologist could tell you you're wrong. Anyone who's studied the behaviour of animals in zoos could do the same.
Britain is too crowded. The footprint - the required amount of space for one person to function - has not remained static over the last 200 years. Nowadays, a person's footprint is far larger than it used to be. With the advent of the motor vehicle, a person's footprint is far larger.
Now, I know that you'll say we don't need cars because we can all live in giant tower blocks and travel on public transport, but you're wrong.
I'm sure that, as a city boy, you're scared of anything green and you look down on little villagers and country folk as probably inbred, and predisposed to racism and homophobia and, therefore, their opinion is invalid. They live in the UK too, you know, and I thinki their opinion is more valid than someone who, quite frankly, lives in a little bubble of leftism which is unrepresentative of the country.
It's nice that The Left has yet another platform for its demented views on immigration, but out in the real world - the world where the roads are crowded and the schools are teaching classes peaking 30 different languages - it's a different matter. We are sick of it.
It's not a race issue. Immigrants who came over twenty, thirty or fifty years ago are just as heartily sick of the flood of new people as people whose families have been here for centuries.
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Totally agree with Soddball.
It is a matter of personal choice. Mark clearly loves city life - and the bigger the city the better for him. Bigger does mean more things to do - London is full of options for nights out.
So why would I choose not to live in London and for the whole country not to become like London?
Well I like the quiet life. I love the countryside, the hills near where I live. The fact if I want to I can get away to places where I might walk for an hour and not see a soul.
So yes physically Mark is right - with the use of high rise flats we could fit billions in the UK.
But for those looking for a bit of peace and quiet it'll be no fun!
In addition to which natural resources become more stretched. Oil, water, gas, electricity are already increasing due to higher demand and short supply.
Even food will become increasingly in short supply- the BBC itself ran an article about wheat prices doubling over the last 12 months - and to quote from their own article:
"Demand [for wheat] is growing because of population growth and increased wealth in developing countries like China and India"
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/witn/2008/02/080229_wheat.shtml
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Some people like the city, some like the town, most enjoy elements of both, But lets not severely degrade one for the benefit of the other.
What is wrong with wanting some sort of hinterland?
North Yorkshire and exmoor are pleasant precisely because they dont have motorways criss-crossing them. Why should Norfolk become Surrey?
Japan seems to have decided to limit immigration and is reseigned to seeing its population age and fall. This presents its own problems and I'm not suggesti
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apologies mods... carrying on from previous post that got sent early.
....I'm not saying the Japanese way is necessarily the route to follow but surely there is a happy medium between their solutions and our one of de facto perpetual population growth
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It might be worth saying for the international comparisons that the UN used the definitions of urban from each country.
UK - ... In order to achieve consistency in the definition of an urban area it was assumed for the 2001 census that an urban area in England and Wales had a population of at least 1,500 people; in Northern Ireland it was 1,000 people or more; while in Scotland is was assumed that all settlements and localities were assumed to be urban.
Germany - Communes (kreisfreie Staedte and Kreise) with population density equal or greater than 150 inhabitants per square kilometre.
Netherlands - Due to several historical changes in definition of urban areas, urban is defined in this publication as municipalities with 20,000 inhabitants or more.
France - Communes with 2,000 inhabitants or more living in houses separated by at most 200 meters; or communes in which the majority of the population is part of a multi-communal agglomeration as defined above.
For the 2001 Census, I worked out that ONS thought England and Wales' population was 89.9% urban. This includes some fairly small places like Tideswell and Hathersage in the Peak District NP.
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Who's saying anything about building over the countryside? The point is that we need increasing density in cities to safeguard the countryside, otherwise we'll just end up with miles and miles of suburban noddy boxes.
The trick is to develop the cities within limits to allow for growth, whilst providing a suitable and sustainable quality of life. Those who want to live and work in the countryside can do, but remember the more folk in the countryside the less of it there will be. It is important for the UK to be able to sustain both.
Regardless of the current economic situation, the UK will for the foreseeable future always be a magnet for immigration, the poor always go to where they perceive the money is. Whether you agree with it or not, its happening so it has to be managed.
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People forget that as well as the most densely populated bits of Europe, the UK also has the least densely populated region - or at least it did, until Lapland became part of the EU. Even so, Sutherland/Caithness is amazingly empty - and that's what makes those figures about 70% of the land being owned by 1% of the population so meaningless. Sure there's a lot of land up there, but noone wants to live up there and economically it's almost worthless - in fact estates such as Balmoral run at a loss and have to be subsidised from outside. If they weren't owned by people capable of subsidising them, they'd be stuffed, you need that scale of operation to make them begin to work economically. I'd guess that somewhere like Oxford is probably worth more than all of Scotland north of Perth, and generates more economic activity.
It also strikes me that the figures for how crowded England "feels" are distorted by the large stretches of low population in the far north, the figures for the "box" bounded by the M62 corridor and the continuation of the Welsh border to slice off the West Country must be even more impressive. Anyone got stats? Perhaps England-outside-the-national-parks might be the easiest approximation to get stats for unless someone has UK population on a GIS.
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Mark,
The problem with the 'crowded Britain' debate and your article is that the definitions used are chosen not because they are good ones but because they fit the argument being made. For example the statistics you quote that 90% of us live in urban areas can only 'correct' if you use the widest possible definition of what is 'urban'.
It is also interesting how certain statistics are ignored if they don't fit the narrative, for example we are always told we live in a multicultural country, but the vast majority of us, 85%, are 'white British' contradict that.
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So when i'm stuck in traffic, or have my face squashed in someone's armpit on the tube, or have to home-school my children because there aren't enough available places at our local school, or when I go for days without hearing English spoken in my area - I should console my frustration in the fact that there's plenty of room at the top of Ben Nevis and Snowdon, and that white, overpriveleged, cocooned, upper-middle-class Left-wingers like Easton finds it all so jolly exciting!
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I remember the BBC political editor saying a similar thing on the TV about a year ago when this subject came up - that there is plenty of space in the UK and there would be no problem fitting in an extra 15 million people or so: a view curiously similar to the "no limits" policy of the present government.
This attitude of we can "cope with the extra people" ignores the reality of the pressures it will cause on housing which will inevitably lead to the greenbelt being built upon - which I vehemently oppose. We have already seen recommendations for this action in the Barker review on housing.
Why is limitless immigration always presented as inevitable/necessary by the BBC? Who wants to live in an overcrowded island?
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I am a bit confused are we talking about England, London or Britain here? A typical English southern based BBC journalist. No mention of the second City of the Empire (Glasgow) here or the depopulations of the hinterlands of the Celtic areas and the North of England caused by a South East dominated economy fuelled by Scotland's oil. Perhaps there should be an acknowledgement that most of the problem of overpopulation rests with structural problems in the UK economy and the bias towards the south east as well as the lack of democratic mandeted waves of migration sanctrioned by the ruling elite but not by the people. This sort of BBC PC journalism just shows you whey people turno off when it reflects the view of white south east of Englan, middle class, left of centre, right on journalism.
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Noonday,
Overcrowded tubes or roads have more to do with the failings of Labour's transport policy than anything else.
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AAgree totally with comment number 1 by RGRAHAMH. I've spent much of my life in cities and suburbs but only by necessity for work, never by choice. If I had my life to start again the biggest difference I would make is to choose a career that would give me the freedom to live in a rural area.
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Hey BlogBag You are "a bit confused"and asking "are we talking about England, London or Britain here? A typical English southern based BBC journalist. No mention of the second City of the Empire (Glasgow) here or " blah blah
I found the answer ....I read the Headline
"England's legacy as an urbanised society"
Maybe thats why Glascow isn't mentioned? or for that matter the capital of God's own kingdom Cardiff?
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"but I remain unpersuaded that we cannot cope with the extra people"
Hmm, "extra people" I would be interested to know at what figure of population does Mark Easton think would be right for 2008?
Or should we want as many people as possible as "population equals wealth".
Does he think there is a point where we should start worrying about the amount of people living in England or is his view the more growth the better?
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Same old bigoted middle englanders posting again on here I see: "I'm not racist but..."
It's patently obvious that few of you are even reading the blogs properly. To summarise the salient facts for you: There is little net immigration of foreigners into this country: The vast majority of immigrants are doing manual labour that you would rather starve than do: Overcrowding in cities is caused by country-to-town migration of english people: itself caused in many areas by second home owners from the cities squeezing local residents and thus destroying existing services.
(I love the sentiment of the second poster: "we visited the small English town of Bristol, but we hit a traffic jam and so now we're moving to the promised land of the America". I think they might have traffic issues there too...)
If you don't like living in watford, move out. Ah, they don't pay so well outside London do they? That's because there's not so much cheap immigrant labour to get fat off. It is self-evident to anyone with half a brain that without such a weight of people London could not support all the businesses and infrastructure it has. What about before the immigrants you say? There was no before! It's immigrants all the way down...
Hopefully you people will get what you wish for one day soon; the things you most despise make possible the things you most desire.
PS. Mr Tim Weakley, the immigrants that come in mainly work on farms producing food for the rest of us. Your implicit statement is that we need less immigrants, yet when the economic collapse sets in what we will actually need is more of them and less London-based middle-managers. One farm labourer can produce enough food for several people, whether he speaks Bulgarian or English, one advertising account executive consumes the resources of several provincials. If all else fails perhaps we can trade our surplus of stockbrokers to Poland for some much needed labourers?
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Post 31, here we go again, anyone who shows concern for Immigration MUST be racist, by the sound of your post us English are bigots, this I find laughable as I have just come back from a worldwide trip and have seen how other nations treat their countrys neighbours/people different to themselves, we are in fact one of the most tolerant societies there is, this why perhaps so many migrants choose to come to Britain and have done so as you say
'all the way down".
I suggest you get out and see a bit more of the world.
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I suspect, Anthony G, that I have seen a lot more of the world than thee.
I never claimed you were racist, I said you were a bigot: "one who regards or treats the members of a group with intolerance". I also made no claims for other nationalities, many of whom are indeed inveterately racist. But "they do it so why shouldn't I" is a poor argument outside the school yard.
But nevermind, you are right, our success as a nation is built on our welcoming nature and integration of migrants. That is why cutting off that supply would not be a wise thing.
Immigrants are a very poor scapegoat for over-crowding. They make a negligble impact on the overall population and are dwarfed by the it's natural growth. 60 million people have a lot of babies in a year, about 750,000 in fact; net immigration last year was 191,000. Which do you think contributes more to overcrowding?
The only ways to reduce or at least stop the growth of the population are unacceptable: stop people having babies and stop people living so long. We're not of course going to do either of those things so there simply is no socially acceptable solution (other than perhaps taking some lebensraum from someone else), however blaming it on foreigners makes us feel better in the short term.
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Rufus it is in fact you who is the bigot, you are the one who cannot read other peoples views without personal insults and slurs.
This is just the type of behavour I have seen around the world that I loathe, unfortunately I see it is alive and well within your post.
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I was interested by Raymond who moved to America to get away from traffic problems... wow. Its not the traditional version of the American dream.
Like most things the things that make people in the UK unhappy is such an over-reliance on material things and quality of life issues. Aspirational longings and greed, obsessional interest in house prices, desire to eat "organic" pre-packed meals from tescos, living in small families without extended support, over-reliance on cars, Endless lifestyle T.V. shows telling you how to redecorate the house...!
i am not sure which is more depressing the lives that people are living or the fact that they want to blame immigrants for causing it...
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RufusTFirefly in #31 you wrote "There is little net immigration of foreigners into this country” only to state in #33 that "net immigration last year was 191,000" . Are you saying that 191,000 is a 'little' number ? That is equivalent to the size of Swindon arriving every year. As for the 750,000 births you forget to mention that some of those will be births to immigrants, in fact almost a quarter of all babies in Britain are now born to immigrant mothers according to the Office for National Statistics .
There are now more than 6 million people in the UK who were born abroad, that is over 10% of the population or looking at it another way there are more foreigners living in the UK than the entire population of countries such as Denmark, Ireland and New Zealand .
We can cope with the extra population in the same way that hens can cope with living in battery farms just because it can be done does not make it desirable.
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Mark,
Your blog entry suggests that urbanisation is a good thing and that we can continue that way indefinitely. I realise that you have a limited amount of space and can't say everything, however I find the result a bit misleading.
"Britain was witnessing urbanisation on a scale that the population could barely comprehend. The contribution of farming to the nation's output fell from about half to just under a fifth as the steam-driven factories took over."
You don't mention that those newly created "gigantic cities" were plagued by pollution, disease, malnutrition, poverty and crime - problems that persisted for generations. Furthermore, the rapid switch to a country that couldn't even feed itself without substantial imports created major problems in both World Wars. As global commodity prices rise we will likely see a variant of that problem again.
"Internal migration is currently the principal cause of population growth in the UK"
Plainly this is not true. If the population of the UK is, say, 60 million and Joe Bloggs moves from London to Penzance then the population of the UK hasn't changed at all - nor has the UK's population density. The population density in both London and Penzance has changed and perhaps that is what you were trying to say, unfortunately, that is quite unlike immigration. With relocation the costs and benefits of an extra person in one place will cancel with the benefits and costs of their absence from the other place. With immigration the "other" place is another country and there is no possible balance.
"Urban centres can thrive on very high population densities "
This is one of those statements that is true literally but nevertheless misleading. Let's take London as an example. London dumps millions of tonnes of rubbish in the more rural counties of the south east. Without this practice the city would be an open sewer - as indeed it was until the Victorians built a decent sanitation infrastructure. So London is totally dependent on more sparsely populated surrounding land - and not just for waste disposal. Where does London get its fresh water? How much land is needed just to catch all the rainwater that London consumes? Where does London get its electricity? The government has recently claimed that we will need new nuclear power stations to meet future demand for electricity. How many nuclear power stations are there within the M25 today? As far as I know all nuclear power plants are kept well away from London in remote, sparsely populated parts of East Anglia, Scotland and Wales. How about food? My (admittedly crude) guess is that meeting London's requirements for food would require 10-20 million acres of agricultural land. Of course that land could be outside the UK, as much of it already is, and that arrangement works well while you can pay for the imports. Remind us again Mark, how big is the UK's balance of trade deficit? When was the last time Britain managed a quarterly surplus? How much longer can that state of affairs continue, do you think?
When you say "Urban centres can thrive on very high population densities" you really ought to mention that those centres are completely dependent on the existence of vast areas of rural land to supply what they need.
"Infrastructure needs to reflect demand but, assuming the extra population generates wealth, this is clearly feasible."
All true, but again, misleading. Your assumption - that the extra population generates wealth - is a huge one. How much new wealth do immigrants create? According to a procession of government commentators, most immigrants come here to do low paid work that "we" do not want to do. By definition the amount of wealth created is small. You also fail to consider just how much extra infrastructure will be needed. One of the earlier comments quotes a net immigration figure of 191,000 per year. That's a city the size of Newcastle, Northampton or Portsmouth. Over five years, it's a city the size of Birmingham. Those comparisons demonstrate the true cost of immigration and show us just how much extra infrastructure is required. Do you really believe that the government is building houses, roads, railways, reservoirs, power stations, schools, hospitals etc sufficient to create a new Northampton every single year? Don't forget that all this expensive construction is in addition to the construction that is necessary anyway to maintain or replace the existing infrastructure for the existing population.
I'm surprised that you claim that this is "clearly feasible". I think you know perfectly well that the government is not building infrastructure on this scale nor will it ever do so. Instead, immigrants move into existing communities and the missing infrastructure shows up as over-crowded buses and trains, congested roads, even longer queues at your local GP surgery and hospital and on and on. Environmental campaigners might like to consider that current levels of immigration mean that every year Britain's output of carbon dioxide (and every other pollutant) grows by the output of Newcastle. Imports grow by the amount needed to provide for Portsmouth. Is there any evidence that exports grow at all?
"I remain unpersuaded that we cannot cope with the extra people"
That's because you are taking too narrow an interpretation of the question. In fairness, anyone who claims that Britain cannot accommodate one more immigrant because there literally "isn't room" is talking nonsense. But that isn't the issue. Britain is "full" in the sense that the economy cannot provide the infrastructure that extra people need. We can "cope" with the extra people in the same sense that the occupants of a lifeboat can cope with extra people - by squeezing together and cutting everyone's food and water ration. The question you conspicuously don't address is - why should we do that?
Mass immigration is an expensive business, and we can no longer afford it.
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This blog is giving me a real sense of deja vu...
Re post 31.
Dear RufusTFirefly, it's patently obvious that you have little grasp of the facts you so smugly summarised for our benefit. I hate to shatter your 'homme du monde' delusions but you really don't have a clue.
So you think immigration has negligble impact when compared to natural growth. You clearly don't have the faintest clue regarding current birth statistics and hugely disproportionate number of births to immigrants. While I do happen to be in possession of the full facts, I also speak from experience. Maternity wards are stretched to breaking point and my wife and I had to fight for our bed at out nearest hospital. The maternity ward at Ascot was closed and relocated to Slough due to the overwhelming demand from immigrants there. The Royal Berks are also struggling to cope which was why we were turned away, it was only when my wife was ready to give birth in the car were we admitted. My second and youngest daughter was born in our bathroom. Royal Berks were beyond full capacity and refused to bring us in and put us off and off... Given my wife had the complications of tachycardia this was not an experience I relished. The facts are that immigrant births are a massive burden and our a direct cause of our burgeoning population. These are facts and I have real world experience of the impact of this... But of course to ignorant liberal apologists such as yourself I am a little englander bigot.
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RufusTFirefly said ‘Immigrants …make a negligible impact on the overall population and are dwarfed by its natural growth’
This is clearly not true – the natural growth of the UK population for the period 2006-2007 (births-deaths) was 187,000*
The growth due to net immigration (in-out) was 198,000*
Net immigration was responsible for more than 50% of the total population growth – hardly ‘negligible’ This is not a one-off either, net migration has consistently contributed to a significant proportion of total population growth.
This is backed up by the comments on the ONS site ” Natural change provided the largest influence on population growth until the year to mid-1999. Since then net migration has become the main driver"
*(Figures from government ONS website)
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Typical BBC one-Worldism.Don`t we English just love sharing our living space with these charming foreigners?.
Glad I don`t watch the tele-vitz anymore(or have to pay that grossly unfair tax).
No one who votes for the Lib/Lab/Con dictatorship parties has got ANY right to moan about the state of this country.You created this mess by voting for these creatures.
And you`ll be voting again soon for more of the same.
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Yers!!! Well the Industrial Revolution certainly did increase our population not just because our birth rate went up- because that was not really coincident. We were certainly producing children but they were also dying in numbers we would not tolerate today. A lot of the increase came from Immigration as a result of persecution allied to the fact that this country could make money. Of course that means that in other European countries the rise in population would'nt be so marked because people were leaving in droves.And another thing in low population countries the average percentage rise is higher. Lastly could we please reflect the fact that although the mass of migration in the 1750's was to England it was in fact Britain and that many came from Scotland Wales or Ireland because of British policies related to the clearances. What is also clear is that between 1950 and 2005 that the divide between agricultural industrial has risen sharply. To say that Immigration has had a negligable impact is to spit in the eye of the truth.
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I haven't seen the magic words "carrying capacity" or "food security" in any of this.
I don't want to be apocalyptic about any of this, but maybe Malthus was right, and all we are doing is bickering about the details as the crisis looms - planet-wide, Europe-wide, nation-wide, and yes - England-wide.
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Last post (42) nailed it.
Rufus TFirefly: Ive seen more of the world than either of you,one. And 2 i was born in London and lived in the same area all my life.
It is now a complete toilet.
If i was to suggest that globalisation/Tesco killing all the local shops etc was responsible for that ,you'd go well done old chap. But if someone suggests that its also to do with the fact that there is about ,literally,3 trimes as many people in my manor than in say,the seventies,then they are a bigot,even if they dont mention the word 'Foreigners'!!
Cookie cutter liberals. The worst.
Anyone here,for a laugh,do yourself a favour and try to look at Thin Lizzys DVD live at the Rainbow 1978 (no,stay with this..)Theres a bit in the opening credits where the artics are unloading the gear into the Rainbow (Finsbury Pk for those who don t know)..check out the amount of traffic as they are doing it. Its almost unbeleivable. Its 9AM.
You would think the volume of traffic is closer to the 1920s than anything else.
Go and stand on the same POV as the camera man at the same time of day and check the traffic and people.
And dont be a smart arse and say well its cos theres more cars etc.We are talking about overcrowding. I was out EVERY NIGHT in the seventies going to concerts in the west end (Marquee,Heaven,Music Machine) and id be the only person on a night bus most of the time. Now..its like as busy at 4am on them as it is at 4pm. And yes,they did run one every hour in those days,not as you were about to type "probably cos the services are worse now" etc.
Maybe i'll post photos up somewhere of me and my mates walking home from school on the main road at 3.45pm in 1976 and there are no cars on the road as far as you can see. The same road now: i just dread getting in my car and driving down it.
Face facts : its bloody crowded now.
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