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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

Seems weird that so many of the comments are complaining about immigration (the depletion of which has fucked the NHS, for example) in an article which is talking about the UK not keeping up with building housing for 5 decades, and even if they’d kept pace with many peer European countries they would have had a London’s worth more housing.

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I think it's weird to want to avoid any mention of immigration when discussing housing supply and demand.

Let's talk about it!

If the US didn't have immigrants, we would have almost no capacity to build anything. Immigrants are the backbone of the construction trade.

One of the surest signs property prices are going to get crazy high is when blue collar immigrants are no longer able live in the area. You need a plumber? They live 5 hours away. Wait in line.

Population growth is only very tangentially related to property prices. Plenty of examples of places with high population growth, but reasonable prices.

But when you don't have a strong supply of construction labor, you're in a bad, bad spot.

How reliant is the UK on immigrants for construction?

Not weird but expected, if you understand the British population and in particular the media. They're xenophobic and down right racist in their commentary, everything is zero-sum, they see other people doing well and think they must have stolen it from them. Brexit was driven largely by this toxic mix of misinformation and people craving to believe the narrative.

I am British and lived there for 30 years by the way and all of my family is there, in case anyone wonders how I know.

Curious. I've lived here for 10 years and I don't see it like this.

As a Brit, who now lives in the EU, I would agree with this. Bear in mind that London and the rest of Britain are very different places.

what a load of nonsense, most international polls determine it to be one of the least xenophobic and most racially tolerant nations, variously coming in at anywhere from third to fifteenth.

Unless, of course, you're Gypsy, Traveller, Jewish, Irish, Caribbean in the UK (outside of London) .. then recent survey's agree the xenophobia is pretty damn high .. oh, and being Pakistani doesn't help.

Although if you're Idris Elba post fame you'll be fine .. just don't ask him what it was like growing up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dAdZGtkg8

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/21/metropolitan...

oh I don't deny that there absolutely is racism and xenophobia, I'm not deluded.

The ethnicities you listed experience racism and xenophobia across europe, the UK is not exceptional in this regard (the nationality perhaps a little more casual xenophobia than they do on the continent but then most brits are at least part Irish).

I'm not sure the guardian or a youtube video count as references, the WVS might be a better place to start but there is no shortage of empirical (albeit this is a socially scientific topic) sources.

My feeling is Britain is both paradoxically tolerant (I live in Germany, and the difference is stark), but also omnidirectionally hateful - for instance, British people are the only people in the world who, as a norm, hate children. It's a nation of sadists, not a nation of racists.

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