Wednesday 22 August 2007

Time to leave after all?

I posted a poll a whole ago about whether it was time to leave the UK. The vast majority of you voted yes. Today I see that your thoughts are heavily backed by the latest ONS population figures.

385,000 people left for the long term in 2006. That is 0.7% of the population in a single year. In addition to this, 549,000 people migrated to the UK, or 1% of the 60.6 million population.

So if you look at the net change, 900,000 people were involved in major population movement, or 1.5%.

My hypothesis is that many of those leaving are white, retired or near retirement. Most of those arriving are from Africa or Eastern Europe.

The speed of this change is backed up by my experiences of living and working in London, where it is sometimes rare to meet a white native in a whole day. This brings up so many issues about cultural change and potential capital flight; yet I see no political commentary on it because it is 'red' issue. The left think migration is good becuase it means a net gain of poorer people in need of a nanny state, the right are scared to mention it in case they get accused of racism.

What do you all think? Am I getting my knickers in a twist over nothing?

13 comments:

Crushed said...

Possibly. I don't always notice.

I was at a meeting once, where at the end one of the girls came up to me and asked if I felt uncomfortable being the only white guy in the room.

I hadn't noticed- everyone else was asian.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

No, not over nothing. I had always championed immigration because I was brought up to treat everyone the same and later I taught many asylum seekers and had heard something of their stories. But if you lived in the area of Cardiff where I did, people felt that they had had no say in it, that they were being "taken over" - for example, pubs would close because there was so much less custom, for obvious reasons and you could only find a Halal butcher. I used to dream of a country in which we could all live harmoniously side by side, where the halal butcher could co-exist with a "traditional British" one in the same street, but it was not to be. Then "men only" coffee shops sprang up and people resented it. I still feel enormous sympathy for those who flee terrible regimes and then encounter racism in Britain but I can understand the fears of the indigenous population too. No one, they feel, listens to them, and you can guess into whose arms that drives some of them.

CityUnslicker said...

Crushed - it is not skin colour that gets me, it is the cultural invasion. Skin colour is irrelevant.

CityUnslicker said...

Welsh - thanks for the isight, you write exactly the kind of thing that is not allowed in the MSM.

Steven - As with Welsh, a fine set of comments that analyse the real problem and are not kow-towed to the PC lobby. If we continue down this route there will be plenty mroe tears I think. As well as more white flight!

Stan Bull said...

People are voting with their feet. I for one have long since cast my ballot on this particular issue. High taxes,chronic job insecurity, exorbitant property prices, a crap climate, a rather low quality of life, etc. The British have a passion for travel. And clearly a lot of them have been doing some compare and contrast analysis on their trips to Italy, Turkey and Spain in recent years...There are now coastal resorts in Southern Turkey which have a significant and growing British presence all year round. That simply didn't exist 10 years.
In a hundred years or so, little will remain of what was once known as Britain.

CityUnslicker said...

Stan - I think you are right, the quickly growing expat communities say alot about the state of the country at the moment.

it iwll be a lot less than 100 years for total change to happen, the population shift alone is at 2% per year!

pommygranate said...

I emigrated in 2006 but not because i don't like Britain. It's a great country and we all moan far too much. I left because i am married to an Aussie and we wanted to bring our bairns up in Sydney.

The only thing that sucks about Britain is the fucking weather.

Anonymous said...

There are a couple of things here.

There has been a lot of discussion about immigration, even in the mainstream media. It doesn't divide neatly along left-right lines either.

Some on the right think immigration is a good thing because of the economic benefits it brings, such as cheap labour and new skills. Some libertarians, Tim Worstall for example, are all in favour of it.

Then there are some on the left, such as Frank Field, Margaret Hodge and even Will Hutton, who have expressed concerns about the impact of immigration on social cohesion and the increased alienation of the white working class.

My question to all these people who want to emigrate is where do people think they can go which will be so much better?

Whenever I'm abroad, even in the USA, the headlines are similar. Fears of crime, immigration out of control, migrants taking jobs or over-burdening the welfare system, strident Muslim groups demanding this and that.

Sure, you could get away from it all by going to an enclave for retired white people in Spain or Florida but you can find similar places in the UK.

CityUnslicker said...

Pommy - fair enough. IS Aus a better society though, now that you are there?

CityUnslicker said...

Steve- Some well made points. I lovee the USA and there are some great places to live like New England. There are many awful places too, even just in the USA.

I would agree that the UK is far from teh worstplace in the world to live, of course there are many worse places. What I was getting at though is why are we having this massive shift?

Is it because the country is getting worse as a place to live?

Is it just becuase the Government want to change the profile of the population?

Is there something we should do about it? Should we care?

Anonymous said...

I think the problem with mass immigration is that patriotism in the majority population soon flies out the window. Britain stops being a "nation" - a huge community of similar people bound together by history and culture - and becomes simply a rock where people come and go. You see this kind of attitude on a small scale in the dormitory towns around London where there is no sense of community because people don't feel they have roots there and feel they will probably move on soon enough. We are seeing this now on a large scale with the white majority getting up and leaving - might as well be living on some other rock with better weather, right? They don't talk to the Spanish, but they never talked to the Asians next door either. They prefer to hang out with their own kind.

I never had much sympathy with those immigrants that were the victims of nasty regimes. Look more closely and you will see they have played their part in creating those regimes and allowing them to flourish. They run away here rather than stand up and fight, leaving those less financially fortunate to fend for themselves. Consequently their culture embeds itself in Britain and spreads the same sort of hatred that caused so many problems in the country that spawned them. If Islam causes problems in Pakistan it causes problems when it is imported here. If high crime causes problems in Jamaica it causes problems when it is imported here.

The white majority used to know how to solve the problems of the blacks and asians but the blacks and asians didn't want to know about white solutions to their problems. They used the race card to keep whites out of their affairs. Now the whites have given up and are leaving and the blacks and asians have taken to killing each other. Lets face it, it's not a pretty picture.

People come here to get away from the problems in the 3rd world countries that they left, but in doing so they import exactly the culture that causes those problems. We spent hundreds of years resolving those problems but now we are allowing our nation to be dragged back to the middle ages, where people only care about their family and close friends and the concept of society and nationhood has all but dissolved.

jmb said...

This is an interesting set of statistics.
You should check out my set of posts on Vancouver labelled Temptation, to entice you. But this is now a very multicultural city so you may not care for it.
Somehow or other, being white and British and a professional doesn't seem so desirable according to our immigration policy which it totally screwy and favours family reunification.
On the whole though, Vancouver seems to work.
regards
jmb

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