FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Apart from the bollocks about other planets, I agree with Leon!
So do I. Worrying isn't it when you read the bollocks he posted at the end of the last thread.
My esteemed editor at the Gazette sent me some fascinating data the other day. Might become an article
It’s from a scientist who studied the effects of overpopulation on rats. He made rats live at varying levels of overpopulation - from moderate to severe. Each scenario was termed a “universe”
In “universe 25” - extreme overpopulation - the rats suddenly reacted very strangely. Female rats refused to have sex and became more aggressive and masculinised. Male rats became more feminised and sperm counts plummeted. Anxiety and self harm proliferated and the rats got more and more atomised - interacting less, isolating more
Eventually all the rats in Universe 25 died out. The rodent baby bust could not be fixed
Are we in the human equivalent of Universe 25?
I am aware of the Calhoun studies and they have many flaws. Having said that I think we are quite capable of wiping ourselves out by other means anyway.
Ah. Are these studies well known? They are totally new to me - and fascinating
Are they questioned by scientists? Serious query - I might write about them
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
And God so loved the Earth that He overpopulated it.
The religious have more children, on current figures the groups having most children globally are Muslims followed by evangelical Christians.
Both groups are LGBT sceptic and believe in traditional gender roles and that women should focus on raising families above all.
[snip]
Are anti-semites going to be "Hebrew-sceptic" next, I wonder?
But seriously, the sheer idiocy of the things you say is getting so extreme it's almost inspiring.
No it isn't, if you want to boost fertility rates the quickest way to do that is make it illegal for women in their 20s and 30s to have careers when they are at peak fertility level. Plus push traditional family roles over LGBT.
Muslims and evangelicals would be closest to that and by 2100 not impossible you could get more Muslim and evangelical led nations pushing that
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
HYUFD has a peculiar blindness when it comes to anticipating and predicting change.
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
There's a second assumption in the threader; that the man actually *likes* his wife, and wants to remain with her.
I would be unsurprised if some people were alerting ICE to their spouse's immigration status, because it might be easier (monetarily and/or socially) than either divorce or murder...
We did this last night….
As the great Austrian philosopher said -“Consider this a divorce.”
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
Most of their victims never want to admit (to themselves, let alone anyone else) that they did something stupid/greedy/dishonest.
The thing that's a bit different here is that the conman isn't doing a runner, because he doesn't need to.
Could it simply be that Trump voters continue to fear the alternative more? The Dems aren't exactly going out of their way to court the middle ground of American opinion.
I genuinely don't understand your interpretation of reality. Have you been watching Fox and Friends?.
Mainstream Dems are generally rather conservative. They are not Jeremy Corbyn clones. Even AOC and Bernie, by our standards would be relatively New Labour.
Economically, perhaps. Culturally they would be Sultanas. Have you seen the front runner for the mayor of New York?
He's certainly put the shits up the right in the USA and wider world. Their latest wizard wheeze to take him out is that he put down African American as one of his identities on a college application. Perhaps it's just me but it seems a fairly accurate description for someone born in Uganda but brought up and living in the US.
American politics is bonkers.
How dare you call yourself African-American! Where are you from? Uganda Exactly! What does Uganda have to do with being African? etc
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Apart from the bollocks about other planets, I agree with Leon!
So do I. Worrying isn't it when you read the bollocks he posted at the end of the last thread.
My esteemed editor at the Gazette sent me some fascinating data the other day. Might become an article
It’s from a scientist who studied the effects of overpopulation on rats. He made rats live at varying levels of overpopulation - from moderate to severe. Each scenario was termed a “universe”
In “universe 25” - extreme overpopulation - the rats suddenly reacted very strangely. Female rats refused to have sex and became more aggressive and masculinised. Male rats became more feminised and sperm counts plummeted. Anxiety and self harm proliferated and the rats got more and more atomised - interacting less, isolating more
Eventually all the rats in Universe 25 died out. The rodent baby bust could not be fixed
Are we in the human equivalent of Universe 25?
I am aware of the Calhoun studies and they have many flaws. Having said that I think we are quite capable of wiping ourselves out by other means anyway.
Ah. Are these studies well known? They are totally new to me - and fascinating
Are they questioned by scientists? Serious query - I might write about them
They are well known and controversial.
Indeed, I’ve done a deep dive
However, it seems to me they look increasingly prescient - indeed uncannily so. Despite their contentious nature
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
Iran, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are all below replacement level, as is the UAE. Kuwait is at replacement level.
Syria, I grant you, is above replacement. As are Gaza and Israel.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Out of my three closest friends and me, none of us have children. One has a step son. We haven’t become friends by default as not being part of the whole parenting world, we’ve been friends since a mix prep school and early twenties.
Out of my wider circle of friends (rather than acquaintances) of six chaps there are another two who have no children.
None of us didn’t have children for financial reasons as everyone has great careers and/or family wealth.
Two of us just never settle in relationships and other reasons are that their partners don’t want children or met current partners when partners are past wanting more children.
I think we are a relatively unusual group in the lack of children for men in their forties but not sure.
Personal question (you are not obliged to answer!) - do you ever regret this? You don’t strike me as full of wistful remorse so probably not
Many of my childless friends (and like you I have a lot) seem to cycle. At certain points they are struck with sadness - something missing. At other points they relish the freedom and the lack of financial pressure
I wouldn’t say I regret it, more I wonder what life would have been like as I see how people get a load of joy and love from their children but the one time I was in a relationship where it might have worked for me my partner didn’t want children.
I regret allowing my parents stopping me from joining the army - they threatened to defund me if I took up my place at Sandhurst before university and so I put the idea off until after uni then after four years in London I was too booze and drug addled! That to me is my regret that haunts me but not the children issue.
I’m fine with it, I have nephews and nieces who fulfil certain elements of younger family for me and I don’t have to worry about my child’s safety, health, happiness.
I'd say you are unusual - but not THAT unusual in a way you would have been 50 years ago. I'm 50, so at a stage where in any group of contemporaries breeding is almost certainly finished. And in almost any group of contemporaries I select, we are well beow replacement levels. The number of people for whom - for reasons similar to those you describe - it just didn't happen is sadly large. There are all sorts of reasons for not breeding: medical, financial, just-not-wanting-that-life - but the not-meeting-the-right-woman-at-the-right-time is the most tragic. Because in theory, with all the women in the world available at the touch of a button, that reason should have gone. In practice, the availability of *everyone* seems to have made finding the right partner much, much harder than when it was simply a matter of selecting one from the 40 or so realistically available.
Millions of women may be willing to meet you, but many of them are doing so while looking over your shoulder to see if anyone better might be available.
We would have had kids if we’d met earlier.
There would have been positives but also negatives. For one I’d still be working.
I like our lifestyle. We’re not massively wealthy but we have enough and enjoy ourselves.
I think that's the thing - if we hadn't had the twins we would be retired (or as close to as makes no difference). Instead I'm probably working another 10-12 years but hey I mostly enjoying doing so.
I was 30 when our youngest (of 3) was born, so by the time I was 50 he and the older two were off doing their own thing. He, on the other hand, didn't get married and start a family until he was in his late 30's and then he and his wife had a third child when he was in his late 40's. He's going to be supporting her, probably, into his late 60's.
Deputy heads must roll? Ask Sue Gray what happens when the choice of scapegoat comes down to politician or civil servant. Or Nick and Fiona for Theresa May's and Lynton Crosby's disastrous 2017 election.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread
Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind
One I cannot mention, so I won’t
The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed
eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast
The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist president
Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet
I would say we would be getting 'bad' immigration whether we were in a baby bust or not. Some immigration is a result of us needing more workers - but if that was all it was, we could choose our immigrants and integrate them. This is what is happening in my home suburb - it is a lot less white than it was 20 years ago, but the new faces are HK and Indian and integrate well (especially at the cricket club) and are largely middle-ish class. For the other face of immigration however look at Piccadilly Gardens, or at Cheetham Hill. These aren't immigrants we asked for, they are immigrants who came because their home countries are medeival shitholes and because getting to the UK is now just about possible in a way it wasn't 40 years ago. They'd be coming regardless of our demographics.
I don’t understand why, if Islam is so popular, even in “medieval shitholes” why so many Muslims choose to move to Christian countries? After all there are Islamic countries that aren’t shitholes.
There are fewer consequences for bad behaviour in our societies than in the Islamic world, because we are “civilised” (or decadent and weak, depending on one’s POV).
Morning, PB.
There's also. primarily, more job opportunities.
From immigrants in my family, married into an immigrant family, worked in workplaces with lots of immigrants.. it’s -
1) jobs 2) random shit doesn’t happen - much. In many countries being stopped by the police needs a bribe and the chance of it really going sideways are high. If your are the wrong faith, every now and again the mob comes round to burn you out.
You may think the U.K. is corrupt and crime ridden. But until you’ve seen the non-tourist life in many countries…
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
Assuming you still have an intact house or car, the occupied territories do not look very appealing to say the least and feck all chance Russia will rebuild for peasants, the crooks will be making the cash.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
Labour now expect to lose the next election. This is a one term parliament. So they are blaming and infighting even as individual groups try to push through favoured causes (because they won’t get a second chance). Meanwhile backbenchers rebel because why not? - they will probably lose their seats and they will never be promoted before 2028
Amazing thing is the 40% of absolute dumbasses that approve of the clown. Seems USA and UK have something in common, more than a fair share of dumb asses
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
Amazing thing is the 40% of absolute dumbasses that approve of the clown. Seems USA and UK have something in common, more than a fair share of dumb asses
What I find quite remarkable is that his idiocy seems to have so little effect. It's like finding a madenned bull has been in your china shop all weekend, and yet there's no damage.
(Obviously there are bad effects from Trump, but not on the scale you'd think)
Amazing thing is the 40% of absolute dumbasses that approve of the clown. Seems USA and UK have something in common, more than a fair share of dumb asses
While that is true, the "mainstream" politicians have hardly covered themselves in glory, either. Most of the scandals that @Cyclefree has detailed can be laid at the feet of the mainstream.
Most of their victims never want to admit (to themselves, let alone anyone else) that they did something stupid/greedy/dishonest.
The thing that's a bit different here is that the conman isn't doing a runner, because he doesn't need to.
Could it simply be that Trump voters continue to fear the alternative more? The Dems aren't exactly going out of their way to court the middle ground of American opinion.
I genuinely don't understand your interpretation of reality. Have you been watching Fox and Friends?.
Mainstream Dems are generally rather conservative. They are not Jeremy Corbyn clones. Even AOC and Bernie, by our standards would be relatively New Labour.
Economically, perhaps. Culturally they would be Sultanas. Have you seen the front runner for the mayor of New York?
He's certainly put the shits up the right in the USA and wider world. Their latest wizard wheeze to take him out is that he put down African American as one of his identities on a college application. Perhaps it's just me but it seems a fairly accurate description for someone born in Uganda but brought up and living in the US.
American politics is bonkers.
How dare you call yourself African-American! Where are you from? Uganda Exactly! What does Uganda have to do with being African? etc
Maybe a distinction could be drawn between the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery and the descendants of Africans who sold them?
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Apart from the bollocks about other planets, I agree with Leon!
So do I. Worrying isn't it when you read the bollocks he posted at the end of the last thread.
My esteemed editor at the Gazette sent me some fascinating data the other day. Might become an article
It’s from a scientist who studied the effects of overpopulation on rats. He made rats live at varying levels of overpopulation - from moderate to severe. Each scenario was termed a “universe”
In “universe 25” - extreme overpopulation - the rats suddenly reacted very strangely. Female rats refused to have sex and became more aggressive and masculinised. Male rats became more feminised and sperm counts plummeted. Anxiety and self harm proliferated and the rats got more and more atomised - interacting less, isolating more
Eventually all the rats in Universe 25 died out. The rodent baby bust could not be fixed
Are we in the human equivalent of Universe 25?
I am aware of the Calhoun studies and they have many flaws. Having said that I think we are quite capable of wiping ourselves out by other means anyway.
Ah. Are these studies well known? They are totally new to me - and fascinating
Are they questioned by scientists? Serious query - I might write about them
They are well known and controversial.
And even ended up as a novel and then on the big screen :
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
As Francis Pym tried to warn Mrs Thatcher, landslide election victories are double-edged swords. Labour's backbenches are filled by paper candidates, some of whom resent being there, and up to 200 who think they can do a better job than half the Cabinet but are slowly realising the PM (any PM) only promotes his chums so it is four more years as lobby fodder before losing in 2029, so at least vote for Labour priorities not Tory-lite austerity.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Out of my three closest friends and me, none of us have children. One has a step son. We haven’t become friends by default as not being part of the whole parenting world, we’ve been friends since a mix prep school and early twenties.
Out of my wider circle of friends (rather than acquaintances) of six chaps there are another two who have no children.
None of us didn’t have children for financial reasons as everyone has great careers and/or family wealth.
Two of us just never settle in relationships and other reasons are that their partners don’t want children or met current partners when partners are past wanting more children.
I think we are a relatively unusual group in the lack of children for men in their forties but not sure.
Personal question (you are not obliged to answer!) - do you ever regret this? You don’t strike me as full of wistful remorse so probably not
Many of my childless friends (and like you I have a lot) seem to cycle. At certain points they are struck with sadness - something missing. At other points they relish the freedom and the lack of financial pressure
I wouldn’t say I regret it, more I wonder what life would have been like as I see how people get a load of joy and love from their children but the one time I was in a relationship where it might have worked for me my partner didn’t want children.
I regret allowing my parents stopping me from joining the army - they threatened to defund me if I took up my place at Sandhurst before university and so I put the idea off until after uni then after four years in London I was too booze and drug addled! That to me is my regret that haunts me but not the children issue.
I’m fine with it, I have nephews and nieces who fulfil certain elements of younger family for me and I don’t have to worry about my child’s safety, health, happiness.
I'd say you are unusual - but not THAT unusual in a way you would have been 50 years ago. I'm 50, so at a stage where in any group of contemporaries breeding is almost certainly finished. And in almost any group of contemporaries I select, we are well beow replacement levels. The number of people for whom - for reasons similar to those you describe - it just didn't happen is sadly large. There are all sorts of reasons for not breeding: medical, financial, just-not-wanting-that-life - but the not-meeting-the-right-woman-at-the-right-time is the most tragic. Because in theory, with all the women in the world available at the touch of a button, that reason should have gone. In practice, the availability of *everyone* seems to have made finding the right partner much, much harder than when it was simply a matter of selecting one from the 40 or so realistically available.
Millions of women may be willing to meet you, but many of them are doing so while looking over your shoulder to see if anyone better might be available.
We would have had kids if we’d met earlier.
There would have been positives but also negatives. For one I’d still be working.
I like our lifestyle. We’re not massively wealthy but we have enough and enjoy ourselves.
I think that's the thing - if we hadn't had the twins we would be retired (or as close to as makes no difference). Instead I'm probably working another 10-12 years but hey I mostly enjoying doing so.
I was 30 when our youngest (of 3) was born, so by the time I was 50 he and the older two were off doing their own thing. He, on the other hand, didn't get married and start a family until he was in his late 30's and then he and his wife had a third child when he was in his late 40's. He's going to be supporting her, probably, into his late 60's.
OKC do you ever stop supporting them
Now in late 80's and partially crippled we're 'looked after' by children and grandchildren reasonably often. I can't do much about the house, so son/son-in-law/grandson are called in for 'masculine-type' jobs. And eldest granddaughter keeps an eye on her Granny.
Most of their victims never want to admit (to themselves, let alone anyone else) that they did something stupid/greedy/dishonest.
The thing that's a bit different here is that the conman isn't doing a runner, because he doesn't need to.
Could it simply be that Trump voters continue to fear the alternative more? The Dems aren't exactly going out of their way to court the middle ground of American opinion.
I genuinely don't understand your interpretation of reality. Have you been watching Fox and Friends?.
Mainstream Dems are generally rather conservative. They are not Jeremy Corbyn clones. Even AOC and Bernie, by our standards would be relatively New Labour.
Economically, perhaps. Culturally they would be Sultanas. Have you seen the front runner for the mayor of New York?
He's certainly put the shits up the right in the USA and wider world. Their latest wizard wheeze to take him out is that he put down African American as one of his identities on a college application. Perhaps it's just me but it seems a fairly accurate description for someone born in Uganda but brought up and living in the US.
American politics is bonkers.
How dare you call yourself African-American! Where are you from? Uganda Exactly! What does Uganda have to do with being African? etc
Maybe a distinction could be drawn between the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery and the descendants of Africans who sold them?
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.
Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
There's often a gaping disconnect between the interests of a country's leader and its population. That democracy makes this less likely is one of its strengths. But then again, Trump and Netanyahu.
Most of their victims never want to admit (to themselves, let alone anyone else) that they did something stupid/greedy/dishonest.
The thing that's a bit different here is that the conman isn't doing a runner, because he doesn't need to.
Could it simply be that Trump voters continue to fear the alternative more? The Dems aren't exactly going out of their way to court the middle ground of American opinion.
I genuinely don't understand your interpretation of reality. Have you been watching Fox and Friends?.
Mainstream Dems are generally rather conservative. They are not Jeremy Corbyn clones. Even AOC and Bernie, by our standards would be relatively New Labour.
Economically, perhaps. Culturally they would be Sultanas. Have you seen the front runner for the mayor of New York?
He's certainly put the shits up the right in the USA and wider world. Their latest wizard wheeze to take him out is that he put down African American as one of his identities on a college application. Perhaps it's just me but it seems a fairly accurate description for someone born in Uganda but brought up and living in the US.
American politics is bonkers.
How dare you call yourself African-American! Where are you from? Uganda Exactly! What does Uganda have to do with being African? etc
Maybe a distinction could be drawn between the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery and the descendants of Africans who sold them?
Mamdani is of Gujerati Muslim descent so almost certainly neither.
Incidentally he also ticked "Asian" on the same form apparently.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.
Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Out of my three closest friends and me, none of us have children. One has a step son. We haven’t become friends by default as not being part of the whole parenting world, we’ve been friends since a mix prep school and early twenties.
Out of my wider circle of friends (rather than acquaintances) of six chaps there are another two who have no children.
None of us didn’t have children for financial reasons as everyone has great careers and/or family wealth.
Two of us just never settle in relationships and other reasons are that their partners don’t want children or met current partners when partners are past wanting more children.
I think we are a relatively unusual group in the lack of children for men in their forties but not sure.
Personal question (you are not obliged to answer!) - do you ever regret this? You don’t strike me as full of wistful remorse so probably not
Many of my childless friends (and like you I have a lot) seem to cycle. At certain points they are struck with sadness - something missing. At other points they relish the freedom and the lack of financial pressure
I wouldn’t say I regret it, more I wonder what life would have been like as I see how people get a load of joy and love from their children but the one time I was in a relationship where it might have worked for me my partner didn’t want children.
I regret allowing my parents stopping me from joining the army - they threatened to defund me if I took up my place at Sandhurst before university and so I put the idea off until after uni then after four years in London I was too booze and drug addled! That to me is my regret that haunts me but not the children issue.
I’m fine with it, I have nephews and nieces who fulfil certain elements of younger family for me and I don’t have to worry about my child’s safety, health, happiness.
Most of their victims never want to admit (to themselves, let alone anyone else) that they did something stupid/greedy/dishonest.
The thing that's a bit different here is that the conman isn't doing a runner, because he doesn't need to.
Could it simply be that Trump voters continue to fear the alternative more? The Dems aren't exactly going out of their way to court the middle ground of American opinion.
I genuinely don't understand your interpretation of reality. Have you been watching Fox and Friends?.
Mainstream Dems are generally rather conservative. They are not Jeremy Corbyn clones. Even AOC and Bernie, by our standards would be relatively New Labour.
Economically, perhaps. Culturally they would be Sultanas. Have you seen the front runner for the mayor of New York?
He's entirely unrepresentative of the wider party; way out on its left. He got the nominations because he's a great campaigner and was running against an asshole sex pest.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Apart from the bollocks about other planets, I agree with Leon!
So do I. Worrying isn't it when you read the bollocks he posted at the end of the last thread.
My esteemed editor at the Gazette sent me some fascinating data the other day. Might become an article
It’s from a scientist who studied the effects of overpopulation on rats. He made rats live at varying levels of overpopulation - from moderate to severe. Each scenario was termed a “universe”
In “universe 25” - extreme overpopulation - the rats suddenly reacted very strangely. Female rats refused to have sex and became more aggressive and masculinised. Male rats became more feminised and sperm counts plummeted. Anxiety and self harm proliferated and the rats got more and more atomised - interacting less, isolating more
Eventually all the rats in Universe 25 died out. The rodent baby bust could not be fixed
Are we in the human equivalent of Universe 25?
I am aware of the Calhoun studies and they have many flaws. Having said that I think we are quite capable of wiping ourselves out by other means anyway.
Ah. Are these studies well known? They are totally new to me - and fascinating
Are they questioned by scientists? Serious query - I might write about them
I don't know how well known they are and I only have a brief passing knowledge of them, so dodgy for me to comment too much. He isn't considered a quack if that is what you are asking. It is proper science I believe, but the conclusions drawn are open to debate.
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
Surprised to see that sort of language in the Times.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
and (c) the Soviet Union was far more agrarian, with a large proportion of its population involved in agriculture, and much larger than in most of Europe at the time. Many of these workers could be sent to fight, allowing near-starvation , changed crops and western food supplies to fill the gap. I've seen it posited that whilst Russia may have won the war without allied arms shipments (at a much greater cost...), they would have lost without the food shipments. Though as with arms, there is great debate about that.
Amazing thing is the 40% of absolute dumbasses that approve of the clown. Seems USA and UK have something in common, more than a fair share of dumb asses
What I find quite remarkable is that his idiocy seems to have so little effect. It's like finding a madenned bull has been in your china shop all weekend, and yet there's no damage.
(Obviously there are bad effects from Trump, but not on the scale you'd think)
It will catch up with us though, must increase inflation in USA and stunt growth so we will feel it by next year for sure and given by then Labour will already have beggared us it will not be pretty.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
Why is it a bad thing if they do continue to decline for the next century, say?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Out of my three closest friends and me, none of us have children. One has a step son. We haven’t become friends by default as not being part of the whole parenting world, we’ve been friends since a mix prep school and early twenties.
Out of my wider circle of friends (rather than acquaintances) of six chaps there are another two who have no children.
None of us didn’t have children for financial reasons as everyone has great careers and/or family wealth.
Two of us just never settle in relationships and other reasons are that their partners don’t want children or met current partners when partners are past wanting more children.
I think we are a relatively unusual group in the lack of children for men in their forties but not sure.
Personal question (you are not obliged to answer!) - do you ever regret this? You don’t strike me as full of wistful remorse so probably not
Many of my childless friends (and like you I have a lot) seem to cycle. At certain points they are struck with sadness - something missing. At other points they relish the freedom and the lack of financial pressure
I wouldn’t say I regret it, more I wonder what life would have been like as I see how people get a load of joy and love from their children but the one time I was in a relationship where it might have worked for me my partner didn’t want children.
I regret allowing my parents stopping me from joining the army - they threatened to defund me if I took up my place at Sandhurst before university and so I put the idea off until after uni then after four years in London I was too booze and drug addled! That to me is my regret that haunts me but not the children issue.
I’m fine with it, I have nephews and nieces who fulfil certain elements of younger family for me and I don’t have to worry about my child’s safety, health, happiness.
I'd say you are unusual - but not THAT unusual in a way you would have been 50 years ago. I'm 50, so at a stage where in any group of contemporaries breeding is almost certainly finished. And in almost any group of contemporaries I select, we are well beow replacement levels. The number of people for whom - for reasons similar to those you describe - it just didn't happen is sadly large. There are all sorts of reasons for not breeding: medical, financial, just-not-wanting-that-life - but the not-meeting-the-right-woman-at-the-right-time is the most tragic. Because in theory, with all the women in the world available at the touch of a button, that reason should have gone. In practice, the availability of *everyone* seems to have made finding the right partner much, much harder than when it was simply a matter of selecting one from the 40 or so realistically available.
Millions of women may be willing to meet you, but many of them are doing so while looking over your shoulder to see if anyone better might be available.
We would have had kids if we’d met earlier.
There would have been positives but also negatives. For one I’d still be working.
I like our lifestyle. We’re not massively wealthy but we have enough and enjoy ourselves.
I think that's the thing - if we hadn't had the twins we would be retired (or as close to as makes no difference). Instead I'm probably working another 10-12 years but hey I mostly enjoying doing so.
I was 30 when our youngest (of 3) was born, so by the time I was 50 he and the older two were off doing their own thing. He, on the other hand, didn't get married and start a family until he was in his late 30's and then he and his wife had a third child when he was in his late 40's. He's going to be supporting her, probably, into his late 60's.
OKC do you ever stop supporting them
Now in late 80's and partially crippled we're 'looked after' by children and grandchildren reasonably often. I can't do much about the house, so son/son-in-law/grandson are called in for 'masculine-type' jobs. And eldest granddaughter keeps an eye on her Granny.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
Labour now expect to lose the next election. This is a one term parliament. So they are blaming and infighting even as individual groups try to push through favoured causes (because they won’t get a second chance). Meanwhile backbenchers rebel because why not? - they will probably lose their seats and they will never be promoted before 2028
Expect to lose a lot of seats? Yes. Expect to lose the election? No.
As far as I can see Ordnance Survey maps (especially Landranger 1:50,000) have vanished from Bing.com, which is a key source for me.
Does anyone know what is happening?
No, and I hadn't noticed. But ISTR that the way Bing Maps works was due to change at the end of June, so perhaps it disappeared as part of those changes?
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
Bit like Gaza, Putin dare not stop now unless handed something he can call a win. These despots will always do what is best for themselves regardless of the human cost.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
Why is it a bad thing if they do continue to decline for the next century, say?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
Big difference between 5 billion with an average age of 35 and 5 billion with an average age of 45
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
Incidentally, six ships of the Russian shadow oil fleet have suffered fires or explosions so far this year. After the first couple, I assumed that it was just old, clapped-out tankers facing issues. But six makes it seem like someone's taken a disliking to the fleet...
Though as there might be over 1,000 ships in the shadow fleet, it still could just be the fact they are clapped-out ships.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
Bit like Gaza, Putin dare not stop now unless handed something he can call a win. These despots will always do what is best for themselves regardless of the human cost.
It's the old President for Life issue. Russia does not have enough to declare victory. And so Putin pushes on. But every day means more Russian casualties, and means that the scale of the victory needs to be even bigger to justify the losses.
Most of their victims never want to admit (to themselves, let alone anyone else) that they did something stupid/greedy/dishonest.
The thing that's a bit different here is that the conman isn't doing a runner, because he doesn't need to.
Could it simply be that Trump voters continue to fear the alternative more? The Dems aren't exactly going out of their way to court the middle ground of American opinion.
I genuinely don't understand your interpretation of reality. Have you been watching Fox and Friends?.
Mainstream Dems are generally rather conservative. They are not Jeremy Corbyn clones. Even AOC and Bernie, by our standards would be relatively New Labour.
Economically, perhaps. Culturally they would be Sultanas. Have you seen the front runner for the mayor of New York?
He's certainly put the shits up the right in the USA and wider world. Their latest wizard wheeze to take him out is that he put down African American as one of his identities on a college application. Perhaps it's just me but it seems a fairly accurate description for someone born in Uganda but brought up and living in the US.
American politics is bonkers.
How dare you call yourself African-American! Where are you from? Uganda Exactly! What does Uganda have to do with being African? etc
Maybe a distinction could be drawn between the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery and the descendants of Africans who sold them?
Put a statute of Efunroye Tinubu on Bristol Dock.
Will the statue-topplers be charged with terrorism? Group, tick; damage, tick; seeking political change, tick.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
Why is it a bad thing if they do continue to decline for the next century, say?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
I didn't say it was a bad thing: I'm just taking issue with @HYUFD's assumption that things will continue exactly as they are.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
Bit like Gaza, Putin dare not stop now unless handed something he can call a win. These despots will always do what is best for themselves regardless of the human cost.
It's the old President for Life issue. Russia does not have enough to declare victory. And so Putin pushes on. But every day means more Russian casualties, and means that the scale of the victory needs to be even bigger to justify the losses.
But not just Russian casualties: troops from NK are prominent, and 'volunteers' from other countries. As more of these are lost, Putin will become more indebted to, and reliant on, those countries. That's going to be important geopolitically if Putin remains in power.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.
Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:
As far as I can see Ordnance Survey maps (especially Landranger 1:50,000) have vanished from Bing.com, which is a key source for me.
Does anyone know what is happening?
No, and I hadn't noticed. But ISTR that the way Bing Maps works was due to change at the end of June, so perhaps it disappeared as part of those changes?
Mapping Nerd here.
The OS Maps subscription is brilliant value at £25 a year. Not only access to the full 1:25k and 1:50k database (including Northern Ireland) but handy features in the phone app like route recording. Best of all it actually tells you where you are - rather useful when descending Tryfan in a thick mist, wondering where the top of the staircase might be that seemed so prominent on the way up.
As far as I can see Ordnance Survey maps (especially Landranger 1:50,000) have vanished from Bing.com, which is a key source for me.
Does anyone know what is happening?
No, and I hadn't noticed. But ISTR that the way Bing Maps works was due to change at the end of June, so perhaps it disappeared as part of those changes?
Mapping Nerd here.
The OS Maps subscription is brilliant value at £25 a year. Not only access to the full 1:25k and 1:50k database (including Northern Ireland) but handy features in the phone app like route recording. Best of all it actually tells you where you are - rather useful when descending Tryfan in a thick mist, wondering where the top of the staircase might be that seemed so prominent on the way up.
PSA - the OS Locate app is free and very handy in an emergency. None of that ///i.am.lost nonsense.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
Exactly so. And yet, we see it now. The decay of this government is considerably ahead of schedule.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
We don't know how many of them are Russian. The Russians have been quite successful at getting other people to fight and die for them, from the Central Asian Republics and further afield.
This is the sort of thing that our diplomacy should have been working hard to shut down, but we haven't done well at it.
As far as I can see Ordnance Survey maps (especially Landranger 1:50,000) have vanished from Bing.com, which is a key source for me.
Does anyone know what is happening?
No, and I hadn't noticed. But ISTR that the way Bing Maps works was due to change at the end of June, so perhaps it disappeared as part of those changes?
Mapping Nerd here.
The OS Maps subscription is brilliant value at £25 a year. Not only access to the full 1:25k and 1:50k database (including Northern Ireland) but handy features in the phone app like route recording. Best of all it actually tells you where you are - rather useful when descending Tryfan in a thick mist, wondering where the top of the staircase might be that seemed so prominent on the way up.
I got MemoryMap in 2020, so I've access to maps from then. 1:25,000 only. I'll probably update the maps when I get back into long-distance walking; for the moment the 2020 maps do me well enough. Before that I used Anquet with 1:50,000 maps. I much prefer MM to either Anquet or OS.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
Why is it a bad thing if they do continue to decline for the next century, say?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
I am generally pro-people, so I don't share the desire for a shrinking population, and fewer people enjoying the world, creating things, etc.
"Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
Exactly so. And yet, we see it now. The decay of this government is considerably ahead of schedule.
My theory is the hope was that the 'social progressivism' could be championed whilst 'tough decisions' were made fiscally.
A certain SC ruling combined with Trump election put the kibosh on that...
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
Why is it a bad thing if they do continue to decline for the next century, say?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
I am generally pro-people, so I don't share the desire for a shrinking population, and fewer people enjoying the world, creating things, etc.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
For clarity's sake: my annual cohorts are men and women. So there's only about 600,000 Russian men per annual cohort.
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.
Total council tax take is £40bn.
1p on VAT is about £5bn.
Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
Putin was promised a 3 day war - easy conquest followed by rich pickings.
Ironically, a lot of this was based on the apparent recruitment of large chunks of the Ukrainian elite. The trouble was that they reported the attempts to recruit them to Ukrainian intelligence (for the most part).
So the Russians thought it would a cake walk, completely with tons of help from inside. And the Ukrainians knew the whole plan of attack.
Putin can’t stop. If he stops, he dies. There no genius level plan, now. Just making it past the windows, each day.
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.
Total council tax take is £40bn.
1p on VAT is about £5bn.
As I've said multiple times - last autumn it should have been 3% on income tax keeping the WFA and replacing the 4p in NI cuts. Alongside Council tax reform based on current prices now that the data is public knowledge.
Then this year would have allowed the employer NI changes but they would be coming from a position of relative strength.
99% of Labours problems come from them not reversing the Tory's cynical NI cuts..
To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread
Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind
One I cannot mention, so I won’t
The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed
eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast
The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist president
Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet
I would say we would be getting 'bad' immigration whether we were in a baby bust or not. Some immigration is a result of us needing more workers - but if that was all it was, we could choose our immigrants and integrate them. This is what is happening in my home suburb - it is a lot less white than it was 20 years ago, but the new faces are HK and Indian and integrate well (especially at the cricket club) and are largely middle-ish class. For the other face of immigration however look at Piccadilly Gardens, or at Cheetham Hill. These aren't immigrants we asked for, they are immigrants who came because their home countries are medeival shitholes and because getting to the UK is now just about possible in a way it wasn't 40 years ago. They'd be coming regardless of our demographics.
I don’t understand why, if Islam is so popular, even in “medieval shitholes” why so many Muslims choose to move to Christian countries? After all there are Islamic countries that aren’t shitholes.
They do often move to Muslim countries. You just don't hear about it because you're not in one of those countries.
If we focus on just refugees, if we look at the top 5 countries by refugees taken in per head of population, 4 of them are mostly Muslim. If we look at the top 5 countries by total number of refugees, 4 of them are mostly Muslim.
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.
Total council tax take is £40bn.
1p on VAT is about £5bn.
Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
And that will mean people will save less in pensions - so creating an even bigger problem down the line.
A YouTube video (that I won't link to in order to hide this month's ailment) while discussing complications included the reassuring words that “this is usually uncommon”.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
That Survation poll would give a hung parliament with both Reform and the DUP/TUV and Labour and the LDs, Greens and SNP short of a majority.
Kemi would be kingmaker as to whether Starmer or Farage would become PM
Kemi or her successor. Do you think she will be leader in 4 years time?
We will see, if Kemi or Jenrick are both would back Farage over the Labour leader as PM.
If Cleverly or Stride were Conservative leader not impossible they could back Starmer or Streeting as PM over Farage in return for some concessions on tax. Neither would back a Rayner premiership though
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.
Total council tax take is £40bn.
1p on VAT is about £5bn.
Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
Maybe but it is the boy who cried wolf. The papers have spent the last year (or more) confidently predicting pension raids and tax rises that so far have not happened. Short of slaughtering the first born to save on child benefits, there's not much left.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
You seem to blithely assume that birth rates in Africa will not continue to decline.
Why won't they follow the same path beat by the West, the East, and even countries like Bangladesh?
Why is it a bad thing if they do continue to decline for the next century, say?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
I am generally pro-people, so I don't share the desire for a shrinking population, and fewer people enjoying the world, creating things, etc.
You mustn't get out much then.
It's just my innate optimism. I assume the best of people, and I've only met a modest fraction of the global population, from which I'm not willing to over-generalise...
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
Don't worry: we can legislate against such heresies.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.
Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.
Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
“He truly does have, to steal a phrase from Steve Jobs, a reality distortion field,” one top Republican aide said. “People come into that field, they go beyond the limits of what they think are possible for themselves.”
You have to go back to Project 2025 and the authors. It's the Playbook and Trump is the salesman for it. His experience of Reality shows suggest he's picked up quite a few tips on 'how' people believe.
If you have ever run a sales team, you'll know that salesmen not only lie, they lie to themselves too.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
Sure, but these have been around for decades, but with Smartphones that information is much more widely available, including on the life opportunities as alternatives to serial maternity.
Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
Sure, but these have been around for decades, but with Smartphones that information is much more widely available, including on the life opportunities as alternatives to serial maternity.
If you were born in an African village - I suspect opportunities beyond the village only arrived in the past 10-15 years as mobiles arrived..
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Apart from the bollocks about other planets, I agree with Leon!
So do I. Worrying isn't it when you read the bollocks he posted at the end of the last thread.
My esteemed editor at the Gazette sent me some fascinating data the other day. Might become an article
It’s from a scientist who studied the effects of overpopulation on rats. He made rats live at varying levels of overpopulation - from moderate to severe. Each scenario was termed a “universe”
In “universe 25” - extreme overpopulation - the rats suddenly reacted very strangely. Female rats refused to have sex and became more aggressive and masculinised. Male rats became more feminised and sperm counts plummeted. Anxiety and self harm proliferated and the rats got more and more atomised - interacting less, isolating more
Eventually all the rats in Universe 25 died out. The rodent baby bust could not be fixed
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.
Total council tax take is £40bn.
1p on VAT is about £5bn.
Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
I did predict to fitaloon that this Labour Government will end up finishing what Gordon Brown started when it came to taxing as much of the disposable income of the working and retired middle and working classes as they can before getting desperate and going after their pensions...
FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)
The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion
The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us
Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.
Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade
So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.
So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.
Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.
While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.
‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’
What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.
West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
They're both trying to outbreed each other.
Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.
Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?
Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics
This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
The differences are that:
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.
You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
Comments
Muslims and evangelicals would be closest to that and by 2100 not impossible you could get more Muslim and evangelical led nations pushing that
Westminster Voting Intention:
RFM: 27%(=)
LAB: 26% (+2)
CON: 19% (-1)
LDM: 12% (-1)
GRN: 8% (=)
Via @Survation, 25-27 Jun.
Changes w/ 30 May - 2 Jun.
(Note this was pre- this week’s rebellion and tears though)
https://x.com/electionmapsuk/status/1941192719524823161?s=46
Aggregate Result of the 49 Council By-Elections since the 2025 Local Elections:
LDM: 17 (+6)
RFM: 16 (+14)
LAB: 5 (-12)
CON: 4 (-5)
GRN: 3 (+2)
Ind: 3 (=)
SNP: 1 (=)
Local: 0 (-5)
https://x.com/electionmapsuk/status/1941060193649061991?s=46
Exclusive:
Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion package she imposed in November
The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost
She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’
Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options
Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises
Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget
Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”
Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well
As the great Austrian philosopher said -“Consider this a divorce.”
How dare you call yourself African-American! Where are you from?
Uganda
Exactly! What does Uganda have to do with being African?
etc
You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
However, it seems to me they look increasingly prescient - indeed uncannily so. Despite their contentious nature
This was all cleverly analysed in the Spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-global-populations-need-to-fall/
1) jobs
2) random shit doesn’t happen - much. In many countries being stopped by the police needs a bribe and the chance of it really going sideways are high. If your are the wrong faith, every now and again the mob comes round to burn you out.
You may think the U.K. is corrupt and crime ridden. But until you’ve seen the non-tourist life in many countries…
RFM - 95% votes, 20% seats
LDM - 5% votes, 79.8% seats
Others - Corbyn holds on in the peoples republic of Arise Jezzbollah in Islington (N)
second chance). Meanwhile backbenchers rebel because why not? - they will probably lose their seats and they will never be promoted before 2028
(Obviously there are bad effects from Trump, but not on the scale you'd think)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4xHs01SUA4
(a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.
(b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
Incidentally he also ticked "Asian" on the same form apparently.
https://www.nme.com/news/music/bands-start-boycotting-radar-festival-after-bob-vylan-removed-from-line-up-3876018
The backlash against the backlash.
I know this because I've met them
And yes it is fascinating stuff.
As far as I can see Ordnance Survey maps (especially Landranger 1:50,000) have vanished from Bing.com, which is a key source for me.
Does anyone know what is happening?
We have no idea how the trend will behave over the longer term, or if global population returns to eg its 1990 level, which is around 5 billion.
and 5 billion with an average age of 45
Though as there might be over 1,000 ships in the shadow fleet, it still could just be the fact they are clapped-out ships.
How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs
I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
The OS Maps subscription is brilliant value at £25 a year. Not only access to the full 1:25k and 1:50k database (including Northern Ireland) but handy features in the phone app like route recording. Best of all it actually tells you where you are - rather useful when descending Tryfan in a thick mist, wondering where the top of the staircase might be that seemed so prominent on the way up.
This is the sort of thing that our diplomacy should have been working hard to shut down, but we haven't done well at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU
[1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.
A certain SC ruling combined with Trump election put the kibosh on that...
Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
Kemi would be kingmaker as to whether Starmer or Farage would become PM.
Survation of course the most accurate pollster in terms of forecasting general elections over the last decade
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/05/the-vehicle-suddenly-accelerated-with-our-baby-in-it-the-terrifying-truth-about-why-teslas-cars-keep-crashing
The Tesla Files, as advertised on the Guardian's front page.
TL;DR Teslas self-drive like Richard Hammond reviewing a supercar.
Total council tax take is £40bn.
1p on VAT is about £5bn.
Ironically, a lot of this was based on the apparent recruitment of large chunks of the Ukrainian elite. The trouble was that they reported the attempts to recruit them to Ukrainian intelligence (for the most part).
So the Russians thought it would a cake walk, completely with tons of help from inside. And the Ukrainians knew the whole plan of attack.
Putin can’t stop. If he stops, he dies. There no genius level plan, now. Just making it past the windows, each day.
Then this year would have allowed the employer NI changes but they would be coming from a position of relative strength.
99% of Labours problems come from them not reversing the Tory's cynical NI cuts..
If we focus on just refugees, if we look at the top 5 countries by refugees taken in per head of population, 4 of them are mostly Muslim. If we look at the top 5 countries by total number of refugees, 4 of them are mostly Muslim.
A YouTube video (that I won't link to in order to hide this month's ailment) while discussing complications included the reassuring words that “this is usually uncommon”.
I may well add usually uncommon to my PB lexicon.
Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).
The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points
I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
Farage over the Labour leader as PM.
If Cleverly or Stride were Conservative leader not impossible they could back Starmer or Streeting as PM over Farage in return for some concessions on tax. Neither would back a Rayner premiership though
Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
How Trump pushed Republicans to yes.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5385546-trump-republicans-megabill/
You have to go back to Project 2025 and the authors. It's the Playbook and Trump is the salesman for it. His experience of Reality shows suggest he's picked up quite a few tips on 'how' people believe.
If you have ever run a sales team, you'll know that salesmen not only lie, they lie to themselves too.
https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-experiment-69941
Except for tomorrow, when from 08.00 a day of rain and thunderstorms are forecast.
Can you, oh wise people, guess when my next race is?