Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
As for Khan, he's on the record as saying that more migration is good for London whist moaning about all the cars, pollution etc. Presumably, therefore, he'll build the tens of thousands of homes he reckons we'll need every year and ensure they're all occupied by people who walk everywhere, wear thick woolly jumpers to keep out the cold and don't want gardens. When all the available brown field sites are built upon he'll start building on the green belt because who needs that anyway...
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Most people in London don't drive, especially not migrants. The issues with pollution and cars is just because it's an old city with congested roads. Oxford Steet is two lanes and most of the surrounding area isn't friendly to cars either. If it was me I would start to look at banning private non-commercial cars in London and speed up the use of electric taxies and so on.
As for homes London needs more but it would be a damn sight more helpful if every development wasn't for luxury apartments. It's not relatively poor migrants that are the problem there but rich foreign investors that buy apartments as a place to store their money.
I would suspect migration probably is good for London given the constant demand the city has for more workers. Unemployment is low and the city has a very high amount of educated migrants. It's obviously in a different situation than the rest of the county. More people in means we need more housing and transport yes but London has a pretty high churn of people, few stay in the City for long, and it also has a load of people from around the UK coming down as well.
After all if London is to step-up it's house building and transport expansion then we may well need migrants to build them:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/p...sebuilder.html