‘When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.’ Lord Kelvin, eminent physicist, mathematician and engineer, 1824
HERE IS a range of numbers about our country. Some are surprising, some rather curious (housing, for example) and some very worrying indeed.
When doing the research it rapidly became obvious that we seem to believe that AI will solve all our problems. It was often quite happy to give me two different answers to my questions, so here is what I found without its help.
This kind of data is published in many different ways which explains why it sometimes refers to either England, England and Wales, or the UK.
1 HOUSING England and Wales
1801 Population 8.87million
Houses 1.63million – 5.4 people/house
1901 Population 41.1million
Houses 6.71million – 6.1 people/house
2025 Population 60.9million
Houses 27.2 million – 2.2 people/house
Here we have the first puzzle: the figures are from government websites, yet that same government says we need another 300,000 houses a year. There surely can’t be that many second homes?
2 GPs
1950 UK Population 50.3million
GPs 19,000 – 2,600 people/GP
1980 UK Population 56.3million
GPs 26,143 – 2,100 people/GP
2025 England Population 57.3million
GPs 38,323 – 1,500 people/GP
Puzzle number 2: Why has it become so difficult to see a GP when there are more in proportion to the population than in 1950?
3 POLICE England & Wales
1946 Population 22million
Police officers 52,106 – One police officer/422 people
2024 Population 60.9million
Police officers 147,700 – One police officer/412 people
The strangeness continues: where are all these police officers? Almost exactly three times as many for three times as many people. Yet you rarely see one on the streets. Are they all chasing thought crimes?
4 NHS STAFF UK
1948 Population 50million
NHS staff 144,000 – One staff member/347 people
2025 Population 69.5million
NHS staff 1,539,571 – One staff member/45 people
Comment here is not needed. You can see what’s happening. The NHS is already the largest employer in Europe.
5 CARS UK
1945 Population 41.7million
Cars 1,522,000 – 27 people/car
2024 Population 69,100,000
Cars 33,930,000 – 2 people/car
6 ROADS UK
1945 183,000 miles – Cars 1,522,000, 8.3 cars/mile
2024 246,500 miles – Cars 33,930,000, 137.6 cars/mile
See why it takes you so long to drive to work?
7 ARMED FORCES UK
1800 Population 10.5million
Service personnel 200,000 – 1.9 per cent of population
1918 Population 39,582,000
Service personnel 4,583,000 – 11.6 per cent of population
1945 Population 48,669,000
Service personnel 4,900,000 – 10 per cent of population
2024 Population 69,100,000
Service personnel 148,000 – 0.2 per cent of population
No threat to Russia here.
8 PUBS
1901 Population 38,328,000
Pubs (1900) 96,000 – 400 people/pub
2024 Population 69,100,000
Pubs 45,000 – 1,535 people/pub
Pubs and the hospitality business in general are suffering from politicians who have never run a business.
9 RAILWAYS
1850 6,000 miles
1900 29,800 miles
1914 20,000 miles
2024 10,000 miles
The ‘Beeching Axe’ chopped our network of local lines in the 1960s. Buses have never really filled the gap.
10 ENERGY Personal data
2016 Electricity 11.35p/kWh, plus 16.4p/day
2025 Electricity 27.03p/kWh, plus 53.8p/day
In 2025 there are 11,500 wind turbines and 1300 solar farms providing ‘free’ electricity.
11.1 IMMIGRATION (legal)
Totals of people entering the UK minus those leaving.
2020 93,000 Added one city the size of Bedford
2021 484,000 Added one city the size of Edinburgh
2022 873,000 Added two cities the size of Liverpool and Coventry
2023 860,000 Added two cities the size of Bradford and Nottingham
2024 431,000 Added two cities the size of Peterborough and Brighton & Hove
Total in five years: 2,741,000
See para 13.
11.2 IMMIGRATION (illegal)
The Migration Observatory notes that between 2020 and the end of September 2024, ‘around 175,000 unauthorised arrivals were recorded by the authorities. Of these, 78 per cent [136,000] arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in a small boat’.
Note that the legal immigration total is around 15 times higher than illegal.
See para 13.
12 AREA
England: Area 51,325 sq miles
Population 2025 57,30,000
Population density 1,116/sq mile
France: Area 248,573 sq miles
Population 2025 66,600,000
Population density 268/sq mile
See para 13.
13 COMMENT
It is quite clear to all except our current and preceding governments that immigration has crippled the country in many different ways. Too many people in too small a space. Hardly racist, surely, to point this out? Too many people, whether they’re Chinese, Swedish, Albanian, French, Moroccan, Tibetan or wherever in the world they’ve all come from.
If your government has a deliberate policy of allowing large-scale immigration, it has a duty to plan and then provide the facilities the newcomers will need. There we have the unbelievable thoughtlessness, and thus the ensuing disaster.
Too many people in too small a space and none of our political masters thought we might need more schools, more hospitals, and more of everything else to cope with eight cities’ worth of expansion in five years.
I hope your knowledge now is a little less ‘of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind’. These numbers show how our country has been so badly managed over the last twenty-odd years, and even worse, shows absolutely no signs of improvement under the current stewardship.
