Playing into the hands of racists



The implications of the fastest population growth in our history are truly alarming. This isn't about race. It's a question of sheer numbers.



For these overcrowded islands cannot absorb an extra 10million inhabitants over the next 24 years - more than two-thirds of them first-generation immigrants and their children - without seriously damaging the quality of life for all who live here, whatever the colour of their skin.



Housing and public services are already under huge strain from mass migration. Yet the Office for National Statistics says we must now brace ourselves for a population of 70million in just 20 years.



Vile cause: Mainstream parties who ignore the public are doing a favour for the likes of Nick Griffin's BNP

At this rate of growth, we'll need a new city the size of Bristol every 12 months.



Where is everyone to live? With money so tight, who is to pay for the extra roads, trains, hospitals and schools?



Even more worrying, what impact will these vast numbers have on social cohesion - particularly in the most congested parts of London and the South East, where two-thirds of immigrants settle?



As Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green argues so powerfully, this is a timebomb ticking under our environment and the whole nature of our society. Yet to listen to Immigration Minister Phil Woolas, you'd think it had already been defused.



With breathtaking complacency, he argues that the Government's new points-based entry system is solving the problem.



Yet this is the man who promised only last year that the population would never reach 70million. Meanwhile, Home Secretary Alan Johnson yawns that he 'doesn't lie awake at night' worrying about it.



Well, opinion polls show 84 per cent of us, including two-thirds of the ethnic minority population, do worry about it.



Rightly, ministers have scrambled to condemn the racist Nick Griffin as he prepares for tonight's Question Time.



But has anyone done more for the BNP's vile cause than the mainstream politicians of all parties who ignore the public?



Act of sabotage



If ministers had legislated 12 years ago to end NHS discrimination against elderly patients, the Mail would have applauded.



But when they do it now, at the very tail end of their administration, we can only gasp at their cynicism.



Health Secretary Andy Burnham is fully aware that lifting the age-bar on expensive treatments will be unaffordable in this grim economic climate.



But he also knows he won't have to put the law into practice.



That job will almost certainly fall to the Tories, who will either have to repeal the Equality Act - and look mean - or saddle the country with yet more crippling debt.



This has nothing to do with dignity for the elderly. Like so many of Labour's lastminute laws, it's just a grossly irresponsible attempt to sabotage the next government of Britain.

Sound judgement



Three cheers for the Lord Chief Justice, after his timely warning that judges should never seek to gag Parliament.



Lord Judge also deserves high praise for condemning the 'libel tourism' that attracts wealthy foreigners to London in the hope of silencing criticism.



It's good to know that somebody in our increasingly politicised judiciary values Britain's hard-won freedoms and the public's right to know.



First-class folly



As tens of thousands of the unemployed gratefully accept the national minimum wage to fill in for them, shouldn't striking postal workers be asking if this is really the right moment to walk out? Or are they truly bent on self-destruction?

