Guest essay by Eric Worrall
You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night, government advisory bodies would have the sense to avoid suggestions which could put pressure on food supplies.
‘Cut lamb and beef’ to fight climate change
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analystThe number of sheep and cattle in the UK should be reduced by between a fifth and a half to help combat climate change, a report says.
The shift is needed, the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) maintains, because beef and lamb produce most farm greenhouse gases.
The report foresees an increase in the number of pigs and chickens because these produce less methane.
The farm union NFU said it supported more diverse land use.But environmentalists say the recommendations are too timid.
The CCC says a 20-50% reduction in beef and lamb pasture could release 3-7m hectares of grassland from the current 12m hectares in the UK.
The un-needed grassland could instead grow forests and biofuels that would help to soak up CO2.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46214864
The CCC report is available here.
The report authors claim that reduced production due to farmland lost to “afforestation” could be compensated by increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, indoor agriculture under grow lights, and improvements to agricultural practices, though they admit using grow lights is expensive.
I am not saying these people are stupid, but they’re stupid.
Bonkers, stark raving mad, are the polite British phrases.
Canadians are starting to catch up.
Robert of Ottawa
[Snip] insane is the correct polite British phrase.
Of course it’s relative to the proposition. ‘Bonkers’ and ‘stark staring mad*’ are reserved for stupidity like our PM’s attempt at negotiating Brexit.
“‘Stark staring mad’ was an earlier variant and this was first recorded in John Dryden’s Persius Flaccus, 1693: “Art thou of Bethlem’s Noble College free? Stark, staring mad.””
Every days a schoolday on WUWT. 🙂
I.e., ‘Have you escaped from Bedlam?’
Bethlem/Bedlam was the site of an English nut house.
Are you sure that the PM has been attempting to negotiate Brexit? If she has it is difficult to see what she has gained. On the contrary the EU appear to be getting most of what they want and, if I were a Remainer, I’d be congratulating May for giving up virtually nothing of the EU’s control over the UK. So while May may have been giving the appearance of negotiation it rather looks like she wasn’t really trying very hard. Which would be hardly surprising as Mrs May opposed Brexit during the Referendum campaign.
“Radio Rental” is another traditional UK slang description.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Radio%20Rental
It’s becoming boring how often the BBC repeats claims by vegetarians, vegans, and various assorted green-shirts telling us to eat less meat and more cockroaches. On the other hand they do say it’s a good thing to never interrupt your opponent when the are making a mistake: Telling most people to stop eating meat probably comes about third after telling them to not have sex.
And they are so out of touch with economic reality. Much UK sheep farming takes place on marginal upland which has no other agricultural uses. It is also the sheep that help keep the Lake District looking the way it does for tourists and hill walkers. They would not be the same if forested.
Perhaps they might actually consider getting the populace to eat more venison. Deer are plentiful in upland Scotland. I’ve read they often improve pastureland because, more than sheep and Tiggers, they will also eat things like thistles (which Scotland also has in abundance). I guess that currently most of their value comes from allowing vacationing German hunters to shoot them.
TV rental was also an illustration of the way in which many people can’t see things in the long term perspective, and opt for the solution that seems cheaper in the sort term but which actually costs more. A factor which no doubt applies here.
It gets worse in industry though. Some of the oil companies hired AV equipment at a silly money rate from specialist hire companies, where it would have been cheaper to buy the items wholesale if they were used twice.
michael hart
You might want to read George Monbiot on sheep, he hates the woolly blighter’s. They crop the grass too short, compact the earth with their hooves and eat seedlings. Flash floods are frequently caused by the rainwater flowing over the compacted ground at high speed carrying everything with it into waterways and bursting banks etc. Trees are needed in these areas to slow the waters progress and of course the earth wouldn’t be compacted so rain would soak into the ground as well.
I hate Monbiot when he starts on politics and climate change but when it comes to practical issues relevant to his qualification, he’s a Zoologist, he’s really quite good.
Sorry, but Moonbat Monbot is an idiot all the way round. Claiming sheep are the cause of flooding because of compaction is simply silly. Silly.
I grew up in a house on stilts on the floodplain of a creek in the middle of forests just outside Washington DC. Several times per year that creek flooded like hell despite the forest and the uncompacted ground. And no, it wasn’t because of urban paved area. In my childhood there was not much of that in Fairfax VA.
Creeks, streams and rivers flood. They just do. That’s why they have flood plains and why streams and rivers constantly evolve (snakier and snakier until they get snaky enough to cut through and straighten out again)
Sheep cause soil compaction?
Nope!
Sheep and many other critters have cloven hooves, which allow them to splay their foot wider when encountering soft ground.
Nor have I seen cattle compact the ground, unless they stomp the same damp ground repeatedly. e.g. around a water hole or watering trough.
I love venison but it’s a bit on the deer side 😂 ……… I’ll get my coat!
I much prefer ‘barmy in the crumpet.’
The stupid never stops!
Stupid? No. Malcious? Yes.
They want the Deplorables to die. They want to impoverish and demoralize the hoi poli, lest the rabble become a threat to their rule.
Jack the Ripper’s descendants are running amok.
I must say this about Hillary, she finally let the cat out of the bag, for which we can thank her, when she expressed her and the elite’s opinion about the rest of us.
The Committee On Climate Changes is an outsourced Green Blobbette. It is not ‘the government’s advisor’
It’s a sinecure for political has-beans, It is jointly sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Northern Ireland Executive, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government – a safe place to park senile windfarm protagonists and overweight baronesses trying to be relevant.
It can safely be completely ignored.
beyond stupid and moving to malicious and venal in my opinion
Two things need to said about UK countryside:
1. Get rid of the green belts.
2. Stop massive subsidies to farmers.
Roger Harrabin is professional green activist whom the BBC employ as an “analyst”. I guess his job title of analyst excuses him form proper journalistic standards. E.g. a few months ago he interviewed Governor Brown of California on BBC Radio 4. Nothing was said about Brown’s long-standing fossil fuel interests.
Don’t agree about 1. In the the village I amd from in Hampshire, just north of Portsmouth, it’s a concrete jungle now all the way up and down the old A3. 2? Oh yes, stop those.
No agriculture in the UK is as profitable as building cheap housing. There would be no green spaces at all if the green belts were abolished.
Exactly how profitable is it to build more housing than you have people?
EU policy ensures there will be plenty of people in the UK. Rotherham is full of them.
If they are there, shouldn’t someone build houses for them?
Some people, and they are a growing number, have the ability to afford more than one house. One result of this is the phenomenon of large numbers of houses being bought up in attractive parts of the country to rent out as holiday homes. Another factor leading to house-building is the break-up of families. Where once the family used one house they now need two. And there are people campaigning to make divorce even easier so look out for more family break-up. Then there is the increasing number of younger people who decide to stay single and the increasing number of elderly people. Near where I live there have been lots of new houses being built in recent years and there are more being byuilt right now. As to where the people come from who move into these houses I have no idea but it would be interesting to find out. And also to know where the people came from who moved into their former houses. But they all get occupied almost as soon as they are built. Meanwhile the local roads are getting busier and busier and car parking near to the local railway stations is becoming more and more difficult.
Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors.
“Keep clear of the moors.”
Agree, and both Sir Thomas and his wife, Mary Tyler.
And don’t forget…
I guess that’s what you meant, Tom?
Ja, Oui, Si, Tak, Sim, Da
and in the American South: sho ‘nough.
Apologies. I’m a bit slow sometimes.
The British Govn’t should focus on Brexit.
Patrick MJD
As of today they have comprehensively screwed that up.
Four Cabinet resignations over it within 24 hours.
May is in deep Doo Doo.
Yeah saw reports of cabinet disapproval, the possibility May may lose her job and the resignations. Yes, comprehensively screwed up alright!
Of course! We will make ourselves better off by producing less food! How could we have missed such an obvious solution? /sarc/
Once they stop growing cows and sheep,
They will be able to import more.
So China will supply the cows and sheep, along with the steel and cement. Sounds good to me, good thing China don’t produce any CO2.
china doesnt do sheep and few cattle
you need Aus n NZ for that preferably frozen boxed not live exported
the carbon that cattle transfer from vegetation to the atmosphere is not a
“perturbation of the carbon cycle with external carbon dug up from under the ground where it had been sequestered for millions of years”
but the carbon cycle itself.
The anti cattle anti meat drive is inconsistent with the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/06/25/a-greenhouse-effect-of-atmospheric-co2/
The carbon that cattle transfer from vegetation to the atmosphere is not “external carbon dug up from under the ground where it had been sequestered for millions of years” but the carbon cycle itself. The anti-cattle anti-mean climate movement is not consistent with the theory of AGW
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/06/25/a-greenhouse-effect-of-atmospheric-co2/
anti meat
The reason beef and lamb are grown in the UK is that they are profitable. If fruit trees were more profitable they would be grown instead.
The only fair way to over rule the landowners on how they farm is to nationalise the farmland. If we are now prioritising demands other than those decided by the market then the new prioirities ought to be decided by the will of the people – determined in another way.
The argument can be made that the market is too short-term for control of vital national resources. But fear of computer modelled weather is not that argument.
The market is the will of the people.
Politics is never anything more than the will of the politicians and the powerful.
The best way to ruin anything, is let government take it over.
sheep farming in Britain is only profitable because of EU subsidies. The average farmer gets over
a third of their income from the EU (and yet they voted for Brexit). On top of that there are tariffs to
ensure that cheap meat from overseas becomes uncompetitive. In addition to which the removal of upland forests for sheep farming results in floods the costs of which sheep farmers don’t have to pay.
dont feed trolls
The argument that farming is driven by state intervention and therefore the state should take full responsibility is worth considering.
Don’t assume that every view you disagree with is being put out to troll or taunt you.
The state taking full responsibility for anything is an idea that should never be considered.
Beyond that, using state intervention as an excuse for more state intervention is the kind of logic that no sane person should be willing to entertain.
O.K., go ahead and feed ’em.
But only feed ’em fruit and vegetable … no meat.
(Thanks M, that was pretty easy)
The only subsidies that Percy objects to are those he isn’t benefiting from.
Sheep farming? Is the UK still banned from selling sheep/lamb since Chernobyl?
“Let them eat trees.”
Will not the massive immigrant population in the UK be launching a protest to prevent said?
Because growing plants indoors magically fails to release CO2. Second law of thermodynamics fail.
A stupid idea. However, it is NOT British government policy as the poster claims. It’s from an advisory group and has about as much chance of becoming policy, as I have of becoming Pope.
True. It’s Gummer again, Lord Deben.
He of mad cow burger fame.
Correct. But the BBC do so love to report all the latest insane pontifications of the commitee and their “reports” as if they were both real science and going to be taken up by the government. I suspect many of the (few) vegans in the Couse of Commons want to sit on this committee, alongside the MPs with their snouts in the windmill trough, who are as likely to give up meat as a Eurocrat is likely to give up Claret.
What name would you like to reserve for your election as pontiff?
Wouldn’t it be simpler to eat vegetarians? (No, it’s a joke, I’m not being serious)
Moderately Cross of East Anglia
So that’s what they mean by vegetarian burgers. 🙂
Reminds me of the Spitting Image sketch (something like this):
Margaret Thatcher is having dinner with her cabinet. The waiter asks Maggie what she would like to eat.
Maggie replies, “Steak, 18 ounces, raw”.
The waiter replies, “And the vegetables?”
Maggie: “Oh, they’ll have the same.”
Almost all cows ARE vegetarian.
Switching from eating one type of vegetarian to eating another type of vegetarian would include less variable change that switching to a completely different food source; so, yes.
(and I think “Pope Guy-Johnson the First” be a winner)
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
“what do humanitarians eat?”
Soylent Green
I never said it was policy. But I’m watching the UK parliament on TV right now, so I don’t share your confidence that lunatic plans have no chance of becoming policy.
… yes, but it is a *statutory* advisory group, and no major party would dare to go against BBC-approved Planet Saving policies, so maybe prepare for Pope Guy-Johnson.
Don’t you believe it David. This policy will filter down through the myriad of rules and designed to make production of these meats more and more expensive. It will have a softy softy but inevitable effect. All under the radar.
Of course, all that will happen is that we will wind up eating expensive and inferior imported meat.
There is weird logic here; as if the Drax wood pellets are deemed to be biomass zero emission products, then so too should animal emissions. However as this “deeming “ business is a total nonsense we are all left in despair.
Well if you actually get your Brexit organised there is plenty of lamb & beef available to buy from your old friends in Australia, Argentina & New Zealand..After all we used to sell it to you until joined the EEC and then we were tarifed out of your market…And meat got very expensive then didn’t it ?
As for your ‘official’ advisery committee recommendations, maybe you should put them to a referendum and have the British people piss on them directly….Real democracy !
Bill In Oz
‘Brexit’, ‘organised’.
Two terms that bear no relation to one another.
And I voted for Brexit!
I did say “If”.
What find interesting is that the UK joined the European Common Market (EEC ) in 1973 after a referendum. But joining the “European Community” in the 1990’s was done without any referendum….Just a unilateral act by the Conservative government of the day…And now it’s a Conservative government which is dodging and weaving to negate the Brexit referendum of 2016..
But we in Oz still have lots of chilled lamb & beef for you there in the UK…But the price has gone up because the Chinese, Koreans & Japanese want it now as well.
“Bill In Oz November 15, 2018 at 2:19 pm
I did say “If”.
What find interesting is that the UK joined the European Common Market (EEC ) in 1973 after a referendum.”
No it didn’t. Heath took the UK in to the CM in 1973, effective Jan 1st 1974. No vote, no referendum, no mandate. It was put to a vote in 1975 but the damage was done.
Bill
It would be better and more satisfactory to piss directly on the committee.
I thought I saw your name on the shortlist for the next pope when Francis gets forced out over the pedophilia scandal. 😉
Does anyone know of the best methane (myth debunking) summary abailable?
We must disarm the armies of climate justice warriors out there while we can.
The world wide growing of rice produces 11% of all global methane emissions. Our vegan friends will have to forego their rice in future ! It’s warming the planet ! sarc/
The issue of methane CH4 is tied to how it oxidizes as it rises to water H2O & then water in the atmosphere is involved in “warming”. The calculation used to determine how much methane contributes to “global warming” is based on the cipher that for every 1 molecule of CH4 methane released 2 molecules of H2O water are created, & that amount of water is added to a formula modeling “warming”.
In journal (2018) “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics” the team of Frank, Jockel, Gronov & Daneris researched the old assumption 1 CH4 –> 2 H2O. Their data shows there are as low as 1.5 to 1.7 H2O derived from 1 CH4; meaning climate models have been using about 10-25% more water due to methane emissions as a “warming” driver.
See free full text of title below available on-line. For easier reading skip 1st to text section titled “Discussion” for the explanation of results in cited authors’ “Investigating the yield of H2O and H2 from methane oxidation in the stratophere.”)
More vegans & vegetarians = more rice eaters = more rice production = more methane.
A global warming tragedy ! sarc/
The climate obsessed extremists have no shame.
Eric,
I don’t wish the following to in any way seem to be supporting the UK Climate Change Committee’s and Mr Harrabin’s delusion, nor do I wish to impune your own very fine work and that of WUWT in general. However, I would wish to comment on your opening statement “You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night….”
Whilst this is a complex subject with many variations and its own nomenclature, the UK “basic” state and “new” state pensions (which are heavily inflation protected) are around £130 and £170 per person, per week, respectively. Basic unemployment benefit, which may, in some circumstances, be topped-up with significant other benefits, is around £75 per week.
So, I really think that the idea that “thousands” die in poverty each winter in Britain is a gross exaggeration and unfair on the people’s of the world who really do live in poverty. Some undoubtedly do die due to cold weather- related issues in the UK and indeed the ludicrous CCC is hell-bent on making matters much worse by imposing much higher energy costs on UK citizens. Nevertheless, up until the full financial horrors of renewable energy sources are imposed on the population, our welfare state will pay for people to feed and warm themselves if people choose to prioritise such in their spending. This is not to suggest that there are not some cases of real hardship – that is inevitable among a population of 60 million – but even then there are charities to help the most needy.
I hope that you can see my point.
£800 / month is not a lot of money in Britain, especially for people who don’t own their own homes.
Food is expensive. Electricity is expensive. Old people get sick – medicine and transport is expensive, especially if you live in an area with poor public transport.
I don’t think you can separate fuel poverty from general poverty. If many people can’t afford to heat their homes, to the extent that thousands of people die each year from exposure or starvation, depending on what expense they decided to trim, I can’t see how it is unreasonable to describe that as “dying of poverty”.
Thousands of people in the U.K. cannot both eat properly AND heat their homes properly in winter cold and the numbers of excess deaths rise with severe weather precisely because of the rapidly increasing cost of energy. This is because of the absurd ever-inflating increase in green subsidies for wind farms and other lucrative eco-scams.
It is that straightforward and Eric is spot on with his posting.
“Thousands of people in the U.K. cannot both eat properly AND heat their homes properly…”
And doubtless many hundreds of thousands cannot drink properly on that low a pension and eat and heat, as well.
Eric is right, in that many people have to make a choice between food and heating.
Growing up through the 70s/80s, one of the biggest things that struck me about the difference in living standards between UK residents and my US friends, was that people from the States regarded having a copious hot shower, and having ice NOT form on the inside of your bedroom window in winter months was normal, not a luxury.
Green-shirts seem to think that everyone else should be made to continually suffer winter conditions that they were maybe able to manage more comfortably in their student teens and twenties, and that any other attitude is destroying the planet. They probably also think that food rationing along the lines of WW2 allowances is the best treatment for diabetes. Unless it affects them, of course.
It is a metabolism problem.
If one is between the age of say, 12 to 60, they are mostly quite comfortable with their indoor temperatures, during wintertime, ….. averaging around 70 to 72 degrees F.
But senior citizens, greater than 60 years of age, will be constantly “chilled-to-the-bone” if their indoor winter temperatures are not maintained above 72 degrees F.
So, iffen one is a senior citizen with limited (poverty level) income, then it’s a choice between “food or heating”.
I assumed Eric was being sarcastic.
Eric, please tell me I am correct.
Ian Magness,
My basic state pension in the UK is £152.50 per week.
The UK govt has stolen my wife’s pension, though she’s been working & paying her Nat. Insurance stamp since the age of 15. Originally promised at the age of 60, her pension is now promised at 65 years plus 8 months, as of now. She is 64.
There are millions more women in this predicament, yet the Brit govt can afford to fund the war on Syria, & The White Helmets terrorist propaganda arm, in particular. It’a a wonderful world.
Search Engine: WASPI pensions campaign UK if you are at all interested in educating yourself on this scandal.
John Doran
My second reply disappeared. Que?
JD.
John Doran – November 16, 2018 at 2:07 am
Same here in the US.
Social Security retirement money originally promised at the age of 65 …. is now at age 67. People were supposed to die before their 65th birthday, but now they are living into their 70’s.
The US’s Social Security Trust Fund, where all the SS monies were to be held in an interest bearing account, …… is nothing more than a “lockbox” that is stuffed full of IOUs …. because the politicians have per se, stolen the money and spent it.
I believe in its early days, US Social Security fund made a PROFIT on its investments. But that was totally contrary to the politicians’ ideas at the time, so they just appropriated the cash, and made it like all other State ‘safety nets’ – i.e. tax the workers to fund the retired and other non-workers. Standard Socialism, but Maggie was right – they DO eventually run out of other peoples’ money! For ‘orrible examples, see Zimbabwe, Venezuela and (coming soon) South Africa!
I believe that was done during the Nixion Administration to make the federal deficit appear not to be as bad as it was.
Two of the main aims of the lunatic “environmentalists” pushing the moronic strategy of generating ultra expensive electricity via bird & bat chopping windmills, are Depopulation & One World Govt.
Excess deaths in winter suits this Satanic agenda perfectly.
These two aims are clearly revealed in climatologist Dr. Tim Ball’s great new book: “Human Caused Global Warming, The Biggest Deception In History. In only 121 pages he reveals the Rockefeller Banksters funding their sidekick thief Maurice Strong in setting up the fraud factory UN IPCC, the false science, the faux “scientists”, the profiteering politicians like Al Gore, etc etc.
Written in plain English for the general public, this is a must read.
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/06/winter-kills-excess-deaths-in-the-winter-months/
John Doran.
The un-needed grassland could instead grow forests and biofuels that would help to soak up CO2.
Grass “soaks up” more CO2 than forest.
Some forests emit CO2 net – more so than cities.
That is what the CO2 satellites show and why news from them has gone dark.
and grassland becomes bushy scrubland and then a nice place for fires….without it being grazed or cleared/lopped regularly.
Do these people even know what day it is, how do they feed themselves, who changes their nappies?
Great government thinking. Just eliminate a few traditional industries that provide honest jobs and good products.
How are the going to compensate those in an eliminated business?
This is beyond stupid. It is criminal.
The one thing that the green urbanites have overlooked is that most farmers in the UK still have shotguns.
careful … the 350.org wacko will write a follow up opinion story about you and this nasty blog.
Britain hasn’t just been hijacked by the climate lobby, now it’s being hijacked by the vegan lobby.
Let them go back to live on potatoes like the Irish once had to, and see how far that gets them.
Oddly enough living on a diet consisting mainly of potatoes works just fine. But ironically enough you have to add milk to make it work.
How things have changed – I recall growing up in the ’50s, ’60s and eating lamb and beef regularly, and where chicken was an expensive luxury. Now retired, we find we eat less beef etc mainly because it appears to be so much more expensive compared to chicken. Not to mention all the health scares about eating red meat. I am always a bit surprised any farmer still grows the stuff. When its on sale, we do enjoy a bit of New Zealand lamb though.
New Zealand Lamb has to many Moari genes in it, a friend of mine says.
You’re funny! I’m surprised that comment made it past CTM. Not a criticism of CTM, but that comment made me laugh on several levels, because I sometimes enjoy low humor.
He is an Aussie friend.
Rachel Carson Syndrome comes to climate change.
What drives this “Let’s move the problem elsewhere” approach? I mean, really. Just because the UK cuts domestic production doesn’t mean the demand goes away. The supply will just shift elsewhere, increasing the UK trade deficit further and increasing end price to consumers. Oh, let’s not forget, making zero difference along the way. Other countries are likely not so overly concerned about animal welfare, either.
Eric,
Both to you and “Moderately Cross”: show me the bodies, along with proof of death caused by real poverty, not misguided spending.
“thousands of people die each year from exposure or starvation”. Really? In Britain in 2018 with our welfare system combined with charities and the country-scale organisation called the NHS? Sorry, simply don’t believe it. A few here and there – inevitably. Thousands who die of starvation and/or fuel poverty? I don’t believe it.
“with our welfare system”
Now that’s funny.
Ian. Here is an extract from the “independent climate think tank” ESG which works as a partner of National Energy Action describing part of the problem. The U.K. performs very poorly on fuel poverty compared to most of Europe – Poland does markedly better for example, which may be considered surprising. You can find plenty more evidence.
Table 3, taken from report. Living in the poorest quality housing causes places health at risk and leads to premature death. In 2016/17 there were 37,020 excess winter deaths in the UK, the second highest number in five years. 11,110 of these deaths were attributable to cold homes. Ill health caused by poor housing is an even bigger problem. Treating the health impacts of cold homes, including cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, falls and injuries and mental ill health, is costing the NHS an estimated £1.36 billion each year.
Table 3: Excess winter deaths considered attributable to cold housing conditions
[4] See ‘Cold Man of Europe’ briefings:
Guertler, P., Carrington, J. & Jansz, A. (2015) The Cold Man of Europe – 2015.
Guertler, P. & Royston, S. (2013) Fact-file: The Cold Man of Europe.
Sorry, Roger, old mate. Not going to happen. We like our meat too much. Nice try though. It’s WE THE PEOPLE who decide, not you.
Housing is a more serious problem in the UK than food shortages. This is largely because of our EU membership, which forbids us from excluding any EU member citizen who wants to live here. The addition of numerous countries with relatively low wages and limited employment to the EU has led to an influx not unlike that of Mexicans into the Southern USA. Except that is mostly illegal, whereas the UK influx is legal and there is therefore little we can do about it. The pressure on housing has pushed both house prices and rents up to the point where those on low income just can’t afford them.
Actually it isn’t the house that’s worth the money, a bare plot can cost almost as much as a house. Unless it’s land that you can’t get permission to build on, in which case it’s worth peanuts.
We have a project called CFine round here which collects near end-of-date food from stores and provides it to the poor. This is a win-win arrangement because the stores have to pay for the unwanted stuff to be landfilled otherwise, so it cuts their disposal costs and helps the needy. Only thing is we’ve had one or two chancers selling the free food. But then any such scheme is bound to attract its share of profiteers I guess. It still does a good job.
Yes, I also suspect that the UK draws relatively more immigrants than many other countries because of the near-universality of English as a second language. While it can be argued that that is an economic boon, it does put extra pressure on housing, benefits&social services, and the tax base. An overall economic “boon” does not affect everyone equally, and many of them are (Brexit) voters.
I’m all for it.
I only eat Manx beef & meat.
See a 50% cut in British beef should mean 50% less bullshipt.
Somewhere, someone made a bet that they could get England to eat Bug McNuggets on a regular basis.
That would be Francis Urquhart.
Gummer’s ludicrous Committee has to produce stuff to justify its existence
. I am waiting for its reaction to the IPCC’ s 1.5degrees paper. I have just read most of it and was a painful exercise. Such motherhood and apple pie with no practical answers on top of a lot of the usual alarmist lies – pages and pages and pages. 792 actually. BUT right up Gummer’s political and alarmist street . BUT such self-evident nonsense that the CCC dare not reference it nor support it. What a dilemma for Gummer !
Where are all these fruits and veggies going to come from?
”Where are all these fruits and veggies going to come from?”
Tesco’s silly.
Growing up in England in the 1950s and 60s, I never (probably “hardly ever”) ate British-grown beef or lamb. Beef came from Argentina and lamb came from New Zealand. The meat came in refrigerated ships (not freezer ships) and so it was well aged and tender when it appeared on the butchers’ slabs. My mother told me we couldn’t afford British meat, apart from bacon, pork and ham and the (occasional, expensive) chicken. The EU ended all that.
Perhaps after Brexit Britain can go back to doing business with our relatives and (sometimes) friends across the oceans.
You seem to overlook the possibility that our friends and relatives may have found other outlets for their produce, since we threw them to the kerb in 73 ? And this fondness for the 50’s and 60’s does seem a little overdone ? Those decades from memory, and in comparison with today, were not really as good as many would have everybody believe, Come to that the 70’s were pretty crap also 🙂
I’m also bemused by the antagonism against fellow Europeans being able to enter dear old blighty without let or hindrance. It never seems to occur to those expressing such a view that a successful Brexit will simply replace Johnny Polacki with Gee Gee Boy Patel, and other sub continentals. No doubt should such a state of affairs come to pass, the everyman will look back at the days of European influx in the same nostalgic way that decades past are viewed.
Remember, a lot of “environmentalists” think there are way too many other people.
The people have no meat? Let them eat pine cones.
Can any of our British friends explain something to me.
We vacationed in England last spring. We spent two weeks driving around rural areas so that we could tour Stately Houses and Gardens.
Everywhere we went we saw sheep, hundreds and thousands of sheep. Yet we only saw lamb on the menu in a couple of restaurants and never mutton.
What do they do with all those sheep?
Not sure the answer would get past CTM.
You win the site for today.
Hey, he specified England, not Wales …..
Which reminds me of a story (told here before but perhaps there are those who missed it):
An American tourist walked into a pub in Cardiff. He saw three buxom women sitting at a table enjoying a pint or two. He went over and said to them “I always love listening to the way you ladies from England speak”. The larger woman replied “It’s Wales you idiot! Wales!” The American says” Oh, I’m sorry, I always love listening to the way you whales from England speak”.
It took 3 weeks for him to get out of the hospital.
Wool?
Actually it always surprises me how few sheep there are to the acre.
i think most British lamb is exported to the EEC,it also tends to be kg/kg more expensive than beef ,(depending on the joint or cut),hencewhy it’s exported .Pork is cheaper than both .Mutton is hardly ever heard of in the uk,but some may be sold under the name of ‘lamb’ .I heard that if a leg of lamb weighs more than 5kg ,it’s not lamb.
In Scotland we have mutton pies, very tasty too. I like Baked Beeans with mine. I got this recipe from the internet
Ingredients
For the filling
600g/1lb 5oz mutton mince
¼ tsp ground mace
¼ tsp nutmeg
5 tbsp gravy or stock
salt and white pepper
For the hot water crust pastry
½ tsp salt
120g/4¼oz lard
360g/12½oz plain flour
1 free-range egg yolk, beaten, for glaze
Count them Walter, very tiring business.
It will be intriguing, from an experimental point of view, to watch an entity (country) shoot themselves in both feet, and then monitor their recovery period. How smart will their worldly smart scientists appear to be in a few years, when their greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, instead of fall?
Great news for American beef farmers….English beef is horrible anyway, been there and done that. We can ship them beef or let them starve.
If burning hardwoods from the Carolinas at Drax Power in UK is “neutral” and the trees take 80yrs to regrow, then emissions from cattle and sheep burning grass, which regrows in a few weeks, is several orders of magnitude greener than the Drax case. Why aren’t knowledgeable people making this case loud and clear?
Grass absorbs CO2, cows eat grass\ release methane, 7 year half life gives water \CO2 – cycle begins again. Where’s the CO2 production? Humans eat cows then eventually die and are buried- looks like CO2 sequestration to me! (grumpy morning comment before coffee)
‘You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night, government advisory bodies would have the sense to avoid suggestions which could put pressure on food supplies.’
Ahhh – but that’s no contest compared to the warm fuzzy all these elites get off on.
And I’m pretty sure none of these elites are among the starving.
Besides, human beings are killing the planet, right? So it all serves the cause.
WaPo story: “High-tech farmers are using LED lighting in ways that seem to border on science fiction””
https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fclassic-apps%2Fthe-cutting-edge-tech-that-will-change-how-we-feed-ourselves%2F2018%2F11%2F06%2F775ac684-ce66-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html%3Futm_term%3D.332eb8ea9a3e%26wpisrc%3Dnl_rainbow%26wpmm%3D1&formCheck=43daa9f905ef489cde4af2f119000d6b
Duh, like, where does the power for these ‘grow lights’ come from?
‘The report authors claim that reduced production due to farmland lost to “afforestation” could be compensated by increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, indoor agriculture under grow lights, and improvements to agricultural practices, though they admit using grow lights is expensive.’
Perhaps a nice shiny new coal-fired electric plant could power all those grow lights.
I’ve lived in the UK all my life and travelled much of the world as well, including the good ole US of A. As I’ve visited parts of Oregon, Idaho, Alabama (I could go on), I have noticed that there is just as much (if not more) “extreme” poverty in the so so called land of opportunity as there is in my country. Mr Worral’s completely unwarranted at digit at a country “where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter” didn’t even quote the link accurately. It referred to fuel poverty, not lack of food, medical care and shelter (incidentally, I’m just about to get my £200 fuel allowance from the UK government so that helps to refute his dig) . Most of those I’ve seen living in trailer based shacks in the outskirts of many US towns don’t seem to me to be getting much in the way of fuel allowances, adequate medical care and shelter so I suggest Mr Worral takes a drive and opens his eyes (and mind) a little.
If there existed a network of stations throughout the World measuring atmospheric CO2 levels there might be a better grasp of the origin of the atmospheric CO2. Governor Brown of California might be surprised by learning that CO2 levels were higher in the forested areas of his state than in the cities.
Livestock do not produce CO2 and CH4! Grass and trees do. And that’s after they absorb the required atoms,C,H,and O from air and water.
All Graziers in Australia will be standing by, ready to take up the new opportunities for meat export to the British Market pf desperate meat lovers.
And to think this stuff is comming under a supposed conservative government.
Imagine what will happen when the socialists get back in power
Who said it was a British government plan? It’s merely a daft recommendation to the British government. Read the article and absorb it properly before spouting off.
Once the population of the UK passed 20 million, they had to import food. The Germans almost won WW2 by the use of U boats to sink inporting shipping.
So the likes of Australia will gain by exporting food to the UK as they used to do before they embraced the EU. Back then it was a economic union, later it grew to become a government of all of Europe. So a hard Brexit will long term be a good thing, but short term it twill be hard times.
France had a fear, justified, of Germany again taking over Europe, so volla make a one government Europe. Napolian would be proud.
MJE
“Fight climate change?” What climate change? Why don’t these people grow up and realize that CO2 is not the cause of global warming?
The gods must have lost the belief that the British people are worthy of preservation.