Is Britain Full?

[KrissKross]

speedy_thrills said:

KrissKross said:

Adam Ansel said:

Demographics. We need people to pay taxes so that Baby Boomers get their pensions and care workers.

The people arriving to do low end job roles are not capable of contributing enough tax to cover themselves, let alone the rest of us. The maths does not work, its a simple as that.

The UK will need an immigration policy that balances the need for financial sustainability against it's infrastructure development funding.

The problem for the UK is that it's economy has really slowed considerably which will push the persistent budget deficit (according to the governments own figures). Usually you would expect this to push the government towards action but the government has not yet responded to these changes and they're probably quite hemmed in at this point because of their approach to budgeting. Bank of England obviously don't really have any room respond at this point as the recovery has been very slow and weak to date and having made their last cut to support the economy after the Brexit vote (which actually worked for about 6 months.)

The UK has obviously had this problem with wage growth being tepid for much longer than this government but when you start to get media reporting falling (real) wages it's likely to be difficult to ignore.

I am not sure if you are agreeing or not. Do you agree (with the numbers) that the tax generated from immigration does not contribute to the UK sufficiently?

[FN2TypeR]

KrissKross said:

vonuber said:

I've always wondered how, if you don't hear someone speak, you can tell they are an immigrant.

Passports or some other type of ID?

Are they walking around whilst waving it above their heads?

[babatunde]

PRTVR said:

Not quite true though is it, if what you say was correct the areas that have high migrant levels would be nice places, does anybody aspire to live in certain parts of the likes of Bradford or Birmingham, Please do not start with the It's all our fault, its not , the past is the past, we live in a modern age mostly brought about by British inventions, a few years ago I was talking to a group of well educated Indian guys and the role of the UK in India's past cameup, all thought it was positive, with things like education law and the common use of the English language having make India a better place than it would have been without it ,
just look at Zimbabwe, use to be the bread basket of Africa under British rule, now a net importer of food, is that our fault also ? should we have stayed ?

Using your analogy we might as well judge all "English" people by the standards of Oldham.
Don't know were you've getting the inference that the British Empire was bad.
I'm just pointing out some of the reasons for immigration and why it's not all negative.

[Earthdweller]

Britain is a nation of immigrants ... fact

From the romans ( what did they do for us again?)

Through to modern times .. it has enriched and made the UK what it is

However I think England is now the second most densely populated country in Europe with about 413p/km .. much more so in the south east

France I think is about 121 p/km in comparison

The difference now is the speed of migration which the infrastructure at present cannot cope with

It is not an option to keep concreting over the green bits as they have a vital role up play ... i.e. Feeding us

The green bits may be pretty but mostly are as productive as factories and more vital

So imo are we full ?

Probably getting there .. I think we need to think what sort of country we want in 50-100 years and whether it will be sustainable with the population levels

So I do think we need to pause and think and ultimately slow down

[anonymous-user]

babatunde said:

Using your analogy we might as well judge all "English" people by the standards of Oldham.
Don't know were you've getting the inference that the British Empire was bad.
I'm just pointing out some of the reasons for immigration and why it's not all negative.

Oldham has a 5x over representation of people of Pakistani ethnicity vs the UK as a whole, what are you implying about anyone who shares that heritage?

[gizlaroc]

Earthdweller said:

Probably getting there .. I think we need to think what sort of country we want in 50-100 years and whether it will be sustainable with the population levels

And this is the point.

Take a map of the UK, now for 50 years chose where you are going to place the 100 cities the size of Cambridge or Oxford on that map?

Now for the next 50 years chose the next 100 places.

Starts to get pretty tricky pretty quickly.

[Hugo a Gogo]

Troubleatmill said:

It has to do with not putting detergents into the environment.
The new fangled German car wash machines - have filters that remove detergents etc etc - and are able to recycle the water.

Now if you do want German do-lally - The rain water that goes down your gutters and drains is on a meter - and you get billed for that.

not so much detergents (washing up liquid and washing powder still go down there after all) as oils, fuel etc

you can wash your own car at a 'wash box' type place

water down your drain is not metered, you just pay based on the area of land house+garden

If I stored up all 'my' rainwater and exported it to the desert I would still have to pay for 240m² or whatever (I don't know how big my own garden is!)

[Hugo a Gogo]

gizlaroc said:

Earthdweller said:

Probably getting there .. I think we need to think what sort of country we want in 50-100 years and whether it will be sustainable with the population levels

And this is the point.

Take a map of the UK, now for 50 years chose where you are going to place the 100 cities the size of Cambridge or Oxford on that map?

Now for the next 50 years chose the next 100 places.

Starts to get pretty tricky pretty quickly.

start to think whether cities like London can exist with rows of terraced houses with gardens
tower blocks, what's the worst that could happen

[markcoznottz]

KrissKross said:

vonuber said:

I've always wondered how, if you don't hear someone speak, you can tell they are an immigrant.

Passports or some other type of ID?

Can usually tell polish men by their clothes lots of stonewashed jeans etc

[garagewidow]

for all the ambitious,well meaning and want to make a better life for themselves immigrants that come here we also get a percentage that are under the impression you can get somewhere to live and 'free' money if you don't have employment.unfortunately putting that genie back in the bottle is difficult.
these are the ones that fall through the net and are a social problem when it comes to drugs and alcohol abuse etc.

[princealbert23]

vonuber said:

I've always wondered how, if you don't hear someone speak, you can tell they are an immigrant.

They are writing hundreds of posts onto a NP&E terrorist thread?

[Pan Pan Pan]

PRTVR said:

Mojooo said:

If the current infrastructure is full but the land is not the logical step is to build a massive new city.

I once drove through Wiltshire and spent what felt like 60mins solid driving through greenery

fk the greenery I say! Or at least we can give up one section to take the pressure off surely.

The greenery you talk of is food production , something we will need more of with an increased population.
When do you stop building new cities? where does the services come from? Electricity production is running on equipment well past it sell by date, water, the last major reservoir was built when it was under national ownership a very long time ago, very easy to say build more towns far harder to do.

We could be approaching the Soylent Green scenario quicker that we thought. If that is what people want for the UK, all we need to do is continue importing hundreds of thousands more people than we export each year.

[Rich_W]

babatunde said:

Well I kind of see the opposite, jump on a night bus at 3 in the morning it's full of "English" people struggling to get home after a night drinking and "immigrants" off to work.

Doubt it. Are we talking 3am on a Wednseday? Tuesday? I don't know anyone who gets that bladdered and uses a night bus on a week night. But I don't hear any foreign voices in smart clothes going off to work either. Simply because 24hr society or not, not many jobs start at 4am. The Polish guy who lives on my floor works normal hours like everyone else As does the Serbian guy I work with and the Polish/Macedonian supervisors we have.

babatunde said:

People who leave their homes and travel half way round the world trying to make a better life for themselves and their families are logically not lazy, even when they are poorly educated.

Hmmm. Imagine if they set up an enterprise at home. Rather than coming to the UK. Imagine if rather than running from their problems in their homeland they tried to make their country better!

Post WW2, UK, France and Germany were all fked economically. Our grandparents, our governments at the time, And yes in our case a lot of families from the West Indies came and worked bloody hard for very little and helped make these countries the giants they are today.

Imagine if the low IQ/low skill Eastern Europeans put their apperent "hard work, more motivated, and smarter" selves to work in their own countries rather than just chasing the quick Pound.

In terms of the low IQ/low skill migrant. There's been a sizeable cultural change over the last 30-50 years. At the far end of that, families were coming to stay, raise families and have that 2nd generation. Go back even 20 years and it was the same. (remember this is all pre ROFM) With ROFM we've seen a rise of the latter type who are here for the money and will be leaving in a set time frame.

As a stereotype the more educated a migrant is, the more likely it is they will have a good command of English, and will be far more integrated to the UK. They'll understand our cultures. They'll get our sense of humour (or "soul" of the language as my Serb friend says) The oft mentioned "best and brightest"

Now if only there was some way of limiting immigration to that demographic I can tell you know there wouldn't be 3/4s of the resistance to freedom of movement we have today!

vonuber said:

I've always wondered how, if you don't hear someone speak, you can tell they are an immigrant.

Clothing can distinguish. For some reason a lot of Eastern Europeans LOVE tracksuits. Particularly those who work trade jobs (sparks, chippies etc) Rarely jeans. Though as said the The more intellectually challenged ones love a stone wash! Often other clothes don't tend to be named brands. Brits and first world Europeans do love a Nike swoosh or a Boss logo

Whilst general facial appearance of Eastern Europeans is different to that of Brits/Germans/Dutch. And if you wanted to picture a low IQ Albanian labourer I bet most would have a stereotypical image which isn't a million miles away from reality.

[Crippo]

The question is this "Is Britain Full"?

The answer is dependant upon your point of view. In my opinion it is because I happen to believe that quality of life,Open Countryside and a certain nostalgia for the past is more important than the so called benefit of immigration.
I also don't believe that immigration brings a great deal of benefit. For example we have record levels of employment, never before have so many people been employed. Woo hop, amazing...I bet the government is loving it. Well no actually, Welfare spending has never been higher and tax credits are one of the main reasons. Most jobs don't generate enough tax to pay for themselves and are actually subsidised by higher paying work and other taxes. Also don't forget about the funny money.... just look at HS2 for an example of this. Why would the Country spend over £50 billion on one railway? Especially when it's going to be obsolete before it's finished and almost nobody is in favour of it...the answer is because we can get the Chinese to invest in it... it will create work and more borrowed money and all economic transactions add to the GDP figure. An example of this is an environmental catastrophe...which we all believe would be a bad thing...but look how much money is spent clearing it up...billions...where does this money come from...ultimately it's created out of thin air by either QE or Gov bonds....so much of the economic arguments for immigration are funny money arguements that come down to buying cheap foreign labour rather than investing in a highly skilled work force...and you know how they get away with it? The dumb down education so much that most people are too ill educated to see the wood for the trees...
My two penneth

[Hugo a Gogo]

Rich_W said:

Whilst general facial appearance of Eastern Europeans is different to that of Brits/Germans/Dutch. And if you wanted to picture a low IQ Albanian labourer I bet most would have a stereotypical image which isn't a million miles away from reality.

utter ste

you might be able to have a good guess based on clothes, but don't tell me you can ID which country each of these people come from


oh but you can spot low IQs, skull shape etc, no doubt, degenerate races etc

[Colonial]

Hugo a Gogo said:

Rich_W said:

Whilst general facial appearance of Eastern Europeans is different to that of Brits/Germans/Dutch. And if you wanted to picture a low IQ Albanian labourer I bet most would have a stereotypical image which isn't a million miles away from reality.

utter ste

you might be able to have a good guess based on clothes, but don't tell me you can ID which country each of these people come from


oh but you can spot low IQs, skull shape etc, no doubt, degenerate races etc

If you wanted a stereotypical post from a low-IQ ENGERRRRRRRRRRLAND INNIT poster child, you could also have a stereotypical image which which isn't a million miles away from reality.

[Earthdweller]

I think he has a point tbf

When as a young lad I moved to London a white person was a white person a black person a black person an Asian an Asian person

Now .. after 30 odd years of looking at people and dealing with them it fair to say that I can spot to a very high probability what nationality/origin someone is

I can tell the difference between Eritreans and Ethiopians

Ugandans and Nigerians .. and West Indians

Polish and Latvians

Italians and Spanish Etc

I could probably say it's stereotyping for sure .. but it is my experience of dealing with the world for over 30 years

[Hugo a Gogo]

go on then, without googling?

[Hugo a Gogo]

maybe it's just me, but after 45 years looking at people, working all over Europe, working in very international spheres, you can have an idea of some people, some countries, and confirmation bias will back you up, but generally, people are pretty mixed up nowadays and there are few genetically homogenous national populations, and even then, that person you spot might be a 3rd, 4th generation resident

I know plenty of people who've lived in England all their lives with some pretty exotic surnames and backgrounds, clearly not immigrants though

[768]

Hugo a Gogo said:

go on then, without googling?

And without looking at the flag?