To think that most people voted to leave the EU to stop freedom of movement?

[Moomin8]

The proposed new rules the government have supposedly set out that are designed to keep out 'low skilled' workers seem to me like social cleansing. Most recently , when people moan about 'immigrants' they are always talking about people from Eastern Europe in my experience.

What really annoys me is that almost all leaver voters deny repeatedly that their vote had anything to do with the fact they wanted freedom of movement stopped.

Sorry if this has been done to death. But why won't people just be honest?

Ragged
The net population losses in the 70's and 80's were even made into a frankly dire TV series

fieldofflame I can see why people with choices would leave, even though their jobs and futures are not under threat. It’s surely about Brexit as an issue of ‘culture and identity’. Just as some people are ideologically enthused by what Brexit stands for, others could just as easily find it grubby, demoralising and not at all the sort of country where they imagined building a future together, so you seize the chance to leave it all behind. Lots of people are furious about it.

That's living alright😊?

Without the extra people we would not have needed the extra infrastructure.
That is a ridiculous argument. We have an ageing population. We need more people, increased infrastructure, social care and more taxpayers to pay for it all, especially the growing pensions bill. We already have about the worst state pension in the developed world.

Indeed.

If you're concerned about failing infrastructure, then you should be desperate for even more of the people who are net contributors, i.e., the people who actually provide the financial means to fix our infrastructure - immigrants.

The reason for failing infrastructure isn't over-population or immigration, it's that successive governments simply haven't spent enough on it to maintain an adequate level of provision, preferring instead to fritter away money on vanity projects, unusable nuclear deterrents, propping up collapsing de-regulated industries etc etc

Cognitive dissonance? Aye, on the part of the people who will not accept their own electoral choices have wrecked public sector provision, and are gullible enough to buy the line that it's all the fault of Johnny Foreigner instead.

When Brexit inevitably utterly screws the UK economy, the Brexiteers will undoubtedly be blaming 'Remoaners' or some such.

One reason for the failing infrastructure in the north is that too much was spent in London. 18bn for cross rail.
HS2 was initially to Birmingham. I wouldn't call that the north, personally, living 200 miles north of there.

One of the reasons for the failing infrastructure is a lack of investment in the ageing facilities we have. Funding vanity projects such as the garden bridge (only £200 million, but still) instead of hospitals, schools and potholes.

County Council budgets reduced to a point where they cannot maintain local infrastructure.
Greater demand but no increase n capacity. Relatively new or refurbished hospitals built with emergency departments that were too small for the demand at the time,
Far fewer hospital beds per capita than any other European or G20 country.

HS2 was initially to Birmingham. I wouldn't call that the north, personally, living 200 miles north of there.

HS2 isn't really to benefit the North anyway. It's to further strengthen the centrality of London. Basically to ensure all the important stuff remains in London because you've made it easier to get there, rather than encouraging some of the important stuff to be done elsewhere. (iyswim, I've worded that very badly!)

What about the environment? Surely more people coming into the country when we’re only an island is not the best for the environment? What about diseases spreading with the movement of people, isn’t that an extra health risk? How many people can the UK manage, another 5 million, 10 million, 60 million? What about as the climate change, we have more flooded areas, where are we going build home for everyone?

So many threads on here about only having none or max 2 children because of the environment but we should encourage migration to the UK? How is that going to work?

Migration will undoubtedly increase due to climate change as land is submerged by rising sea levels and areas becone unhabitable. Some major cities in Oz for example are almost in constant drought. So there will be najor population movements at some point.
Equally transporting more goods from distant places ie meat from the US/brazil is hardly lowering our carbon footprint.

What about the environment? Surely more people coming into the country when we’re only an island is not the best for the environment? What about diseases spreading with the movement of people, isn’t that an extra health risk?
So many threads on here about only having none or max 2 children because of the environment but we should encourage migration to the UK? How is that going to work?

The environment doesn't just happen in the UK. It's kind of a global thing. More people coming to the UK might mean increasing urban sprawl but in terms of climate change it's unlikely to make much difference. The problem is more to do with reproduction - continuing increases in the global population - rather than migration which is the same number of people on the planet just living in different areas. Obviously the argument is a little more nuanced than that but it's the general gist.

As for spreading diseases, which creates the greater risk?: People moving once to live permanently in another country, or people moving lots of times back and forth to go on holiday or for business purposes? Your argument doesn't make any sense unless you think closing all the borders to everyone (migrant and UK national alike) and everything is a good idea.

So how many is to many for the population of the UK 5, 10, 60 million? You can’t control world population by only controlling birth control from our small island, there is only 65 million in the UK, nearly 8 billion world wide, us not having children here, won’t make a blind a bit of difference to world population but large migration to the UK will make a big difference to our everyday environment, we will end up with a concrete island without any green spaces.

Well with the Coronavirus spreading each country might start to lock down and there might be a ban on travel.

we will end up with a concrete island without any green spaces.
6% done, another 94% to go

6% done, another 94% to go
What a pointless statistic. There are significant areas that cannot be built upon. There are further areas that really shouldn't. We need places to grow food.

Even at 50% we'd be royally fucked.

Population Density, Aug 2019:

statisticstimes.com/demographics/countries-by-population-density.php

Malta: 9th
Channel Islands: 13th
Netherlands: 21st
Israel: 32nd
Belgium: 34th
------
UK: 51st

The Daily Express, the Mail and the Telegraph won't tell you that, though. The 'overcrowded island' bollocks is more xenophobe-friendly.

Actually we are 21st

www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/

But most of the population is in England.

@Mordred Like the previous statistic though, that's a pointless and misleading statistic. France, for example, is 97th, yet Paris is in the top ten most densely populated cities in the World.
There are parts of the UK where no-one could live.
By any measurement, whether you are for or against, the UK has experienced a spectacular level of immigration since the early 1990s.

"By any measurement, whether you are for or against, the UK has experienced a spectacular level of immigration since the early 1990s."

Looking at the stats linked by @Gin96, we were 15th in 1990 (1.07% of the planet's population) and 21st (0.87% of the planet's population) now. It's been a steady decline so it seems

Mind you, there are lies, damned lies and statistics!

@Gin96 and @Mordred
Two different measures though - so both 21st (by population) and 51st by density of population are correct.
And this is how facts get turned into scaremongery..... by not actually paying attention to the detail, just grabbing the headline that supports your agenda.

YABU OP this is a very simplistic view of the reasons people had for voting

@mordred - you have just quoted more irrelevant statistics. In a country of our size, an inward migration level per annum of the size of an existing major town or city cannot occur without it having some effects.

As for the contention that infrastructure strains are caused by lack of planning and investment - how can a Council plan for the arrival of a figure of between zero and millions? When free movement was expanded the Guardian and others took the piss out of the Daily Heil and others who warned that hundreds of thousands of people would come here from Eastern Europe - they ran stories asking where the influx was. Then they went quiet as the numbers increased, a lot.

ONS

hinge
Take that data set back a few decades ...
show the significant net emigration in the 70's
show the MASSIVE immigration in the late 40's and 50's
context is everything