An Overcrowded Island? - The Great Myth of Urban Britain

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... poor old Singapore.

Exactly.

I'm alright, Jack - at the moment.

[MrGongGong]

This is just an enquiry - not a challenge. How much of this is about the demands of the public who have come to expect certain kinds of food to be available all year round? Presumably when we were self-sufficient we didn't expect to have tomatoes all the time, for example.

Is it an insufficiency in terms of quantity or what people want to eat now?

Indeed
I don't know the figures but was reminded of things i've been told from a friend who used to live in Java. Indonesia is one of the most densely populated countries in the world but having a very different type of society feeds it's population in a different way. If we think (as seems to be the case) that a measure of "development" or "progress" is the freedom to eat Aspragus in October then there's no way that we can provide this......
I do think there's an element of "script" in the "overpopulated little island" rhetoric

[MrGongGong]

On a more cheery note, I live in a very rural part of France. I don't grow much myself, yet get a lot from my farmer neighbours: potatos, strawberrys, veg, a freshly slaughtered lamb, etc, all seasonal. When you eat real food like this you get some understanding of the tasteless rubbish they sell in the nearest big supermarket.
.

That's what you get when you have a government that wants to support local non "economically viable" food production coupled with the effects of the EU............

[Lateralthinking1]

Not everyone can - or would want to - live in middle of nowhere France.

Just my kind of place. What time does the next boat leave from Dover?

I'll do a deal. Just say yes and I will put up with a broken down caravan for the next 20 years.

[jean]

Not everyone can - or would want to - live in middle of nowhere France.

Not even the French, apparently!

I spent some time last year in the beautiful town of Le Dorat, in the Limousin. Practically deserted.

[amateur51]

This report is a load of balls in my view. Useful ammunition for speculators and property developers. But anyone living as I do in central Hertfordshire, being assailed on all sides with threats of developments of all kinds, will be appalled at this. The figures quoted are meaningless.

People need houses, Oddball.

Meaningful fact!

[MrGongGong]

I think it's important to remember that the "countryside" is as much a constructed landscape as the towns and cities........ there is a kind of nostalgia for a fictitious rural idyll (which is what the Olympics opening looks like being about !) which never really existed. Its a salutary experience to walk in the "remote" parts of Scotland and to continuously trip over the traces of where thousands of people used to live until sheep became more economically viable than people.

I also remembered going to Ravenscar in North Yorkshire , which now is a beautiful "unspoiled" rural environment yet from from 1640 to 1862 had a huge industrial Alum works on the site a until a chemical process was discovered of making Alum synthetically ...............

which is NOT to say that we should build over every bit of green land , but save us from Poundbury

[amateur51]

I think it's important to remember that the "countryside" is as much a constructed landscape as the towns and cities........ there is a kind of nostalgia for a fictitious rural idyll (which is what the Olympics opening looks like being about !) which never really existed. Its a salutary experience to walk in the "remote" parts of Scotland and to continuously trip over the traces of where thousands of people used to live until sheep became more economically viable than people.

I also remembered going to Ravenscar in North Yorkshire , which now is a beautiful "unspoiled" rural environment yet from from 1640 to 1862 had a huge industrial Alum works on the site a until a chemical process was discovered of making Alum synthetically ...............

which is NOT to say that we should build over every bit of green land , but save us from Poundbury

Great stuff, MrGG!

[ahinton]

Just my kind of place. What time does the next boat leave from Dover?

I'll do a deal. Just say yes and I will put up with a broken down caravan for the next 20 years.

Well, it'll be the boat from Portsmouth for me but, although I don't yet know when, I'm planning to go and live there eventually and have a wee plot on which to build; it's not in one of the most remote areas of rural France admittedy, although it's a long distance from urbanity and industriality (I'm referring to the southern Charente, very close to the border with northern Dordogne).

[MrGongGong]

(I'm referring to the southern Charente, very close to the border with northern Dordogne).

As in "Dordogne twinned with Borsetshire"