Why don't the police just shoot these anarchist idiots with rubber bullets?

If you keep treating the proletariat like **** they will come after you. Benefits cut too much too fast, proposed Tax credits cut, NHS waiting to be privatized, rising costs on everything, no rent controls on landlords,

Do you expect people to just roll over and be cool with it?

Yes, I too blame overly-inflated housing prices in London on immigrants. If only they stopped flocking to London and stealing our jobs, then houses would be much more affordable.

And if they keep smashing and burning things which don't belong to them, the government will have an excuse to tighten its grip; not to mention people will just see the "protesters" as scumbags.

I'm talking about launching fireworks at police horses and burning police cars......

Do you have any actual evidence for this? I worked it out for the whole country once and it turns out that even if all the immigrants including women and children took one average house each it would still only have increased demand by 8% over the last decade: prices have gone up far faster than that.

Plus there is the small matter of how house prices have absolutely no correlation with either major waves of immigration, total immigration, EU and non-EU immigration or net migration.

Stop shifting blame. I want the crisis solved, I don’t want to spend the next ten years bullying immigrants because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy while the crisis continues on because the true causes have remained unchanged.

I'll have a family to be bringing up and I won't have time to pander to your emotion-driven nonsense about immigrants: I'll just want it solved.

Immigrants put pressure on the housing market not only in terms of increasing demand. They also compete with local workers for the same jobs, pushing down wages, causing the current wage stagnation which in turn makes homes unaffordable. Furthermore, lots of foreign buyers of property aren't even living in the UK. Look at all the London property development websites. Notice that most of them have two language options: one in English, the other in Mandarin.

Oh, I don’t doubt the economic mechanism: it's just that the effect you describe is so small it's negligible. It is quite simply not the cause of the problem. Sorry, but you will have to provide some sort of statistical based evidence before I will further engage.

It scarcely maytrs wherther tax payers are nativ eor foreign. The more people are here the more demand there is, the more jobs, the more tsxes. It should work itself out to be about equal per capita. If all these immigrants are stealing jobs (there was I thinking they were all lazing around on benefits!) then why aren't we using the extra tax revenue to build extra houses?

Revenue and expenditure is broadly the same per capita no matter what the population. The only opportunity for major differences to arise is in allocation of capital and it's rhe state that does that. They are deciding not to provide houses to the population.

I have a vitriolic hatred of overseas property investors yes, but although I haven't looked into the figures my impression is that there are too few of them for them to be the cause of the problem either. (Although of course I do support measures to get their dirty money out of our property and give them to people who actually live here.) Since there are too few of them I am not going to focus my rants on them.

It consists in separating emotion from what actually needs to be done, I hope you and the rest of the reactionary right will learn in time.

They're not out to win over the public.

And if the government passes laws legalising increased physical force, tensions will rise tenfold and they'll have more than anticaps on their hands. Protests become large-scale movements and riots when people become sympathetic to their cause. The Arab Spring was almost entirely down to this. I'm not headstrong or idiotic enough to go and punch police horses, but I won't stand for rubber bullets and I know a lot of others won't either.

Lots more would. The opinion polls were overwhelmingly in favour of rubber bullets, water cannon and even real bullets during and after the London riots.

Comparing the UK to the Arab spring is poor. We have nothing like a comparable environment for such things.

Condoning violence in the way you're doing is pathetic.

The amount of tax revenue generated from most immigrants is paltry considering the wages they are paid; coupled with stagnant/lowered wages for British workers, revenue as a result of immigration won't dramatically increase to allow the government to build new homes as fast as one wants. Furthermore, the amount of work available is finite, and so tax revenue will not necessarily increase in proportion to the rate at which the population grows (due to immigration).

It is quite amusing that you don't know how big it is for foreigners to invest in London housing. London homes are not just destinations for dirty money, but also sound investments for middle-class foreigners. In fact, every weekend the local paper in the country where I am at now (i.e. not the UK) will run full-page advertisements for investment opportunities in new-build London apartments, with seminars held at hotels such as the Hyatt.

I hope that the immigration-loving lefties will finally separate emotion from reality and understand the true effect of immigration on this country.

And this is coming from an immigrant.

I know it's big and I deplore it particularly after seeing a BBC programme on it last year. In fact it was one of the proximate reasons why I voted Labour, as they were talking about/putting in manifesto measures to restrict the sale of these properties so that Brits got preferential treatment. Seriously if you want this one sorted out Labour or maybe the Greens are your best choice and it is why London voted Labour.

As an immigrant, this was one of the reasons I decided not to vote Labour nor the Greens.

The Government of pussies, if it was Russia or some other country those lefties would have been shot with actual bullets. With few lefties dead, the world would become a calmer place for decent people

Although I might come across as an 'All Coppers Are Bastards' type, I'm honestly being pragmatic. Violence to meet violence is a bad idea.

Er, on what grounds? What better measures did the party you voted for bave on the housing crisis in general and the issue of foreign investment in particular?

Because no other party - certainly not the right wing ones - mentioned it. They looove foreigners as long as they're rich.

Or did you just vote on your emotions and prejudices?

I voted for promises for restrictions to EU immigrants, whom I have to compete with. I do not want any policies which priorities British property owners, as I too want to buy property in the future. So in the end, a Labour/Green party which did not promise a referendum/EU treaty renegotiations were not too attractive for me.

Well you are not supposed to vote in your self-interest but rather that of those whose lives are in direst need of improvement. You will be OK whether Labour or the Tories are in, others won't. Plus if you are voting in a British general election then you are eligible to buy property under such rules the same as any Brit I would have thought.

It emerges that your opposition to (particularly) European immigrants combined with your support for property bought by absent foreigners is nothing but self-interest. Therefore your views are not admissible in a discussion of what is best for the country as a whole.

Well you are not supposed to vote in your self-interest.

I'm not supposed to vote in my self-interest? Preposterous. And hilarious.

And politicians are supposed to act the same way...


Kindly get into the real world.