UK Population must fall to 30mill says Porritt

UK Population must fall to 30mill says Porritt

www.timesonline.co.uk

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I wonder how they're going to go about enforcing this? Any ideas or predictions?

“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”

Population growth is one of the most politically sensitive environmental problems. The issues it raises, including religion, culture and immigration policy, have proved too toxic for most green groups.

However, Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

www.timesonline.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well more than a few people have been saying this for years. Funnily enough, a lot of them live in population-dense inner-cities, large towns and sink estates. What's even funnier is when a lot of these people point this out and question immigration policies - which are a factor here - apparently it's a 'racist' thing, or a form of xenophobia or even a cultural Ludditism where people are assumed to have a problem with immigration. Whereas the reality of it is that it's not always about colour, race or religion; sometimes it's just about the numbers.

I've used a set of figures to illustrate this a few time on this board and others over the last 12 months, which really gives some perspective about the position that Britain is in. England (not Britain) has a 1/6th of America's population living in 1/75th of it's land mass. The other worrying figure is that 1 in 9 people currently living in the UK were born abroad. I honestly find that staggering.

Another figure I read several years ago was regarding urban architecture, how how, by 2020 or something a worryingly large percentage of people people in Britain (I think 1 in 5 ?) will no longer be living in ground floor properties due to space restrictions in urban areas meaning more and more people will have no choice other than high-rise living. Current developments in Manchester and many of the surrounding neighbourhoods (including mine) attest to this.

As for predictions, I think there's already several measures under way that will have some small impact on this. The government is tightening (legal) immigration by raising the bar regarding entry via job skills and qualifications. Apparently, they're also going to be clamping down on 'extended' families entering the country through 'proxy' qualifications where families are gaining entry via marriage rather than individual entry requirements.

I think in the future, there will be financial discouragements, where larger families will actually be disqualified regarding support/benefits. Maybe even going as far as taxing families of a certain size. Whilst I'm no fan of eugenics or would like this to happen, I could even see sterilisation as becoming a sentencing option for habitual criminals or maybe even drug addicts.