Monday 30 December 2013

Back to the 19th century?

We have a shortage of housing, unemployment (and, in particular, youth unemployment) is high, it can take 3 weeks in some parts of Scotland to get a doctor's appointment and NHS dentists are scarcer than hens' teeth - so would someone please remind Calton why we need thousands more immigrants from Eastern Europe? Unfortunately, unless we leave the EU (which is Calton's favoured option), we are powerless to stop a new influx in two days' time, regardless of what some Conservative activists may think. Even if we succeeded in delaying the ability of Romanians and Bulgarians to move here until 2018, that is just postponing the problem. The Tory activists are at least right in one thing - more immigration will only fuel tensions, particularly in poorer areas where people are already struggling to find homes and jobs and to access vital services. Calton is not against immigration per se - he is against unlimited economic immigration from poorer countries within the EU and one look at the graph in this BBC News article will tell you why. The number of Eastern European workers in the UK has gone from less than 50,000 in 2003 to 800,000 in 2013. There are areas in Glasgow where one bedroom flats house 15-20 people. That's a higher population density than when the Victorian tenements were built! If this is the sort of Scotland which Alex Salmond and his party wants, Calton's response is "no thankyou". A return to overcrowded tenements and streets overflowing with rubbish hardly seems to be progressive - it's more like a regression to the 19th century. Is this really Scotland's future?

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