Atenco, immigration is absolutely not the sole reason for pressure on the NHS and on other resources. We have a steadily growing birth rate, an ageing population and large numbers of migration.
I do, in fact, feel people should restrict their family size due to the environmental impact but recognise you cannot force people to do so, and i hazard a guess euthanasia will become legal in the next two decades if not before, but the fact is that it is not now. In any case, migration is a bigger cause of the surge than both those two factors put together, or did in 2013/14 at any rate - 259,700 in migration compared to 226,200 from natural growth. In other words, to summarise, we cannot control the population by restricting family size or by bumping people off so migration is the only thing we can control.
Bandying 'racist' about actually perpetuates racism. Why? Because when you know you are not racist (as I do) but have a concern and feel you cannot express that concern because an assumption is jumped to, you become frustrated. There's a 'hanged for a sheep as well as for a lamb' element to it, but more than that: when values are driven underground they generally become more extreme through ignorance - and why ignorant - because questions can't be asked without cries of 'racist.'
I'm actually disappointed I'm making these posts, as I thought Mumsnet and other factors had long since realised this.