EU Referendum – are you in or out?

Prove it.

I have proved it, the theory anyway –
“give grants to growers, allow south west to be covered in poly tunnels, use automated planting/picking etc,. ”

Or do you expect me to actually get a job in government as a minister, get the policy through parliament, give it five years and then evidence it?

Is it actually a good idea, though?

That is the other great unanswered question for me:

Even if ‘Britain Can Make It Alone’, which we palpably cannot, but even if we could, who says this is actually a good idea?

Brexit is nonsense. The knots people tie themselves up in trying to find even the vaguest reason why it might not be all that bad are indicative of something that is just a stupid idea.

Bollocks to Brexit.

The UK could easily become self sufficient in food – give grants to growers, allow south west to be covered in poly tunnels, use automated planting/picking etc,. but there is/was no need to ever do that.

Even if the first half of that statement were true – and I’m far from convinced that it is – it’s not simply that we don’t need to. If we were to attempt to grow, say, pineapples we’d need land, labour, some form of artificial climate control… we’d essentially need to build another Eden Project the size of Wales. Or, we could just import them from somewhere sunny at tuppence a hundredweight.

Or do you expect me to actually get a job in government as a minister, get the policy through parliament, give it five years and then evidence it?

I expect you to be able to backup your statements with facts not unicorns and rainbows. You’d need to actually prove its feasibility before making it policy.

One of the reasons we are in this mess is people espousing their ill-informed opinions as fact when the realities are entirely different and inherently more complex.

‘Throw money at it / greenhouses / technological solution’ is not proving anything.

the theory anyway

Brexit was great in theory to some ….how’s that panning out for us?

Politicians in theory are great …and that’s not so good right now either

We could go a long way towards self-sufficiency of people didn’t throw away quite so much food (which could still be eaten, rather than food waste like bones etc). Best figures I have got suggests that each person in the UK will throw out ca. 67 kilos of food each year (seems a lot! – 4.4m tonnes in total according to this story… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/10/uk-throwing-away-13bn-of-food-each-year-latest-figures-show) .

Since your average lamb has about 13 kilos of meat on it after bones, that means that the equivalent of over 5 lambs per person are grown in the UK just to end up in landfill.

So that is the equivalent of 340 million lambs being produced just to be thrown out as waste. (we only produce 12 million lambs as a nation 🙂 )

Or if you are a Vegan, then consider it to be approximately 10 trillion iceburg lettuces being grown for nothing!

Worth thinking about if we are thinking of become self sufficient any time soon.

Any notion that we can “go it alone” would mean we’d need a clear Government strategy supported by investment – called industrial policy. Since 2000 it’s been promised but never delivered – they invited sectorial bids from industry. Some of us spent years working on proposals, working with other employers to get co-funding for investment – securing funding for 10 year programmes and 2 years later they canned the lot. Whilst we work within 5 year parliamentary cycles we won’t achieve anything of substance – just mealy-mouthed mendacity to secure votes and then pi$$ing-off when it comes to delivering anything!

Being self sufficient in farming is a needless fantasy. Even the Romans were importing wine and olives, its likely the our neolithic ancestors were trading tin for earthen ware.

I doubt there’s a time in our recorded history that we’ve ever been self sufficient.

he UK could easily become self sufficient in food

you call it an obesity epidemic, I call it stockpiling…

Lamb and lettuce.

Anyone else craving a kebab?

This is all just more of the stuff that got us into this mess. 10 different people promised 10 different types of Brexit, one to please the “shut the borders” lot, one to please the “invest in the North” lot, one to please the “Singapore” lot, one to please the “kick out the muslims” lot, one to please the “the EU is about to collapse” lot, one to please the “regulate the bankers” lot , one to please the “Canada/Norway” lot etc etc.

And now that it’s happening we’re going to be a high-tech economy, and we’re going to be like Singapore, and we’re going to invest in the whole country, and we’re going to all be self-suffiicent hunter-gatherers after the Red Khmer Rouge, white and blue Brexit.

Daily Mash nails it.

have proved it, the theory anyway –
“give grants to growers, allow south west to be covered in poly tunnels, use automated planting/picking etc,. ”

No that isn’t proof, it’s an idea. You don’t grow grain in polytunnels and we import masses of the stuff. Have a read of Jay Rayner’s “A Greedy Man in a Hungry World”. Localisation of production (i.e. growing stuff where conditions are best suited) is a given in food production. It’s efficient, even factoring in the food miles and carbon footprint of transport.

Very good.

Anyway… 1850… that’s my punt for when the UK was last just about self sufficient as regards food. Been a few changes in diet (and the make up of the UK) since then.

No that isn’t proof, it’s an idea

It’s an idea that could clearly easily work. We wouldn’t grow pineapples, you don’t need pineapples to be able to live and they are not a key part of being self sufficient.
The choice would go down (i.e no pineapples) but by selectively growing what grows well in the UK (in poly tunnels where necessary to help production) it could be done if a government really wanted to do it.

However, they don’t want to do it and we as a country don’t need to do it.

Sunlit uplands…. no I can’t see them from inside a poly tunnel desperately trying to grow citrus fruit to stop the scurvy and rickets

what a silly mess this is – like any self-respecting project manager would with a project at work that is a banjaks, stop the entire show and start again with a better plan.

I expect you to be able to backup your statements with facts not unicorns and rainbows. You’d need to actually prove its feasibility before making it policy.

One of the reasons we are in this mess is people espousing their ill-informed opinions as fact when the realities are entirely different and inherently more complex.

FFS, get some perspective. I was just giving my opinion that with the required desire we could produce a lot more food (limited in choice but enough to feed people). I have not performed a feasibility study and I won’t be making anything policy and I am aware that there are complexities to it.
It was just an opinion on a bike forum and I am hardly espousing anything as fact here and really don’t think I can be responsible for the mess we are in with Brexit by posting that opinion.

limited in choice but enough to feed people

Like a famine in Africa, wonder if there will be any European aid for the humanitarian crisis in Britain?

7 Years earlier…

Not sure what point I’m trying to make but it all seems so long ago and yet it wasn’t.

How did we **** it up so badly?

It’s an idea that could clearly easily work.

If it can ‘clearly easily work’ you can provide us with some kind of fact based evidence; sometimes referred to as ‘proof’.

It’s an idea that could clearly easily work. We wouldn’t grow pineapples, you don’t need pineapples to be able to live and they are not a key part of being self sufficient.

I would prefer the current arrangement.

Not sure what point I’m trying to make but it all seems so long ago and yet it wasn’t.

How did we **** it up so badly?

I think that the Olympics is a perfect example of how we got here, it was a private enterprise raid on tax payers with promises of long term benefits. Even those of us who thought that during the build up, had our spirits lifted in a summer of optimism. But after the show was over, and the promises were shown to be lies, all the supposed public benefits were handed over again to private enterprise and everyone realized we were conned.

Brexit is just another heist on a bigger scale, only we will never have a summer of optimism to look back on.

I think that the Olympics is a perfect example of how we got here

As well as the reasons you mention, it was the very definition of London and the South East benefitting at the cost of everyone else. There wasn’t much enthusiasm for the Olympics up here in the Pennines.

OK MSP, well when I take a group of scouts whitewater rafting this weekend on the Legacy course at Lee Valley, I’ll be sure to let them know that they aren’t really enjoying it and that actually they have been conned.

OK MSP, well when I take a group of scouts whitewater rafting this weekend on the Legacy course at Lee Valley, I’ll be sure to let them know that they aren’t really enjoying it and that actually they have been conned.

Maybe also tell them how much they will subsidizing west ham united for the next 25 years, or how much it will cost them to live in the supposed affordable housing that tax payers built. A couple of shiny trinkets does not alter the reality of what happened, even if it fools a few people.

There wasn’t much enthusiasm for the Olympics up here in the Pennines.

Bullshit of the highest order. Pubs here in the Pennines were packed to watch key events.

There was lots of cynicism on the run up to the games, but once they were going we embraced them wholeheartedly.

That opening ceremony linked to above was the moment that much of the UK got behind the olympics… we could see ourselves, and the real heritage of the UK, in what we expected to just be a white elephant. It was a great and surprising moment.

“A couple of shiny trinkets does not alter the reality of what happened, even if it fools a few people.”

Better we hadn’t bothered with hosting the olympics at all then? What would YOU have done? How would YOU have improved the lives of everyone in the country for a few weeks? Because I don’t know many people that didn’t feel a little bit more optimistic for the country that summer – its such a crying shame that its all been for nothing.

“There wasn’t much enthusiasm for the Olympics up here in the Pennines”

Absolute rubbish – I was kayaking on Dartmoor, equally far away from the epicentre and the atmosphere was electric in the pubs and town centres where screens had been erected.

FFS, get some perspective. I was just giving my opinion that with the required desire we could produce a lot more food (limited in choice but enough to feed people). I have not performed a feasibility study and I won’t be making anything policy and I am aware that there are complexities to it.

best to understand the state of the UK in years past, its reliance on imports, its history of rural and urban malnutrition. rickets, scurvy etc. are very real and very much a part of the current situation. Now restrict food, you could move to rationing, which only results in a huge black market and wealth getting food the poor can’t.

If it can ‘clearly easily work’ you can provide us with some kind of fact based evidence; sometimes referred to as ‘proof’.

Bear in mind that the UK is already 60% self sufficient without even focusing on it as a goal. You don’t think that could easily be increased via reduction of waste, more limited choices, incentives for people to grow and produce specific stuff? Of course it could if it came to it.

I am not saying it is viable and not saying it would make sense, I am just saying that it could be achieved

How would YOU have improved the lives of everyone in the country for a few weeks? Because I don’t know many people that didn’t feel a little bit more optimistic for the country that summer – its such a crying shame that its all been for nothing.

I would have spent 10bn on social housing (real social housing, not social cleansing and gentrification in a single area). Improve lives for life, not just a false glimmer of hope for 4 weeks, now long forgotten.

Even 10 billion spent on nationwide sporting facilities would have been fantastic, unfortunately while 10bn was spunked on the few, the many saw sporting facilities reduced and closed. Public facilities sold to private providers to provide councils temporary respite against slashed budgets now too expensive for the poorest members of society.

Man you wouldn’t want to be the next party in power…

y 60%

so it imports 40% of its food, ie almost half!

then you have the minor issue of who is growing it? picking it etc. you can increase production, it does involve banning livestock and a massive investment in chemicals but if that is what it takes i guess that is fine.

(re the Olympics) …..we could see ourselves, and the real heritage of the UK, in what we expected to just be a white elephant. It was a great and surprising moment.

For a period of about 2 weeks – from that point where the feeling of ‘what the **** is going on here’ at about 12 or 13 minutes in that video turned into my phone buzzing off the hook with text messages from overseas colleagues all saying how brilliant it was, we were immense.

How have we allowed ourselves to become a laughing stock.

‘London and the south east benefitting at the cost of everyone else’ ?
To most of us here it makes absolutely *no* difference, so cut tbe’be efit’ rubbish please. There’s a velodrome / cycle circuit which replaces the old Eastway circuit I used to live near in the 80s – which if Herne Hill hadn’t survived would been the only track down here(AFAIA)- I’ve been to the white water centre on a jolly but it’s not easily accessible for many. There’s a bigger shopping centre/various bars across the site but not exactly somewhere i’d ever aim to go.
As someone that lives pretty near London and goes on a few times each week, I and many others aren’t happy with the post-2012 ‘benefits’, specifically affordable/social housing, and a stadium being chucked away at a football team. But this kinda stuff happens with many Olympics, and I can think of a few ‘festival of’/’expo (insert year)’ events from around Europe or the wider world where the sites have very often fallen into disrepair, disuse and abandonment. Over the last 33 years the commonwealth games has been held in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Brum gets its turn in 2022. I can’t vouch for the effect on those, but at least 2012 has regenerated an area, much of which needed it. And the unfortunate truth is that a nice shiny stadium, wherever it is, can’t remain empty and be self funding. ‘Course, not everyone’s happy, some businesses had to move (I wonder whether they were compensated sufficiently), and some have moved out purely because of increased premises costs – not limited to Stratford, and that’s a related but separate problem. As is the issue of developers all over London/SE trying to scale down social/affordable housing which many council struggle to deal with in terms of getting stuff built.

Experts have released a picture portraying what london will be like in april.

Apparently Brexit’s going to rearrange London monuments…?

then you have the minor issue of who is growing it? picking it etc. you can increase production, it does involve banning livestock and a massive investment in chemicals but if that is what it takes i guess that is fine.

Why would you ban livestock? I reckon 80% of the sheep meat in the UK is produced on landscapes where you would be hard pushed to grow even the most hardy tiny little turnip, let alone anything most people would like to eat. Plenty of cattle, deer, pigs and poultry can thrive under similar conditions too, we have just chosen to farm them on an industrial scale as prices have fallen and artificial inputs have become cheaper too.

Turnips ate ok 👍

More crazy Brexit spouting – this time family.

Regarding the Olympic legacy – I went to the 6 day cycling last October & walking around the site on a Saturday afternoon it felt like a ghost town, there was nothing there, bar the velodrome. It was a cold inhospitable area. We went into Hackney before & after the difference was night & day. So from what I’ve seen of the Olympic legacy it looks like a massive waste of money.

It’s an idea that could clearly easily work. We wouldn’t grow pineapples, you don’t need pineapples to be able to live

It’s a fantasy you’ve just made up and the truth is that you have zero idea whether it could actually work or not, let alone that it could “clearly easily” work. It’s a gross oversimplification of a very complex issue, like a tick box on a referendum ballot form.

Also, I like pineapples. What else are we going to have to give up in this post-brexit utopia? You’re framing this in terms of “being able to live,” which is great and all, but I don’t really just want to merely survive. We’re not (yet) a third world country.

If the best argument you’ve got is “well, if we work really hard and invest a buttload of money in labour and technology then we probably won’t starve to death” then you might want to have a rethink. I’ve no idea how much land it would require in order to feed the entire country but it’s sure as shit going to be more than a couple of polytunnels.

And anyway, here’s a million dollar question for you. If this is such a great idea and we’d be so much better off, why aren’t we doing it already?

I am not saying it is viable and not saying it would make sense

I think we’re all in agreement with you there though.