Jaffa

A what?

A Jaffa is a kiwi term Kenty

There's certainly a few childless wonders on here!

Most of Europe and parts of Asia like China & Japan are depopulating and have ageing populations that need healthcare and financial support (pensions). These countries will have to accept immigration from undeveloped countries or accept the realities of regrowth.

Are Eastern Europeans the only ones that carry cash nowadays.always seem to have bundles when they pay me.although the poor exploited girl from the car wash that I helped with her suitcases last weekend to her new house share, paid me in ÂŁ1 coins.

Our population would be falling already if it wasn't for prolonged life expectancy and immigration. The average children per mother was 1.68 in 2018.

Lurk - “ “there is a difference between here and Japan”; indeed there is.

I'm not sure where your 50-50 figure comes from, I suspect it is anecdotal. Yes, some people arrive because they've been sold the story of the generous welfare state but most come and work hard in areas we don't like - agricultural labour, care settings, hospitality and so on. There are staff shortages in those sectors that will continue to get filled by immigration unless conditions and wages improve drastically and then people will complain about the resulting inflation.

A4e there is a difference between here and Japan. Here people are still having families, they're exercising their "right" to pick when, delay, have them later, etc. So the population isn't falling. In Japan there's a much more society first attitude. Slight generalisation but not that big a one - hence they cope with things like a pandemic in a more cooperative way.

R K if they fall you sit tight and don;t sell, in the long term prices creep up.

TL:DR version..........We are at the point where we are trying (for various reasons not just immigration) to fill a 15litre bucket with 20litres of water and we haven't had a new bucket in 100 years.

OI for every person doing the jobs people in this country are too lazy etc to do, there's another that realises they can get good money in short bursts here that they can send back/use to improve their life at home. As an example there's a well known car repair company I deal with. They have a pattern of eastern european workers working every hour possible, raking in money, sharing a pretty basic temporary housing, then moving back home with what is there a substantial sum to improve their life there. Great opportunity for them - not that helpful here. I've said before about a direct family member who works in homeless shelters - they deal with a lot of people who have just arrived in the country with nowhere to go etc. Turns out the "myth" about people coming here to "pick up the gold off the streets" isn't a myth after all. People are being told all sorts of bullshit about the life in this country, then the reality is shitty housing, 0 hours contracts, rubbish work conditions. (You can guess which country many of them pass through where they're told England is the place to be). The whole perception of this country as being a huge empty space to fill with people, through immigration, lower mortality rates, has all exceeded the infrastructure. We've been told that the reason we're now flooding regularly is the drainage system is massively old and never meant to cope with the volume of housing running into it. Our infrastructure, our housing programmes, our work structure was never designed for the way our society now is and won't keep up. People have to wait weeks to see doctors and dentists, the NHS was built for a population 60% of what we have today and where people died relatively young. We've outgrown ourselves.

*traditional

Key word - “unfettered”. It’s obvious that much immigration is good, that which either supports the economy through taxation and NI, some is compassionate (and there should imo be room for a certain amount of this), but also some isn’t necessary - getting that balance right is the trick no government has quite managed. Part of the rising property price problem is that fewer young people will have children, choosing a career and a social life over a “tradition family life” (although the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, mostly the wealthiest who can afford both) - countries like Japan have falling populations due to the cost of living and younger people choosing not to sprog, so they encourage older people to retire later and incentivise having a family through attractive monetary grants etc.

A quick tour around our local area will finfd tiny flats being built on plots of land not conducive to enjoyable living conditions for most! We are already too overpopulated in the south east. As said the proportion of saleries spent of buying a property is already far higher than most eu countries meaning a lower standard of living for most. Investing in property for profit rather than a home to live in will end in tears one day.

We is now 16th in the covid deaths per capita table. Argentina have gone ahead and almost certain Colombia will do same tomorrow

Matt, true but only so long as property prices don't fall. We have a big house building programme plus we have some depopulation (a good thing imo).

I thought part of the house building problem was that all the "Polish plumbers" had gone back home. The problem with cutting down on immigration is that the vast majority come because they do want to work and they will work at jobs, with conditions and pay that many born here don't like. We're an ageing population, having fewer children so immigration will become more important.

Lurk - I’m not sure it’s “EUphiles” as such, I think many on the right bemoan the affordable housing situation too - surely that was part of the “taking back control of our borders” argument, so that not allowing unfettered immigration would give the home building sector a chance to catch up with demand, something I fully support by the way (building more affordable housing that is, not unfettered immigration).

Lurks - If you also consider proportion of income spent on housing its (according to a quick google) 25% in UK, 18% in France and 13% in Italy. This is a huge difference in quality of life especially for those paying it as rent as opposed to mortgage (where at least some of it is saved for the future).

RK - I don't think it's as simple as stamp duty holiday has driven all the extra demand. Fundamental shifts in people's lives including need for more space, less likely to be paying expensive rail season tickets, etc. etc.

you get to keep the 55k increase value in the property the 15k just goes to the government. I think it should be a fixed fee Londoners and SE get penalised with a %

I find it interesting how many EUphiles complain about impossible for people to own their own home in this country. This country is in the middle of EU countries for % of home ownership - so we're in line with EU standards. The ones that are higher have smaller populations, especially smaller land/population ratios. In many cases significantly smaller. And much smaller people/city ratios. E.G. Italy is 7% higher home ownership % but has about half the number of urban areas with 100K+ populations that the UK has. France has slightly lower home ownership % with a much larger land mass, lower urban build up and smaller population.

Mad - “Over demand which you were all for” - what? The sentence doesn’t make any sense, what’s your actual point?