Well Toad it depends how you look at it. Yes dartmoor is nice - rugged moorland and some space but in reality just how much wilderness is there ?? According to the fact sheet the Dartmoor National park is only 368 sq miles - about 19 miles by 19 - hardy huge. Scotland has the only real wilderness left. The rest of lowland UK is populated.
Dowding it's my feeling of the UK. You say there is plenty of countryside - take a map out of say ...... gloucestershire, and pick a unclassified road. Now draw a radius from the most remote part on that road and see how far out you go before you hit a building or another road - it won't be more than a few miles. And the next bright idea is to make the M11 - A14 an urban corridor - built up from Stansted to Peterborough - planning is underway - thats 70 miles of unbroken urban sprawl.
Chortle - I sick of taking it easy and I don't particularly give a damn any more about upsetting peoples political sensitivities. The fact is we are hemoraging resource through the social system in to an ever increasing immigrant population - of what ever race and colour. We don't have enough resource to fulfill the needs of those who have lived here for the last say 30 years - of whatever race and colour. We don't have the health resource, elderly care resource, housing, transport infrastructure.- you name it.
As for the greater Europe - with the expansion of the EU we will see pay and conditions in the Western European states fall towards the Eastern nations levels while they climb towards ours - the settling point will be somewhere in between but living standards will ineveitably fall in Western members. With education standards falling in Western states (particulary UK) and skilled / qualified workers available from eastern member states willing to work for low wages we will see a growing population of young un-employable graduates. In order to supply the very low pay end of industry (to keep compettitive with the far east) we will continue to allow immigration from the arab / eastern / asia area which will lead to an increased percentage of Islamic population ( ohhh errrrrr how non PC shock gasp). Like it or not the Islamic communities are much more politicaly active than other cultures and so we will see increasing pressure on legislation to sway political and social descion making to tender to that populations needs - it is a democracy you know. France is already seing this and is fighting it - in the words of a French politician on TV recently they would prefer to make "Islam more French than France more Islamic" in their country.
Soooo - you have a resident population seeing falling living standards, reduced access to traditionally available resources and reduced oportunities for their children looking at a political situation swinging out of their control. You work out where that goes .................
Now in UK you overlay a 10% increase in population from immigration and the traditionally larger subsequent family size of the incoming immigrants (particularly after their perceived prosperity in the new country and access to resource they are unaccustomed to) and the pressure increases.
But I should take it easy ..........
This is all very un PC and I'm sure dowding and others will jump on me but it is a growing feeilng in the middle classes - may be unpleasant but it exists. I don't believe population decrease is the risk in Europe - falling living standards, increased pressure on resources and an insistance on multi-ethnicity instead of integration is the biggest risk to Europs future.
