Over a year ago, when parts of the UK were inundated by floods, I remember the Spectator’s Rod Liddle moan that one reason why the water was running off the ground and into the rivers so much faster was because of all the additional immigrants crowding into the UK at the time. (Yes, really). It was a nonsense argument: much of the worst flooding was in places like Gloucestershire rather than in London, the former hardly being a hotbed of immigration. But hey, if you are in the business of defending zero-sum economics and the “lump of labour fallacy”, not to mention hold a general dislike of foreigners messing up the view, any stick will do.
It turns out that tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of immigrants want to go back to their country of origin because of the changing economic landscape, and may do so. So Rod and his other worriers can sleep easy. Britain is now able to breathe free (sarcasm alert).
On a side-note, I’d add that with a recession now occuring, dislike of “foreigners” taking “our jobs” is going to become an even more toxic political issue, particularly where among the low-paid, arrivals from abroad do depress wage rates, if only in the short run. But then one should consider the shocking fact that during the boom years, immigrants were taking half of the new job vacancies in the UK, despite there being a large amount of unemployment among the indigenous population, a terrible indictment of the tax and welfare system’s destruction of work incentives.
Essentially, what Liddle and his ilk were getting at was a general argument that the continued encouragement of population growth, which together with other demographic changes was leading to increaed housing growth, had encouraged the building of housing developments on marginal land. This is something that in my opinion -coming from a rural county- has particularly been the case outside traditional big population areas and has led to building on flood plains/faster run-off etc. This might not necessarily be correct but it would be helpful to engage with the argument rather than making veiled snide remarks. One normally expects less disingenuous debate from this website!
Doesn’t this suggest that large scale immigration has actually propped up the welfare state rather than undermined it?
Well, not necessarily. If the immigrants who took half of the new vacancies were accompanied by welfare-receiving families, or were otherwise net recipients, they were not propping up the welfare state.
I was “snide” in my treatment of Liddle’s position because, as I said in today’s comment, the flooding that hit the UK last year was in places that have not been densely populated, which rather buggers the idea that immigration-fuelled housebuilding is causing problems. In any event, one might as well cite the fact that as people become more affluent, live in smaller households, etc, demand for housing increases, and would do so without immigration. So perhaps Mr Liddle and his ilk might favour drastic population controls to “solve” the problem.
Liddle has been long-standing foe of immigration. His use of the flooding argument was shoddily argued and I gave it suitable treatment. End of subject.
Why leave, i imagine the depression will hit Poland too and the unemployment benefit will be much better here.
Living in Sheffield, (4th largest city in England), growing up in Rotherham, (another quarter of a million people), and having attended the University of Hull, (a larger population still), I find it intriguing that you can claim that last year’s flooding was “in places that have not been densely populated”.
Either you have no idea about what you are talking about or you have an appallingly arrogant attitude to those of us living in the North of England.
Neither option is particularly palatable.
Some of the worst flooding was in the area around small towns in Gloucestershire, so how does that square with the argument that population density is directly correlated to flooding risk, exactly? My whole point is that there is no such automatic link, not that I deny that large towns did not get flooded. Your whole post, with its tedious bleat about how I ignore the north, does not take that point on board.
And spare me the whole tedious victim approach of my “ignoring the north”. Stop being such a pussy.
The worst flooding was in Hull. Fact.
There are people still living in caravans after having lost all their possessions in the flooding in South Yorkshire. Fact.
Why not be a man and just admit you’re wrong in your assertion that the flooding hit areas that weren’t densely populated?
You were trying to make a “political” point about Liddle’s comments and used a wholly bogus argument.
In other words, you were resorting to sophistry to try and win your argument.
Too bad, you failed.
So? How to explain why flooding in far less densely populated areas was also very bad? Try telling someone in Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire that their flooding was less serious that in Hull.
Rod Liddle deserves to get stick for somehow trying to work his anti-immigration angle into the issue of flooding, which has a number of causes, many of them complex. That is not “sophistry”, but calling out a bigot who uses any argument he can get his hands on to bash immigrants. Do you think that immigration has anything to do with the matter?
And read my comment again: I did not state that the worst flooding was in lowly- or densely populated areas; I merely pointed out that there is no correlation between the two and it is dishonest to say so without plenty of hard evidence. Rod Liddle did not even bother: he just tried to posit this as some sort of theory. It was typical MSM lazy journalism with a sly agenda. He gets away with it almost every week.
I have no wish to belittle the problems in any specific part of the country. I obviously touched a bad nerve in your case.