Caporegime
The UK is simply not that urbanised. Just 7% of British land is classified as urban; slightly higher in England. Even among that urban land, less than half of it is actually built on the rest is gardens, parks, etc.
Poll: The EU Referendum: What Will You Vote? (New Poll)
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The UK is simply not that urbanised. Just 7% of British land is classified as urban; slightly higher in England. Even among that urban land, less than half of it is actually built on the rest is gardens, parks, etc.
Soldato
So we don't have enough houses, not enough school places, NHS at breaking point. Surely simple supply and demand exists here. We could throw money at all three to bring the capacity up but we don't have enough money. That only leaves reduce the demand (or at least restrict the increases until the services can catch up)
Caporegime
All aboard the Mr Jack train to Mega-City One, right here in what was once a green and pleasant land.
Yeah, I kind of get that. I'm just amazed that the media are complicit in this.
What I am struggling to understand is why the government are pursuing economic policies which result in a decrease in quality of life and actually make it harder for the indigenous population to reproduce.
Take house prices for instance. The government has gone to great lengths not only to avoid correction, but also ensuring that prices continue to go up. This can be evidenced by the fact that little has been done to increase supply, while at the same time finance and money supply for house purchases. Take Help to Buy (Government backed 95% mortgages), FLS, QE )% Interest Rates etc.
In a generation, the average house price has gone from 3.5 x the average income, to 11x the average income.
I am in my early 30s, in a stable relationship, good job , girlfriend also in a good job. We live in a 1 bed flat and are saving £2.5K per month for a house deposit. Ultimately we have a choice - buy a house in a rough area and have kids, or buy a house in a decent area and not be able to afford them.
With a joint income of £95K, we should not need to worry about who we end up living next door to, or the fact that house prices are going up faster than our savings account!
By my age, my Dad (on a teacher's salary - less than half of what I earn) had managed to buy a house I could only dream of owning.
Had we already been settled in our own house in a reasonable area, we'd have probably already had children.
The government must accept at least some responsibility for the decline of the indigenous population/
Soldato
Well 7% is enough as far as I'm concerned - stats don't give you the big picture. Frankly there isn't enough natural space left in this country that doesn't have a road running through it or a town/city expanding into it. Just driving anywhere these days is a PITA with the amount of traffic on the roads. Add a Cardiff sized city every year and its just going to get worse and worse
Man of Honour
You'd also have to build between 8 and 10 hospitals, and god knows how many schools etc. It's not just houses. And where, pray tell do you propose to build all these new cardiff-sized cities?
It isn't working-age immigrants who are putting a strain on the NHS. EU immigrants pay more into the tax system than they take out. It's our own aging population that's the problem.
Without immigrant workers the NHS would collapse.
If you notice, I'm not saying more and more people = better and best, I am saying the political thinking of this country are trying to tackle the issue of an ageing population and the strain that is putting on society and this is one of the methods they are using.
So I don't care if they say "we want immigration down to 10's of thousands" just to be populist, they don't mean it. The problem with coming out of the EU for them is they then don't have the EU to blame!
Here's a list of some of the perceived problems
and the proposed solutions
You will notice that the Government have been implementing all those suggestions over the last few years, including number 2
Again, they are bare faced lying to you about the 10's of thousands. If they meant that at all, why did we have 190,000 net migration of Non-EU citizens, hmm?
Soldato
That's the problem - if they just plonked a city into place they would build the infrastructure to support it. But just adding houses here and there means the existing infrastructure has to support the growing demand
Mid-Wales.
I'm sure the people there would love all of the new jobs that it would create.
Soldato
I doubt it - theres plenty of countries in the world where nurses and doctors would happily migrate from to help with the supply if they were allowed
Soldato
More Project Fear nonsense.
Soldato
If that's the case then they're assimilating into British culture remarkably quickly. Just look at the most popular baby names of births in 2014...
http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...ynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsgirls
http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...bynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsboys
Caporegime
If you notice, I'm not saying more and more people = better and best, I am saying the political thinking of this country are trying to tackle the issue of an ageing population and the strain that is putting on society and this is one of the methods they are using.
So I don't care if they say "we want immigration down to 10's of thousands" just to be populist, they don't mean it. The problem with coming out of the EU for them is they then don't have the EU to blame!
Here's a list of some of the perceived problems
and the proposed solutions
You will notice that the Government have been implementing all those suggestions over the last few years, including number 2
Again, they are bare faced lying to you about the 10's of thousands. If they meant that at all, why did we have 190,000 net migration of Non-EU citizens, hmm?
If you notice, I'm not sticking up for the government on this at all - no-one knows better than me that the Tories, especially Cameron's Tories, are a bunch of liars, still better than the bunch of liars in Brussels though. The fact is that while we're in the EU it is impossible to control migration, the only way we will ever get net migration back under control is to leave the EU. The EU's laws on immigration are providing a convenient excuse for Cameron to not fulfill his pledge to reduce net migration to the 'tens of thousands'.
Soldato
From what I know so far, which I admit isn't a great deal, I would vote to stay in. I need to do some more research really.
It's pretty simple. The people kicking back and enjoying an easy life on the back of the property market are the people who bother to vote. That and UK culture is so deeply, uniquely, and weirdly obsessed with the property market that any downturn in prices triggers economic downturn.
I said that without immigrants the NHS would collapse. You're suggesting that I'm wrong because we could replace the immigrants with... more immigrants?
Caporegime
How much of the country have you actually visited? Fire up the satellite view on Google maps and have a look around. Most of the UK is green and undeveloped. If we build 300,000 houses a year then, in a decade, we'll have gone up to having urbanised a massive 7.5% of our land. Oh, yeah, that green and pleasant land will be gone. Even if we built 300,000 houses a year, every year, until the year 2100 we'd still only have urbanised around 14% of the land in the UK.
Why am I not surprised? 
"Electoral Commission says 770,000 names were deleted in change to registration rules as critics claim Tories are ‘rigging the system’"
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/24/nearly-800000-names-axed-from-voter-register-officials-figures-show
"Electoral Commission says 770,000 names were deleted in change to registration rules as critics claim Tories are ‘rigging the system’"
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/24/nearly-800000-names-axed-from-voter-register-officials-figures-show
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