“This whole debate is driven by an over reaction to a short term rapid rise in population over a short period of time.”

That may be your view -it isn’t mine.

THe data for the last decade makes it clear what the nature & scale of the problem is & I am perfectly cabable of reading it & assessing it without silly comments about oil prices thanks.

I-unlike you am content to let people make their own minds up without resorting to phrases like-”There coming over here and taking our jobs and swamping our services”. There are plenty of very unpleasant people around willing to use that sort of phrase in earnest.

So I can do without people like you using it as a patronising joke.

See….. Migration works both ways.

Peter.

I think the LibDems are doing jolly nicely for now, and I’m looking forward to polls which show their recovery stabilising once they have a new leader.

Sorry.

But the bulk of it has been in the last few years and that isn’t sustainable, as it is principally due to the expansion of the EU. It has to be seen in the context of a larger population and greater movement of larger numbers of people.

Since the start of the year oil has risen from $80 a barrel to $100, a 25% increase, but that doesn’t mean that by 2010 it will be $196 a barrel ( increasing 25% year on year).

This whole debate is driven by an over reaction to a short term rapid rise in population over a short period of time.

If Poland hadn’t joined the EU we’d probably be panicking over the flow of 25-45 year olds heading for Australia and New Zealand, leaving the old to fend for themselves.

Polls deal with perception not fact. What is driving this is our old friend, “There coming over here and taking our jobs and swamping our services”.

The government is culpable of poor planning and little or no forsight, but we don’t have an open door immigration policy and there isn’t a crisis.

Britain is less densely populated than Belguim and it’s hardly going to sink in to the Channel. Rapid change can be unsettleing for people, but that doesn’t mean we should panic or that it will continue indefinitely.

The context that has sparked this has been an over rection to a large number of migrants from a new source in short period of time and an belief that weare ill prepared for a growing population.

What we are seeing is the migration equivelent of the Norther Rock, there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong, but a crisis of confidence in the system has made it in to a self fulfilling prophecy.

Peter.