Muammar Al Khadafi

Newly released government figures have shown that there has been a 17% increase in the number of homeless people in Britain since this quarter last year.

Burying his head in the sand as ever, or leaning it over the side of that houseboat, Housing Minister Grant Shapps tries to tell us that homelessness is actually at an historically low level.

Still, despite sticking to that line, he blames it all on the recession anyway. There's not a problem, but there is, the recession underlines it. Good hedging, call me Dave had better watch out with skills like that, could be a future party leader in the making there.

Of course, wrong on both points hapless Shappy - there is a problem, and it cannot solely be laid at the doors of the recession.

But, there shouldn't be a problem. There is absolutely no need for any homelessness problem in the UK.

Should we choose to allocate social housing properly, and cease paying exorbitant rents to house asylum seekers in £1million mansions, or indeed to house them in any British homes at all, there would be plenty of housing for the British people, and there would be money to subsidise it where needed for those Brits on low incomes.

We'd actually likley make a huge net saving overall if the system were thus overhauled, and also cease to be so much of a magnet for asylum seekers from the world over.

Our population is not expanding rapidly, at or at least it wouldn't be without the pressures of immigration and immigrant birth rates - control that and there is no reason whatsoever why there should be any homelessness at all.

Pertinent in regard to homelessness would also be to consider how many of the homeless, either official or otherwise, are actually foreigners, although sadly the government statistics do not provide this information.

We have finite housing and finite room - yet there seems to be some insane delusion that we can continue to fit in infinite people and that infrastructure will magically appear to accommodate them.

It won't, all that we are doing is putting an increasing strain on the resources which we have, symptoms such as increases in homelessness are the inevitable result.

Between recession and housing stocks tied up on accommodating half of the world we will inevitably have a homelessness problem. As recent evidence has shown housing simply cannot keep pace with the number of people who require it.

Mass immigration to the UK has often been hailed as being of amazing benefit to all - but tell that to the homeless and to everyone else living with the daily reality of the problems which it brings.

Our UK today is one where we witness more and more land becoming housing and housing estates, and yet also one where we see homelessness increasing.

The two together do not make sense - unless we concede that, in this instance, as in so many others, the problem either begins, or is made far worse at, our borders.

Of course the recession and manufactured financial hardship plays a part, but the fact remains that there is no reason why there should be any homeless within Britain unless we are faced with a population which is expanding at a rate which we realistically have no chance of accommodating.

Homelessness, like so many other things, is a problem which need not exist - the fact that it does should tell us that something is desperately wrong in this country of ours.

Government ministers like Grant Shapps can bluster and blame the recession all they like, but the simple fact is that an ever expanding population will play an even greater role.

Until we tackle the issue of immigration then, recession or no recession, the fact is simple - homelessness will increase.

We have neither room nor homes to accommodate a population which has been subjected to an artificial and unprecedented increase such as the one which has been inflicted upon Britain.

Police Community Support Officer Renata Dudek has raised the issue of homeless migrants with Yeovil Town Council as the towns streets become home to jobless Polish immigrants, many of whom are reported to have alcohol problems and mental health issues.

"The number one problem is migrant homelessness. Some of them choose to live that way and some of them don't know where to go to get help" PCSO Renata Dudek, herself a native Polish speaker, told the council. Part of her job is to act as a liason with South Somersets migrant population.

The blame appears to lie with the economic downturn leaving many of these people jobless, with of course no mention made of the insanity of importing scores of workers to begin with.

And, it's our fault. According to Andy Merryfield of the Somerset Racial Equality Council, "These are often very proud people, not wanting to admit the situation they find themselves in and perhaps too proud to go home.....English language courses are limited and this is a real barrier to what they should be getting".

Should any of us decide to move to other countries in search of work, how many of those countries will pay for us to learn the language so that we can get help with benefits and health issues? Tut tut, such discrimination.

Yet another benefit of open borders and mass economic migration which they never told us about - that when the jobs are gone, the streets are enriched by drunken foreign workers without jobs who are too proud to go home.

Nobody ever really expressed any concern about the poor British worker getting elbowed out of the jobs market place though, left struggling for work, in grinding poverty, and suffering rising levels of mental health issues and alcoholism, did they?

Somehow none of this is a surprise at all.

*quotes from Yeovils Western Gazette