70,000 people could be living in Guernsey by 2035
Thursday 19th May 2011, 11:30AM BST.
GUERNSEY’S population will reach 70,000 by 2035, the annual population bulletin has shown.
At the end of March last year it was found that 62,431 people were living in the island – an increase of 157 (0.3%).
Natural increase, which is defined by the number of births over the number of deaths, accounted for the majority of the growth while net migration, the sum of immigration and emigration, boosted the population by just 14.
The figures fit the pattern that shows Guernsey’s population will grow by another 8,000 in under 30 years.
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Need to stop letting foreigners in.
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Bernard Flouquet maintains that the latest population bulletin emphsises the need for population control as proposed by the PPG. To my mind it is quite the reverse. Apparently there was net immigration of 14, a figure which we can surely cope with. The rest of the increase was due to an excess of births over deaths. I don’t imagine that the PPG would suggest euthanasia or birth control to change the balance and the PPG document offers no solution to this. We should be grateful for these additional births as there will be more young people to look after the old folk in due course. What we need to concentrate on is how we provide for the increasing number of people living to a ripe old age.
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Great news we must embrace multiculturism and ensure diversity like the UK.
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Why has the number of “Public Administration” long term licences gone from 80 to 113 in the space of 2 years? The States would be better spending time controlling what they directly control rather than mucking up the Open Market!
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I take it that nobody is taking the very bad day predicted in the Mayan calendar (21/12/12)as seriously as they did the Millennium bug then ?
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Andy, I couldn’t agree more cultural diversity can only enrich the lives of this insular little island. Personally I’d love to see more eastern europeans, pakistanis, indians, afro caribbeans,
somalians,afghans,orientals, the list is endless,
come and settle here.
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The net result of immigration and emigration was 14 extra people last year – therefore that is not the problem – so the Guernsey Liberation Army can stop banging on about “letting foreigners in”.
The elephant in the room – not just for Guernsey, but globally – is that population growth is becoming unsustainable. To put it bluntly, we need to breed less.
Just about all the world’s major problems from climate change, to pollution, to rising food prices, to urban spread, to depletion of fish stocks to wars and famine can be directly or indirectly attributed to overpopulation.
Guernsey, being a 25 square mile rock, is in many ways a microcosm of the broader issue. We have to import food to sustain our population, our roads are clogged with cars, there is precious little sapce to build new homes and we pump unseemly amounts of raw sewage into the sea.
The trouble is that economic growth is linked to population growth and no government in the world is going to promote a realistic birth control policy if it means their economy will stall. Furthermore, large families are still an insurance policy in many poor countires and many people object to birth control for religious or other ethical reasons.
Two choices really – we either accept that population growth is inevitable, until we reach a point where the world can no longer sustain us – or we address the underlying problem and find a way to encourage birth control on a global scale. Sadly our politicians (like all politicians) will go for the former easy option.
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Laurie Walker
Rarely have I read such an accurate summary of the situation. You are spot on.
By 2070 a huge proportion of the population will be living indoors in retirement homes. They are not going to be increasing the traffic problem, putting pressure on the schools or earning income from which tax and social insurance will be paid.
Its vital to look beyond the numbers.
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Andy and george, we don’t have enough room. Case closed. If you love loads of foreigners move to the UK.
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Mr G,Do I detect a whiff of Xenophobia? shame on you.
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Mr G – maybe you should leave, this island is more fast paced than you are (that is a massive insult btw)
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I wonder how they arrive at these figures, I don’t remember being accounted for at the end of March last year.
I suspect that the true population of Guernsey is more like 70,000 right now as there are all sorts of people over here below the radar.
As for the suggestion that the birth rate needs to be maintained in order to look after the aging population, this shows a complete lack of foresight because all it will lead to is an even greater aging population to be serviced in the future and a further continuation and amplification of the current vicious cycle.
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When you are in your dotage Mr G you will have nobody to look after you in your Guernsey nursing home unless you relax your ban on ‘foreigners’.
I hold the contrary view that we will have to let in thousands of younger, economically active people to keep our society going during the decades to come.
At the same time I agree entirely with CD about the human population explosion being the ‘elephant in the room’. The problem is not in our part of the world but in the developing world, where there is a very urgent need for draconian measures to stop the fast breeders. Unfortunately, I think CD has assessed the situation correctly in his final paragraph.
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Not at all, foreigners have their purpose. This island cannot support that many people, it’s crowded as it is.
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Please do invite all your friends from the Orient here. Luckily, because we definitely aren’t one of the most densely populated areas in the western world, we will have no issue in accommodating their every whim.
Oh no, that’s not quite right…
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I think its time to make plans to fill in Belle Grave bay. Just think of the houses that can be built there.
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@CD
You have expressed my own thoughts on the worlds’ situation soo succinctly. The planet is straining under the human presssure being put on it, and it can only get worse in my view, unless something drastic is done to reverse this cycle.
As for “George” I’m sure his post was a “tongue in cheek” comment, but “George” welcome to the world of todays’ Australia exactly as per your list of ethnic people with all their religious diversity and some of it quite manic to say the least. In some cases, current immigrants (definitely some not poverty stricken) to Australia have so many children that they use people mover vans to ferry their children to school and back (that is fact)! So it is quite possible that future Australia will become (Muslim???) However that is Australias’ problem.
The following is quite tongue in cheek “Catholics” have the belief they’re the only ones that will go to “Heaven???” But there again so do the Muslims etc. etc. So there’s going to be an awful lot of strife in “Heaven” don’t you think. Of course as the chinese don’t believe in “Heaven” that will leave lots of room for others.
Some will no doubt think I am being sacrilegious here, but that is not my intention, so apologise to those that think I am.
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A couple of previous posters have hit the nail on the head with birth rates being the issue. Taking the Chinese stance of 1 child per couple may be a little draconian but encouraging “social responsibility” may help.
I have had a few pub conversations with people as to why only having, at most 2 children, is a good idea – many hadn’t even considered the consequences for society of increasing population etc and just wanted a large family.
Or of course, a good old fashioned bit of war, famine or natural disasters may help set the population back a bit.
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Andy, ‘embrace multiculturism and ensure diversity like the UK’.
Love the irony (bearing in mind the state of the UK) !
errrrr….you were being ironic….
right…?!
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The only way out of this is to stop giving out flu vaccinations and hope for a cold winter. That should help a few of the ‘oldies’ on their way out.
Instant drop in population *cheers*…
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Everything that CD says. What the Island needs, in my view, is to recognise its enviable position and sustain what it has got. ‘Going for growth’ is Guernsey speak for every field, vinery and spare plot of land becoming a housing target and nothing more than an economic Ponzi scheme.
Sustainability, however, does not come cheap and inevitably means higher taxation and lower expectations.
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I agree with Martino on this one. The problem in Guernsey is an ageing population. We don’t want loads of elderly Daily Mail readers banging on about 14 extra people in the Island.
We need young people who will pay tax, boost the economy and work in jobs locals have no taste for.
Everytime I go to Town I am served by the most polite and professional Latvians and Madeirans. And it is great to see 2nd and 3rd generation Maderians now doing so well in the Island in professional positions and running very good businesses.
The only gripe the Daily Mail reading locals have about foreign workers is they get arrested for drink driving or fighting in the street.
Well what do you do when youre off Island away on business? Yes you get bored in your hotel room and wander to a small bar and get drunk. Exactly what the foreign workers do. Theyre no different to us.
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For advocates of more birth control,the 0-15 age group DECREASED by almost 1% and the 65 and overs INCREASED by 2%. This trend is set to continue. If the baby boom parents had made more use of birth control or had the same distractions we have today maybe this wouldn’t be happening- but people are right that we need more youngsters to support all of us as we go into old age and live longer. To blame the growth on immigration is just daft- and by the way the advantage of fixed term licences is that we get the taxes without having to support them other than whatever their pension entitlement is.
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Please all read the report and not the summary above. It’s very misleading.
The 70,000 is based one a net immigration of 200 per annum plus a continuation of the current natural growth (births less deaths) approx 150 ish.
The report does provide other potential outcomes as these assumptions are questionable.
As picked up by a few above the main concern should not be the increasing population but the ageing population and the financial impact of more people requiring pensions, health etc but less working population to support this increased burden!!
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The urgently needed limit on childbirth will allow money to be saved on schools, benefits and social housing etc which can then be used to prop up the ageing population during what will only be a short term problem lasting a few generations.
…
I frequently pass through town at the beginning and end of the day when the streets are not heaving, and I can truly say that more often than not the predominant or only languages I hear spoken are what I assume to be Mediterranean, eastern European and Asian. Then, if I do hear English being spoken, often it is with some regional UK or international accent.
I think it is a shame but Guernsey is already a melting pot; in fact it is a lot more multicultural than swathes of provincial France and England I have encountered, metropolises excluded.
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Mr G has hit the nail on the head.
This needs to be addressed, as all we seem to advocate now is a rich boys play ground.
Sooner the finance goes the better, we can build ourselves up once again in the traditional Guernsey way!
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When considering birth rates it is necessary to realise that there is already a two tier approach here as in the rest of Britain. Those who have every intention of fully supporting the cost of their children generally have an average of two children or less. Then we have the second type, for whom it really is a case of ‘the more the merrier’ because they know the state will increasingly bear the cost. There is no way society can justify endorsing or encouraging the latter, but we do.
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More young people to prop up the aging population is a none starter.
There are too many people globally for the planet to support today, let alone with any extra births just to support a western lifestyle.
The trend will need to change to accepting less and working longer and being responsible for our own health so that we create less of a drain on services.
The Western lifestyle is in general lazy and certainly very unhealthy and deffinately greedy. So I don’t support continuing this trend.
Historically (just taking the UK for exmaple) there were enough famines, diseases and fights/war to keep the population level reducing back down between each episode so growth never really occured. But now we have medicines that stop the major wiper out which was diseases and food is obtainable and war is not wiping out many.
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Guern abroad
Your post was doing ok till you got to “war is not wiping out many”.
If you call the recent slaughters in the middle east (1 million +) not many then i can only imagine you either dont read the news or your mad.
If its the former then you can be excused on the grounds of ignorance to whats going on in the world.
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At bcb, neither.
There is not enough war, famine or disease to keep the population at a status quo.
Population growth over this century is projected to rise say 4 billion looking at figures. So a million here or there, however gutting this is, is nothing.
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Are you sure there is not 70,000 plus living here already?
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Guern abroad
apologies i re read your post and have noticed you were talking about the UK.
Its me thats mad :)
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Patois, can you just explain for all those who are unsure myself included exactly what this means “we can build ourselves up once again in the traditional Guernsey way!”
Did you mean once the finance industry leaves with its 3/4 of a billion £’s and all the workers leave then all the restaurants shut and the construction industry comes to a grinding halt because all these horrible bankers have stopped spending their money developing and modernising the island.obviously over time this would be having a knock on effect that will probably cripple a fair few smaller businesses along the way.
If so what are you going to do in the traditional guernsey way to rebuild?
Unless i have completely misinterpreted your comment I cant see any positive outcome coming from losing the finance industry in guernsey.
Discuss
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planet earth – well said.
The finance industry is the life blood of this island. Almost everyone directly or indirectly benefits from it. How many taxi drivers in the UK own a boat and go on 2+ long haul holidays a year? Almost every taxi driver that takes me the airport seems too!
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planet earth/Jock,
Yes, unfortunately the finance industry is the lifeblood of this island now but in many ways your average(non office worker)person was far better off before it came along.
All the success of the finance industry has done is to drastically increase the cost of living in Guernsey to the detriment of those that do not earn money from it – there is little doubt that many people in the island benefit from it but not everyone.
If taxation and everything else had not gone ‘through the roof’ us non finance peasants would not need to earn a fortune just to live here!
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Kevin, you are talking rubbish. “your average person was far better off before [finance] came along.” No they weren’t, they were stoking the boilers to warm greenhouses all night while growers got very wealthy.
The island has always made money from our independant tax status – offshore finance is just the current manifestation. i50 years ago we were the offshore marmalade capital of the world. Later on it was grapes, immediately before finance we were primarily it was the tomato business. But times change, we cannot compete with places like Spain for growing so that industry has gone for good. Guernsey without the finance industry would certainly make housing cheaper, shame you will probably have no income to take advantage of it as the island becomes depopulated and ends up like some barren scottish isle. Bad idea.
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We are a local employer who is trying to keep all our staff local. One major contributing factor to our population is cheap non local labour. One problem is non local firms picking up contracts. They come from places where the cost of living is far less and their men are on peanuts compared to what locals need to earn to be able to live. When these workers come over, they are doing work that a local could be doing and there is no other benefit to the island from them being here, they will take their contributions with them. Thats if they leave the island. We have the airport site opening soon and just like the Waitrose sites, 95% of the labour will not be local. The airport site will require 200 men split in to a night and a day shift. Inevitably a large proprtion will be non skilled labour that will like the Guernsey way of life and stay. There should be something in law that says any firm winning any contract must have a certain percentage of local workers on site. The biggest joke was the social building itself. A couple of years ago they had the roof done and used a non local firm. Other than the states getting the work done marginally cheaper (and then having to have a local company come and fix the problems they left), Guernsey did not benefit from having them complete the works while people sat underneath them waiting for to be handed locals contributions.
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Also, there should now be a restriction on who can just turn up here, like non essential workers. One woman was in the press on the 12th of Feb, she was homeless and unemployed but had an address of a west coast hotel and was caught twice stealing food from the neighbouring garage. She went to court and was awarded a temporary housing licence and benefits! If thats not an open invite….She would not have been able to step foot in America http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/ineligibilities/ineligibilities_1364.html#1
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Beanjar
Kevin does have a point.
You can`t just measure everything in terms of money or what we have now.
Many had far less years ago but seemed to be happier in general?.
There are many people struggling to survive and working too many hours to pay the bills. I think it is deceptive to assume that because we seem to have more we are better off.
Many are much better off but there are many left behind and they tend not to be heard so much.
Hasen`t there been a big increase in people seeking help with stress and many more marriage break ups amongst other things? does this have anything to do with the must have money/everything society we are creating?
Just my thoughts.
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Employer
I work in the construction industry for a local contractor I’m not familiar with the foul up (can’t swear on this forum) with the roof on the social building but surely that was a project management issue regards design/testing/snagging/supervising on behalf of the states as well as the contractor. We always try to take on good local labour to avoid the hassles of trying to get non-essential but skilled workers licences. unfortunately per head of population a vast majority of the skilled local guys/gals are already working for the larger well established firms and with school/college leavers going straight into junior management roles within construction it is essential to take on non-local labour to fill the labour gap in order to fulfill work commitments. I hate to say it but lot of the guys who come off the social have absolutlely no interest in hard graft. As for the woman who was stealing I’ll agree that someone moving to guernsey just to take advantage of the benefit system should be put on the first flight back.
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Beanjar,
You raise an interesting point at the end of your most recent post – if the finance sector folded or seriously downsized the houses would be cheaper and the island would become depopulated.
Would this not mean that the lower paid amongst us would be considerable better off if we did not have to pay increased taxes to subsidise the finance sector (zero10) and try to maintain this islands over stretched population and infrastructure?
In many ways Guernsey is a victim of its own success.
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Kevin, have you actually seen what depopulation does to an island? If the finance sector left the island what do you think would replace it? In recent history the alternatives were horticulture which is uneconomic due to climate and tourism which cannot compete with package holidays to Spain etc. Finance feeds every other industry on the island and that translates into the money to pay for infrastructure – despite the States chucking millions away as fast as they can. If nothing replaced Finance, eventually everybody would leave apart from a few farmers – are you a farmer?
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While the economic situation in Ireland is not the same as the possibility of the finance sector leaving Guernsey, the effect on the population would be much the same. Before Ireland’s financial boom years, young people used to leave for the UK and overseas in search of jobs. The emergence of Dublin as a finance centre stopped that with, I understand, many young people returning home. The problems with the economy there have resulted in the young seeking work elsewhere again – and this is exactly what would happen here in Guernsey.
Those who believe that the Island would be a happier place without the finance sector are not being realistic. I am absolutely certain that some people feel they derive no benefit from the income it provides but they should take a good look around them at the facilities that exist on this small Island and think about how the Island could have afforded this in other circumstances. Of course, should the finance industry leave, those who would be happy to see it go would also be happy not to have the level of facilities we enjoy, I presume…..
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We disagree on Sunday trading but I’m with you all the way on this one Beanjar. If we don’t bite the bullet and do away with this unsustainable cap on population/immigration we will indeed be *******d 20 or 30 years down the line. And without the finance sector coming in around the time our growing and tourism industries were in steep decline we’d probably be *******d right now. If some people were to have their way the nursing home industry would soon become Guernsey’s biggest!
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planet earth
You are absolutely spot on.
And the standard of some of this work is shocking. As to how some of these jobs get signed off i`ll never know.
planet earth
Many contracts are being awarded purely on price when there is local labour to do the jobs.
Nobody who resides in Guernsey can work and live on the wages that are being paid to the temps that come over here, and more and more are being brought over in gangs by people from foriegn
countries.
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Simple solution – keep finance, but prohibit the importation of medical staff – docs and nurses, surgeons an so on.
Result? Elderly (and many others) would depart more quickly… so -declining population, declining social security and medical costs, increase in trickle-down of inheritance, freeing up of property for incoming bankers.
Even Hunter Adam could get on-budget.
Any complaints?
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Bob, there is a certain creepy logic to your post! What might be more acceptable would be to legalise voluntary euthanasia. Assuming there were sensible safeguards this would relieve many people from pain, worry and stress whilst reducing the financial burdon of our ‘ageing population’.
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If you look at the population report (attached to the above article) it is obvious that immigration is not the real problem here. The fact is in 2010 there were only 1,619 essential licences and 1,421 short term licenses issued.
Short term licensees are going to leave so not relevant. The number of essential licenses is insignificant compared to the overall size of our population.
Whinging on about the finance industry is missing the point – the longer lifespan of local people and the birth rate are the real issues.
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Keep the chavs from breeding like rabbits and the population problem is solved! Plus….my tax can then be used for worthy causes. And do not get all liberal…..there are plenty of jobs out there. If you are not working in Guernsey it is because you are too lazy!!!!!!!!
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@jsimpson
I couldn’t have put it better mayself!
Stop the baby machines churning out another baby each time the previous one is about to start school and make these women work for things they need rather than our taxes paying them to sit on their backsides whilst they have all of lifes luxuries handed on a plate. That will keep the population down as we won’t need so many workers from outside the island.
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I suspect that what Mr G is trying to say is that multiculturalism is all very well but Guernsey simply doesn’t have the space.
When flying in you see the density of population, and it doesn’t matter about creed, colour or race – it is a matter of how many people we can fit in regardless of their ethnic origin which is frankly irrelevant.
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No one disputes the fact that Guernsey has no more space. The problem is that even if we closed the gate to new people arriving here today the population will still be growing. How can that be stopped? The reality is that sooner or later the housing spec on the Island will have to change. Apartment blocks will be needed just to cope with the natural growth of the Island. Some Agricultural space will need to be taken for housing….no one wants to do this, but I cannot see any other way. I am afraid that as a population we are going to have to accept that the way we live here IS going to change…for better or worse…and I am afraid there is nothing that can stop that from happening.
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