Cycling UK Forum

You are obviously one of the ruling class with a lot of influence. Unfortunately I remain one of the put upon proles...

Al

al_yrpal wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:31am The only control I have is over my own home and garden and even then I am in the thrall of all sorts of unwanted officialdom

al_yrpal wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:42am You are obviously one of the ruling class with a lot of influence. Unfortunately I remain one of the put upon proles...

I'm lucky and get to vote in elections and referendums.

Jonathan

Jdsk wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:19am
Hunger, starvation and undernutrition across the world are decreasing.

It's under our control whether we address food poverty in the UK. We know why it's increasing and we know how to reduce it.

Jonathan

George Monbiot in The Guardian says otherwise.
He does not quote a source.

Many people assume that the food crisis was caused by a combination of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. While these are important factors, they aggravate an underlying problem. For years, it looked as if hunger was heading for extinction. The number of undernourished people fell from 811 million in 2005 to 607 million in 2014. But in 2015, the trend began to turn. Hunger has been rising ever since: to 650 million in 2019, and back to 811 million in 2020. This year is likely to be much worse

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... regulators

Good luck with that... I can never remember anyone or any party to vote for. I lived in the same village as George who was widely regarded as the village idiot.

Al

Mike Sales wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:43am

Jdsk wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:19am Hunger, starvation and undernutrition across the world are decreasing.

It's under our control whether we address food poverty in the UK. We know why it's increasing and we know how to reduce it.

George Monbiot in The Guardian says otherwise.
He does not quote a source.

Many people assume that the food crisis was caused by a combination of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. While these are important factors, they aggravate an underlying problem. For years, it looked as if hunger was heading for extinction. The number of undernourished people fell from 811 million in 2005 to 607 million in 2014. But in 2015, the trend began to turn. Hunger has been rising ever since: to 650 million in 2019, and back to 811 million in 2020. This year is likely to be much worse

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... regulators

It depends on the timescale which you consider. There has been some deterioration in some measures in the last 10 years. But that's a very short period of time. The overall trend is extremely positive.

The most convenient source of reliable information is Our World in Data:
https://ourworldindata.org
and that now has a whole section on "Food and Agriculture".


Jonathan

Jdsk wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:43am

al_yrpal wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:31am The only control I have is over my own home and garden and even then I am in the thrall of all sorts of unwanted officialdom

al_yrpal wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:42am You are obviously one of the ruling class with a lot of influence. Unfortunately I remain one of the put upon proles...

I'm lucky and get to vote in elections and referendums.

al_yrpal wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:45am Good luck with that... I can never remember anyone or any party to vote for.

At the moment food prices are higher and GDP lower than they could have been because of how we voted in a referendum (amongst other reasons). And taxation and benefits and policy on free school meals and harmful foods are being set because of how we voted in a general election.

It's under our control. We can go on like this or we can make things better.

Jonathan

Monbiot discusses another reason why hunger began increasing before Putin's invasion and Brexit.
I think that he would agree that we could make things better.

Pebble wrote: 19 May 2022, 9:42am just had Breakfast - 170g porridge oats 13.6p + pint milk 28.5p = 937 calories for 42 pence + electric for heating 3.7p
that is a quality breakfast for less than 50p

Quality?
Warm wall-paper paste
I had 3 poached eggs on 3 slices of seeded bread with 1/4 tin of chopped Toms,a yoghurt and an apple.No idea what it cost but that's a good breakfast.
I doubt it came in at the 30p one can allegedly feed oneself for but there you go.

At the moment food prices are higher and GDP lower than they could have been because of how we voted in a referendum (amongst other reasons). And taxation and benefits and policy on free school meals and harmful foods are being set because of how we voted in a general election.

All in line with a bitter brand of politricks which sits back and constantly whinges but offers no practical solutions whatsoever. Not worth listening to...

Al

al_yrpal wrote: 19 May 2022, 1:07pm

At the moment food prices are higher and GDP lower than they could have been because of how we voted in a referendum (amongst other reasons). And taxation and benefits and policy on free school meals and harmful foods are being set because of how we voted in a general election.

All in line with a bitter brand of politricks which sits back and constantly whinges but offers no practical solutions whatsoever.

Do you mean me or the Chancellor?

Practical solutions:
Higher personal taxation, fiscal redistribution and higher state benefits delivered more quickly
Increased minimum wage
Lower trade barriers and lower barriers to employment of foreign workers, reducing the cost of food and wastage of crops and livestock, and increasing GDP
Lower trade barriers increasing GDP
Massive increase in eligibility for free school meals
Consistent long-term food polices including taxation on harmful foods in line with the evidence from other countries
Regional policies that support local employment and reduce the need for benefits

All achievable if that's what we want. Or we can increase social disparities and increase food and fuel poverty if that's what we want.

Jonathan

PedallingSquares wrote: 19 May 2022, 12:34pmI had 3 poached eggs on 3 slices of seeded bread with 1/4 tin of chopped Toms, a yoghurt and an apple. No idea what it cost

About £1.68 for 850kcal if you're buying budget brands like me.
At £1.97/1000kcal that's about 16 times the Lee Anderson budget, and 10% fewer calories than Pebble's porridge.

Jdsk wrote: 19 May 2022, 1:21pm (snip)
Practical solutions:
Higher personal taxation, fiscal redistribution and higher state benefits delivered more quickly
Increased minimum wage
Lower trade barriers and lower barriers to employment of foreign workers, reducing the cost of food and wastage of crops and livestock, and increasing GDP
Lower trade barriers increasing GDP
Massive increase in eligibility for free school meals
Consistent long-term food polices including taxation on harmful foods in line with the evidence from other countries
Regional policies that support local employment and reduce the need for benefits

All achievable if that's what we want. Or we can increase social disparities and increase food and fuel poverty if that's what we want.

Jonathan

Whilst I would dearly love to still have the optimism of my youth, instilled in me by Harold Wilson's talk of "the white hot heat of technology" and all the benefits it would bring, not to mention the Christian notion that we are "Stewards iof The Earth" and able to make "rational decisions to our own benefit", in the auto-good-seeking mode proposed by Adam Smith ..................... well, time and experience now tells me that humans are irrational, controlled by mad memeplexes (formerly described as "possessed by devils") and dangerously inclined to self-destruct in a fashion that ensures the destruction takes down as much else as possible.

"We" (a concept not at all cogent, since there are a thousand tribes all with crazed antithetical dogmas and hatreds) are far from able to make choices that underpin "practical solutions" to the various serious issues confronting "us" (another faulty classification, as there are, in fact, a thousand "thems" too).

The privileged will continue to seek means to keep those privileges, at any cost to the rest of the humans, not to mention every species on the planet. Many of the underprivileged will continue to chew happily on and swallow the various made-up-stuff justifications offered by the privileged for both their privileges and their need to supress or oppress vast swathes of other humans.

Or, to put it in another more succinct fashion - hordes of humans will go on believing and voting for nasty-folk who will use the power they acquire to continue their rampant and ever-increasing inclination to destroy everything in pursuit of their pestilential power & gory glory.

Or haven't you noticed yet? We British Boomers have lived through an extraordinarily pleasant place and time in human history. But don't take it as some sort of trend for the future! Just lately, that history is turning back to the normal human behaviours found throughout the centuries - internecine conflict, destruction and mass murder.

Of course we now have some very sophisticated methods and technologies to support these inclinations, from creating & punishing "the undeserving poor" in vast numbers to invading areas elsewhere to "save" the humans living there by murdering them wholesale.

Humans! Cuh!!

Cugel, not possessed by any angels myself, mind.

Not a bad motto for today, to wit "The Good Times are over!".

Cugel wrote: 19 May 2022, 2:19pmOr haven't you noticed yet? We British Boomers have lived through an extraordinarily pleasant place and time in human history. But don't take it as some sort of trend for the future! Just lately, that history is turning back to the normal human behaviours found throughout the centuries - internecine conflict, destruction and mass murder.

As far as we can tell the *long-term historical trend is one of lower death from violence, better nutrition, better health and longer life expectancy.

But I'm not saying that these happen in any sense automatically. And especially not in the short term. It's up to us.

Jonathan

* The exception being the transition from nomadic hunter-gathering to settled agriculture. That doesn't look so good for health, or at least not for those who reached adulthood.

PS: Would anyone like to play Rawls' Veil of Ignorance... name a society in which you'd rather be living without knowing what your place in that society will be.

Jonathan