Dr Neil MacFarlane MBBS (E&W)

We are expected patiently to accept the unending heartache of one special landscape after the next concreted over for ugly housing development, vital farmland lost forever, precious rivers choked with effluent. We’re told that house building targets must be met, because housing constraints are preventing young people from getting on the housing ladder, and housing is becoming far too expensive for most Brits. This is largely accepted to be true, so conservationists don’t complain. We just plead for a little nature to be left round the edges, and for the most beautiful places to be spared. Deep down we know where this leads. Simple mathematics says we will continue to build until there are no dark skies or quiet dells remaining. Perhaps not in our lifetime, but eventually. Then reports like this one by @MigrationWatch reveal the whole thing to be worse than a scam, rather an unprecedented exercise in social engineering (and landscape destruction) started under Blair’s New Labour and perpetuated by one government after the next ever since. Unmanageable numbers of people are invited to relocate to our small island, in the millions, many of whom arrive from places and cultures which truly loathe us and everything we stand for, lured by the promise of free everything, free money, and *free housing*. All these new houses blanketing our world-renowned landscapes do next to nothing to fix the very real problem of not enough housing, because they’re given away like confetti, at vast taxpayer expense, to new arrivals. The whole thing is a total and utter outrage.