to aak UKIP supporters if you would have voted for the Nazis too?

[wigglylines]

The brilliant Michael Rosen on UKIP.

l“I sometimes fear that people might think that fascism arrives in fancy dress worn by grotesques and monsters as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you…It doesn’t walk in saying, “Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.”

No, Tucson, I think it's more complicated than that and that if and when the population becomes unsustainable for the resources available, we will see a mass wave of outward migration. Until then, resources tend to expand to the population, because with each increase comes new innovations to facilitate the increase, and increased population in turn increases employment, which allows the purchase of increased resources, and so it goes on.

These are broad and generic trends which are of little comfort to the person who is right now living in an overcrowded area and isn't aware that s/he is part of a 50 year trend.

But there is no way that we could have sustained today's population on last century's resources, and that is true right back for centuries. Our current population would have been unthinkable to the Victorians. They would have assumed that to have this level of population we must all be living in horrendous squalor and misery, whereas in fact we are richer, safer, healthier and better fed than we ever have been.

If the speed of resource increase doesn't match the increase of population then there will be a wave of emigration. This is how it's always worked, it's unlikely to change now.

I don't think the population is 120 million but the official figure of 63 million is woefully inaccurate. This Independent article from 2007 estimates at least 77 million.

Tell me you don't believe 1 crackpot article based on food sales over national statistics, do you?

120 million is less than the population of Japan, and while they have about 50% more area, they have aggressive forestry protection and a lot of mountain covering their islands. I don't know the exact numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if we have more inhabitable area than they do. In any case, we have a lot of land here that isn't being used.

England is the second densest country in Europe, next to the Netherlands. But the only seriously dense part of the country is the southeast.

sure, at some point the population might get too high. but others have coped with much higher density so I don't think we are nearly there yet.

I think I am going to write an article estimating the population of the UK based on wine consumption.

The UK is one of the most socialist (ie generous welfare benefits, NHS) countries in the world. There are only three mainstream parties and they support broadly similar policies.

I see the support for UKIP as being a voice for those who don't want to fit their views into one of only three such similar camps. Probably their supporters feel that they are not being represented.

I also think the UK political system is really quite odd and the hysteria that is caused by anything slightly shaking it up almost makes it seem like much of the population is brainwashed a bit into trotting out the same old opinions and faux shock and awe.

writtenguarantee I'm pretty sure England has overtaken The Netherlands in terms of population density.

Wow. You didn't even wait to jump into Godwin's Law did you?

Did anyone see Farage on TV last night stoutly denying that he'd ever scaremongered about floods of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants? Right after several clips of him, er, massively scaremongering about Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants. He clearly has so little respect for the electorate that he feels we're too stupid to notice.

Ah was that the influx of thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians that didn't actually come to the UK Icimoi

IMO parties like UKIP are going to continue to gain support until we face up to the fact that many people feel large scale immigration has not been of benefit to them. Namely the unskilled and low skilled workers who have seen direct competition for their jobs. Wages are kept low and it is harder to access adequate housing.

There is a hardcore of lifestyle claimants but the majority of people want to work and build a better life for themselves. A large number of low skilled workers feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have been negatively affected by immigration. Simply shouting this group down as racists and bigots is not going to help the situation, it will only breed resentment and disaffection. People need to be listened to and their situation understood.

I do think we have a welfare problem in the UK and it is mainly due to the inability of the benefit system to respond quickly to change. Got an offer for a weeks work, fantastic, it could turn into more but it could not and if it does turn out to be only short term it can take weeks to get benefit claims back in place. Then there is the awful zero hours contracts or other jobs for low numbers of hours, take on some overtime and mess up your benefits for weeks. It is not laziness that stops many British people from taking these jobs but the very real possibility that you could end up with no money to feed your children, the threat of losing your home if the rent does not get paid whilst your application creeks through the system. Look at Agirlcalledjack, what threw her into a tailspin was trying to get off benefits and into work.

Many British workers are then judged negatively against migrant workers, people will state they prefer to employ Eastern Europeans as they work harder. Ignoring the fact that only the motivated hard workers are the ones who made the decision to come and that many British workers are making a sound economic decision in the short term. Complain about the situation and you're a racist bigot, get told why don't you get off your arse and do the same, precisely where people can find unskilled work abroad that pays significantly more then the UK is unclear. This makes a fertile breeding ground for resentment and racism to flourish.

Many are moving to Far right parties because they feel that they are the only ones who are listening to them. Shouting racism and bigotry whilst not listening to people just pushes them further into their clutches. We need to understand how people have been affected and why they feel how they do, we need to listen to them and address their concerns. We need to sort out the ridiculous benefits system that keeps people trapped, we need to give people hope that they can build a better life with adequate homes and access to services. I fear it'll never happen though, we'll just call them Nazis and pat ourselves on the back until we are all screwed.

In SW London the hospitals are actually buckling under the weight of healthcare tourism. There is a drive within the service to create an easy and enforceable way of billing people who aren't entitled to care but this is being met by some opposition.

I do feel that tax payers are being fleeced by health tourists. It's really not why i pay my tax bill twice a year.

I very much agree with Trevor.

Well said Trevor.
I do think that this election has brought things into the open a lot more, and the people that make decisions will listen to the arguments properly now.
tbh, it is way past the time when this should have happened.

Hmm, I'm not so sure about the foreign worker issue Trevor. A recent conversation in the office touched on this. There are several people who are having building work done at the moment, in various places around London. To a person they cannot get a British builder/electrician/plumber to turn up or, when they do, to do a job that does not require redoing. It's anecdotal but I was amazed at how consistent the problems are. A wait of 9 months for a builder is not uncommon. To a person they are all wishing they did not go with British firms because the ones run by immigrants are reliable, turn up when they say they are going to, do the job to the standard you would hope for and keep working till the job is done. Being nice middle class socially aware lefties they made a point of employing local firms, yet he local firms consistently let them down. This isn't restricted to one area, but spreads across a region from West London to Brighton and Cambridge.

I know anecdote does not equal data but I have several neighbours and friends who work in the building trade and, apart from one who is highly specialised (and, to think of it an immigrant) they all have the worst work ethic I've ever encountered. They routinely knock off early, it's not unusual to find them in the pub at 3pm or drop one job in favour of another that pays cash in hand.

Your point about the bureaucracy and glacial slowness of the benefits system is, however, spot on.

I'm also sceptical about the Health Tourism argument. DH worked in the NHS and would occasionally make my hair stand on end by quoting the amount of money charged to foreign users of the NHS.

• Right after several clips of him, er, massively scaremongering about Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants. He clearly has so little respect for the electorate that he feels we're too stupid to notice

I saw those new bullitins , however one cant blame anyone for being concerned seeing as we were told by labour a few thousand poles would come over every year and so many came, the face of many towns has changed.

If Labour had made different descions way back when...NONE of this would be an issue now and I lay blame for UKIP< immigration and everything else at Labours door.

I actually felt sick watching Ed Milliband on the Labour broadcast last night, in an NHS hospital.

Also in the news articles themselves they said they would be looking at figs over a 5 year period?

Well said Trevor - a brilliant post.

I'm also sceptical about the Health Tourism argument

Really even after panorama did mass uncover of how the NHS has no departments to even chase up foreign nationals, GPS selling numbers to get people onto waiting lists for surgery? its big business and was alll documented.

My wife was a victim of this and it affected us and many other families directly.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/11/labour-tesco-next-foreign-workers

Loads of people in the Uk supported the Nazis in the years before the war- including the Royal Family.

Slug I am referring to unskilled and low skilled workers, where your examples are skilled trades that we have had a skills shortage in for some time, that is a different kettle of fish. It also highlights how we have been letting our young people down due to lack of training and apprenticeships in the shortage skills. My boyfriend 20 years ago was desperate for an apprenticeship and simply couldn't get one.

A lot of people really struggled to find unskilled work in my town but it seems like the majority of shops are staffed by people with non-British accents. I can completely understand why people in that position feel like mass immigration has not been of benefit to them. Housing here has gotten stupid too, it is over priced and in poor condition but complain and you'll get evicted. We also have graduate unemployment on the rise. If they complain then they are racists, lazy and should get off their arses and go abroad. I feel like this is a huge driver behind disaffecting the young and the rise of the far right and the longer we ignore it the worse it will be.

BTW all my grandparents came to the UK as economic migrants. I do not support parties like UKIP, or any of them at the moment actually. I also don't blame the people that have immigrated, If I was in their position I would have been over here in a heartbeat!

Trevor. I know about the problems with apprenticeships. I taught in FE where the struggle to get apprenticeships is well known. The Govt insists (rightly in my opinion) that students on apprenticeships also gain a level 2 qualification in English and maths (and sometime IT) so it was a core part of our business providing that part of the apprentice training. However, even at that stage you could look at a class list and accurately predict which students would bother to turn up or do any work and those that wouldn't. It was just so frustrating. I worked in a high immigration area. Students who were from first or second immigrant families would knuckle down, whatever their capabilities, and do their best. Once they got beyond the immediate memory of immigration and were more 'mainstream British' it was a rare student who put any work in. The culture of hard work seems to have disappeared. It was so frustrating to see bright, intelligent and capable boys do the bare minimum and be constantly outshone by frequently less capable lads who often struggled with English. It was very, very difficult to get them to see that it was their own actions that were causing their poor outcomes. They preferred to blame it on the "it's easier for them there's all the extra support for the ESOL students" meme.

It's the same sense of entitlement that I noticed when doing an IT degree. The men in the class would always complain that the women's marks were the result of PC measures/sleeping with the lecturers/university policy, rather than admit they were competing against hard working women who were prepared to put in the hours and the effort.

UKIP tap into this sense of entitlement. 'It's not our fault, they come in here and take all our jobs'. Without once stopping to examine just what part their own behaviour pays in that equation. When I first arrived in the UK I worked several low paid, unskilled jobs. I got them because I was prepared to get up early and present myself at the factory door at 6am consistently and work overtime if they offered it. My brother tells the same tale. After abandoning a PhD he has unexpectedly found himself working as a factory foreman after only 3 months on the job. Not because he has any skills in that area but because he is the only worker, along with some Polish men, who turns up every day, on time and works all the way through. The English workers last about 2 weeks before they give up and leave. Since he has no intention of making this into a career, he gives English lessons to his workmates, who make the effort to put in a few extra hours after work to gain the skill that will let them take over his job when he leaves.

And just in case you are wondering, I'm everything UKIP hates. I'm female, educated, leftie and an immigrant. I despair when I look at the way UKIP is pandering to prejudice. It's becoming more and more difficult for people like me in the UK lately. I'm not obviously foreign, until I open my mouth that is, and it's amazing what horrible things people feel it's acceptable to say to people like me. Things that, a few years ago, I would rarely have heard.

A pox on them all.

YANBU. UKIP and similar tend to be very careful exactly what they say in public. How it's interpreted and enacted in private is the really worrying part. Rosen makes a very intelligent observation.

health tourism

and more

and yet another UKIP candidate

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9582272/Health-tourism-GP-surgeries-selling-black-market-access-to-NHS.html

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19789397

The Minister had no explanation of why recent guidance has said GPs should offer free registration to anyone who asks, and no answer to hospitals who rely on the fact of GP registration to act as a passport for hospital treatment to which the people are not entitled