If things get tougher?

oystercatcher

ceridwen wrote: »

Errr....does that actually matter what the cause of overpopulation is?? Too many people in the world as a whole is what matters and any children people have will be living "somewhere" in the world - whether it adds to this country's population or some other country's.

As I understood it - many of the Eastern Europeans for instance who came here for jobs are now going back to their country of origin.

A "Western" child will expect a higher standard of living than ones from many other countries and will expect that - somewhere along the line (directly or indirectly)- another slice of countryside will be built on to provide them with a house once they are adults.

There is also the fact that child benefit doesn't stop at two children - it continues to be paid for all subsequent children currently - i.e. more money coming out of the Nation's Budget and not available for other purposes (eg NHS, education, welfare benefits, etc).

But - I will stop there....as I know many people believe that it is a person's "individual choice" how many children to have - even some people who say they are environmentalists. Those of us who worry about overpopulation know we will never change other people's opinions no matter what we say/no matter how much evidence we produce - so will be just left with "heartsink moments" every time anyone announces they are expecting Child No. 3 or beyond. I know all we can do is ask people to be responsible and then try not to be depressed for too long any time someone announces they don't intend to be.

(NB: I do accept that people who already have 3 or more children may have had them not realising how serious the situation is. I am only stating that we all now do realise the situation is extremely critical.)

I do agree with you actually.
If you read around the facts are that 'western' populations are having less children. It is the immigrants who are having an average of 4.4 (I think I read) children per family as opposed to 1.6 per family for western families.

Lots more education needed.

Oystercatcher

ceridwen

I would agree with that Oystercatcher - the bit about "lots more education needed" - with the corollary that we don't draw distinctions between native-born Britains and anyone else in the country - we ALL of us need not to have more than the replacement value of people - not sure if that's an exact two people per woman. If "anyone" has three children - it means they have had that "3rd child and beyond" and someone somewhere needs to counterbalance by only having one of the two children they are "entitled" to. I did read the figures somewheres when I was wondering whether people like myself who have elected to remain childless would be sufficient to be a counterbalance to those choosing to have more than two - apparently not.

As I recall - even though childless people aren't adding any people to the population - we are already needed to allow for the fact that the population needs to actually physically reduce in number. The population staying the same even isn't a viable option to save us all.

2cats1kid

Well I'm a counterbalance then, as although I am one of 3 and so is DH, we have 1 child only.

I'm thinking that "replacement value" should actually be coming down from 2. If you think that a few generations ago you were looking at your threescore and ten, if you were lucky, and now the Queen is forking out a heck of a lot for telegrams and we are hearing more and more about an aging population, we ought actually to be producing fewer than 2 to keep things stable. Of course then you run into the whole *problem* of the aging population, which is that we need young people to replace the workers and support all the older people. So I'm not sure getting people to reduce the number of children they have will help. Or at least it will help one problem, but potentially make another one worse?

Leaves thread for now as this is way too deep for a Sunday afternoon....

ceridwen

2cats1kid wrote: »

Leaves thread for now as this is way too deep for a Sunday afternoon....

I can do "deep" for breakfast, lunch and dinner -and middle of the night - but I'll go away and "behave myself" now and do some housework..:D

happytails

Just to let you all know ASDA curry sauce is now down to 8p (from 28p but previously 4p) so i went all out and bought 2 jars lol will get plenty more if its still cheap on pay day.

Sarah x

p.s ASDA are doing sugar puffs 450g £2 a pack at the moment 2 for £2 but they have 50% extra free so in effect you are getting 2 675g packs for the price of 1 450g pack. :T

kbarty

I like the idea of the builders bags for the square foot gardening idea - I could put them on our driveway. But, I'd hate to try and move them once they got started and since we're in a rented house then that may be a possibility. I saw some laundry bags in the pound shop and thought they might work on a smaller scale.

Would be a good idea to recycle old builders bags though. I bet freecycle might throw some up.

Caterina

ceridwen wrote: »

Further on growing one's own food in tiny spaces - I can't do better than use as a title "growbag thingies" that a virtual friend used in a P.M. to me about summat I'd told her about.

See below - for more growbag thingies:


http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/07/05/lfa-2008-grow-bags-urban-allotments/


a rather good idea methinks and sparked off the thought of those "bag thingies" that are used sometimes instead of skips - ie those sorta huge bags with handles that I see on the road outside people's homes in lieu of skips and filled with sand or similar. Errr...non-technical that's me!:D but I'm sure someone will come along with the correct name for these bags soon - bet they'd do the trick as massive growbags in someone's garden personally. I've got a vague idea I might even have seen them in the Argos catalogue for just a few £s.

Hi Ceridwen,

The growbag thingies might be cheap (in fact if you ask Jewsons they probably have some spare ones for free, or look in skips!), but the soil required to grow stuff in them is prohibitively expensive. One such bag, full with good quality horticultural topsoil does not cost less than £70 in London, and that's cheap!

We are planning to grow food in our front garden and making raised beds is a good option, but we are still struggling with the idea of having to PAY for EARTH!

Hope it makes sense,

Ciao

Caterina

Pitlanepiglet

Caterina wrote: »

Hi Ceridwen,

The growbag thingies might be cheap (in fact if you ask Jewsons they probably have some spare ones for free, or look in skips!), but the soil required to grow stuff in them is prohibitively expensive. One such bag, full with good quality horticultural topsoil does not cost less than £70 in London, and that's cheap!

We are planning to grow food in our front garden and making raised beds is a good option, but we are still struggling with the idea of having to PAY for EARTH!

Hope it makes sense,

Ciao

Caterina

Freecycle? There are always folk trying to get rid of topsoil on our group. It would do the bulk of your beds and then if you wanted to add high grade soil you could just top it up?

Yategirl

Caterina wrote: »

Hi Ceridwen,

The growbag thingies might be cheap (in fact if you ask Jewsons they probably have some spare ones for free, or look in skips!), but the soil required to grow stuff in them is prohibitively expensive. One such bag, full with good quality horticultural topsoil does not cost less than £70 in London, and that's cheap!

We are planning to grow food in our front garden and making raised beds is a good option, but we are still struggling with the idea of having to PAY for EARTH!

Hope it makes sense,

Ciao

Caterina

have to agree with this - try and get free topsoil on freecycle and start the process of making your own compost but to buy in soil or compost is extortionate!! I have raised bedsin my garden - I managed to get a load of free good quality topsoil but nowhere near enough the quantity I needed so have had to buy in compost (Wickes is cheap for bags of compost - 4 for £10 or you are looking at bulk buying which is £60+ for a tonne weight (look on ebay for suppliers for an example of prices)..

D&DD

Just a quickie as dinners nearly ready..
I got a net of those 'xmas' spuds to try this year as they were going cheap (3.50 a net with around 20 tubers) I also stuck in a few sprouty ones as an experiment
I split them with my mum and she just rang to say 3 tubers in a bin yielded just over 1 kilo of luscious new potatoes :j Hers went in 2 weeks before mine and I've not even had a dig around yet but sounds like a success so far!