Too many people

There have been reports recently about declining productivity both in Scotland and in the UK as a whole. Productivity is measured in terms of economic output per capita of population. The reports have tended to ignore the fact that population increase has a direct impact on productivity assessment. Thus they have given the impression that Scottish and UK workers are becoming lazy and/or inefficient.

However, UK population has increased by 5 million since 2001, largely because of migration (according to the Office of National Statistics) and since output has not risen at the same rate, productivity has gone down.

Population growth has outstripped economic growth and so our standard of living has declined. It has also meant increased numbers relying on our public services which have become overloaded, resulting in queues, shortages, staff burn-out and cuts.

Germany, by contrast, has high productivity, because its population has not increased since 2001. The EU opendoors policy on migration has not affected it the way it has affected the UK. It would seem that migrants were put off by the history of Germany and preferred the UK because they had a smattering of the language. No wonder David Cameron’s request to the EU that they put a brake on mass migration fell on deaf ears!

Strangely, the SNP Government is intent on continuing the EU open-doors policy, regardless of our overloaded public services and declining productivity. Do they think that our local Scottish workers are too wee, too poor, too lazy, too costly and too truculent, so we must import thousands of migrants to do the work instead?

LES REID Morton Street, Edinburgh