Which prompted me to look up the latest results from an outfit for whom I used to work more than forty years ago, the population estimates unit of what is now the Office for National Statistics. Quite a snappy web site these days, and I am quickly able to turn up the nicely animated graphic snapped left, from which I learn that fifty years ago the population of England and Wales was around fifty millions, not much different twenty five years later, but climbed to sixty millions during the second tranche of twenty five years. Is this just right or rather too many?
Quite a lot of people for a country without much, these days, in the way of natural resources, apart from lots of fresh water and lots of wind, both of which might be turned to good account in the future. But in meantime, we shall just have to hope that our stable social, political and legal framework continue to appeal to all those foreigners, respectable and not so respectable, who balance our account books by buying up all our real estate - that is to say our tall buildings and our productive resources.
From where I jump off to population density, to find a helpful table at reference 2. Out of around 250 countries listed we come in at around 50, with those beating us mainly being oddities and much smaller islands. To my surprise, we only just beat the Germans, but the French are well down at around 100, with China half way in between. Nevertheless, I clearly need to work on any argument against population growth which is based on density.
Once again, a problem which does not resolve over the matinal marmalade.
PS 1: what would we do without Wikipedia? I only hope that they continue to stave off the advertisers. Advertisers who are steadily infiltrating what I had thought was the safe world of my laptop. Perhaps the Queen should give Mr. Wales the O.M., when there is next a vacancy, in recognition of his services to humanity. Or perhaps a Nobel prize for something or other?
PS 2: I was reminded this morning by Jenni Russell that, as a country, we manage both to get into a lather about immigration and to be rather bad at controlling it, with our control at entry not really cutting the immigration mustard in an era of mass travel. Our EC partners generally go in for the defence in depth afforded by identify cards and such like, something we have always rejected as smelling of the police state. This despite the fact that today's IT technology makes such things far easier - and far easier to control. Despite the fact that public service entities like HMCR and DWP already have registers which come close. Not to mention those of for-profit entities like Visa, MS, Google and Facebook. We already have the intrusion - but without the control.
Reference 1: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/timeseries/ewpop/pop.
Reference 2: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density.
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