The U.K. is prepared for nothing

Oh farmers are the lifeblood of a country. They should be looked after by any governments, regardless of which flavour they are. Trouble is they don’t seem to realise it.

David49

I grow quite a lot of fruit and vegetables in my garden probably half, but no meat which we buy.
Father told us about how bad it was in the 1930s and WW2 but they lived in a village with a large garden, they kept chickens and caught rabbits, bartering with neighbours. They lived well but they had no money because all of it was spent on rent and other essentials

I really dont see that being a realistic way of feeding the IK population

No, you're right, it's not possible.

Even 'digging for victory' and rationing couldn't make a population of 45 million self sufficient in food in WW2. hence the Atlantic convoys.

What are our chances now with a population almost double that size?

MaizieD

Even 'digging for victory' and rationing couldn't make a population of 45 million self sufficient in food in WW2. hence the Atlantic convoys.

What are our chances now with a population almost double that size?

It's better to light a lantern than cry at the darkness - ie do what one can.

It's not easy to sit and take a good hard look at "What Is" in the world. I was only thinking this morning that one of the things no-one mentions about retirement is how much more aware one becomes (well can become) about just how awful life on Earth is. You knew the financial situation wasn't set-up for the benefit of "ordinary people in the street", you knew the NHS was terrible, you knew there was a lot of wars and a lot of other crime going on - but you've got the time to take that good hard look at your Society and realise just how appalling and fragile life on Earth is. Mind you - since I've retired there's been "Lockdown and Covid" and the war in Palestine has been ramped up one heck of a lot with that genocide currently taking place there, there's lots of illegal immigrants piling in - and so you can see that it's not just that you are much more informed/aware than you had time to be whilst still working - but Society has indeed become a heck of a lot worse as well.

But one has to "light that candle" and do what one can imo. That "rage rage against the dying of the light" as the phrase in that poem goes....and doing what we can won't be enough/won't be everything....but it will help.

I know what my own personal decision is for myself if things get even worse on this planet.....I've known that for a very very long time .....but I still operate along the lines of "Whilst I'm on this benighted planet - well...one does what one can....".

Looking back at those retro TV programmes makes me realise that we had such happy naive times years ago .
So many people had endured the first and second World wars with vivid memories of lost or injured family members ,bombing ,rationing and deprivation that they convinced themselves that we'd all learnt a hard lesson and it wouldn't happen again .
We stepped from those monochrome years into the exciting optimistic brightly coloured sixties....

And now this-

Last week , we sat in our freezing cold church being lectured about being good Christians when the reality for many people is shopping in Iceland on Tuesdays ,putting food back because they can't afford it and not being able to enjoy a warm house .
We sit in cold houses having been told how to keep warm .
I have lived without heating and your body freezes up and it affects your general well being .
And many grandparents not being able to help with child care or being a bank means that you are estranged from your angry ,disappointed children.
We watch endless advertisements for cremation plans and charity appeals.
Many of my friends can't bear to watch the news because the threat of a nuclear war is a reality .
It's a World in which the division between rich a poor seems to be widening and a World controlled by despots.

Yes a lot of things do look very bleak but I do think we should try to be positive and do what we can.
In many ways life is easier now than it was in say the 1800s. So many people over 60 were in the workhouse.
Life in this country is better than some other places.
Also I think we expect far too much from the government these days and expect them to look after us all the time.
Some profound subjects here.
But think we should try to be as positive as possible.

Yep.....I remember the optimism way back when Esmay. I remember that our physics teacher (for some strange reason as a lesson topic) was telling us how things were "going to get better and better". That there would be less work to do - but what there was would be shared out between people and we'd have a shorter working week etc etc. Duh - I believed him/I guess we all did.

I was watching the workyear get shorter for instance - yep...as far as I recall I only had 3 weeks a year holiday when I started on my worklife (I was gobsmacked at how little we were allowed for ourselves), I was gobsmacked at walking out of a school where we'd dressed as we pleased (trousers/I went into school one day in a floating maxidress etc) to a workplace where the women told me the day I turned up in trousers that "We're still fighting to be allowed to do that" and I went back 20 years in time in between leaving my (pretty advanced in hindsight) school and starting work - but I was optimistic. Those times were optimistic and I looked forward to pretty easily finding a way to retire in my 50's. Hollow laugh that my single status meant "Thank goodness I saw what was happening latterly and started preparing - or I wouldnt even have been able to retire at 60 as I did, given I'm a WASPI woman". The shorter workweek I'd anticipated turned into "I'm single and at one point I had to have 3 part-time jobs on top of my full-time one to cover those extra costs".

I do watch to see if something as drastic as a nuclear war happens - so that I can be gone before the worst hits Britain. I only have so much patience...and putting up with a society that's a lot worse than I thought it was/would be.

How times change - I remember my optimism starting up a voluntary scheme in my home city that went on for years after I'd been asked if I'd "give it away" and I agreed for others to take it over and thinking up another scheme for my city that I didn't want to run myself and so I gave that away as well and handed over all the details I'd worked out and a 99% identical scheme started up elsewhere and went worldwide!! and I suspect it's my scheme (even the wording is identical) - but choose to be pleased about it.

You're brave sitting in an unheated church! When I saw which way the wind was blowing and that many would cut back on heating because it costs so much = I made a decision to stick to my childhood decision of "I'll never be cold again - courtesy of my mother chose a cold house rather than going back to work earlier than she did or any more than she could help" and, if that meant having to avoid places that were too cold to be in because heating costs were being saved on = then I'd avoid those places. By the time my father finally managed to get her back to work - ie the man who indulged mother/let her do the decision-making basically - even my brother had been at school for years before she finally returned to work and it was only part-time. Hence a lot of my childhood decisions of "I'll never be cold again, I will always have plenty of fresh fruit in, I'll have a varied diet, I'll have plenty of clothes" as I'd decided my adulthood would be very different to my childhood and I would be the one making my decisions for me. Things could have been easier than they were and adulthood brought one of my "cringing whilst out with my mother" episodes - as she'd never been in a budget supermarket (Aldi in this case) and I volunteered myself to take her round one and I was cringing at the way she was acting (though I was surprised she did actually buy a few things - whilst marvelling at the lower prices and generally embarrassing me with her obvious attitude to it). She had little idea in many ways - and I still recall her puzzled comment one of the times I was unemployed of "Why do you keep buying those awful tasteless apples (ie Golden Delicious)?" and I had to tell her "Because they're the cheapest and I'm unemployed and the money they pay is too low". Yep...I didnt like them much...but needs must and she could flippin' talk - given I was always made to ask for fresh fruit and not allowed much as I grew up.

I think this is it basically - ie a lot of people (probably most) can't or won't even try to put themselves into "someone else's mindspace". I don't know why in most cases. I watched my mother as I grew up and figured out what caused the "mental wall" around her and it was partly her upbringing and partly I realised "My brothers very low IQ obviously came from somewhere - and it wasn't my very intelligent father....yep it was her". I guess it had its uses being brought up by such disparate parents (one working class and very intelligent and basically a logical thinker and his wife - errr....not intelligent, wanted to hang on in there to middle class 'keeping up appearances' as far as she could manage....and a very 'closed' person).

When you've got two such different parents and one of them was very "closed" a person you realise how people can mentally shut themselves off and think their way is the only way. I think that's the thing - probably many people think their way is the only way and others don't exist because they had two similar parents (similar intelligence/similar class level/similar temperament) and so they think "That's how it is and always will be". So the rich stay rich because they've maybe got two similar parents and think "That's how it is" and the poor ditto to similar parents. So their thinking is more likely to be "This is The Way things are".

MaizieD

Even 'digging for victory' and rationing couldn't make a population of 45 million self sufficient in food in WW2. hence the Atlantic convoys.

What are our chances now with a population almost double that size?

Nil.

Civilisations have come and gone on Earth several times over by now - and we're here now.

The last one was at the time of the Great Flood (down there in lots of other holy books besides the Bible) - as it really did happen and, as far as I can make out, the last technologically advanced civilisation on Earth looks to have been around 12,000 years ago. Hence why our "history" only seems to go back around 10,000 years - as we had to "clamber our way back up again" after the Flood and it was thought we've not been comparatively "civilised" for long.....because everything got destroyed and we had to start again.

Oreo

MaizieD

Even 'digging for victory' and rationing couldn't make a population of 45 million self sufficient in food in WW2. hence the Atlantic convoys.

What are our chances now with a population almost double that size?

Nil.

Well, agricultural producctivity has increased immeasurably snce 1945 - and reember wartime meant pristine downland and other uncultivated land was ploughed up. That could be done again - allotments in parks rather than flower beds and grass.

But I agree we would still not be able to feed upto 70 million people.

Overpopulation is a difficult problem to solve. In the 1990s my Mum used to go on about how overcrowded and overpopulated the UK was. All the shops were crowded and they used to go out very, very early to get their food in because they didn’t like pushing and shoving . She wouldn’t be happy now. This was London, though, maybe other parts are not so bad.

Esmay

Looking back at those retro TV programmes makes me realise that we had such happy naive times years ago .
So many people had endured the first and second World wars with vivid memories of lost or injured family members ,bombing ,rationing and deprivation that they convinced themselves that we'd all learnt a hard lesson and it wouldn't happen again .
We stepped from those monochrome years into the exciting optimistic brightly coloured sixties....

And now this-

Last week , we sat in our freezing cold church being lectured about being good Christians when the reality for many people is shopping in Iceland on Tuesdays ,putting food back because they can't afford it and not being able to enjoy a warm house .
We sit in cold houses having been told how to keep warm .
I have lived without heating and your body freezes up and it affects your general well being .
And many grandparents not being able to help with child care or being a bank means that you are estranged from your angry ,disappointed children.
We watch endless advertisements for cremation plans and charity appeals.
Many of my friends can't bear to watch the news because the threat of a nuclear war is a reality .
It's a World in which the division between rich a poor seems to be widening and a World controlled by despots.

The reality of the 1960s was no different.

Many of my friends can't bear to watch the news because the threat of a nuclear war is a reality
We were living through the Cold War.

We sit in cold houses having been told how to keep warm
My parents' house never had central heating and there was ice on the inside of the windows in winter.

There were tramps, ie homeless people but they kept on the move and sometimes would knock on the door and my mother would give them some food although we weren't well-off.

There has always been huge disparity between rich and poor.

Instead, we were told "You've never had it so good" by Harold MacMillan and, I suppose, after the war years, things were better.
However, looking back, were they better than now?

There have always been doom-mongerers too but there was no social media.

M0nica

Oreo

MaizieD

Even 'digging for victory' and rationing couldn't make a population of 45 million self sufficient in food in WW2. hence the Atlantic convoys.

What are our chances now with a population almost double that size?

Nil.

Well, agricultural producctivity has increased immeasurably snce 1945 - and reember wartime meant pristine downland and other uncultivated land was ploughed up. That could be done again - allotments in parks rather than flower beds and grass.

But I agree we would still not be able to feed upto 70 million people.

Which is one possible take on things - ie mega land utilisation.

A LOT of system change all round needs to happen - look at what happens right now, ie lots of edible food still being chucked in dumpsters, lots of edible food overlooked (will someone please sell me my darn cauliflowers with their leaves still on for instance - it's the best bit imo?), lots of food chucked out of kitchens wasted, food not regrown on that could be (yep for instance I did buy a couple of leeks the other day - but their root is now sitting in a mini bowl of water ready to be replanted on into my garden - and then eaten again).

There's quite a list on the table of what could be done - but still isnt.

Yep...we should only have somewhere between 17 million and 30 million here in Britain and the official population is way more than that level and that's not counting the fact there's estimated to be over 1 million people here unofficially (and that's another question that needs sorting...).

Yep...I was gobsmacked the other day to see that they're thinking of bringing back benefits for 3 or more children. They were perfectly fair when they said "Two and any extras you've already had - and that's it" a few years back - as they gave 9 months warning "Any more after that - and you pay for them and not us". In fact they gave a bit of leeway - they gave 10 months warning (ie "Any children born 10 months or more later to anyone that has two = you pay for them and not everyone else doing so"). So why roll that one back?

Just why is our population being allowed to increase so - when there's way too many of us already?

Just why is our population being allowed to increase so - when there's way too many of us already?
To pay for your pension?

While our pensions go up if the triple lock stays the ones who will suffer are Gen Z, our grandchildren. They will be supporting more and more pensioners as time goes on.

CariadAgain

Just why is our population being allowed to increase so - when there's way too many of us already?
There’s a falling birth rate which is causing problems in some schools. UK School funding is based on bums on seats, not on how much better it would be if we had smaller classes. So allowing the birth rate to increase means more children will benefit from Keir’s free breakfasts that we are paying for, because families need two parents working in order to be above the poverty line.
The same advantage doesn’t apply to allowing the country to be flooded with adults who claim endless benefits.

Allira

^Just why is our population being allowed to increase so - when there's way too many of us already?^
To pay for your pension?

That's a whole other question for sure - ie I know this is what we're told and it boils down to a Ponzi Scheme back at the beginning I gather. That being they started paying the State pensions - but decided to say it was taken from what the next generation would pay in. I'm not that up on history to know why they didnt say "Right - we're starting at Ground Zero and however many years YOU have paid in for will go to YOU". That would have meant problems then - as someone who'd only paid in 20 years would have only got 20 years worth - whereas they seem to have said "Oh we'll just lob that bill onwards for anything you personally are missing onto the next generation".

A subject to look into as to why they did that "lobbing the ball to another generation" so they say. All the money spent on wars has a lot to answer for I guess.....

Difficult to see what the answer is - but the fact is there IS only enough food for a certain number of stomachs (though we can and should improve that situation), there is only enough land for a certain number of people and still keep enough land for farming/countryside/etc.

But certainly I can sympathise with people who've paid in an absolutely full whack - or more - for their pension. I'm one of them = 41.5 years in the workforce and all full-time (and more!) so I have paid in full plus extra for one person and why do they tell us "Actually you have to contribute for an NI stamp for a certain number of years - or you won't have paid enough for a full State pension" if we ourselves arent the one we have been paying for? It's a seriously wierd and confusing thing that they're trying to tell it to us both ways....

Remembering now that someone actually said to me years back - and they werent joking either!!!! - "Since you've not had your two children = then I can use that quota and have a 3rd and 4th child without raising the population". They really were serious! That got followed in very short shrift of them being firmly told "I have decided what to do with that two I could have had. It's my decision and my decision was to bring the population down by not having my two - one for me and one for him". I wonder how long their ears stayed red for and they beat a hasty retreat before I started asking them if they wished to have any of my money and spend it whilst they were on the subject, rather than me doing so - as apparently it was okay to have someone else take what's mine in that respect - ie my "replacement level children" LOL.

Mollygo

CariadAgain

Just why is our population being allowed to increase so - when there's way too many of us already?
There’s a falling birth rate which is causing problems in some schools. UK School funding is based on bums on seats, not on how much better it would be if we had smaller classes. So allowing the birth rate to increase means more children will benefit from Keir’s free breakfasts that we are paying for, because families need two parents working in order to be above the poverty line.
The same advantage doesn’t apply to allowing the country to be flooded with adults who claim endless benefits.

That's why we have immigration.

However, I don't understand why people who have established their lives here, worked, paid taxes, who came on working visas will have to wait three times as long (15 years) before applying for settled status.
It seems as if the Government is trying to tackle the migrant crisis by attacking the wrong people.

They may find that well-qualified but not well-paid workers from overseas will emigrate, in some cases taking their working spouses with them.

Esmay

Looking back at those retro TV programmes makes me realise that we had such happy naive times years ago .
So many people had endured the first and second World wars with vivid memories of lost or injured family members ,bombing ,rationing and deprivation that they convinced themselves that we'd all learnt a hard lesson and it wouldn't happen again .
We stepped from those monochrome years into the exciting optimistic brightly coloured sixties....

And now this-

Last week , we sat in our freezing cold church being lectured about being good Christians when the reality for many people is shopping in Iceland on Tuesdays ,putting food back because they can't afford it and not being able to enjoy a warm house .
We sit in cold houses having been told how to keep warm .
I have lived without heating and your body freezes up and it affects your general well being .
And many grandparents not being able to help with child care or being a bank means that you are estranged from your angry ,disappointed children.
We watch endless advertisements for cremation plans and charity appeals.
Many of my friends can't bear to watch the news because the threat of a nuclear war is a reality .
It's a World in which the division between rich a poor seems to be widening and a World controlled by despots.

Are things worse or do we know more? My parents and Grandparents were happier with less. Simple pleasures, low expectations, the Church and local community.

starnded-
Financially comfortable ,in relatively good health and surrounded by a loving family-nothing prepared me for my life now .
My children seem so discontented with everything and blame me .
Maybe they are just overwhelmed with modern life .

Sorry to hear that Esmay.

Good question, starnded
As I said upthread there was no social media.

I do remember my father expounding at length about various failure of successive Governments and questioning "You've never had it so good"!

A lot of us have found that what comes out on mainstream media is so geared to what a small handful of people want it to say and cannot be relied upon to be "The Truth...."

Salutary lesson decades back now of just how few people own our mainstream newspapers - think it amounts to a number that can be counted on only two hands!!!! So we get the views of just a few people there - which leaves us with a huge "How do we find out the rest of the news and then decide what we think about it? We want The Truth and not just a few peoples viewpoints".

I don't give a darn about what individual celebrities (influencers/royal families/whatever) are doing - as they are just "a person" the same as I am "just a person".

One has to be discerning with any media - mainstream or otherwise - and I did manage/many of us managed to find out what news is being broadcast in other countries/what objective doctors who think for themselves are thinking and doing (which was extremely useful during Lockdown) - when eg we could see a former Pfizer executive tell us ALL about "those jabs", we could see an independent group of American doctors there doing the same.

A lot of us managed to find some very intelligent/objective/well-informed social media in amongst quite a bit we certainly don't think of that way.

From that it's been gobsmacking to see the take on what is happening in Palestine from countries other than Britain/America/Australia. I've been astonished just how different it is. I knew America tries to run our country - but I didn't really know just how much it's determined to do so and have been absolutely horrified at their serve-themselves-only take on it and just what is happening. Thank goodness I've been able to watch official news channels, etc, from so many other countries and make up my own mind - rather than having it made up for me. So I watch German, Al-Jazeera, Indian, etc and make up my own mind - rather than having our government or someone else's government tell me what to think.

WWM2 I was just 'looking about me' when I was out this morning. What a state our roads/pavements/infrastructure is in. I remember when everything was neat, repaired, painted, unbroken and in working order. Subsequent governments haven't been up to taking on the task of keeping it shipshape, or getting it all back to 'acceptable' again.

First thing the UK should do is to hold another referendum asking whether to join the EU.again.
I am sure people can see how both Russia and the USA and their UK followers, one earns £1m per year, wanted to make the EU weaker. People told lies, as did the newspapers moguls living abroad.
The UK is weaker as is the EU, together the block will find it easier to trade in all aspects and fight.
The UK’s closest richest ally was supposed to be the USA but they want to cosy up to Russia.