Extra housing needed
Andrew | 29.04.2004 17:10
In an interview with The Observer on 21 March, The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, indicated that the government plan to double the rate of house building in England.
He was responding to the Barker Report which recommends building an extra 120,000 new private sector homes in England each year to reduce the trend in real house prices to 1.1% per year.
The Barker report looked primarily at the supply of housing and how this could be made more sensitive to price. It did not explore whether some of the factors driving demand, and therefore price, could be managed. But even on the Government's latest, and very conservative, projection of 103,000 net immigration each year, more than 1.1 million homes will be required just for immigrants for the period 1996-2021.
For the past five years, however, net immigration has been running at an even higher average of 158,000 a year and this excludes illegal immigrants which the Home Secretary acknowledges is a large, if unknown number.
Net immigration will continue at about the average of recent years. If this proves correct, total new households attributable to migration in the planning period 1996 - 2021 would be 1.75 million. This means that well over half the extra houses will be for new immigrants.
Concentrating on the supply of housing the government are glossing over one of the main determinants of demand - namely immigration. Indeed, analysis of the government's most recent population projections shows that 85% of the increase in the UK's population up to 2031 will be due to immigration.'
The Barker report points out that England is a close second to the Netherlands as the most crowded country in Europe with 380 persons per sq. km. compared to 390 for The Netherlands. The South East region, including London has a density of 734 - again the second highest density in Europe. Part of the answer to the housing crisis must be to get a grip of immigration. Yet the government has been promoting immigration on a massive scale without a moment's thought about the implications for housing and therefore for the countryside. This, to say the least, is not joined up government.
The Barker report looked primarily at the supply of housing and how this could be made more sensitive to price. It did not explore whether some of the factors driving demand, and therefore price, could be managed. But even on the Government's latest, and very conservative, projection of 103,000 net immigration each year, more than 1.1 million homes will be required just for immigrants for the period 1996-2021.
For the past five years, however, net immigration has been running at an even higher average of 158,000 a year and this excludes illegal immigrants which the Home Secretary acknowledges is a large, if unknown number.
Net immigration will continue at about the average of recent years. If this proves correct, total new households attributable to migration in the planning period 1996 - 2021 would be 1.75 million. This means that well over half the extra houses will be for new immigrants.
Concentrating on the supply of housing the government are glossing over one of the main determinants of demand - namely immigration. Indeed, analysis of the government's most recent population projections shows that 85% of the increase in the UK's population up to 2031 will be due to immigration.'
The Barker report points out that England is a close second to the Netherlands as the most crowded country in Europe with 380 persons per sq. km. compared to 390 for The Netherlands. The South East region, including London has a density of 734 - again the second highest density in Europe. Part of the answer to the housing crisis must be to get a grip of immigration. Yet the government has been promoting immigration on a massive scale without a moment's thought about the implications for housing and therefore for the countryside. This, to say the least, is not joined up government.
Andrew
Comments
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I think I spot a fascist
29.04.2004 18:11
The UK has an aging population so we need more young people from other countries to work pay tax support us!
The REAL problem with the housing market is estate agents, mortgage lenders, property speculators and other assorted bastards hiking property prices by having empty properties (squat and pay nothing) also we have lots of void properties in areas where people do not want to live as there is no good jobs is the ghettos.
http:
www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3667617.stm
Golgi
Understand ?
29.04.2004 19:00
The Myth
Britain has a declining population and work force"
The Facts
The British population is officially projected to increase by 5.6 million by 2031 (3 million of this is attributable to the assumed level of immigration.) The work force will also increase, partly because women will be working longer. With a birth rate of 1.64, Britain is in a completely different situation from Germany, Italy and Spain whose birth rate is about 1.1.
The Myth
"Britain needs migrant workers to help pay for our pensions"
The Facts
False. Immigrants themselves grow older. To maintain the present population of working age to pensioners would require over 1 million immigrants a year up to 2050. That would double the population to 120 million and leave us with the same problem.
The Myth
"Migrants contribute a net £2.5 billion to the exchequer"
The Facts
False. The relevant Home Office paper was heavily qualified, describing the results as conditioned on the period in which they are calculated and the country's position in the business cycle. In fact the year chosen was one in which the public sector accounts were in surplus so everyone was contributing 5% more than they took out. The study also overlooked the key point that, since the early 1990s, migrants have added to our population so it ignored the cost of new facilities required and the costs of special education etc.
Just because a person raises the issue of immigration doesn't make them a fascist anymore than it does if they raise the issue of Israeli agression in Palestine.
Truth and Consequences
The head article is yet another cut and paste from BNP website
29.04.2004 20:49
These guys want to reduce EVERYTHING to race and immigration. Thats becuse they have no real answers to the complex problems society faces.
Re- Housing and land...
One change in contemporary society that leads to so much extra housing being built is the fact that people want to live in smaller units. Each unit wants their own private space, their own house and garden.
Once we used to all live in bigger families crammned into small houses! Now, in advanced capitalist societies, more people than ever live on their own, or in couples, and family units are much smaller. Generations live apart.
Interestingly, the if you were looking to find the households in Britain which still have many people and several generations crammed into one small house, this would be amongst immigrants! This has always been so. If you could be bothered to pursue the quetion, therefore, it is more credible to argue that immigrant workers take up less space!
This is even more the case regarding the poor bastards who come here to pick our fruit or cockles, and live crammed into hostels! It is therefore not migrant workers or asylum seekers who are living in the new estates of four bedroom houses that are engulfing our countryside!
But some neo-Nazi shit for brains would be incapable of seeing this!
This is 'coz they see everything through the distorting spectacles of race! This blinds them to everything else.
But this doesn't matter to them as they are only interested in propaganda to justify their attempt to plunge our society into a genocidal 'race war', with 'ethnic cleansing' providing a smokescreen for them to impose their long planned brutal fascist BNP dictatorship on all of us! Well hey Nazi! No Pasaran! Not this time!
What part of "Never again you twisted Nazi fuck" do you not understand?
Aelfred-the-freak