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Wind Turbines.

quite right, but traditional farming methods along with its relative respect for the rural environment and animal welfare, simple cant provide enough "product" for the bloated and ever increasing world population.

hence the mass industrialization of farming. living creatures are merely parts and the countryside merely the factory floor..

Being from a farming background I may be biased but "traditional" methods of farming are the best for animal welfare and the environment.... the problem being that the public and particularly in the UK and USA expect to pay below the cost of production for their food ....they just want cheap volume .

You can not produce a 99p 1/4lb burger ethically and sustainably ...despite what the publicity may say . Same for Milk ....it's cheaper than bottled water in some case's and despite what the "plant based " crew may have you believe you can't milk nuts or soya.... and no mammal other than humans think you can raise young on anything other than milk....

The other issue was touched on when the WW2 ration diet was mentioned .... we all eat too much ( broad statement I know ;-) ) and prefer volume to taste ...
Just walk down any street in the UK and you will see the result of this ..... go past any maccies at school day end time and see the lines of cars with fat mums and kids in them getting a snack on the way home for dinner ...

Being a veggie isn't going to save the planet if you eat veg that has travelled halfway round the planet and been grown on scarce fertile land or on cleared forest in a third world country so you can have any veg at any time of the year.....

Palm oil..... don't get me started ... should be banned from any food but in vast areas of the world it's too late the forest has gone .

The other strange thing is in areas of Kenya they are growing flowers that are flown to Europe just to be in a vase for a week on land that could be feeding Africa...

At times the world is truly a fu#ked up place.... with an ever increasing world population we have a problem if the over bloated western diet is seen as aspirational by millions of people in China and other nations.....
 
I read somewhere that Spanish city dwellers spent more than 40% of their income on food in the 60s - now it's 11 % .Yes our calorie intake as a population is excessive but folks on low incomes buy cheap calories & often don't have time to spend an hour or 2 cooking.What was once spent on food now goes on rent/mortgage car payments - gotta have wheels to go to work - child care , phones etc.Big agribussiness is overproducing mostly unhealthy food , the cheapest ingredients make more profit & economies of scale mean tremendous waste. Chicken wings from China , farmed Prawns from Vietnam & fruit and veg from Africa.This madness has to stop.
 
Spain is lower than I expected. UK bottom in Europe relative to income. Raw data here.

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My view, as a livestock farmer. Anything other than extensively reared meat is a waste. Cattle and sheep are a good way to get food from land you can only grow grass on. Pigs are a great way to turn food waste into food, but we're not allowed to do that. Chickens should cost £20 each. If you can grow grains or fruit it's far more efficient to eat them yourself. Plenty of food generating capacity about. We just use far too much of it growing meat.

Also animal fat is tremendous stuff. Its mistake was getting its name used to describe obesity. Sugar is evil.
 
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I used to keep a bit of stock, not in a big way, 30 or 40 ewes and their lambs, a few heifers and their followers, various fowl. I wasn’t registered organic, but tried to avoid the multitude of veterinary potions and sprays, only using antibiotics if really needed, which was not often, or if being legally required to dip the sheep (in a substance developed from nerve gas). I kept an eye on things health wise and made sure nothing went hungry in the lean months.
One of the big drawbacks of cheap food, is the seemingly often indiscriminate use of pharmaceuticals (growth hormones etc.). In one way cost is a limiting factor, but if the bottom line is bigger profits…… Antibiotic resistance is already causing great concern (quite rightly !) and insecticides are wreaking havoc, but cheap food is a powerful political weapon and is used as such............... let them eat crap. Money in the pocket or a healthier diet and planet ?
Ramblings over !
 
Rob's chart made me wonder what similar charts are out there to add perspective , a lazy search found this

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though i'm sure there are many others such as house prices or rental costs , unemployment figures perhaps , that together might paint a very clear picture of why household expenditure on food which is after all an absolute necessity differs so considerably . A homeless man needs no less food than a rich man .
 
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Rob's chart made me wonder what similar charts are out there to add perspective , a lazy search found this

though i'm sure there are many others such as house prices or rental costs , unemployment figures perhaps , that together might paint a very clear picture of why household expenditure on food which is after all an absolute necessity differs so considerably . A homeless man needs no less food than a rich man .

Pretty damming, although I never realised Germany was in the same position. Shows how much we have to pay in benefits to people with jobs because their employers don't. We're all subsidising businesses who are getting away with paying their employees less than a living wage.
 
living wage

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noun: living wage; plural noun: living wages
  1. a wage that is high enough to maintain a normal standard of living.
    "they were no longer sure of earning a living wage there"
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Begs the question - what's normal ?
 
I does beg that question, and of course the answer is different everywhere. It's relative to the people around you. In the UK we stop paying benefits to single people if they earn more than about £13500 a year. A couple with a child don't get benefits if their combined income is greater than about £20000. The numbers are a little higher in London.

Now that's not exactly the same as the poverty measure in your chart. But gives an idea. Maybe I'm horribly out of touch but that doesn't seem like a lot of money for an employer to be paying as a minimum such that we all don't have to subsidise their business. What will skew it are zero hour contracts and the like.
 
Begs the question - what's normal ?
Having the basic necessities , food , decent housing health care & education should be normal for those living in the worlds 5 th largest economy.

A quote from Martin Luther King

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
 
Rob's chart made me wonder what similar charts are out there to add perspective , a lazy search found this

though i'm sure there are many others such as house prices or rental costs , unemployment figures perhaps , that together might paint a very clear picture of why household expenditure on food which is after all an absolute necessity differs so considerably . A homeless man needs no less food than a rich man .

Pretty damming, although I never realised Germany was in the same position. Shows how much we have to pay in benefits to people with jobs because their employers don't. We're all subsidising businesses who are getting away with paying their employees less than a living wage.

Virtually the entire nation is in the same position, If you were to take away tax credits half the country would be destitute the following week.
The economy has been manipulated to offset the slump in the value of the pound. Honestly, for a lot of families something like the clutch going on the car or he boiler breaking down would put them in a financial tailspin. Just before Christmas i joined a local Facebook group as i knew the kids would be jettisoning their toys to make room for the new gifts. I almost wept.
It was just the normal "Does anyone have a charging cable for a HP laptop" or "I'm looking for some garden furniture" sort of thing.
Every dozen or so posts was "Could someone please spare some food" or "The electricity/gas has ran out on my prepay meter can someone please spare even a pound"
A lot of people are of the opinion that its spongers but most of the impoverished have jobs, the only thing worse then unemployment is underemployment. The twilight world of the gig economy and the zero hour contract.
 
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" breaking down would put them in a financial tailspin. "

:clap:

It's the washing machine giving up that usually does it , if anyone were keeping tabs they might wonder why the mrs has a bunch of them through catalogues . She can pay it monthly see and they pay her back as and when they can .

A lot of them got into that position by missing a monthly payment and eventually finding the £200 debt had become a £2000 debt backed up with the threat of baliffs .
 
There's trerrible poverty in America too. The "richest" country in the world, admittedly one of the largest in area but not in population though. Must be a better way. In the revoluntionary period you could overturn things by shear weight of numbers but not any more unless you have the army on your side.
 
Haven't logged in for a while so haven't read all the replies to this one.
I used to work at the P&L Wind Farm in Newtown Wales many years ago, at the time it was one of the biggest wind farms in Europe with 103 turbines.
If all the energy used to create the wind farm was added up it was calculated it would take 25 years for the wind turbines to just to regenerate that energy.
Ironically the lifespan of the wind turbines was 25 years.......
 
Having the basic necessities , food , decent housing health care & education should be normal for those living in the worlds 5 th largest economy.

A quote from Martin Luther King

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
im not buying this. there will always be some people who think they are poor because they have less than those who have more.
 
Absolutely ..... certainly in the UK
Many people seem to be victims of an aspirational world where it's "vital" you have a massive flat screen telly/ satellite package , latest mobile , designer brand clothes etc.... not to mention eating out or going to the pub /coffee shop .... they expect all of these as a right ....
It is undoubtedly wrong that a person working full time is often worse off than someone who has no intention of ever working and is a third generation benefits scrounger....
Not sure how any of this is linked to huge great windmills blighting the wild spaces of our country side though .... ;-)
 
Haven't logged in for a while so haven't read all the replies to this one.
I used to work at the P&L Wind Farm in Newtown Wales many years ago, at the time it was one of the biggest wind farms in Europe with 103 turbines.
If all the energy used to create the wind farm was added up it was calculated it would take 25 years for the wind turbines to just to regenerate that energy.
Ironically the lifespan of the wind turbines was 25 years.......
Nice to see you back on here.The carbon payback has been addressed in previous posts.The latest studies show that 3 years is needed to recover the carbon investment.
 
Nice to see you back on here.The carbon payback has been addressed in previous posts.The latest studies show that 3 years is needed to recover the carbon investment.
I would like to see the evidence for that one. I suspect the study was funded by some sort of pro wind power group.
 
im not buying this. there will always be some people who think they are poor because they have less than those who have more.

Thats why we look at kids to gauge the measure . Trouble is poor kids understand and accept there is no money so if they miss a meal its just :confusion-shrug: and carry on . They build physiological walls to maintain their pride , £5 for school trip phffft who wants to go to an old castle anyway . £10 for a cub scout uniform :icon-surprised: nah its not for me thanks . I convinced myself and everyone else that i didn't like chocolate and i didn't want the same Nike stuff everyone else wore . Once while coming of age i suppose i worked all summer so i could buy the same school uniform as everyone else and i'd handwash my small collar white shirt every night but it wasn't long before somebody noticed i only had one uniform which brought an end to my interest in fitting in .

If there was any help out there teachers should be looking for skinny kids with a huge appetite , but its best they don't because social services would rather punish the kid than help the parents because "we don't have the resources".

It should be noted that i chuckle to myself remembering it all and i don't actually know any poor kids now .
 
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Mum would not let me get a paper round and as for pocket money yeah as for pocket money when i got a summer job she was standing at the door step with hand held open and there disappeared all of me 18 quids but bless her heart she did give me 10 ciggies for the day she was a hard woman and i did learn how to cook a sunday roast dinner clean a house from top to bottom change the beds do the washing and ironing and if i gave her a bit of back chat well best not go there but ended up in tears and sent to bed with no chance of having tea and all before puberty So what have i learned never never back chat a single mother of four even up to the age of 40 mum could put some fear on me if you look around these days at the young mums how many of them have got tourettes syndrome kids are not poor the parents are stupid they got the big flat screen plasma tv latest hand held mobile device on an extortionate contract for the rest of their lives fashion tacky jogging tops and bottoms from the catalogue with shoes to match which goes in the bin after a few days as the mum up the road got a different colour and mum don't want to be looking different and left out of the circle then Oh bugger shit and sugar broke one of me nail extensions nave to get that sorted thats a nice colour have them and can you do my toes to match oh don't I look good cept hair don't match nails but now it does well kid you got a bag of budget crisps for tea tonight Kids ain't poor Parents are Stupid
 
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