Good job they will pay our pensions.

[vetran]

No you think Britain has too many immigrants.

When I was at school the number of children was falling. We were told horror stories of having to support 4 pensioners each with our taxes.


Migrants from the past and the UK's history of migration make the UK what it is today.

10% population increase in a decade directly attributable to uncontrolled immigration. Yes that is what has made the UK what it is today.

[zemoxyl]

No you think Britain has too many immigrants.
When I was at school the number of children was falling. We were told horror stories of having to support 4 pensioners each with our taxes.
.

With an increasing migrant population tomorrow's kids may be supporting >4 pensioners. Todays immigrants are tomorrow's pensioners.
What number would you think is ideal? 70 million, 100 million?

Going to be tough for those new arrivals now that ALL political parties are suggesting withdrawal of benefits for at least 2 years.

BTW I'm pro-immigration - just on an equal footing mode like Australia, Canada,NZ, USA,.....

[SueEllen]

With an increasing migrant population tomorrow's kids may be supporting >4 pensioners. Todays immigrants are tomorrow's pensioners.
What number would you think is ideal? 70 million, 100 million?

Do you know what the population of the EU is? If you did you wouldn't quote such stupid figures.

Going to be tough for those new arrivals now that ALL political parties are suggesting withdrawal of benefits for at least 2 years.

No one was stopping any UK government from doing that in the first place. It's the fact our benefits system is more entitlement based than contributory based that is causing the problems. No government wants to change that otherwise business would be pushed to pay workers more.

BTW I'm pro-immigration - just on an equal footing mode like Australia, Canada,NZ, USA,.....

The government signed up for EU including freedom of movement. So we are stuck with it.

[BlasterBates]

The fact is for a number of years the UK was the only Western EU country allowing in Eastern Europeans hardly surprising we had a surge. Germany had a similar surge in the early 1990's from old Yugoslavia and other Eastern European countries, simply because they accepted a huge number of refugees, several hundred thousand so comparable.

As in Germany the immigration will calm down, Poland Romania and other countries won't stay poor they're getting richer by the minute. We work with Romanian IT service companies, so their home industries are thriving.

Also a lot of immigrants, particularly in Europe do go home they've no intention of retiring in the UK.

A lot of hysteria, it will balance out in the end. The recent surge was welcome given the imminent baby boom retirement wave just starting.

In 1900 they predicted that by 1940 London would be 30 ft deep in horse manure but it didn't happen.

[darmstadt]

So Cameron admits that the NHS is struggling: David Cameron admits NHS is under pressure | Society | The Guardian, I wonder why?

<with help from Another Angry Voice>
1 - Before the 2010 general election David Cameron promised “no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS”, then within months of coming to power his Health secretary Andrew Lansley launched the biggest top-down reorganisation in the history of the NHS (the Health and Social Care Act). Cameron also made the pre-election promise that the Tories would “cut the deficit, not the NHS”, before launching £20 billion worth of NHS cuts.

2 - BBC News - NHS reforms were potential vote loser - Portillo

3 - According to a 2013 YouGov poll, 84% of the public would prefer to see the NHS run as a not-for-profit public service, whilst just 7% favour privatisation: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04...es-say-public/

4 - Dozens and dozens of the Tory MPs and Lords who voted in favour of the privatisation of the NHS had clear vested financial interests in private health corporations and who look set to benefit from the NHS privatisation bill they voted for: Social Investigations: Compilation of Parliamentary Financial Links to Private Healthcare

5 - The Tories have been carving up the NHS and giving it away to their party donors. See Circle Health and Care UK: Fury as Tory party donors are handed NHS contracts worth £1.5BILLION under health reforms - Mirror Online

6 - The NHS is one of the best health services in the world: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, 2014 Update: How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally - The Commonwealth Fund. The Tory mantra about bringing in the private sector to “make the NHS more efficient” is just a smokescreen. The real reason for bringing in the private sector is to soak as much profit out of the system as possible, with no regards for the quality or efficiency of the service.

7 - Jeremy Hunt wrote a book in 2009 on how to dismantle the NHS. In 2010 Cameron appointed him as Health Secretary meaning that the man who is now responsible for the NHS is a man who has called for it to be completely abolished: 3 top Tories call for NHS to be dismantled - Mirror Online

8 - Forced hospital closures. The Princess Regent University Hospital (which cost £118 million to construct) was built in South London, but under the terms of the PFI contract, the amount repayable over the decades will be £2.5 billion: The funding timebomb that crippled an NHS healthcare trust - Health News - Health & Families - The Independent. The extraordinary costs of paying off this PFI debt crippled the South London Healthcare Trust, forcing them to look for savings. The proposal they came up with was a plan to shut down the Accident and Emergency department and the maternity ward at Lewisham Hospital, and to sell off the land in order to raise £17 million towards paying their PFI debts. This plan would have left Lewisham (population 750,000) without an A&E or maternity ward. The legal challenge was successful so the Tories changed the law:

2010 - “We will stop the forced closure of A&E and maternity wards, so that people have better access to local services, and give mothers a real choice over where to have their baby, with NHS funding following their decisions.” - 2010 Conservative Party Manifesto, page 47
2012 - The Tories attempt to force the closure of the A&E and maternity ward at Lewisham Hospital, but were defeated in the courts.
2014 - Jeremy Hunt's hospital closure clause is passed

9 - Privitisation: The most recent example of privatising the profits and socialising the losses can be seen in the botched eye operations carried out at the NHS Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton by the private sector contractor Vanguard Health.
30 of the 60 operations carried out by the private company led to complications, including complete blindness in one case: NHS faces legal bill as dozens suffer problems after private eye operations | Society | The Guardian. Another example of the taxpayer having to pay out for the failings of private health companies can be in the case of the Lister Surgicentre in Stevenage, which was run by the private company Clinicenta until the contract was terminated early in 2013 due to poor standards of care. In order to terminate the contract, you the taxpayer had to pay 35 million: Failed firm's £53m from Labour NHS deal: Taxpayers foot huge bill after ministers terminated contract when GPs stopped referring patients to failing hospital unit | Daily Mail Online

There's a heck of a lot more if you want to look...

And, yes, some of it is Labour's fault, in particular PFI but the Tories could have stopped that but as a party they're dedicated to making the rich richer so they can't...

[zemoxyl]

Do you know what the population of the EU is? If you did you wouldn't quote such stupid figures.

It's around 530 , 540 million. That figure in itself is meaningless. I guess you should look at demographics rather than simple figures.

No one was stopping any UK government from doing that in the first place. It's the fact our benefits system is more entitlement based than contributory based that is causing the problems. No government wants to change that otherwise business would be pushed to pay workers more.

Fair Enough. Tax Credits, another Ponzi scheme due to spiral downwards. See Osborne's falling income tax receipts.

The government signed up for EU including freedom of movement. So we are stuck with it.

And I'm glad they did. Like I say, two-way equal opportunity controlled migration is a good thing.

And BTW 60% of current immigration is from outside the EU. Source : ONS.

[turbowoowoo]

Do you know what the population of the EU is? If you did you wouldn't quote such stupid figures.


No one was stopping any UK government from doing that in the first place. It's the fact our benefits system is more entitlement based than contributory based that is causing the problems. No government wants to change that otherwise business would be pushed to pay workers more.


The government signed up for EU including freedom of movement. So we are stuck with it.

Swellen, don't be a silly liberal now...

when was the last time you drove round the M25? Or tried to enrol a child at a school near your home? or wanted a operation in an NHS hospital, see a doctor, book a dentist appointment, get a passport, travel on the underground, buy a house, park a car.

to name but a few the country is FULL

Namby pamby liberals don't get it because they don't see it, they live in their own bubbles in suburbia.

Sooner we come out of the EU the better

[Flashman]

Government forecasts predict 75 million people will be living in the UK by 2030.

After then? 80, 90, 100 million?

Why not, who needs green fields when you can have concrete?

[Flashman]

No you think Britain has too many immigrants.

When I was at school the number of children was falling. We were told horror stories of having to support 4 pensioners each with our taxes.


Migrants from the past and the UK's history of migration make the UK what it is today.

Usual complete garbage.

A study of official census records from 1851 until the present shows that the number of people born abroad living in Britain was very small until the middle of the twentieth century and that the growth of this population between censuses was quite slow. Indeed, in the eighty years between 1851 and 1931, the population born abroad increased by only about one million. It increased slowly after the Second World War, growing by less than two million in the forty years between 1951 and 1991. In the late 1990s the pace and scale of migration increased to a level without historical precedent. Indeed the foreign born population of England and Wales more than doubled, increasing by nearly four million in the twenty years between the 1991 and 2011 censuses. It has now reached 13.4% of our population. This massive increase dwarfs the scale of any previous inflow in our history.

MigrationWatchUK | An independent, voluntary, non-political body concerned about the scale of immigration into the UK.

[SueEllen]

Swellen, don't be a silly liberal now...

when was the last time you drove round the M25? Or tried to enrol a child at a school near your home? or wanted a operation in an NHS hospital, see a doctor, book a dentist appointment, get a passport, travel on the underground, buy a house, park a car.

to name but a few the country is FULL

Namby pamby liberals don't get it because they don't see it, they live in their own bubbles in suburbia.

Sooner we come out of the EU the better

I've been able to do all that without difficulty.



BTW

“But can I ask you this: are you happy that the Daily Express is saying that we should consider people such as Prince Charles, Ed Miliband, Boris Johnson and Winston Churchill as migrants ‘hidden’ from the British public by official statistics? And is it correct that the Daily Express is suggesting that the children of Nick Clegg and, for that matter, Nigel Farage are ‘hidden migrants’?”

Linky