Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Abernathy wrote: ↑Tue Aug 26, 2025 9:19 pm You’re correct to highlight the importance of housing provision in relation to immigration. But other services and infrastructure - schools, medical services, and so on - that come under pressure through demand in areas experiencing high volumes of immigrants (or, when we were EU members, nationals of other EU member states exercising treaty rights of free movement) are also important. I always argued that the failure to provide adequate investment in key services in such areas - to meet the increased demand arising from incoming migrant residents is and was a failure of government (which coincidentally provided Farage et al with the ammunition he needed to enable Brexit). It is to be hoped that Labour’s housebuilding programme will begin to address this issue.

On immigration and Labour generally, back in about 2013 when I was a full time Labour Organiser, I recall Ed Miliband telling us all that we had to talk about immigration, because if we didn’t, nobody would listen to what we had to say about anything else. This was when we were viciously excoriated by the Trots, Guardianistas, and others for marketing a policy slogan coffee mug with “Controls on Immigration” printed on it.

Things have changed slightly.

Yeah, the fuss over that sodding mug was pathetic. A "dog whistle" apparently, rather than something that virtually everybody apart from 10% of libertarians would have agreed with. Within 2 years, the left libertarians were happily cheering on a manifesto where we left the Single Market to avoid freedom of movement.

A higher, mobile population ought to be good for infrastructure, in that it would improve the business case for building new stuff. But I agree with you, that didn't happen, and that was a problem. And anyway, with the best will in the world, in lots of places the result will just be more cars, like where I live. Nobody's likely to open a light rail in Malvern or Hereford.

I am really struggling to think when there has been a serious debate on immigration on mainstream TV. Instead we have various news channels giving a running commentary on how many people have arrived on small boats with no attempt to provide any kind of context. If you are going to keep reporting on the number of people arriving in small boats you really should mention how many people have been deported each day or how many people have been granted asylum.

I'm sure I read somewhere that over 30 million people pass through Britain every year. Obviously the vast majority of these people are tourists or students who stay for a short period of time and then leave but do news channels ever report that 600,000 foreigners arrived in the country today?

Recently the Mirror did an article about a bloke and his elderly mother who ended up living in a Travel Lodge after being turfed out of their private rental property. The article was quite a grim read. Because they didn't have a kitchen they ended up living on pot noodles there was also little privacy and not a lot to do. I'm guessing that this is how many immigrants exist when they are housed in hotel yet I have not seen a single news report that actually looks at the reality of immigrants having to live for months i hotel rooms that are really only suitable for short term stays. No immigrant is enjoying 4 or 5 star service in hotels. They are merely surviving in totally unsuitable accommodation.

Indeed. These “hotels” housing asylum seekers in the main aren’t hotels at all. What these buildings are are former hotels, re-purposed as accommodation for asylum seekers, with most of the comfortable hotel amenities stripped out.