The U.K. is prepared for nothing

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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....".

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?

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.

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.

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

M0nica

Whitewavemark2

Domestic incompetence is disastrous but when it comes from dealing with threats outside of our borders it is beyond frightening.

Same people behind the incompetence whether domesstic or foreign.

For sure.

Whitewavemark2

Domestic incompetence is disastrous but when it comes from dealing with threats outside of our borders it is beyond frightening.

Same people behind the incompetence whether domesstic or foreign.

Many of us over here in West Wales are heading in the direction of permaculture and perennial plants. Looks like the future to me.

What I've not forgotten is - many years back now (we're talking decades) - watching a tv programme that was all about permaculture and I do remember a two person household who only had a large balcony and yet they were producing a rather high proportion of their greengrocery for themselves - vague idea it was in the direction of 80%. Would love to rewatch that programme now all these years later - if anyone knows what I mean and it's up there on YouTube.

That programme finished with me quite convinced it's the way to go and certainly individual households growing what they can. Cue for bookshelves worth of books about permaculture, square foot gardening, perennials and people who visit me wanting a tour of inspection of my garden as far as I've been able to get to date.

Pleased to see that, after my previously "concrete garden" that made my heart sink when I bought the house (but there wasn't much to choose from here) the garden behind mine has been turned over to food production (complete with polytunnel) and the one behind them has now just changed to food production. Cue for a slogan - We're Working on it in Wales.

We have already got miles of poly tunnels they make production much less weather dependant, not just rain but sun as well it also makes harvesting easier.

The main reason production falling is supermarket price pressure and independant growers just can’t fulfill contract terms wanting continuity of supply. The only growers that can do that are international companies, growing in different countries where low cost labour is available. We have one operating in this area who is importing from the Gambia at present.

It’s a global market there isn’t going to be any reversal of that. A few independant growers will struggle on supplying farm shops etc, mainstream production will be international.

Climate change is making a big difference to our food production. I heard a grower on the radio saying that we will need miles of poly tunnels in future because changeable weather and flooding will make growing food difficult and expensive.
"A recent (2023) NFU report says the UK is 62% self-sufficient in food but some sectors are in decline:
For example, the UK’s self-sufficiency in fresh vegetables – key in supporting the health of our nation – is at its lowest since records began in 1988 at 53%.
This year (2024), farmers and growers have experienced some of the wettest winters and springs on record which has put untold pressure on food production and contributed to a collapse in farm business confidence, causing a dramatic decline in the area planted of cereals for the 2024 harvest."

I can't help thinking that many younger generations than us will have trouble getting used to the kind of diet that was normal in the 1960s and the cost of processed food will be unaffordable.

Other problems are the lack of labour for farming and the cost of imports and the fact that other countries are struggling with climate change which is affecting food production elsewhere. If anything needs advance planning it is mitigating the effects of climate change but there appears to be little central planning that makes sense as a whole. The future is grim.

Cadenza123

I think that the powers that be are only interested in the short term. How can we give enough sops to the electorate so they will vote us in next time? Most seem to be only interested in self promotion and enrichment. I also think the perpetual quest for growth is ridiculous. The planet and it's resources are finite and we need to recognise it and act accordingly.

This is the inherent problem with democracy.
A government like China's can be so much more effective in a disaster, and so much more motivated to consider the long -term (crisis planning, climate-change initiatives) as they will benefit from the work put in now & won't suffer from hard, unpopular but neccessary decisions.

I'm glad I live in the UK not a dictatorship, but democratic systems like ours are not without drawbacks. They make unified international initiatives harder too.

Excuse typos

Quite apart from floodplains - what about farming land being sacrificed to something like solar panels built on it?

That deserves a thread of it's own!

Why are these enormous solar farms allowed when planners could insist on solar panels bring put on every new building, factory, car park and more subsidies given to existing owners for solar panels?