I thought in snowflake land theres only winners,no losers.
Brexit vote in the referendum,Trump in the Whitehouse,art50 in march and the votes in Austria,Italy.....I'd say you're losing if you really feel the need to make it a competition.
I can put my feet up and watch it all happen while you blather on getting your knickers in a twist.Its gonna be great-as Trump would say..

You may want to consider reading this before we start paving over the countryside.

http://shewhoseeks.blogspot.co.uk/20...ee-rabbit.html

What on earth is that supposed to mean?

We are still a very rural country. Only 2% of the UK is actually "concreted over". Outside of the South East it's much less than that

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

There are, each to protect against urban sprawl, not for retaining farmland.

And lets keep it that way. Especially if we are only going to ruin the country side so that immigrants can have houses and jobs.

But we should retain all farmland, This is one of the reasons why we need to leave the EU. To protect British farming. We should be producing food for our own country not to sell to other countries.

Er, what do you think a Politics forum is for?

Do Japan have 12 lane motorways, or is your point collapsing under it's own internal inconsistencies?

And who shall work on these farms? Better get your wellies on.

If British farming has a future it has to export as the domestic market just isn't big enough. Why should the rest of the world be deprived of our wonderful produce.

Discussion,a bit of pisstaking etc,never thought of it as a competition.How bizarre.

That's misleading as it includes areas that can't be built on. Though I suppose we could level the mountains to fill in the lakes.

We are still the 15th most populated country in the world by density with around 700 per square mile. Compared to France with a similar population but over twice the size which has 300 per square mile.

How does leaving the EU help retain farmland? It's the EU's tariffs and Agriculture subsidies that protect farming now. One of the oft cited benefits of leaving the EU is cheaper food from elsewhere in the world, thus reducing our farming.

It's called "debate" in Politics usually, not "competition".

Judging by your recent posts you see it as a competition.
No wonder you're so nit picking and pedantic,maybe you were the fat ginger kid who always lost at sportsday and this is sort of therapy.

Leaving the EU is more likely to have the adverse effect, especially if the hard right get their way and farmers are no longer "protected" by both the CAP & Customs Union, but have 20% tariffs imposed on their exports to the EU (the EU's WTO/MFN standard agricultural tariff) as a result of a hard Brexit, and there's (as proposed) free trade with Ghana, Nigeria and other African nations - which will result in the country being flooded with cheap produce, overall, thus putting our own farmers out of business.

Be careful what you wish for....

Have you seen the numbers of fields now taken over by swathes of solar panels, farmers are not interested in serving the public good, only where the best money is coming in

Isn't providing electricity "serving the public good". If they can make more money from solar panels than turnips then good on them. I know which I find more useful.

Some, many, all (I don't know the actual numbers) are used for grazing still. The solar provides additional income while the fields still perform their primary function. Sensible business model for those farmers that can do it.

It also includes areas not suitable for farming.

The grass doesnt grow under the panels, have you seen them, they are packed together so the whole field is one big panel more or less.

Quite right.

But the post I was responding to made the point about our fields being needed for farming for food. Solar Panels would make them redundant for that purpose.

I'm not going to spoon feed you. Google, "solar fields grazing" (or similar) for yourself, then read.

See above.

No they won't see above.

We've had this same debate on DS time and time again....

Who/what is to blame for the record high net migration figures, and also for the housing (& NHS) crisis?

1. Is it the immigrants themselves?
2. Is it because we're in the EU?
3. Is it because we have a strong economy?
4. Is it due to employers?
5. Is it due to UK law?
6. Is it due to government policy?
7. Is it due to government incompetence and failure?

Certain sections of the right-wing media and hard right politicians (hard right Tories, plus: UKIP, BNP, EDL, etc) want us to believe that it's virtually all due to 1 and 2, maybe also a bit of 3 (though the entire Tory party claim this to be a leading factor, not just the hard right).

However, common sense and facts actually show us that it's mostly down to 4-7 instead.

Other than for students, employers themselves largely control the overall immigration figures.
The majority of people do not travel half way across the world (even Romania to UK is ~1500 miles) looking for work.
Poorer people don't have the means to just get up & go and leave it all behind.
More than often, as we've recently discovered, they are recruited in their own countries and paid to come here...
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...9#post84098439

UK Employment Agencies have been advertising and recruiting directly from East Europe.
The jobs aren't even advertised in the UK.
They just recruit en masse directly, paying ZHC and/or apprenticeship wages.

This is what has mainly caused the undercutting/driving down of wages and the rise in EU to UK net migration figures, and the Tory government have done nothing to prevent it - they've been actively encouraging it instead!
http://www.conservativehome.com/thec...proved-it.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/po...s-former-aide/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...budget-surplus
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...eresa-may-ally


In 2012, Theresa May (the then Home Secretary) put a 35k wage cap on non-EU migrants, meaning that we could then only get cheap labour from the EU.

In 2012, EU to UK net migration was ~80k

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...-recent-levels

Scroll down a little to the "Figure 2: Net Long-Term International Migration by citizenship, UK, 1975 to 2016 (year ending June 2016)" graph...

Mouseover the blue line in the graph for 2012 = EU: 82k
Then see how the blue line has risen up to almost 200k since, matching non-EU net migration, which has been at around or above the 200k level ever since 1999.

Tot them all up since 1999, and it shows that over 3 million net migration has come from outside the EU between 1999-2016, compared to just over 1m from within the EU, 660,000 of which have been in the last 4 years alone (2013-2016, inclusive).

The government could make it an illegal practice for UK employment agencies to mass hire under ZHCs and apprenticeships, but they just turn a blind eye, and instead, it's just swept under the carpet and virtually ignored by mainstream media.


So as I said, it would seem as though government policy & failure is more to blame for the problems than anything else.

It's also (successive) governments to blame for not building enough new affordable housing, or for not converting old houses, or for not building on brownfield sites - of which there are plenty - and it's certainly this current government's fault for imposing their ideological unneccesary austerity and cuts to public services. At a time when the population is rising by 330k/yr, we should be increasing funding to public services, not cutting them.

Oh well, congrats to the government for convincing enough people that someone/something else is to blame for all our problems, and not them...