OK. I do believe you are on a wind up, but I will answer, anyhow: I accept people do see things differently and opinions differ. This doesn't mean that I should consider all opinions equally valid. Some are less valid than others because, for example, they lack any logical or factual basis.
Brexited | the worst threads live the longest
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Apologies for any misunderstanding, that wasn't addressed to you specifically. Rather I was making a general point about how often said correlations have been remarked upon in the wake of Brexit and the inference that I'd say many people feel is contained within it.
As I said - I think the EU became a bit of a proxy in of all this. But in a country that has always had a strongly eurosceptic tradition it was a huge mistake for successive governments to allow certain conditions to fester and therefore particular feelings to manifest which would then prove decisive in such a referendum. In one sense then, the vote may not prove to be irrational at all, if it compels the political class to address these issues.
That may indeed be the case, but it simply doesn't matter at this point.
Exactly, and that's the cruel irony of the whole Brexit enterprise.
So in order for one to qualify as pro-EU, they must agree with every single concept, idea or preference of the EU?
Fairly sure that pretty much every remain voter (me included) doesn’t think the EU is perfect, and doesn’t agree with every single policy they offer.
I consider myself pro-EU because I am in favour of cooperation and integration with our neighbours, along with a plethora of other reasons. Doesn’t mean that every single belief that I hold needs to align with the EU. The recent net neutrality legislation is an absolute crock of shit, for example.
You want historical data for something that hasn’t been done yet?
Interesting line of questioning...
Also, quick note regarding overpopulation. I think ultimately it is a subjective term as everyone has their own idea of how many people is “enough”. My opinion is that the UK has too many people right now (and this is absolutely not a comment on immigration or ‘foreigners’ - if anything I find most immigrants more polite and hardworking etc than most brits).
Too many people have too many kids, and have them too young, and as mentioned before, the trend of people living longer and longer has caused an aging population. I would be interested to see the stats of the proportion of the total population in full time employment compared with previous years/decades. I think the “aging population” issue goes very much hand in hand with overpopulation. When I have been abroad to countries like Spain or the US, it has always struck me simply how much open land there is compared with the UK. Even from a brief look on google maps, it is easy to see the level of industrialisation and urbanisation here compared with other countries. Personally I generally prefer cities to the countryside anyway, but to me it is an issue when we are irreversibly getting rid of our green spaces.
Thing is, none of this is particularly to do with the EU or Brexit.
Too many people have too many kids, and have them too young, and as mentioned before, the trend of people living longer and longer has caused an aging population. I would be interested to see the stats of the proportion of the total population in full time employment compared with previous years/decades. I think the “aging population” issue goes very much hand in hand with overpopulation. When I have been abroad to countries like Spain or the US, it has always struck me simply how much open land there is compared with the UK. Even from a brief look on google maps, it is easy to see the level of industrialisation and urbanisation here compared with other countries. Personally I generally prefer cities to the countryside anyway, but to me it is an issue when we are irreversibly getting rid of our green spaces.
Thing is, none of this is particularly to do with the EU or Brexit.
Indeed you did. Too many people my arse...
the rate of childbirth is lower than ever and age at which people have kids is higher than ever
Yeah but he saw a few teenage mums so your stats don't mean anything
Which is a sign of decline, anthropologically speaking.
I can't speak for anyone else but I understand perfectly why people with opinions like yours despise me to the core. I just don't give a shit.
The list of people whose opinions of me I don't care about also includes neo-nazis, racists and religious bigots. You may be on the less severe end of it, but you all exist along the same spectrum.
It’s been highlighted a lot in America recently, but not so much here, that a lot of “establishment” publications have spent an inordinate amount of time naval gazing about how the “liberal bubble” has failed to listen to, understand or sympathise with Trump voters which, whilst somewhat true, has almost NEVER been countered with the view that Trump voters - who actually won, and are actually in power! - should be under any similar obligation to examine their own “bubble” let alone listen to, understand or sympathise with liberals, or (much) more importantly the minorities they’ve actively put in danger, demonised, disenfranchised and imprisoned..
And the same kind of attitudes exist with Brexit now. Where we’re expected to be sympathetic and polite toward Leave voters who can no longer explain why they want to leave. Who don’t really care, but still feel intangibly angry, and like they’ve been fecked over, so just want other people to feel fecked over too (which is pretty much what a 3rd of Brexiters come down to now) and yet they’re not the ones encouraged to sympathise with the countless people being fecked over by Brexit. With the families being separated, or the nurses and doctors being strong armed out of the NHS.
We’re not allowed to make them feel bad for the dumb consequences of their angry vote... but they’re allowed to “despise us to the core” for being angry at them as a consequence of their dumb vote.
I actually do understand why a lot of Leavers would despise the twee, middle class, People’s vote marching, silly cardboard sign dickhead idea of the Remain movement. I even agree to a degree... especially how the likes of Change UK and their media supporters are trying to sell everyone on returning to the very status quo that Brexit was a rebellion against in the first place!... and most of the Left agree with this too!
... but once all the bad faith mainstream and economic arguements for Brexit have proven conclusively to be so, and youre still left blaming the “bloody foreigners” the bleeding heart liberals (i.e. those being too nice?) and the idea that modern global inter-connectivity might destroy the regressive benefits of faux nostalgic insularity, you loose any claims to any moral populous righteousness, IMO..
And now that all of Brexit’s economic fantasy’s have been proven nonsense... anyone still supporting it, can’t pretend they’re being anything other than openly socially regressive.
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That is surprising if so, however a lower childbirth rate from a larger population still leads to a bigger increase, in absolute terms. Consider that over the last hundred years there were also two world wars, each of which had a significant effect on the (particularly male) population. The thankful absence of anything like that in more recent years (along with medical advances) would suggest a more sustained population increase over the last few decades.
What on earth are you talking about? Our TFR (Total fertility rate) is below 2. Which means without immigration we'd be heading for depopulation. And depopulation coupled with a shortage of young people and abundance of old people. Which isn't the good kind. Also the average age of first child for women is above 30 and at the highest it has ever been.
What hymn sheet are you singing from?
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No it doesn't. It's relative to the death rates. Our population might be increasing but it is also aging. Our population problem is basically people living too long. Your suggestion seems to be less kids and immigration. That's literally crazy talk.
Unlimited population growth without limitless resources is a logical impossibility so at some point we will have to look at depopulation as something other than a bad thing. Designing a society around that logical fallacy was always going to lead to a point where we have to answer some tough questions. Maybe we should start building structures to deal responsibly with ageing populations and population decline instead of using migration as a crutch and trying to move back to an unsustainable model of economic prosperity based on endless population growth?
Well how do you possibly predict impending Brexit chaos based on nothing ?
I do hope we get past this little moment soon, could do with some kind of "correction".
There you go, overpopulation resolved.
Cracking post.
Exactly. Uk has actually had more births than deaths since 1976 though. Still “not enough”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...argest-europe-2050-driven-immigration-ageing/
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It really isn't a concern yet. We're very very far off from reaching the limit of our resources. We have a problem with wildly uneven allocation of resources and also of efficient use of our resources, but not a lack thereof. The food thrown away each week is enough to feed everyone twice over. You are also disregarding human capacity for efficiency achieved through technological advances. Within this century we'll have the technology to create abundant clear, renewable energy. 1000 years ago we wouldn't be able to sustain half the current population yet now we do so comfortably thanks to those advances.
Environmental hazards, wars, plagues....those are the real threats to humanity. And as for the West specifically, depopulation is a much bigger problem than overpopulation.
Also, what is your suggestion here? That we don't let people live longer? Kill em off or what?
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It's copyright directive, not net neutrality but I agree it is shit. The EU net neutrality regulation is actually rather nice!
The death penalty, however, is explicitly forbidden in the Treaty of Lisbon. It is one of the most important core concepts of the EU. In fact, even the trade of goods and equipment used for capital punishment is forbidden.
So no, you do not have to agree with every single thing about the EU but the death penalty is one of those big things, like freedom of movement or free trade. The rejection of capital punishment a fundamental, basic concept of the EU; it wouldn't be what it is without it.
My suggestion is that we consider a different way of organising a society that isn't built on the assumption that we need continuous population growth to thrive. We know it's a significant contributor to one of those real threats you outlined there, environmental hazards. The idea of solving a problem we've not dealt with before by doing exactly what we've done before is pretty nuts in my book. Particularly given it's all founded on the notion that economic growth is paramount, despite the fact that a laser-like focus on economic growth based on technological advancement has played a pivotal role in creating some of the major issues you're outlining.
Forced depopulation, however, is a disaster. China's one-child policy was anything but a roaring success and its long-term consequences include increasing social tensions (lack of available women, for one).
And yes, I do realise you're not necessarily suggesting anything so drastic but I regularly encounter on RedCafe the idea that "overpopulation" is one of the world's biggest problems and it happens to be, well, nonsense, at least when applied to Europe. Unlimited population growth was, obviously, never going to work but falling significantly below even replacement rate is very much of a problem - a problem that would be exacerbated by silly policies such as discouraging parents to have more than one child, as suggested in this thread.
Agreed. For the record, I also think it's batshit crazy to propose euthanasia as a potential solution to the problem of "overpopulation" too...
Why is there a palpable difference in attitude when you openly advocate curbing immigration levels to keep population growth in check?
After all, unlimited population growth is unlimited population growth whether it be natural (birth rate) or artificial (net migration rate) ?
(Not aimed at you specifically btw, just an observation)
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The status quo isn't unlimited immigration anyway, government have the power to limit it.
Indeed, and had the government exercised more control over immigration from the mid-to-late '90s on, then Brexit would not have happened.
Reposting...
Now, I'm obviously not empirically endorsing this view based on a single video, it's sources, and the supporting links below ALONE... I'm just positing an interesting and somewhat convincing argument, that if even potentially true, surely changes the contextual hysteria around "overpopulation" a fair bit.. No?
A hysteria that underwrites the likes of Brexit, and similar global right wing movements, quite strongly.
https://overpopulationisamyth.com/
https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/02/26/overpopulation-myth-humanity-will-begin-shrinking-century-13839
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-overpopulation-myth
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Only watched the video. Interesting. A peak of 12 billion they reckon? Good luck feeding & watering that lot. We currently have some problems doing that from time to time with “only” 7.5
good video re: population statistics
Do to inefficiency, inequality and other things but not immigration or resources....
And if we did start to stretch the outer limits of our global resources, cutting ourselves off from the world and attempting to rely on our paltry bland natural produce is gonna put us at a serious disadvantage... There’s a reason all our popular national dishes are colonial imports!
It’s almost as if these Leavers don’t actually want the truth, or any facts at all, lest it ruin the comforting notion that they voted as they did for upstanding logical reasons... and not dangerously ignorant and emotional ones, that are gonna cause a shit load of trouble for everyone, for years to come.
But we can’t say shit like that. ‘Cos its mean, and elitist. So... erm... Well done! I suppose. You definitely didn’t get conned by the tabloids!!
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I didnt realise Malthus had become so popular.
Well, I’m not sure savings in inefficiency will plug a gap of another 4.5 billion but inequality, well that’s the root of a lot of it isn’t it?
In a more egalitarian world, a lot more people would simply stay where they are. Certainly wouldn’t be so keen to come to the UK in any case, because our weather is shit. After all, borders are artificial man made lines on maps & ultimately, one species = one planet.
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yeah so let's keep up those borders- don't want those poor people coming over here with their aspirations and hard work ethic.
You're literally proving my point.
I'm not arguing against the fact that a lot of Remainers are condescending cnuts. But the fact is that Brexiteers now rarely ever, if at all, defend Brexit on the terms of what it'll actually involve.
Depends where you look. I told you a year ago that Norway don’t take 75% of EU rules and provided you with sources. You decided to ignore that and talk to Paul the wolf about how awful it would be to fill out a 6 line form to visit Europe. You are the problem
Unfortunately that's what happens when people are struggling, want better lives and are told by their own government that the problem is something out of their control (which fortuitously also absolves them of blame). They believe the government who want to stay in power, years of negative press rather than the neutral people actually analysing the issues.
Well no. As it stands, opening the whole world’s borders completely would be a fecking nightmare for the richer countries. Even you must see that. There was a reason for the Eastern European tidal wave you know? Like, disparity between us? Hence their rush for the exits? Recipient country infrastructure then struggling to cope for a while?
So yeah , as things stand, let’s repeat that 100+ times over? It’s very admirable & moral, but practical?
Don’t blame me, blame the world elites.
Hm - interesting way of terming relocation of workers, but yes. The UK had a demand for workers with the skills that workers from other nations have that are in short supply within the UK or were jobs that UK nationals were unwilling to do. The currency in the UK was far stronger so the workers from Eastern Europe could make a killing relatively.
On the skills side this is through a lack of funding in education, low aspirations and complacency- certainly in poorer areas. There are also fields that are 'over-subscribed' and others that are crying out for workers (think healthcare, or trade jobs).
For jobs that the locals are unwilling to do - I'm not sure how many people grow up wanting to be a cleaner or to pick fruit or be a labourer but if people are willing to do that then they should be allowed to be here.
The people who relocated deserve far more respect than people like you seem to grant them. Also pragmatically, someone coming into your economy for a number of years and paying taxes - without having being invested in by your education system and then potentially returning home for their retirement is pretty good economically speaking. Not that I want them to go to their home nation - they deserve to be here more than some feckless prick who hangs around their council estate all day.
Hmmmm ok Mr Icke.