‘WHAT I want is facts . . . facts alone are wanted in life.’ Thus Thomas Gradgrind, schoolmaster, appears in the first sentence of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. Here’s a few facts to get us going.
The UK population was 56.1 million in 1972 and 56.9 million in 1988. We took in 820,000 over 16 years, which was an average of 51,000 every year, the size of towns like Dunfermline or Clacton-on Sea.
The UK population was 66.7 million in 2000 and 69.3 million in 2024. We took in 2.6 million in four years which was an average of 650,000 every year, the size of a city like Sheffield.
The official figure for the UK population increase mid-2023 to mid-2024 is 755,254, nearly all of which were immigrants.
There were 43,630 ‘detected irregular arrivals’ (official phrase) in 2024.
Conclusions so far:
· the irregular arrivals are only around 5 per cent of the regulars;
· no country our size can cope with importing the equivalent of a city the size of Sheffield every year;
· the UK has the equivalent of 735 people per sq mile;
· France has the equivalent of 321 people per sq mile;
· Canada has the equivalent of 11 people per sq mile.
Those of us (and we are many) who think that maybe the place is getting a little too crowded are being labelled ‘racist’. One dictionary definition of racism is ‘someone who believes that their race makes them better, more intelligent, more moral, etc. than people of other races and who does or says unfair or harmful things as a result.’
That is not us. Some are like that, unfortunately, which gets us all a bad name. We think that we are not only full but have been overflowing for years. Governments haven’t kept up with the supply of doctors, surgeries, hospitals, schools, buses, roads, trains and houses. Especially houses.
Our concerns are not with immigrants’ skin colour, country of origin, race, religion, beliefs, age, family or behaviour. Our concerns are with the sheer numbers of them.
Now we will leave facts behind while I tell you a story about a seaside hotel with rooms for 50 guests. But the owner is desperate and insisted they take in whoever turns up. Already the place is up to 70 with more arriving daily.
One of the management’s troubles is the financial state of this overcrowded hotel. It’s not making any profit and is losing so much they’re having to borrow at an extortionate rate. Now and again the owner sacks several of the senior staff and replaces them with people considered to be more capable, each new lot promising to really do something about shutting the front door and reducing the debt.
The original guests ask why they are paying ever higher rates for their stay while the latest input have yet to receive a bill. Some are wondering why the younger residents have to sleep in the hotel’s 1930s bike sheds while more recent arrivals are offered proper rooms. Others have questioned the generous wage rise for the kitchen staff when the hotel has huge debts and the actual food is much worse.
Riots nearly broke out when the residents were told a service charge would have to be added to the rates for the more expensive sea-view rooms. The grumbling of the guests has grown even louder recently about the sheer struggle to get attention at mealtimes and to have any repairs carried out to the dangerous staircases and erratic lift. Feelings are running high.
A group of the longer-term residents has threatened to try and usurp the most recent lot of bosses and choose another lot themselves. This has temporarily been stalled after a management promise to announce a new plan for the hotel’s future. This would possibly be associated with some easing of room charges in special cases and would be announced after the annual financial meeting on November 26.
That’s enough fairy tale nonsense. What real-life hotelier would blindly sign in all those freeloading extra mouths to feed and beds to find? Our fictitious owner should have remembered Mr Gradgrind, ‘a man of realities, a man of facts and calculations’.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if just occasionally one of our governments dealt in facts and realities.
