"The story of how we lost count"

The video above is "Immigration - How We Lost Count", by Panorama, a BBC program.

This is a long, but incredibly powerful documentary on immigration in the UK. It focuses on the borough of Slough, which is about 22 miles west of London and is one of the most ethnically diverse towns in the Kingdom. It's also in an absolute crisis, the strain on resources from its exploding population is incredible. Everything from trash collection, to hospitals, to simple living space are at the breaking point. Why? In spite of the fact that it's population is rapidly growing, the government has a different view. According to official figures, the population of the town is going down, not up. And they are losing tax revenue and critical services as a result. This happened because illegal immigration is soaring, and they can't effectively count their population anymore.

In addition to illegal immigrants, there are also transient workers, and legal immigrants arriving by unknown means that also contribute to the problem, mostly from Eastern Europe.

And Slough is not an isolated case. Last October, the UK's office of official statistics made some waves when they calculated that within the next 50 years the country's population will be 8 million persons higher than the previous best estimate. Add to this the fact that there are still a lot more people in the UK that the government doesn't even know are there, and you can bet that even those figures are far too low.

And for those who make knee-jerk accusations of racism against me every time I mention immigration, you can note that the largest recent influx of immigrants in Slough is the Polish community, who are as white as anyone can be. Whether you are Polish, Roma (gypsy), Somali, Nigerian, or Pakistani, if there are too many of you, there are simply too many, and even if racism disappeared it still wouldn't solve the problems caused by masses of people who are simply struggling with finding a place to live, let alone mastering the local language.



Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed