My 2 penny worth (probably not worth that!). "Afordable" houses at the planning permission stage usually reduce in numbers when paper comes to bricks and mortar. After the first folk have bought an Affordable house it goes on the open market at "un-affordable". There is regularly a bit in Private Eye about property in the UK being bought by those who do not live in the UK through tax havens and avoid stamp duty or whatever. We are host to a large number of immigrants for whatever reason they come here; financial, persecution in their home country etc but the UK is a densely populated over crowded island and I dont think more folk are really needed. There have been complaints about losing cheap labour with BREXIT but cheap labour/low wages removes the incentive to automate etc. Before Covid a lot of firms "needed" people to work in offices; may now work from home. This could develop into a long ramble but think the gist is clear. Those who complain there are not enough folk to pick asparagus etc should get out there and do some picking or get busy with a harvester design. A long toem ago a combine harvester had a driver, 2 men on the back bagging the wheat/barley or whatever. The sacks were then dumped on the ground and a tractor with driver, two on the trailer and two on the ground collect the bags. Now its just a combine driver who discharges the grain into a trailer.
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