www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/19/record-immigration-behind-a-third-of-rent-rises/
Record immigration behind a third of rent rises
2 million net migration in 3 years. You’d think it’s blindingly obvious that this would affect rents.
But I have little doubt we’ll be getting comments on here saying we just need to build more houses.
The government just needs to build a Birmingham every year bigot. Brownfield sites only.
I think one Birmingham is quite enough for a country to deal with.
Bradford would like a word, in Arabic of course
Urdu
You mean "Bradistan".
Can we just forget bradford exists?
Rubber dinghy rapids bro
Punjabi or Urdu, possibly Farsi
It's really not when you consider the number of GP surgeries, schools, universities, hospitals and all of the rest of the civil infrastructure that needs to be built and isn't being planned for when whole estates of Deanoboxes are being thrown up. In a lot of instances, these services aren't simply a case of 'if you build it they will come'.
Can we do 4 identical copies of Milton Keynes instead?
You will all be assimilated into The Grid, resistance is futile
Stacked up, one on top of the other please
It's Milton Keynes all the way down...
That would be a good idea. But remember it took 40 years for Milton Keynes to reach its intended size, and that was almost exactly as it was planned right from the start.
You can't just build 100,000 homes and expect people to suddenly come and live there. They need jobs, schools, doctors, dentists, leisure activities, a functioning local government etc. It is chicken and egg, and can only grow incrementally over many years.
Even then, Milton Keynes wasn't in the middle of nowhere. It was only about 30 min from London on a fast train, and it merged with two medium sized towns (Bletchley and Wolverton).
Despite what some say, I think it was a good development. But it isn't a quick fix.
Go for a walk around Milton Keynes this time of year and it's beautiful, seriously. Then head over to Luton, Northampton or Bedford and see what you think...
Totally agree. Milton Keynes is pretty decent and I've nothing against it.
Luton and Bedford are absolute shit holes and should be glassed with atomic weapons at the earliest opportunity.
Also stay away from my area. I need to be able to eat my avocados on toast while I write my next script for the next refugees welcome parade. I need the peace and quiet, council estates etc have plenty of room, already full of crime as it is no need to bring it near my home in the cotswolds.
Protect the Cotswolds at all costs!!
5 of them asap...
The population of U.K. in 2023 was 67,736,802, a 0.34% increase from 2022. The population of U.K. in 2022 was 67,508,936, a 0.34% increase from 2021.
Are these numbers wrong?
They wouldn't have to build a Birmingham severy year if the Thatcher government hadn't removed the legal enforced legislation that all Local authorities had to build housing according to population.
This meant housing demand was met at regular intervals sustained intervals. But she stopped that.
Just build a London worth of houses every two decades! Plenty of space, let's destroy the countryside, destroy villages and build dystopic Manhattans all over the country. Following this principle there's plenty of space left, we can take in 200m more! If Indonesia and Bangladesh can do it, why shouldn't we? The rest of the world is entitled to live in Britain; Nigerians, Indians, Chinese, and so on...come! Plenty of space available! There's nothing wrong with this world view at all! And remember, if you're against mass migration from all over the globe, then you're just like Hitler and Nazi Germany. Saying no to mass migration is the same as causing genocide!
I do not like muppets who parrot the "but our population density isnt as high as....." We can still fit more in, idiots
I mean its largely true. It would be pretty cheap for the UK to build a lot more housing if it built denser towns and cities. Our relatively low density towns and cities massively bloat infrastructure costs. Even without population growth we would still probably want to build denser.
If we all do this, where does all the food come from?
How do you reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions with more people?
Its time to get out of the spiral of more people = better, because thats not true
My point is not more people = better, my point is that denser urban areas = better.
we live in a system where endless growth is required just to stay afloat.
And the inevitable collapse, economically, socially, politically, environmentally, will spare no one. Money and power will.not spare them the consequences, but I don't think they care
yes infinite growth with finite resources is not going to work in the long run, but it's what we are going with for some reason.
I suspect you won’t like the answer but the majority of our farmland is pasture. Sure some of it might not be high quality, but a good deal of it could be converted to more productive crops.
People would just have to eat less animal protein and more plant protein.
Why though? Just to accommodate a rapidly increasing population?
Why can’t we slow down immigration to manageable levels, because immigration is generally a good thing, but not at the pace it has been 🤔
Exactly, and with all these doctors, teachers and engineers coming over the channel we won’t have a problem with providing services for these new, improved, denser cities
Yes let's destroy the environment on this tiny island.
Nymbys
Low IQ individuals, I can’t bare to listen to them.
We could expand into Ireland for more space.
That’s already happening apparently! https://news.sky.com/story/amp/rwanda-bill-causing-migrants-to-opt-for-ireland-deputy-pm-says-13123078
As an Irishman, I laughed, but also feck off!
Rightly so!! But kinda funny. Scotland build a wall!!
To be fair we could save a lot of space if we sent the Irish back to Ireland.
It’s worth considering that mass immigration seems to have been a global policy over the past few years along with hate crime bills and “build back better” agendas (green policies) and restriction of liberty to protest.
The U.K., Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia, NZ have all implemented the same policies including mass immigration. It doesn’t end there though, even Asian countries such as South Korea have implementing the same laws as have Japan and many others. South Korea is experiencing unprecedented immigration from Africa at the moment.
The question isn’t just why hAve the tories done this but why is there such consistency across the world on policy making these days. There is no way Labour would have been any different because it’s not just a national issue.
It’s almost as if national governments aren’t really in charge, isn’t it?
I saw an interesting interview with Liz Truss the other day. And I'm not about to take anything Liz Truss says as gospel (especially while she's trying to sell a book) but what she says about politicians and power was quite interesting.
She says she went into politics because she was frustrated that politicians never did the things they 'ought' to do. But then as an MP she realised that rank & file backbenchers had no real power, everything was decided by ministers. Then as a junior minister she found it hard to get initiatives through as they were blocked by senior ministers and so on until she found that even as Prime Minister anything she wanted to do could be effectively blocked by the extended civil service and quangos if it didn't align with their interests.
Nothing she wanted to do was blocked by the civil service, she just can't cope with the fact her financially-illiterate economic policies scared the financial markets so much that they strong armed her own party into getting rid of her.
But doesn't that prove the point made above, that governments are not really in charge to the extent we think they are
I preferred the bit she did about the cheese
It's probably not a good idea to take what she says as gospel
Liz Truss is a good example of why governments all do the same thing for entirely different reasons: she was just a mouth piece for a short sighted think tank
An old colleague of mine reckoned he shagged Liz Truss when they were at Merton college together. Apparently she was very well liked and a genuine kind person and also a "very passionate woman" to those who knew her that way. I think her parents were hard lefties but she joined the Lib Dems before moving to the tories.
So this is why we don’t get anywhere.. and it takes 10 years to do anything..
Neoliberalism.
This. Neoliberalism worked very well in the short term, so everyone jumped on the bandwagon, and now we are seeing the consequences and govs scrambling to either deal, or more often, distract from them. No conspiracy theories needed.
It's also easy to explain by simply stating that lots of politicians run in the same circles as big stakeholders I'm big corporations, and big "open borders" policies are really great for big corporations it just supplies a steady income of additional workers, while allowing wages to stagnate at the bottom.
European (I mean the continent) social policies are fundamentally incompatible with globalism because the latter strips the populace of bargaining power against big money.
Similar sets of incentives are repeated in all of these countries. In general a declining fertility rate and increasing life expectancy causes an increasing proportion of elderly in the population, so the tax base shrinks at the same time spending commitments increase.
Cutting pensions is unpopular, increasing taxes is unpopular, so one must find more taxpayers. Historically the fertility rate was high enough to provide more taxpayers every generation, but if it can't be raised then the answer is to import taxpayers.
Japan and South Korea both kept immigration low for a long time, but as the aging population problem became more and more acute they have both increased their net immigration.
Yes, I don’t doubt aging demographics as a reason for higher immigration. I do think it’s interesting that most western and lots of other “developed” countries tend to enact policy in unison these days, mass immigration being one of these areas.
For other examples we can look at “online safety” bills. Pretty much all of these countries and more enacted an online safety bill in 2023 or early 2024. Back in 2021/22 it was the same with the “build back better” collection of green policies although many nations ended up changing the name of the acts, possibly as it looked weird then all using the same phrase. Hi back a little bit further around 2017/18 and we had multiple counties bringing in “hate crime” laws at the same time.
Most recently, for 2024/5 we have all of these same nations enacting restrictions to protest in unison again.
It's because a lot of countries are built on needing a continual increase in workers to hold up pensions etc. Good thing as we all know immigrants never get old, so we're not at all compounding the problem and making it a future issue at all.
Build more houses to give to immigrants, not the thousands of natives on decade long waiting lists. And that's if you're somehow "vulnerable" enough to get on said waiting list in the first place.
48% of social housing in London is given to foreign born tenants.
That’s super obvious to anyone that lives there.
I wonder how much tax they paid…
Yes there’s a housing shortage and yes immigration isn’t helping. But the lack of council housing is government policy, not immigrants.
Since 1980 two million council houses have been sold under right to buy and not replaced. Now it’s estimated 40% of those have been sold off are rented out by private landlords.
But it seems we can’t stop voting for these policies .
Do the government not have a say on how many immigrants can come into our country? Seriously did that not cross your mind?
Where have I said that the government doesn’t?
They also had a say in not building homes. Funny how you cry about one but not the other.
How many MPs are landlords again?
Isn't most of that students and Ukrainians?
Famously - Ukrainians and students don’t need anywhere to live
Also a shit load of people from Hong Kong
so infuriating. like you said its blindingly obvious that accepting a million+ people a year would have a effect on housing.
for years now we have had politicians and tv pundits saying that it wouldnt effect housing and the people that say it will are racists.
so t ired of it. glad the " your racist" means nothing nowadays. common sense can be said again.
Culture wars right in time for election. Forgot under investment in building new houses, historic sell off of council houses to the private sector, and mega wealthy owning large swathes of the UK land and property. Nope, blame it on the immigrants!
2 million in the space of 3 years mate. I'm not one of those immigrants bad folk but that number is a fucking problem and you're wilfully ignorant if you think it's not.
Well for the other 2/3 of rent rises.
Exactly.. the goverment is literally stupid
Where does the figure of two million net migration in three years come from? Im not agreeing or disagreeing with anything, I just want to know what the figures are before forming an opinion
The article even says we are below building 300,000 houses, so yeah makes sense someone would point it out in the comments.
We need to build more houses.
In Africa
Same thing is happening in the US
And Canada by the looks of it.
Adding so many to the population is so blindingly obviously a reason for the housing crisis, but so many treat their worldview like it's a religion and won't accept this reality.
Immigration needs to be reduced massively, and there's no appetite in either the Tories or Labour to do anything about it other than pay lip service.
Who do we vote for then?
If i can, SDP as their immigration policy is a generational pause and maximum 20k refugees per year. If I can’t then I’m spoiling my ballot.
This is coming to a head all over Europe now and has to change soon. The problem is the nutters who bang on about Nazis and Fascists are acting as a midwife to those actual movements. A border is not a bad thing; selective visas are not a bad thing.
Societies cannot integrate the numbers we’re seeing and the question is integrate into what? There are parts of the country where you could move to and feel right at home if you’d come from Lahore albeit with worse weather. Same for other regions.
This. I am totally for sensibly managed immigration, such as a South African woman I know who met her French husband when he was working in SA and they want to build a life together in France. However if we are lacking skilled professionals then we should be training up and paying our own people properly and not poaching people from overseas. What happens to countries like Ghana, Nigeria the Phillipines when their brightest talent leaves? How are those countries ever going to pull themselves up when their young people are continually lured away?
This was the point a lot of people made in the late 90s and noughties - that it was essentially colonialism under another name.
It is, and that is why the rich are in favour of it.
It’s an incredible deal for the rich.
For starters, a cheap workforce who, on the whole, are tremendously grateful for the opportunity.
Secondly, they help drive down wages for native workers.
Thirdly, they arrive as adults and so need somewhere to live. Without deposits, they have to rent property. And what do the rich own a wildly disproportionate amount of?
That’s just the start. The Telegraph also had an article by a guy who profited from mass migration, calling for it to be curbed. He basically admitted to points one and two above and left me so angry I felt it in my eyeballs.
Which is partly why I subscribe to The Telegraph.
On the latest Times Rich List there was one foreign investor whose company had over 3000 properties in London alone! I also discovered that the vast majority of land in Scotland was actually owned by a Dane. A huge amount of our infrastructure is owned by foreign investors or British born but living in the Caymans so I just can't see how all that is of any benefit to us or the Country as a whole.
I look back and wonder when did the UK get put up for sale? and who are the estate agents? lol
I’ve recently looked in to the SDP and am really keen to support them in becoming a bigger, and better, party.
Economically centre-left (including renationalising key services), sensible on foreign policy, sensible on social issues and in favour of massively reducing immigration; it’s pretty much exactly what the country needs.
I feel like there are plenty of people who don’t want to see racism running rampant but likewise also think our current approach to immigration is madness. We need an SDP before we end up with some Farage-inspired nonsense.
SDP have a lot of questionable policies but they are policies I think I could live with and I think are quite good compromises. They are on all accounts quite a reasonable option.
I voted for them at the latest election but it was very disheartening looking at Amy Gallagher's mayoral manifesto and the first thing I see is "Stand Up To Woke". A lot of the content was fine but it's just such cringe presentation which I hope they can improve on for the General Election.
The reason why you can find so many places similar to Lahore is because after the war we moved entire villages and relocated them to the UK. It was never going to result in good integrations that way and it is a large part why we have many more isolated communities than the rest of Europe.
We don't. They get in on the basis of the actual turnout of people who vote. In many elections the real story is low voter turnout and if there was a proper democracy or representation then no one would be elected.
Turnout is not the problem with our democracy model, it's only a few % below the average of the last 100 years link
FPTP, lack of transparency, no serious consequences for corruption, our approach to choosing ministers are the bigger problems.
Reform
The population of U.K. in 2023 was 67,736,802, a 0.34% increase from 2022. The population of U.K. in 2022 was 67,508,936, a 0.34% increase from 2021.
Seems like we had roughly 230k extra in 2023 compared to 2021.
Where's this 2 million person increase we're seeing year on year?
Wouldn’t it be something if landlords didn’t increase rents to squeeze the most out of tenants though? Immigration or no immigration, they’ll do that anyway - don’t kid yourselves otherwise. The supply will still be kept lower than demand in order to keep prices high.
You're right landlords will always do that. Literally every business on the planet will raise prices to make the most possible money. Short of getting rid of capitalism entirely there's not much we can about this.
The situation we are in at the moment though is supply and demand. If you want prices to stabilise or even slow down rising you either need to increase supply or reduce demand.
We can either build a new Birmingham's worth of houses every year complete with infrastructure, hospitals, schools, shops ect or reduce immigration.
It's not actually possible to build like that every year and if we actually did it would leave us living in a country with no green spaces.
We need to reduce immigration. It's now the only option.
While it sounds like a lot, that's equivalent to increasing the housing supply by 1% a year or so. Adding 1 new house for ever 100. Which we are totally capable of doing if we wanted.
It's not just the housing. It's the infrastructure required to go alongside it. Doctors, dentists, roads, sewers, food, school's ect ect.
It's not realistic and even if it was the environmental impact would be catastrophic.
Tried to get a tradie lately? They charge small fortunes, if you can somehow magically get one to do a job within 6 months.
Increasing the housing supply by 1% a year is huge, though. It means you are doubling the housing stock of the whole country in 70 years, approximately. And you have to maintain the old houses as well, build additional infrastructure along with the new housing... That's just massive!
Yeah but lower than now.. my rent went up 50 every year for years then suddenly he wanted £900 extra.
I was super lucky as I was due to buy my place anyway..
If landlords didn’t increase prices to match demand you would have a worse housing shortage. There would be long waitlists for all those affordable apartments. Look at a city like Berlin, the rents on paper through the city are reasonable because of robust rent control, but as a result it’s very hard to find an apartment. You have hundreds of applicants within a day for any apartment that comes on the market that’s under rent control.
My landlords are absolutely amazing. But with the increased interest rates they too had to raise the rent.
Reality is that if I didn't pay then there is someone just waiting to pay instead.
When you look to sell something you ask yourself "how much can I get for this." Housing costs aren't going down until the supply of housing goes up.
I have friends who maintain with a completely straight face, to this day, that there is no link between immigration and increased pressure on public services and housing. They just have some sort of mental block which I find so bizarre.
They just have some sort of mental block which I find so bizarre.
The mental block is "saying that immigration causes problems means saying immigration is bad and the people that say immigration is bad are racists and I'm not a racist so I must deny that immigration causes problems"
“I dont want to think that because bad people also think that”
They sound a bit low IQ, no offence
Because they follow trendy left wing opinions like they're a religion.
During the Brexit War years (2016-19, not that long ago). I had someone in this very sub try and tell me that immigration actually lowers house prices.
And this sub agreed with them based on the votes that our respective comments earned.
It's quite remarkable how quickly that aspect of the Reddit hive-mind has changed.
Well we have a two party system where neither party will do anything about it because they almost all already own their own homes or are landlords themselves so the renter class can just suck it.
Don't expect any change.
Incredible that you blame Labour for the last 14 years of Tory destruction.
I don't blame Labour for the last 14yrs of Tory destruction. I've lived through multiple governments.
I watched house prices and rents *triple* under Jesus Christ superstar Blair - not to mention he introduced he introduced tuition fees that I'm still paying off 20 years later. Let's not even mention he never actually built meaningful number of council houses or ended Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme that many Labour MPs benefitted from but never ended - Angela Raynor even, but now she's benefitted from the system she wants to end it for everyone else because its such a despicable policy but only after she benefitted of course.
You're in for an *education* if you think Labour will be much in meaningfully way different to the Tory scum you hate so much.
I have my popcorn bag ready 6 months after the next Labour Government in place and we get the shit just getting shitter, the boats just keep on coming, and plenty of u turns on policy because *enter excuse - ie we just read that financial statements and we not cannot afford x/y/z*
You're in for a education if you think Labour are going to make any material change.
Modern Labour are shite but the Tories manage to outdo them at every opportunity.
Indeed. The number of Reddit accounts who act as though the only thing preventing every problem being trivially solved is specific Tory malice is not only large, but has been growing.
It's a sure-fire way of telling if the account belongs to someone too young to remember changes that happened 1997-2010.
The sheer disappointment that's going to befall these people after the next election is going to be off the scale. I'm concerned where these people are going to turn when the last layer of denial wears off in 2027 or so. They still won't turn to the Tories, but they'll turn to extreme far-left figures instead. (I was going to say they'd turn to the Labour equivalent of Liz Truss, but they already had that in the form of Jeremy Corbyn, so it'll probably be someone currently flying under-the-radar.)
Incredible that you ignore labour opening the floodgates without ever considering the impact.
Incredible that you ignore their response to concerned party members like "that awful bigoted women".
Doesn't help the Tories decided to give free status to Ukraine and Hong Kong adding 200k to average net figures. Good thing we stick our nose in everywhere as global policeman.
Even small towns are affected by having foreign legal and illegal migrants and students. I don't want to live in London!!
While I am all for helping the people those who are leaving Hong Kong due to the political oppression, people from there are flooding the the housing market with a disproportion about of money and raising house prices even further.
Bidding wars have broken out, he says, with properties sometimes going £30,000-£40,000 above the asking price.
It just means Hong Kongers aren’t your average boat people somewhere from Sudan who can’t pay for their own expenses. They don’t need your taxpayer money to buy a place.
Everywhere will be London soon enough. But think of the food!
Lol the food has arrived. I see amazing Turkish restaurants here but I'm more worried about housing
I'm very happy to accept people from Ukraine and HK. Those are not groups that are known to be problematic, and either really want to integrate or they are very clear that it's a temporary settlement (until war ends).
HK people are literally adding fuel to the fire of housing as they have far more spending power than your average brit and tend to be highly educated. HK views on equality differ are very different to ours as is their culture.
Also werent some Ukrainians shocked by how multicultural we are? Ukrainians were seen to be rather homophobic and racist when the war broke out and some had that attitude here to.
https://youtu.be/JRq0zKZ7jU4?si=pklPwyzmdUuvWaFa
they are very clear that it's a temporary settlement (until war ends).
(Well HKers dont count as they are staying permanently not temporarily.)
But isnt that the whole point of refugees? Of course its temporary. Some people have nothing to return to though?
If their families are killed, houses destroyed and villages blown to nothing. What are they planning to return to?
Imagine telling a Syrian refugee to go home when their home is still rubble and is void of any life or way to make a living.
They dont have the EU helping fund them or have western countries ready to supply and help them rebuild either.
Also their war might be ongoing for decades.
Those are not groups that are known to be problematic
They are problematic in their own right. They just dont get the same discrimination from people for obvious reasons.
Yup they don't protest asking for their own laws to be implemented, they aren't marching against lgbtq or getting involved in Palestine/Israel issues or attacking teachers for alleged blasphemy or expecting to be treat as different or victims etc. Most want to go home certainly the Ukrainians as they've friends and family who are still there as well as husbands for a lot of them. I doubt the Hong Kongers will ever be able to return though sadly
"Those ones are allowed because they aren't brown"
I've noticed these subs are now very quiet from the "adding 3 million immigrants in 2 years won't affect housing" tribe. They seem to realise it's not 2010 anymore and we actually see the outcome. Well done you people...you spoilt everything. Woketards!
Speaking as a 37-year-old who always had an issue with mass migration, I suspect it’s because the “But Britain was always a melting pot/we get new foods!/you’re a racist mate,” people are also now 37 and can’t afford a house.
Sick of the racist argument.. you don’t need to be a racist to see plain stupidity!
You can’t get a doctors appointment now..
It was rarely racist to begin with. A ton of people saw exactly where this was going and here we are.
It’s fucking Britain, not small town Alabama. Yet idiots with nothing going for them except a superiority complex somehow believed that we were all racists for going “Yeah, how are we gonna deal with all these people?”
You couldn’t under Blair. He left office in 2007. There was famously a woman on Question Time asking him about it and he was clueless.
This is not a new problem.
Yeah I think the problem has just gotten worse and worse and now it’s to breaking point. The goverment are so slow, they have just this year increased the rules to decrease the immigration.
4 days ago Scotland declared a “national housing emergency”.. it’s all a mess.
The melting pot one always made me laugh. We’re not America
Did you not read the article? It was one guy from Capital Economics saying it's due to Net Migration. Yet they failed to mention the rising cost of buy-to-let mortgages due to higher interest rates, which happened precisely during the same period.
It's not 2010 anymore
You spoilt everything, Woketards
It's not as if the economic Conservatives, the voice of reason, have been in power for the past 12 years or so. It's not as if they didn't have the power to change the law either? Tories mentioned it in their Brexit campaign that they'll stop unfettered European migration and open the borders to "much more skilled" talents from other countries and introduce an Australia style point based system and a Singapore style economy. Well guess what, real estate in Singapore fucking sucks. And they just needed an excuse to suppress wages without EU protectionist oversight. Funny how memory works now isn't it
Why would rising interest rates lead to more buy to let ?
I meant "the rising cost of buy-to-let mortgages", edited
Woketards!
So if the conservative government has been in power since 2010, and they listened to the woketards, as you put it, are you saying the conservatives are not really conservatives but closet woketards?? Gasp!
Well done on realising you're in an echo chamber, try not to let it make you an extremist.
There's been one party in charge since 2010 and they've been allowing all these immigrants in. Blame them, not your neighbour
Amazing how the same political party can have been in charge for 14 years but it's still the imaginary wokies controlling the country
Don't forget the country being in the state it's in because Labour something something "there's no money left!" something something "Gordon Brown sold all the gold!" something something "Blair opened the borders and began tuition fees!" etc etc.
14 years is a long time to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and the Tories have been doing it every day since 2010.
No one ever said 3 million won’t change anything. Voting brexit as if that would change immigration policy is the first mistake.
You can say it’s woke all you like when it’s really right wing governments that allow immigration, and have been at this level for a decade
difficult to take an opinion seriously when someone uses the phrase "woketards"
Yeah, it’s the people having opinions on Reddit that did all this, not the government in charge of literally everything you’re complaining about… but you’ll vote them in anyway, I suppose, because they’re so ‘anti-woke’.
You’re not allowed to say it though otherwise you’re a far-right racist.
I honestly despair.
There’s a massive difference between voicing legitimate concerns about population rises due to migration, and our ability to provide enough housing and services, vs the xenophobic hate that gets spewed towards boat crossings.
There is clearly a mismatch between what the nation can accommodate structurally, and the rate at which it is growing.
Sensible policy regarding housing levels, funding of key services like schools and healthcare, maintaining infrastructure, and coordinating immigration levels are all vital to tackling this.
Sadly we have a government currently who don’t want to increase supply because they’re all landlords and get the landlord vote, are ideologically bent on reducing government services through cuts, and have no incentive to actually deal with immigration as it’s a vital cause of economic growth and a great machine for developing political capital.
The boat crossings needed to stop yesterday.
Xenophobic means a hatred of foreigners.
Foreigners are good. But show us the respect of coming through our borders and ports and customs and not trying to hide. That needs to stop. And bring spending money for your holiday and travel insurance too.
I agree the boat crossings need to stop, it is wrong that people wishing to claim asylum in the UK have to risk their lives to do so.
There are no safe and legal routes for asylum seekers (except special provisions for Ukr, HK and some Afg). They were closed, intentionally to make all attempts to claim asylum here ‘illegal’ and consequently unsafe.
A sensible solution would be to allow people to make a claim and be processed abroad, either through consulates, or specific centres in France. This would mean anybody coming by any illegal means could be outright rejected, as legitimate claims could be approved and given safe passage. The latter proposal was dismissed by the government.
I’m not sure what your last few sentences are about? Tourism is not the same as immigration or asylum claiming.
A sensible solution would be to allow people to make a claim and be processed abroad, either through consulates, or specific centres in France
An actually sensible solution would be for them to claim asylum in Europe, where they already are, safely.
You're a far-right racist unless you are willing to acknowledge that mass migration will continue as long as neoliberal economics does, not just because the government is too woke or something
Im not surprised the Torygraph is continuing to weaponize immigrants.
They are "in this together" after all.
Maybe rental controls would help as well? The UK used to have strong rental control until the 80s. In fact we had it longer than without.
Any guesses on who repealed that law?
See, you’re falling into a 27-year-old trap here (maybe even older) which ironically enough was sprung by the government via the media.
Immigration is not the same as immigrants. Immigrants are people. Good, bad, black, white, hard working, lazy, geniuses, idiots and everything in between. Human beings, in short.
Immigration is, among other things, government policy. It’s also a statistic, a process and so on. Not human beings, but their relocation.
What the government did, very nefariously and with the help of the media, was conflate legitimate concerns about immigration with the racists and xenophobes who did hate immigrants.
Unfortunately, a lot of people fell into that trap and instantly labelled anyone with legitimate concerns “Racist,” thus shutting down the debate. A debate that, as we’re seeing now and have been for a while, really needed to happen.
The Telegraph isn’t weaponising immigrants and hasn’t for years, if it ever did. The weaponising of immigrants was done by those on the purported “Left” (although I don’t like using that term to refer to them) and the harder right publications. And the government, landlord class and business barons who could now employ their workforce for pennies on the pound.
Plenty of publications were anti-mass immigration. Plenty of people too. My best mate’s Australian, the other’s Swedish. I’m anti-mass immigration and have been since I could think for myself.
Alas, the crows are coming home to roost and everyone’s absolutely fucked. Except all the people who got wildly rich off this mess. But they’ve all kept their wealth in Britain and paid their fair share, right?
No, you’re right, adding about 2m more people in 3 years does fuck all to demand.
Is mandating rent prices treating the symptom or the cause?
Never would have guessed.
Once again that thing that people keep saying doesn't happen, has happened.
Just waiting for the "Okay it IS happening BUT it is a good thing".
BUT it is a good thing"
Yep the new goal post is that UK is barely afloat because of immigration, therefore more immigration more good economy!
Step one - nothing is going to happen.
Step two - maybe something will happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Step three - maybe we should do something, but there's nothing we can do.
Step four - we could have done something, but it's too late now.
Where I live people from Hong Kong massively inflated house prices with their bullying house buying tactics.
I got called racists for that... but facts are facts...
What kind of tactics? Gazumping?
Lotta people in here really close to realizing that a political class of landlords and property owners have little interest in building homes or reducing immigration, then turning around and blaming immigrants or 'woke' for problems neither group can solve.
Well the “woke” group could help by ceasing to stop pretending that immigration has no bearing on the housing market.
That’s something that maybe would go towards helping the situation.
Really? You surprise me. Unlimited immigration with no infrastructure or housing being built. Who could have guessed it would have this impact?
Exactly, it’s such a mystery. No one on gods green earth could see it coming.
I wonder why the Torygraph didn’t lead with “the vast majority rent inflation is not caused by immigrants.” 🤔
They spend most of the time talking about the other 2/3rds. There's an article every week explaining how tax rises have led to landlords exiting the market. They spend much more time talking about than anything else.
It's a mystery, I guess we'll never know.
You’d think this is obvious to most people. But so many people choose to be blind to it.
The telegraph says it's not the incompetent government, property prices and cost of living - it's the immigrants
Its always fascinating how many of these articles trace back to the policy exchange think tank.
This subreddit is dead as far as I am concerned. Everyone having a meltdown over the figures yet not even considering a large portion of them are international students who leave after their course.
Key point - who is capital economics? Run by Roger Bootle, ex Tory "independent" advisor.
How is this crap even being posted here?
In the case of students who go home post study, they are then just replaced by new students. So this doesn't help much! It's an unending conveyor belt of people needing housing.
Another large portion of this immense overall number are dependents - people who aren't even students. Or entire families brought over for one care worker.
Everyone having a meltdown over the figures yet not even considering a large portion of them are international students who leave after their course.
Once again, I'm asking everyone to understand what net means in the phrase "net migration".
Imagine having a government that would actually fix it. That's a dream right there. Only a dream...
Yep. “We’ll stop the boats” is too good of a campaign pledge for either of the main parties to actually do it.
Not enough houses then we invite more people to come and live here.
Must be those pesky landlords.at the root of all this. Damn you Ethel and Jim
And this surprises whom exactly?
Immigration can bring many positive things but this country, especially the left tbh (stop foaming at thr mouth I'm coming to the right in a moment) have used their hatred of rhe right to cover up and hide the negatives with calls of racism etc.
The right have used immigration as a tool to secure.power.
Both sides love mass immigration cause we are economically stagnant without more people
More people more tax more economic drill increased fertility iniiiiit
But how is the rent actually afforded by people who have no fixed address or decent jobs ?
Need to stop having immigrants for the sake of the green belt! Less is more the fewer people you have the more safe, secure and have more room for housing. The ridiculous excuse that it boosts GDP which is meaningless to everyone. It’s a trick to replace the culture with tacky architecture and hateful individuals who talk trash about the British day and night. My beloved country will be unrecognisable and a terrible toxic place to live.
There is a difference between illegal and skilled immigration. One is a freeloader class and one is a taxpayer class.
Which one should stay and which one should be kicked out?
And also to blame for hospital waiting lists, gp appointments, school places, etc etc. Ultimately the tories are to blame for allowing them in. Someone has got to deliver that pizza for the lazy bastards!
The UK population is increasing by ~200,000 per year, the idea we can't build houses to keep up with this is nonsense. We'd need go build ~84,000 houses to keep up with this even ignoring any flats or apartments that get built
The number of empty houses in the UK is also increasing year on year
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14d
Well, Brexit means Brexit, isn’t it? Perhaps now Brexiteers can enlighten us on what THEY are going to do about a situation created by them.
I mean sure but then that implies the immigrants can afford higher rents than uk people?
I'm sure it has nothing to do with extremely low levels of housing being built, let alone affordable housing. Wonder who pays the bills at the Telegraph? I'm sure it's not a landlord... /s
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