From The Daily Mail:
While I've the same misgivings about the tax/welfare system paying some people to have as many children as possible while penalising everybody else, and encouraging people from the third world to come here merely to claim benefits, what does 401 people per square kilometre actually mean?
One square kilometre = 247 acres.
There are 62 million people and 27 million households in the UK = 2.3 per household
So 401 people = 174 households
At average residential density of 12 homes per acre, they need 14.5 acres for housing
Let's double that for roads, places of work and public parks = 29 acres, just over one-tenth of the area
That leaves them with 218 acres, nearly nine-tenths of the area, for agriculture and forestry, or well over one acre per household, which is in fact quite enough to grow food for one household if necessary. And if you look at actual land use in England, that's exactly how it pans out, ninety per cent of people live in a few dozen urban areas which cover six per cent of England and the rest is farmland and forests. Am I really the only person who ever looks out of a car, train or aeroplane window?
Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 43:24-34
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18 comments:
What happens when your acre is nice fruitful farmland while someone else's acre is in the northern highlands?
For a better comparison you need to allow a proportional national area loss for areas that are low productivity. Holland, for example is almost all low lying and agriculturally productive, The UK is not although much of England is.
I didn't say give each household one specific acre, be it fertile or rocky and have subsistence farming, I said that even in England, which has the best farmland in the UK, there's plenty left for farmers to produce food.
Land in Scotland (which is nearly as big as England) might not be quite so good (it's colder), but their pop density is only 66 people per sq km, i.e. there are about ten acres per household.
Anyway, firstly the UK is or could be broadly self-sufficient in food, secondly that is pretty irrelevant if we can do higher value stuff, export it and buy cheap food from elsewhere.
Looking out the window while you're in a traffic jam or squashed into standing room only you mean?
JM, if I'm in the six per cent that is urban, there are people everywhere. If you travel from one town to another, there are huge areas that are completely empty.
It's not just us humans who need a place to live. Ever heard of biodiversity - not the unnatural abstract theory which leads to cultural genocide - the variety of plants and animals in any given habitat.
England will be truly empty with your sort of reasoning.
Furthermore, the optimum population for England is 30 million: optimum in a food context being the ability to feed a population - which was tested to the limit in WW2 and still failed. By 2050 the UK will import 90 per cent of its food to survive.
England is about the same size as Louisiana, which has a population of 4.5 million. Needless to say there is no threat to biodiversity in that space.
Anon, I trust that you are aware that since WW2, farming methods have improved immeasurably? And that most adults were busy waging a war, not growing food?
Have you ever heard of GM crops, dwarf wheat, fertilizers, green houses, poly tunnels etc?
As a simple matter of recorded fact, we can and do produce three or four times as much food per acre as back then.
So that puts our 'optimum population' (to use your definition) at about 135 - 180 million (i.e. three or four times the population during WW2).
I often look out into the country and think I must be insane too. no one else agrees with observed fact.
Anon is simply trying to blame nature for the injustices of our society. Hes just scared. sympathise.
Same for David Attenbororough
On imigration the net effect is that some from elsewhere moved here. The common stock is in general decline where wealth is concentrated.
Yep,
Mark I even get the AA map out for some of my relatives to look at. Let them choose London or Birmingham as worse case scenarios, and then ask them about the green stuff around the 'dark satanic mills' and leave it at that.
Makes not a jot of difference to them, mind you!
MikeW
I came to the UK in 2006 from Zimbabwe were we all think that the UK is London and have absolutely no idea of the size of the place. My first job was in Ayr and the journey from where I stayed near London to the airport was quite an eye opener. Everywhere I have been (now live in the North East, there have been more open spaces than even back home. Its well known in Zimbabwe that the UK is concreted over and has on open spaces at all.
Although the house here are much more cramped than the modest bungalow I grew up in for the most part, most houses here are reasonably sized compare to what people in the poorer parts of Harare live in.
Paul
MW, it's what Robin refers to as the 'infinite evidence' problem. People in this country are conditioned to believe certain things and no amount of pointing out that it's all lies makes any difference.
Paul, thanks for that. It appears that English propaganda has even spread to Zimbabwe.
Dont worry yourself Mark, at a projected 80 million in 40 years time we might fill the ole place up a bit.
As long as we are not relaying on the wind and the sun, and are Ok with turning Blackpool into rubble (GM should take care of the meat for the big macs) then we should still be muddling through, like the last 3000 years.
The problem in the UK generally (and even in Scotland which at first sight appears to have quite a low population density) is that the land is very unequally distributed. Less than 100,000 people own great chunks of the UK, more than 50% of it in fact, leaving the other 60 million to own what's left. That's why people believe there is a shortage of land in the UK.
In fact even my last comment paints too optimistic a picture. According to Kevin Cahill, the acknowledged expert on this topic, less than 1% of the population own 70% of the island of Britain. Which means that fewer than 600,000 people own 39757674.6 acres giving an average of 66.25 acres each. And also that the other 99% own 30% of the island. In other words 59.4 million own 17039003.4 acres giving an average of 0.29 of an acre each.
No wonder that the vast majority of people think that Britain's short of space!
"While I've the same misgivings about the tax/welfare system paying some people to have as many children as possible while penalising everybody else, and encouraging people from the third world to come here merely to claim benefits,"
You appear to be suffering from the same stereotyping that you are complaining about. You've just proved that the land to house a population density of 401 people per km2 is not much compared to what you have left over, but you seem not to notice that the number of third world immigrants who have come here and claimed benefits is also a small proportion of the immigrants who have come here and worked, who are themselves a tiny proportion of the actual population (and similarly, with that other bogey(wo)man, the single mother on benefits with lots of kids).
Another observation that comes from car/train windows is that even in Spring you hardly ever see anyone working the land ,the occasional tractor maybe.The only time you see a few people in fields round here, they seem to have dogs for (illegal) hare coursing.Fewer people around in the country than in Constable paintings and he was was supposed to be showing the depopulating effects of the agricultural revolution.
Only 10% of Ireland's beef production is consumed in Ireland, so obviously looking at the British Isles as a whole, there should be enough food production to match consumption.
I could make a circle around my house 1 km in diametre and say that the area is vasty overpopulated in relations to food production, and low in biodiversity, but it wouldn't mean a whole lot in the big picture of biodiversity and food production issues.
-Kj
"Ever heard of biodiversity - not the unnatural abstract theory which leads to cultural genocide - the variety of plants and animals in any given habitat."
Anon, I take it you live in the town. The biggest threat to biodiversity is modern farming methods. Apart from on a few (very very few) traditional farms, most fields are a monoculture, either of the crop being grown, or of a particular high-yield type of grass. By contrast, replace that field with a housing estate and the biodiversity increases enormously with the variety of plants the inhabitants grow in their gardens.
S, I'm OK with all that.
D, yes, the incredible concentration of most people into very small areas creates the illusion of crowded-ness.
B, it may well be that in the whole country, there are only a few dozen illegal immigrants on benefits, in council housing, smuggling drugs and doing arranged marriages (although I suspect the figure is much higher). I still consider that to be A Bad Thing, although if it really only is a few dozen, then it's not top of the list of prioritiues.
DBC, good point. I cen't remember ever seeing anybody out in the fields.
Kj, there you go again, dragging logic and facts into things. If low pop density were the main driver of wealth, then Ireland and Scotland would be immeasurably rich and everybody in London would be desperately poor, which is clearly not the case.
B, ah, but on Planet Homey, there's no such thing as back gardens with ponds and bushes and plants. It's all 'concreted over'.
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