To: My prospective members of parliament
Re: Questions to my parliamentary candidates (for coming general election)
Date: Wednesday 6 April 05

I would like answers to the following questions from the candidates vying for my vote at the coming general election.

1)   Globally, current levels of motorisation and air travel are already placing a non-sustainable drain and strain on our planet’s limited natural resources and finite carrying capacity, yet both are set not to just double, but to increase many-fold as the less well-off become more and more affluent and the developing world strives to emulate Western lifestyles.

Do you recognise this as an utterly untenable situation, which no amount of environmental legislation or technology can cope with, and which threatens not just the prosperity, but the very survival of our children and coming generations? If so, what do you propose we do about it? Should we, for example, be building or expanding more roads and airports?

2)   Do you think that Britain's current population (about 59 million) is too large, too small, or just about right? Should the government be doing anything to encourage a reduction/increase in Britain's population? If so, what?

3)     In view of the many millions of people in the world’s “less developed” countries who - given half the chance and quite understandably - want to come and settle in Britain (especially since so many already have established communities here), what is your attitude towards immigration?

In a number of British cities (as already the case in some London boroughs) the immigrant population will soon outnumber that of native Britons. As a native Briton and ethnic (indigenous) European myself (i.e. someone whose ancestors have lived here since long before the beginnings of recorded history), I now sometimes find myself feeling like a foreigner in my own country. I - and most of the people I know (including some Black and Asian people) - feel very unhappy about this (but wouldn't dream of voting for the BNP). Do you have any understanding and sympathy for the way we feel, or do you think that we are being “racist” (and perhaps should be voting for the BNP)?  

I could ask many more questions, of course, but for me these are the most general and essential. I hope to receive some very clear answers. Otherwise I shan't know who to vote for - in which case, I probably won't bother.

Roger Hicks
@
www.spaceship-earth.org