Even here in Somerset (one of the least populated counties in England) prime agricultural land is being eaten up by housing etc....... so where do we get the food to feed all these new people?

Oh yes, we can import even more goods at a far greater price than we could grow/breed our own (especially if we get out of Europe and the common agricultural policy and our farmers are allowed to farm as they should rather than being paid to leave fields empty to keep the price of French produce high!)

A stairway to Heaven and a Highway to Hell give some indication of expected traffic numbers

Nearly half is imported already, mostly because it's cheaper. Pertinent to the ongoing Brexit and steel debates.

Edited by johnfirewall (03 Apr 2016 8.55pm)

There's plenty of room, but housing developers have the government by the balls. There are spaces for millions of houses on brownfield sites, old industrial sites, wasteground... but developers don't want to build there. They want to build in nice, leafy greenfield areas. Government tries to encourage building on brownfield sites, but can't force developers to do so.

Inevitably, a few chummy drinks with ministers or local councillors and what do you know, permission to build on greenfield sites rubber stamped.

On topic- government probably massaging figures (somewhat) but Guardian does make some valid points- plenty of those NINO's could have been for people who were here 6 months then returned home. Even if you only worked a month here, you would still need a NINO for PAYE. I'd be interested in how much NI contributions were collected for 'wasted' work- i.e. people who worked here for less than a year (thus had no entitlement to state pension) then went home, at which point anything collected is essentially a freebie to the state.

Also bear in mind- the Guardian has an agenda, but so does the Sun.

Net migration figures are different because they include emigration figures from the UK. However, a population increase of 250k per year, from migration is still a concerning figure - especially given that UK refugee / Asylum success rates are probably less than 30k.

The estimates on immigration into the UK put a figure of around 500k last year, and about 230k for emigration, of which around 125k were UK citizens.

So 630,000 applications for NI more of less fit into those kinds of figures. This is for me an issue, because that's a high demand for employees, which is being sourced from abroad, rather than having companies attract employees from within the UK (i.e. it allows companies to keep wages down, by attracting cheap labour from outside the UK, than raising wages to attract people within the UK already).

Not surprising then that paid work pays less than benefits, when companies have been able to squeeze low and non-skilled labour wages for a decade now.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

With rational and sensible debate made even harder by those who simply don't "like" foreigners and their presence here per se and obsess on the topic ,but dress it up as "legitimate" economic concerns about migration...so the debate is undermined on all sides

If voting changed things, they'd have to do something about it. That's the fear that parties like UKIP and the Greens represent to the 'big three'. Personally, I think both of these parties have reasonable futures ahead of them similar to the SNP in Scotland if they can maintain their capacity as being 'the alternative' and talking to the representation of the electorate concerns and worries.

Its easy 'debate' to dismiss the Greens as loonies and UKIP as racists, because otherwise we'd have to address the fact that they are both increasingly popular on issues that actually concern people in society - that the mainstream has effectively avoided.

The hubris of Labour resulted in the SNP dominating Scottish Politics.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]