Is Britain Full?
Discussion
Guybrush said:
Over 300,000 a year net increase only last year. School class sizes increasing, doctor surgery waiting times getting longer, roads ever more crowded, massive housing demand - I wonder if there's a connection. 
Of course is - the supply side has not caught up and that can only lead to lower standards / delays and such for all here already. And resentment towards the new intake.The government needs to be robust - no ifs, no buts but limit intake to what the country can easily manage with.
300000 is net - double that really.
rs1952 said:
CaptainSlow said:
Why does it matter if Britain is full or not when deciding on immigration policies? The question should be do we want to preserve the countryside. We have green fields in England, we have green (green) valleys in Wales and stunning scenery in Scotland, I'd rather keep these than replacing them with concrete to house economic migrants. It's a race to the bottom.
Your post quoted, not exactly at random, but because it is perhaps typical of some on this thread.Some 20 years ago I was having a chat with an old timer in a pub in the depths of darkest Wiltshire. He was telling a tale of someone that had come to his door with a petition, protesting about a new (small) estate in his village. His response to them was: “30 years ago I signed a bloody petition to stop them building your house, and look how far it got me!” The village in question, Studley between Chippenham and Calne, is still a village with green fields all around, and the Marquis of Lansdowne’s estate just handy. The only difference is that thirty or so houses got built on a field on the eastern edge of it and, if you didn’t know the place 20 years ago, you would never realise that they are new build (unless you specialise in such things, of course).
The question is not “do we want to preserve the countryside” because we could literally double the amount of built-up areas in England (let alone Scotland and Wales) and 75% of the land mass would still be green fields and countryside – not many people would actually notice the difference.
Elsewhere on this thread we have had the usual selection of “solutions” trotted out:
“Build smaller houses” – we already have some of the smallest domestic dwellings in the world. Try having a look at space standards in houses in places like the USA, Australia or South Africa if you don’t believe me.
“Build upwards” – we tried it in the 60s and it didn’t work. Whilst those odd European folk seem to like living in high and medium-rise apartments, us Blighty-dwellers don’t. Many of the high-rise blocks built in the 60s were fitted with explosive charges many years ago.
“Utilise all the empty homes” – can I allow myself a yawn here? Like the unemployment figures, surveys of the number of empty houses are a snapshot at a given point in time. Not many are left empty just for the sheer hell of it. Over on SP&L there is currently a thread running about a house being empty for over a year because an executor won’t accept an offer less than the estate agent’s asking price. I’d hazard a guess that there are a couple of hundred thousand empty properties in the UK that currently fall into that category, or the similar one where someone has moved out and is still trying to sell the property they’ve left empty. There is no vast stock of “empty” property out there that anybody could actually do anything with.
“Build on brown field sites” – the only problem is you often have to decontaminate them first, and that adds to the final cost of the houses you put on them.
“We can’t take any more people because of a lack of infrastructure” – part of the existing planning process involves local councils looking at the effect on local infrastructure (roads, schools, health care etc) and getting the developers to fund improvements. Contrary to popular opinion, council officers don’t look out of their windows one day and say “Ooh look, somebody’s just built 500 houses down the road – I wonder how we’ll educate the kids or provide a GP for all those people - oh well, c’est la vie” – these things are planned for in advance.
Within my lifetime, we have built a number of new towns – Crawley, Harlow and Milton Keynes spring immediately to mind (Welwyn Garden City was before my time
). We could do that again 40 or 50 times over and there would still be fields full of cattle and sheep, forests and national Parks, and all the other “nice” things that we might like to see. The only thing that stops it happening is democracy – in the shape of NIMBYs who agree wholeheartedly that we need new houses – but not this close to my back yard...
t load of space in Britain and even if doubled the number of houses (from 25 to 50million) there would still be loads of empty space.rover 623gsi said:
I agree. There is a st load of space in Britain and even if doubled the number of houses (from 25 to 50million) there would still be loads of empty space.
There is very little empty space in Britain. Fields aren't empty, they have food growing in them and mre people need more food. Look at the number of times people get upset when the neighbour helps himself to 6 inches of someones garden. If there were less people, there would be more space for all and nature to which would mean less squabbling. I vote for shipping 30,000,000 people out of the country. t load of space in Britain and even if doubled the number of houses (from 25 to 50million) there would still be loads of empty space.
wiggy001 said:
Excuse me?! Are you seriously suggesting people should feel guilty for having done well enough in life to be able to afford a house with a spare bedroom?
That sentence sums up everything that is wrong with the (not so) liberal left in this country. If I want 5 spares rooms and a spare house in every country, why the hell shouldn't I?.
Your comprehension skills are somewhat lacking. That sentence sums up everything that is wrong with the (not so) liberal left in this country. If I want 5 spares rooms and a spare house in every country, why the hell shouldn't I?.
I don't think anyone should feel guilty, but logically you (and I) are guilty of having too many bedrooms (I iron in one of mine. Literally just iron).
Now go back and read my subsequent post about the culture shift that is required across a variety of areas that would address this.
And left? Oh dear, are you lost?
Hooli said:
TTwiggy said:
Hooli said:
Yes we're full.
Well that's the end of this thread then.Except for a few rare places in England it's damn near impossible to go anywhere you can't see houses/people. That to me is full.
Evanivitch said:
Your comprehension skills are somewhat lacking.
I don't think anyone should feel guilty, but logically you (and I) are guilty of having too many bedrooms (I iron in one of mine. Literally just iron).
Now go back and read my subsequent post about the culture shift that is required across a variety of areas that would address this.
And left? Oh dear, are you lost?
To be fair, it did sound somewhat left leaning, your later comment on encouraging older owners to downsize even more so.I don't think anyone should feel guilty, but logically you (and I) are guilty of having too many bedrooms (I iron in one of mine. Literally just iron).
Now go back and read my subsequent post about the culture shift that is required across a variety of areas that would address this.
And left? Oh dear, are you lost?
PositronicRay said:
Pollution is another problem created by over crowding, not just air but noise and light. Very few places in the UK where you're out of earshot of a busy road.
There is plenty. It's just people normally use a busy road to get to where they are going and so thus will be near one most of the time.NRS said:
PositronicRay said:
Pollution is another problem created by over crowding, not just air but noise and light. Very few places in the UK where you're out of earshot of a busy road.
There is plenty. It's just people normally use a busy road to get to where they are going and so thus will be near one most of the time.I'm talking about rural Warwickshire/Leicestershire/Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire/Wiltshire/Hampshire/Kent/Northamptonshire/Bedfordshire/Berkshire.
A topic I care very much about. We all have differing approaches to this question because for some people it's purely about numbers, others care about the cultural shifts brought about through immigration and others are concerned about building density, open spaces, places for recreation, village culture, road crowding, public service provision, size of the economy etc.
If you were a business you'd want more population as it adds to GDP and lowers wages. But most of us don't think as businesses, we are humans. The human spirit needs wilderness and nature, it needs space to live and breathe. We need to escape from crowded areas and we seek solitude in many ways. There is no finite answer on what our level of population should be because the mush of opinion will change over years. Some Countries like Japan are far more densely populated than us, but I would never wish to emulate that.
All I know is that I'm happiest in the early morning before most people have got up, I see nothing as more important than quality of life and I don't see how more people and more crowding add to that in any way.
If you were a business you'd want more population as it adds to GDP and lowers wages. But most of us don't think as businesses, we are humans. The human spirit needs wilderness and nature, it needs space to live and breathe. We need to escape from crowded areas and we seek solitude in many ways. There is no finite answer on what our level of population should be because the mush of opinion will change over years. Some Countries like Japan are far more densely populated than us, but I would never wish to emulate that.
All I know is that I'm happiest in the early morning before most people have got up, I see nothing as more important than quality of life and I don't see how more people and more crowding add to that in any way.
wiggy001 said:
Excuse me?! Are you seriously suggesting people should feel guilty for having done well enough in life to be able to afford a house with a spare bedroom?
That sentence sums up everything that is wrong with the (not so) liberal left in this country. If I want 5 spares rooms and a spare house in every country, why the hell shouldn't I?
Another post mentioned the building of new towns such as Crawley and Welwyn. They are doing that not too far from me - a whole town with schools, offices and recreation. 10,000 homes. 20,000 jobs. And where are they building this? In the valleys? In the north? South West? No, minutes from the dartford tunnel where you can already spend most of your daily commute sitting in traffic. Where the good schools are already oversubscribed. Where hospitals are at their limits and we already wait months for operations on the NHS.
Brilliant.
Don't worry rs1952 tells us that they do have a real hard think about this sort of thing before they press the button to proceed.That sentence sums up everything that is wrong with the (not so) liberal left in this country. If I want 5 spares rooms and a spare house in every country, why the hell shouldn't I?
Another post mentioned the building of new towns such as Crawley and Welwyn. They are doing that not too far from me - a whole town with schools, offices and recreation. 10,000 homes. 20,000 jobs. And where are they building this? In the valleys? In the north? South West? No, minutes from the dartford tunnel where you can already spend most of your daily commute sitting in traffic. Where the good schools are already oversubscribed. Where hospitals are at their limits and we already wait months for operations on the NHS.
Brilliant.
TX.
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