Is Britain Full?
Discussion
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.
I concur entirely.Saying "we aren't full" because there is still green fields, national parks, decent sized gardens and inner city green spaces is nonsense.
Unless of course you want to live somewhere where none of that exists, which I certainly don't.
I like space. Spacious gardens around decent sized houses, open countryside, city parks, nature reserves, forests and suchlike. I would have thought most other people enjoy these things as well, and have no desire to cram more concrete and bricks over the top of them.
CaptainSlow said:
I'd rather keep these than replacing them with concrete to house economic migrants. It's a race to the bottom.
Sorry to keep banging the same drum but why is the focus only on immigration when deciding whether we're full or not?
If we shut our borders tomorrow we'd keep getting fuller.
Ridley said:
If we shut our borders tomorrow we'd keep getting fuller.
Tricky one though. If we shut them entirely - and of course the govt knows this only too well - we start to get dreaded demographic timebomb of a declining ration of workers to pensioners.Totally open borders doesn't help, but controlled and selective immigration must be the key.
Digga said:
Ridley said:
If we shut our borders tomorrow we'd keep getting fuller.
Tricky one though. If we shut them entirely - and of course the govt knows this only too well - we start to get dreaded demographic timebomb of a declining ration of workers to pensioners.Totally open borders doesn't help, but controlled and selective immigration must be the key.
Controlled and selective to keep everyone happy.
Sam All said:
Digga said:
Ridley said:
If we shut our borders tomorrow we'd keep getting fuller.
Tricky one though. If we shut them entirely - and of course the govt knows this only too well - we start to get dreaded demographic timebomb of a declining ration of workers to pensioners.Totally open borders doesn't help, but controlled and selective immigration must be the key.
Controlled and selective to keep everyone happy.
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.
We don't need to build on the green belt. There are tens of thousands of uninhabited homes (second homes and not in use), there are 10s of thousands of under-populated houses (How many of us are guilty of having several spare bedrooms? ), and we still widely live in 2 story houses (as opppsed to 3 or with a basement) with a driveway out the front (as opposed to beneath).Evanivitch said:
We don't need to build on the green belt. There are tens of thousands of uninhabited homes (second homes and not in use), there are 10s of thousands of under-populated houses (How many of us are guilty of having several spare bedrooms? ), and we still widely live in 2 story houses (as opppsed to 3 or with a basement) with a driveway out the front (as opposed to beneath).
Why should people have to compromise their quality of life just to squeeze more and more people in.People like spare bedrooms, larger houses and plenty of garden and parking space. Not being jammed into a smaller property just so we can cram more people into the same area.
There's just myself and my girlfriend living in one house which has 3 bedrooms, a large garden, driveway for 4 cars and plenty of room. We are soon to move to a 4 bed house with a bigger garden, simply because we want to. There will be more space inside the house and more privacy and space outside.
The suggestion in this thread seems to be that if we cram more houses into already populated areas, and make people live in smaller properties we can fit more in. My question is why on earth would we want to do this?
Ridley said:
Sorry to keep banging the same drum but why is the focus only on immigration when deciding whether we're full or not?
If we shut our borders tomorrow we'd keep getting fuller.
Only if we stopped people leaving, that's a net migration figure you've quoted. I doubt the birth rate covers the death rate plus exodus.If we shut our borders tomorrow we'd keep getting fuller.
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...Economic effects of Immigration Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs said:
Funding for local councils
149. Most taxes are collected at the national level but many public services are provided and paid for at the local level. Councils in the south of England— Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hillingdon, Slough and the LGA—all argued strongly that the problems with the current immigration statistics (see chapter 2) have led to immigrant numbers in their areas being significantly under-estimated (pp 279, 467, 272, 472–473, Q 440). Since the funding to local councils from central government is directly linked to the size of each district’s population, the undercount of immigrants has, local councils argue, led to inadequate funding for public services. The LGA thus called for a special migration ‘contingency fund’ of £250 million a year— about 1% of the total funding councils receive from central government (Q 447).
150. Local councils also pointed out that the extra funding needed following a sudden increase in immigration can take time to feed through despite the immediate increase in pressure on local services (Q 447). Similarly, Dr Dobson said schools sometimes face a jump in pupil numbers through rapid migration but experience a slow response of extra funding from the authorities (p 207)
151. More work needs to be done—by both central and local government— to assess whether and how much extra funding for local services is needed because of increased immigration. The Government should ensure that local councils have adequate funding to provide and pay for the increasing demand for public services.
The committee also received evidence, but it seems failed to report, unless I've missed it, that council funding from central government is based on very outdated and inaccurate census figures, which further compounds the difficulty with rapid changes in population, be that from immigration, emigration, or simple regional population movements within the UK. This point was made partucularly strongly in evidence by Luton, which also had the lowest rate of return of census forms in the country.149. Most taxes are collected at the national level but many public services are provided and paid for at the local level. Councils in the south of England— Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hillingdon, Slough and the LGA—all argued strongly that the problems with the current immigration statistics (see chapter 2) have led to immigrant numbers in their areas being significantly under-estimated (pp 279, 467, 272, 472–473, Q 440). Since the funding to local councils from central government is directly linked to the size of each district’s population, the undercount of immigrants has, local councils argue, led to inadequate funding for public services. The LGA thus called for a special migration ‘contingency fund’ of £250 million a year— about 1% of the total funding councils receive from central government (Q 447).
150. Local councils also pointed out that the extra funding needed following a sudden increase in immigration can take time to feed through despite the immediate increase in pressure on local services (Q 447). Similarly, Dr Dobson said schools sometimes face a jump in pupil numbers through rapid migration but experience a slow response of extra funding from the authorities (p 207)
151. More work needs to be done—by both central and local government— to assess whether and how much extra funding for local services is needed because of increased immigration. The Government should ensure that local councils have adequate funding to provide and pay for the increasing demand for public services.
NinjaPower said:
Why should people have to compromise their quality of life just to squeeze more and more people in.
People like spare bedrooms, larger houses and plenty of garden and parking space. Not being jammed into a smaller property just so we can cram more people into the same area.
There's just myself and my girlfriend living in one house which has 3 bedrooms, a large garden, driveway for 4 cars and plenty of room. We are soon to move to a 4 bed house with a bigger garden, simply because we want to. There will be more space inside the house and more privacy and space outside.
The suggestion in this thread seems to be that if we cram more houses into already populated areas, and make people live in smaller properties we can fit more in. My question is why on earth would we want to do this?
I'm in much the same position, 4 bedrooms, 2 occupants. My parents have 5 bedrooms and 2 occupants (and my occasional student sibling).People like spare bedrooms, larger houses and plenty of garden and parking space. Not being jammed into a smaller property just so we can cram more people into the same area.
There's just myself and my girlfriend living in one house which has 3 bedrooms, a large garden, driveway for 4 cars and plenty of room. We are soon to move to a 4 bed house with a bigger garden, simply because we want to. There will be more space inside the house and more privacy and space outside.
The suggestion in this thread seems to be that if we cram more houses into already populated areas, and make people live in smaller properties we can fit more in. My question is why on earth would we want to do this?
The fact I don't want anything smaller is contrary to the logic that I could live in something a lot smaller. It's a cultural thing that we seek to have as much as we can.
What we need is a cultural change to encourage older people to downsize. To make it possible for people to buy houses that suit their needs (2 bed houses in nice areas don't really exist). That requires much better housing stock, much better communities and a better financial service (often difficult for older people to re-mortgage).
So we're certainly not full, bloated maybe, but not full.
Evanivitch said:
NinjaPower said:
Why should people have to compromise their quality of life just to squeeze more and more people in.
People like spare bedrooms, larger houses and plenty of garden and parking space. Not being jammed into a smaller property just so we can cram more people into the same area.
There's just myself and my girlfriend living in one house which has 3 bedrooms, a large garden, driveway for 4 cars and plenty of room. We are soon to move to a 4 bed house with a bigger garden, simply because we want to. There will be more space inside the house and more privacy and space outside.
The suggestion in this thread seems to be that if we cram more houses into already populated areas, and make people live in smaller properties we can fit more in. My question is why on earth would we want to do this?
I'm in much the same position, 4 bedrooms, 2 occupants. My parents have 5 bedrooms and 2 occupants (and my occasional student sibling).People like spare bedrooms, larger houses and plenty of garden and parking space. Not being jammed into a smaller property just so we can cram more people into the same area.
There's just myself and my girlfriend living in one house which has 3 bedrooms, a large garden, driveway for 4 cars and plenty of room. We are soon to move to a 4 bed house with a bigger garden, simply because we want to. There will be more space inside the house and more privacy and space outside.
The suggestion in this thread seems to be that if we cram more houses into already populated areas, and make people live in smaller properties we can fit more in. My question is why on earth would we want to do this?
The fact I don't want anything smaller is contrary to the logic that I could live in something a lot smaller. It's a cultural thing that we seek to have as much as we can.
What we need is a cultural change to encourage older people to downsize. To make it possible for people to buy houses that suit their needs (2 bed houses in nice areas don't really exist). That requires much better housing stock, much better communities and a better financial service (often difficult for older people to re-mortgage).
So we're certainly not full, bloated maybe, but not full.
Evanivitch said:
We don't need to build on the green belt. There are tens of thousands of uninhabited homes (second homes and not in use), there are 10s of thousands of under-populated houses (How many of us are guilty of having several spare bedrooms? ), and we still widely live in 2 story houses (as opppsed to 3 or with a basement) with a driveway out the front (as opposed to beneath).
There's supposed to be a million empty homes.rs1952 said:
Your post quoted, not exactly at random, but because it is perhaps typical of some on this thread.
Possibly, but there is no need for the UK population. If birth rates are higher, let's have the discussion, as they're not let's preserve this country and pass it on for future generations.
Evanivitch said:
How many of us are guilty of having several spare bedrooms?
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.
wiggy001 said:
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.
Not sure if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick here but while it might seem more sensible to build new towns in the north where there's more undeveloped space but the infrastructure is completely woeful up here, too.Brilliant.
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