panorama programme 23/7/7

[cali]

society.guardian.co.uk/children/story/0,,2123344,00.html
Been a member of mumsnet for ages but have never started a thread so hope this works!
Have just watched panorama and remembered seeing this article, realise that other factors are mentioned but was just interested in other mumsnetters views on being potentially being asked to only have 2 children to slow down population rise in UK?

I'm confused I thought there weren't enough children being born

Anyway I've got 6 so i think the idea's rubbish

Why is it okay to ask us to have fewer children, but utterly taboo to suggest we need to reduce life expectancies to cope with over population?

agree with both of you, wasn't that long ago that gov were concerned about an aging population! Instead of asking us to restrict our family size, maybe a think tank should be set up to accurately monitor numbers of people arriving in the UK. At the mo have a DD age 2, 4 weeks to go until no 2 arrives and thinking about a third, well DH is if we have another DD!!

I think its quite a reasonable thing to ask or encourage people to only have two kids. This island is becoming pretty crowded and the idea of the fact that we are reaching the earths carrying capacity is frightning. However I do think we should find a way of preventing unwanted pregnancies first - and definatley not force people to only have two kids.

i think the issue about overcrowding versus not enough babies being born is that it is difficult to predict how long some people (coming into Britain) will stay in the country...paying taxes and putting cash in the State pot. Also, the degree to which people work legally. I don't think the Government has a clue about precise figures (Panorama made that point) and therefore it is in a total mess assessing budgets/services.

re having kids; if it's a cultural/religious thing to have large families, the Gov isn't going to get very far asking people to have two.

What about comment in article that most of the 300,00 rise in population per year is due to immigration and that is only those arriving legally. The panorama prog last night highlighted that there are many others arriving that the gov just doesn't want to know about.
Once they have sorted this out, then they can start really understanding the true level of population in the UK.

Last night they visited a 3 bed house that had approx 10 people living in it and interviewed a woman who lived next door to a house that had 26 adults living there. Not exactly the same as someone having 3 or 4 kids?

How about restricting entry into this country raher than saying we should have fewer children. Look what a mess they've made of it all in china.

I agree with Kittywits

Should def do what Australia do and have a points system for entry.
Work in the NHS and quite often come across members of extended family who come over for 6-7 months legally, so long enough to register with Gp's and then qualify for treatment-espec true for maternity services which is the area I work in.
Not exactly the issues raised in either panorama or article but another example of how more strain is put on already overstretched resources.