According to the Government and academic demographics experts, Britain is about to witness unprecedented population growth, ranging from five to ten million, over the next twenty-five years.
With the birth rate of indigenous Britons just about at 'replacement' level at best, it is clear that almost all this future growth will be down to either immigration or births within migrant communities already established here. We would refer sceptics to both the government's Office of National Statistics (OS) site or to Migration Watch UK's highly informative site, for confirmation.
The impact of population growth is already manifesting itself in many undesirable ways. Quite apart from the growing pressure on homes, education, health services, employment, social welfare, water availability, policing, landfill sourcing, traffic congestion and the environment in general, is energy demand - with its related 'carbon footprint'!
It is now proposed that a full study be conducted into the feasibility of building the world's largest tidal barrier across the Bristol Channel. This barrier will house a bank of massive electricity generators powered by tidal currents as they flow in and out of the channel. There is much merit, at face value, in this multi-billion pound idea - as the Bristol Channel has one of the largest tidal ranges available anywhere in the world.
According to the experts, a fully functional barrier could meet 5% of Britain's current energy needs - in other words, produce enough electrical power to meet the demands of some 3 million people. That's assuming that it is built - with a tentative start date of 2010-12 and a completion date of around 2018-20 - there is clearly plenty of scope for cancellation or scaling-down.
The barrage is needed, the Government claims, to meet Britain's growing demand for energy and to lower Britain's carbon-footprint through replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with renewables - such as tide and wind. But there is a very obvious problem with all this. Should the barrage be built and fully meet its electricity generation targets, that is, to produce enough electricity for 3 million people by 2020 - then it will have failed both of the Government's prime objectives. This is because Britain, with a NET GAIN of some 250,000 migrants a year, will have 3 million more consumers by 2020! In other words, the benefits gained in terms of additional energy generation and lower carbon footprint, will be completed neutralised through immigration!
Surely then, rather than spend billions of pounds on this huge and potentially environmentally destructive scheme, it would be far more sensible to slam the door shut on all immigration now? If nothing else - this option provides us with all the 'wins' said to be available through the construction of the barrage and at no cost, no effort, now!
Alternatively, we could slam the door shut on immigration and proceed to build the barrage - which would see a genuine reduction in our national carbon footprint, whilst increasing energy capacity - perhaps making us an exporter of electricity?
So, once again we ask: Immigration - what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!