To think England is too crowded

[toadworthy]

In my town on the South coast it really is chaos and getting worse all the time. Roads are a nightmare. There are never enough school places despite doubling the entry in all primaries. Soaring rents. Building sites all over.

AIBU to mind?
What's it like where you are?

Building on the green bits - how very geldof, from people who think food comes from waitrose. We have a sketchy supply as it is.

We need higher taxes, incentives to renovate not build , no development without infrastructure , better public transport ( not hs2 but usable stuff) and so on. Decades of poor planning have caused this.

Chardonnay that is a grim thought. There must be tumbleweed blowing around in poor old Poland and I bet it's beautiful there.

Exit, you can Google the audio for Hiraeth.

Goodnight.

Buddleya's your friend. Guerrilla gardening with Buddleya.

Bloody thing grows everywhere like billyo.

Probably parts of it are. Usually these conversations really mean overcrowded with the 'wrong sort' though and most of us know where that leads, our families having been the target of that derision at some point or other. If they hadn't killed off so many of us in so many wars and impoverished a huge swathe of us in the process (leaving some of us paranoid and fearful of them doing it again) maybe their population would not have collapsed underneath them People, like animals, stop breeding under great stress.

Mim "Usually these conversations really mean overcrowded with the 'wrong sort' though "

Not to me they don't. Too many people is just too many people.

Who are 'they'?

I don't think it's the "wrong sort", it's too many people of all sorts, that's all.

I'm confused about this overcrowded Wales several posters mention. I live on the West Wales coast but work almost 50 miles inland (a drive I can do in an hour and 10 despite it all being windy roads). My daughter lives in Cardiff. This means I regularly drive around the bottom half of Wales. It doesn't appear crowded to me - little traffic, plenty of green. DD has no difficulty finding a place to rent, and purchase prices are reasonable, even if you don't factor in it being a capital city.

But no one wants to live in Wales.

I suppose people have different ideas of what crowded is.

Ive often thought, after friends have announced their third pregnancy, that they're being rather selfish.

Agree with write

there arent any immigrants here, its the least multicultural place on the planet

But no, i cant say its crowded because someone will translate that as being a racist comment

Fucking annoying

It feels like there are some deniers on this thread, who simply can't see/refuse to
believe there are areas of the U.K. which are dreadfully overcrowded.
And then use this argument to push the lefty argument that those who are pointing out the uncomfortable truth, are immigrant bashers.

We are a small island. And some parts are drowning with too many people and not enough services. Simply 'building more homes' will never solve this problem.

In my city, we are lucky to have lots of green spaces but are finding school places severely over subscribed and services suffering due to increased numbers.

Calleigh, I'm glad to hear that. I sometimes think it's just me!

Scotland is not over crowded, there isn't a huge immigration problem. We still have problems with school places, doctors appointments, density places etc etc.

Ageing population + decades of under funding or wrongly targeted funding are the problem, and that's from Governments of all colours.

But sure, blame the immigrants. Getting rid of them is far more palatable than all the alternatives. Not that it will solve the problem.

Not overcrowded where I am (population density in this county 73/square kilometre). We have a major problem with NHS resources, but that's because we can't recruit. Part of the reason we struggle to recruit is that we are so boringly white: in case you hadn't noticed, there's a bigger proportion of NHS staff that are first generation immigrants than within the general population. The NHS is screwed without them. The hospital is the most multicultural place within an hour's drive of here.

No cool "Part of the reason we struggle to recruit is that we are so boringly white"

Im lost. Why would that mean you struggle to recruit?

Who wants to treat boring White people.

Ffs

Original, the problems are the same, but the causes can be different.
In Scotland it might be under-investing but at the same time the the South East the same problem can be caused by under-investment and overcrowding at the same time.
Just because your problem is caused by something doesn't mean someone else problem is caused by the same thing.

And note I'm not saying it's caused my overcrowding and mot migration only, because the SE has a big influx of people from within the UK.

got to go to bed nut still really puzzled by the " trouble recruiting" and "boringly white"

In case that poster comes back, I should probably save time and add:
I'm not white
My parents are first generation immigrants
I have first gen immigrant family working or did work in the NHS
For a long time we were the only non white family in the immediate local area

I still cannot see why "boringly white" would cause recruitment issues and I think it's bizarre to describe people that way. and what is boring about it? Humans in general, yes there are squill ions of us and it is all frightfully boring hence we work and post on MN and eventually die. But "boringly (insert race here)" seems a very odd way to describe anyone. I don't find groupings by skin colour to be any more or less boring than others.

I'm white.
Boring I'm not.

Apologies if it's been mentioned, but the population density on Wikipedia uses population data from 2010 (62 million) I believe the population is around 65 million now, so the table is out of date.

Britain is 10% urbanised. Not at all full. Are towns and cities overcrowded? Sure, some of them, but not because there are too many people - just because we turned huge swathes of the countryside into farming fields and now insist that they're protected even if not needed for farming. I'm all for preserving countryside but leaving 90% of the country untouched while people sleep on the street because there aren't enough houses demonstrates terrible priorities!

^It feels like there are some deniers on this thread, who simply can't see/refuse to
believe there are areas of the U.K. which are dreadfully overcrowded.^

Isn't a large part of the issue (as demonstrated by this thread) that 'dreadfully overcrowded' is an incredibly subjective thing?

I think I get what nocool meant - that the NHS relies on immigrants and the children of recent immigrants, many of whom are BME. Communities that have an above average white (and in particular white British) population are less likely to have members of that community already living there and less likely to attract BME applicants who aren't already living there.

The question of why the NHS is so reliant on immigrants in particular is another question altogether, with quite a complex answer I think - but lack of investment in skills and training is certainly part of it.