SmallTown
Well-known member
If the moon falls from the sky and lands on greate Manchester then we won't have the ability or the land to feed 67 Million people
New UK population estimates published
- Thread starter atypical_boro
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It's also culture. Those countries you mention have a tradition of multi-generational living. A family of 2 or 3 generations only takes up the space of a single house where we don't have that so need 2 or 3 houses for that same family.
I wonder if the Netherlands is better because of the style of houses. The classic dutch design of tall townhouses means more good size dwellings in smaller footprints where we traditionally want a garden. We could have much bigger houses if we gave up our gardens. My house probably only takes up about 30% of my land and it is a new build so not a massive plot. We don't build basements either because I assume it's more expensive for developers but that would give us a load of extra space without taking up anymore land.
hobblewobble
Active member
The point being we don't have the ability to feed our own population i think we can support somwhere in the region of 38 million
SmallTown
Well-known member
SUrely it's jsut in the built up areas that have those tall townhouses in the Netherlands. I've spent some time in Roermond and it's mainly big houses with big gardens
Infrastructure doesn't just mean trains and roads. I really mean schools, hospitals, GPs, houses etc. The hard infrastructure to get people around. adequate drainage, adequate water and energy supply etc is also poor but just the basic public services cannot cope with the additional demand and they haven't been growing anywhere near the pace they have needed to.
SmallTown
Well-known member
NO many countries can. US and China probably. Definetley Canada. Maybe Russia?
Which is yet anohter reason breixt was such an immensely stupid idea. Imagine cutting of free trade to the peopel who make our food? Barmy
Andy_W
Well-known member
Yeah, of course, I should have mentioned those too. We're going to need a push to build more of those, but like you say, staff them too, so we need to be paying them what they're worth, or the UK folk will just not be interested in training as them. If that doesn't happen we'll need to import trained workers (or those who want to get trained), but of course, loads of our folk don't want that. They'll want it when they're in the hospital or care home though, that's for sure.
Upgrading exiting infrastructure of utilities is extremely difficult and costly in built up areas, and my field of work is actually doing that in a way which is least disruptive. Doing it out of town is a doddle by comparison, probably ~10-20% of the cost.
There's a massive push on at the minute for upgrading and adding electricity infrastructure though, my company is gearing more towards that, rather than drainage.
They can sort drainage in town's and new developments out of towns etc by having holding tanks effectively (actual tanks or holding ponds), it buys time during storms for storm water, to limit flow into the existing network. They also can do the same for foul water, using rising mains (basically pumped sewers), these also get stored in tanks, and they only allow a pumped connection onto an area of the foul network which is not at capacity. They've been doing this for at least the last 15 years (largely un-noticed by most) and every new building or rebuild has to have separate foul water and surface water systems, not like the old days where it was all combined. If you notice the green kiosks near new housing, in fenced areas they're often the pump stations for foul water, and there's a big tank nearby often in the road, a car park, or an area of land with no building on. The surface water is normally a 225-600mm pipe feeding into a long pipe in the road 3x the diameter, which basically acts as a tank, but the outlet is limited to that of a 225mm pipe, or on a hydrobrake which limits flow. When there's major storms and the big pipe/ tank gets full, the overflow kicks in, into a SUDS pond. These are are easy to see, they normally just look like empty ponds, but are designed for 1 in 100 year weather events, based on assumed climate change + an additional 20-30%. There's a suds pond on my estate, never seen any water in it, even when we've had extreme rain, and the nearby river was massively flooded. There's a pump station for the FW too, and the other estate nearby also has one. When local capacity is tight, the pumps operate at night when the network is less stressed, basically means you can use the same pipe for more volume over time. I've not worked on many new or refurb developments where they've struggled to get a local connection, worse case is usually just larger tanks on site, but there's always space.
What they end up connecting the Foul water into is often a combined system, but eventually what should happen is the percentage volume within the combined systems will be less and less surface water. With old budlings and the like there's no real way to get them onto separate systems, until they eventually need a full refurbishment, and I think now full refurbishment planning actually forces separate systems.
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JonnyHistory
Well-known member
We haven't since the 1900s and perhaps even later than that.
On a war footing (WWI + WWII) we were only able to provide around 40% of our food needs domestically (with a much smaller population).
GB has been reliant on imports for 200 years or more!
indeedido
Well-known member
The UK has not invested in infrastructure to enable the growing population.
Population has grown because of immigration (not boats by the way).
Immigration has grown because we haven't enough people, the capability, or the will to generate the wealth for the lifestyle expected, OR the appetite to re-distribute income and particularly wealth, more equitably.
The population is growing, aging, getting sicker and becoming less productive per head.
Instead of investing in infrastructure, Government budget services soaring debt built to cover the shortfall between tax income and expenditure on current services like Health, Education and Care.
Our model is ****ed.
We do appear to want rising disposable income, low taxes, our own homes, whilst preserving family wealth and taking a world class public health service, education and social care for granted.
Naturally we also expect to have a strong defence, great law and order, energy security, workers rights, strong road, rail and public transport.
And we want a world voice and the right to tell others how to live, but of course nothing needs to be improved here. And of course it needs to green, unless that means changing what we do, of course.
We will each have differing views on the right mix, but it is clear to me that we can't have all of that above - at least not right now - so we need to prioritise and choose.
Cynically the death rate will inevitably rise, but unless attitudes change and both income and wealth are more evenly distributed, then the young will not choose to breed and in doing so suppress their living standards further.
Without immigration we will face a population slump and a huge gap in the workforce required to keep Britain running, let alone growing.
If we had created the infrastructure required to grow our economy and support previous immigration driven population growth, then we would perhaps have both catered better for that growth and be in better position to support continued controlled immigration and encourage more of our younger people to re-produce.
Our Governments of the last 45 years have been so short term in their thinking and that approach has accelerated shamefully over the last 14 years.
They focus on the next bulletin and the next headlines, interested only in surviving them and deflecting on to somebody else, anybody else.
What chance do we have when our politicians are so vacuous and our system so flawed?
Population has grown because of immigration (not boats by the way).
Immigration has grown because we haven't enough people, the capability, or the will to generate the wealth for the lifestyle expected, OR the appetite to re-distribute income and particularly wealth, more equitably.
The population is growing, aging, getting sicker and becoming less productive per head.
Instead of investing in infrastructure, Government budget services soaring debt built to cover the shortfall between tax income and expenditure on current services like Health, Education and Care.
Our model is ****ed.
We do appear to want rising disposable income, low taxes, our own homes, whilst preserving family wealth and taking a world class public health service, education and social care for granted.
Naturally we also expect to have a strong defence, great law and order, energy security, workers rights, strong road, rail and public transport.
And we want a world voice and the right to tell others how to live, but of course nothing needs to be improved here. And of course it needs to green, unless that means changing what we do, of course.
We will each have differing views on the right mix, but it is clear to me that we can't have all of that above - at least not right now - so we need to prioritise and choose.
Cynically the death rate will inevitably rise, but unless attitudes change and both income and wealth are more evenly distributed, then the young will not choose to breed and in doing so suppress their living standards further.
Without immigration we will face a population slump and a huge gap in the workforce required to keep Britain running, let alone growing.
If we had created the infrastructure required to grow our economy and support previous immigration driven population growth, then we would perhaps have both catered better for that growth and be in better position to support continued controlled immigration and encourage more of our younger people to re-produce.
Our Governments of the last 45 years have been so short term in their thinking and that approach has accelerated shamefully over the last 14 years.
They focus on the next bulletin and the next headlines, interested only in surviving them and deflecting on to somebody else, anybody else.
What chance do we have when our politicians are so vacuous and our system so flawed?
Corcaigh_the_Cat
Well-known member
And reading some of the comments above, short termism is still very fashionable.
There's no chance of us electing a government with long term aspirations.
Unravel_Morrison
Well-known member
the ONS has just been taken by the ONB clearly.
Any other figures you want to invent with no reasoning?
FishofContemplation
Well-known member
We’re not really even similar to the Netherlands. The UK has only a tad over half the population density of NL.
hobblewobble
Active member
Here is a pair of studies about national food self-sufficiency (second one brings corrections and add-on to the first one) :
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014046#erl452631fig4
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/021002
In both studies, the UK is shown to be currently unable to sustain it's own population without imports. Although it eventually could if it focused on improving agricultural productivity and water efficiency (my guess is that part of it would be about turning rangeland into cropland and using water efficient irrigation methods.)
Centralscrutinizer
Well-known member
It's over 100 years since the UK has been self-sufficient in feeding itself.
hobblewobble
Active member
In 1921 there were 30 million less people who also didn't consume at the rate we do.
Corcaigh_the_Cat
Well-known member
They didn't have access to the food we do being the only reason, or the methods for producing it.
There's a plant in Belasis knocking grub out now and half a mile away there's a factory producing tons of tomatoes.
SmallTown
Well-known member
Ag
Not sure what you're struggling to grasp about this? I know you want to keep pushing home the point so you can blame immigrants but it makes no sense
Again NO COUNTRY CAN!
Not sure what you're struggling to grasp about this? I know you want to keep pushing home the point so you can blame immigrants but it makes no sense
Fattyfoggon
Well-known member
Happy days sounds like you are in a great place, and if you also have private medical care you will be sorted! However, not so great for the NHS with the changing demographic with less and less young people making NI contributions to help fund the NHS to provide medical care to an increasing larger and older population, additionally if there are less people of working age available who is going to provide the actual required health care, especially if there is less immigration to help. Ideally with use of technology and AI in other industries maybe that would free up some workers to provide hands on health care but I doubt it...
Even if we could become self-sufficient in food, would we want to? A future of subsisting on turnips all winter? No thanks.
It's one of the great modern achievements that thanks to global supply chains we can eat an amazing variety of foods from across the world, year round.
We're going to have to compromise on that to some extent as part of mitigating climate change, but to set self-sufficiency as a target would be to work towards massively reducing living standards.
It's one of the great modern achievements that thanks to global supply chains we can eat an amazing variety of foods from across the world, year round.
We're going to have to compromise on that to some extent as part of mitigating climate change, but to set self-sufficiency as a target would be to work towards massively reducing living standards.