From The Daily Mail:
England is now the most overcrowded country (1) in Europe... Officials said that by next year England will have 402.1 people for every square kilometre, overtaking the figure of 398.5 in Holland and 355.2 in Belgium... (2)
Recent EU figures have shown that Britain accounted for nearly a third of the total increase in population across the whole of Europe last year (3), with 412,000 extra people in this country in 2009.
Whitehall has also acknowledged that 100,000 new homes will be required each year for the next 25 years to cope with the growth of population as a direct result of immigration. (4)
The figures have underlined concerns over the effects of rising population on transport and housing (5), and on both cities and countryside, as numbers rise towards the officially predicted level of 70 million by 2029.
James Clappison, Tory MP for Hertsmere, said: 'Population density of such a level is an issue which politicians must address. Immigration is the major driver of population increase.' (6)
Two can play at that game:
1) 'The most overcrowded' is a tautology at best.
2) As I've said before: "From Wiki, UK population 61 million, surface area 94,526 sq miles = 645/sq mile (249/sq km). Not spectularly high, so they strip out S, NI and W and look at England only. From Wiki, population 51 million, surface area 50,346 sq miles = 1,000/sq mile (391/sq km).
But why don't we go one further and strip out Greater London? English population (excl. GL) 43.5 million, surface area 49,727 sq miles = 874/sq mile (342/sq km). That gets us down to well below The Netherlands and only a quarter of Malta's density."
Conversely, Greater London has a population density of 10,596/sq mile. If a high population density were such a terrible thing, then nobody would want to live there, would they?
3) Which underlines the point that it's net immigration from outside the EU that's behind this, which is entirely self-inflicted.
4) I cheerfully agree that Labour were letting in far too many of the wrong sort of people, but, being The Daily Mail, they merrily ignore another factor that is just as important: increases in life expectancy.
The UK population pyramid at the ONS shows the number of people aged 60 or under going up from 46 million to 52 million between 1971 and 2029, which is a compound annual increase of 0.2% [=(52/46)^(1/58). The number of people aged over 60 goes up from 10 million to 19 million over the same period, a compound annual increase of 1.1% [=(19/10)^(1/58)].
And how much housing would we need to build to accommodate an extra 9 million people in 58 years? Call it 1.5 old folk per home = 6 million homes, which is just over 100,000 per year.
5) What 'pressure on transport'? Seeing how many bus or train drivers are fairly recent immigrants, we'd be in a bigger mess if they all left.
As to 'pressure on housing', see (4). Is building 100,000 new homes, i.e. expanding our housing stock by 0.3% every year (=100,000/27,000,000) really that terrible, seeing as it'll be recent immigrants doing a lot of the actual work?
Even if we leave the floodgates open (which I do not recommend) and have to build 200,000 homes a year (for the immigrants and to accommodate for the additional old folk), that's an increase of 0.6% a year, against compound annual increase in overall population of 0.4% per year between 1971 and 2029 [=(71/56)^(1/58)], big deal.
6) No it's not. See (4).
UPDATE: Adam Collyer dissects a similarly hysterical article in The Torygraph, illustrated with some bonus Top A-Level Totty.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Population Density Fun
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15 comments:
Mark,
But if you strip out Greater London from England, then to compare like with like should you not (for example) strip out the Randstadt from Netherlands?
(That doesn't imply that I agree with The Wail. Just that I reckon it's difficult to use relative population densities. It gives no idea of whether the population is distributed or clustered, and that depends on many factors - geography, culture, history, etc.)
A couple of seconds with a spreadsheet and Google shows that 70,999,999 people all standing next to each other and occupying, say, 4 sq ft each (I know, I know, but I like sq.ft and acres) would occupy 6,430 acres. Or a neat fit inside Windsor Great Park.
That leaves 51,720,290 acres or about 80,800 square miles for me.
Excellent.
I have to say it doesn't sound all that crowded, unless you're in Windsor Great Park, of course.
When we have the Bloggers Government I am going to pass a law that makes it compulsory for all newspaper articles, BBC items etc etc to carry a compulsory reference at the end of the piece as to where the article can be found well and truly fisked.
VFTS, exactly. You can strip out or leave in as much as you like to prove anything you want. Conversely, if Ireland were reunited with the UK (Heaven forbid), the UK's average population density would plummet. Would we feel any richer for it?
FT, I don't know where WGP is so I'm staying put.
L, but people wouldn't read it. They prefer cosy certainties like "US sub prime loans/immigrants/single mothers/high earners are to blame for everything" or "The State only spends money on vital services so can't be slimmed down" or "A tax on land values is a tax on wealth and aspiraion" or whatever.
6) England is not the most densely populated country. Monaco, Vatican, San Marino and Malta have densities that are higher than what the mail lists.
7) According to Wikipedia, the population density of Holland is 1105/sq. km, which means that England is less dense than Holland.
8) If there's a transportation problem, it's because we don't have enough roads and railways. It would cost a relatively tiny amount of money to raise the capacity of our motorway networks. We just have to bulldoze a few faux bucolic rural idylls.
MW I'll require reader regsitration and they'll get a test in the post. Marks of less than 75% will result in a visit from someone large and grumpy, or Scary Spice.
JT, point 7) is brilliant, if you gamble on the average Wail reader not realising that Holland does not equal The Netherlands. Maybe this is what VFTS meant by Randstadt?
8) Exactly.
L, that sounds a bit authoritarian to me, I'm afraid. People have the right to read and write complete rubbish if they so wish.
MW - don't take me so seriously. I am just railing at the Man on the Clapham Omnibus. Actually, it's not his fault he's ignorant. He's been shafted by the education 'system'.
I am committedly laissez-faire. Not in the deliberately mis-defined lefty sense of abandonment, but in the Libertarian sense of 'let them do'. Each man can do what he likes, as long as he doesn't upset anyone else. Ignorance is no crime. If you chose not to be politically engaged, it's your choice and I would never presume to judge you.
Completely agreed except for this bit:
"Which underlines the point that it's net immigration from outside the EU that's behind this, which is entirely self-inflicted"
Actually it underlines the point that lots of other EU citizens are coming to the UK, reducing their figures for net migration and increasing ours.
Immigration fell last year, btw - emigration fell faster however.
AC, as a matter of fact net immigration into the UK from 'New Commonwealth' and 'Rest of World' absolutely dwarfs net immigration from rest of the EU, see Table 2 here, and out of EU immigration only about half is from the newest 8 member states (the ones the Mail doesn't like).
I enjoy blaming stuff on the EU but this is all largely self-inflicted so far.
"What 'pressure on transport'? Seeing how many bus or train drivers are fairly recent immigrants, we'd be in a bigger mess if they all left."
Really? Maybe true for bus drivers (and locals could never learn how to do that) but not for train drivers
Also if we decided to reduce the numbers from immigration by giving non working immigrants less money - then the train and bus drivers would still stay.
On (1) you could say it was a redundant tautological pleaonasm.
Anon, good plan, that was in the UKIP Welfare Manifesto, of course.
EKTWP, could I?
Mark,
I have to agree, the UK population is truly dense.
"faux bucolic rural idylls"
I think I'm going to have to copyright that expression!
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