alanjjohnstone
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Placing over-crowding in context. Bradford also has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the UK: 26% of young people were out of work in 2015, up from 11.3% in 2004. More than 30% of the population here are currently under the age of 20, and the city has the highest number of under-16s in the country, giving Bradford the unusual title of being the UK’s youngest city.To Adam Mathers, 17, that means one thing: overcrowding.“It’s too small and crowded here, people feel there’s no way out,” says Mathers, who was born and raised in the city and is now one of the 20,000 students at Bradford College. “Young people are always competing for the same jobs."With nearby Leeds a more attractive prospect for young jobseekers – it is the second largest employment centre outside of London, and home to the headquarters of global companies including Asda, Tetley and First Direct – those who stay in Bradford have limited options. After the closure of the city’s textile mills, its largest employer, the majority of jobs in Bradford now fall into skilled trades, retail and administrative sectors.With the population estimated to grow by an average of 2,000 people a year for at least the next 10 years, the inherent problem facing Bradford’s youth – too many people competing for too few jobs – will continue.“A lot of our students don’t leave Bradford, they don’t go out of this bubble,” says the college’s head of health and social care, Wesley McGlinchey. “We’ll take them on trips to the seaside because they’ve never seen sand or the sea. You have to open their eyes to the world and help them develop aspirations.”https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/05/life-britain-youngest-city-bradford-uk-unemployment
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42942921Dow Jones dropped by 1,175 points.The leading US stock market index closed down 4.6% at 24,345.75, one of the largest falls in recent years. The S&P 500 stock index, down 4.1% and the Nasdaq, down 3.7%.The FTSE 100 index of leading companies also fell to close down 1.46% Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 4.8% Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 2.7%. South Korean, the Kospi was down 2.3%. There was a drop of 2% for both the CSI300 index and the Shanghai Composite Index, while the Hang Seng saw a 3.8% dip.Has the bubble eventually burst? I had been expecting it lot earlier.
Quote:Passively standing by waiting for society to either collapse or evolve? Or should we consciously organise and actively replace capitalism with something else?This is often the response i get accused of in discussions with proponents of cooperatives.They tell me to start now by building what used to be called by old timer industrial unionists, the kernel of the new society within the shell of the old. They want something better now and that is something the WSM cannot supply.
There seems to be two reasons why people post here.To convey useful information to other members – a valuable qualityTo ask questions and clarification on some specific issue – equally importantWhat was hopefully going to reach out to non-socialists or find a wider left-wing audience has simply not occurred (albeit we have attracted a few individuals who wish to make known their particular view-point but they are not connected to any broader movement to be of any consequence)So perhaps the goal of the forum should be to concentrate on information-sharing and political education which may require a re-design of the forum webpages.
The question is a simple one.Is the current forum fit for purpose?Does it bring visitors to discuss and debate our case for socialism?Are the benefits outweighed by the handicaps?Perhaps a solution would be to restrict the forum to comments on the Socialist Standard articles and centre our discussion and debates on deepening and extending the scope of those articles. Many topics in the Socialist Stanard can be improved by more recent news and research coverage that crops up since publication.
Another bit of info.Green space – both private and public parks, gardens, grounds, covers 54% of the urban land area, 1,593 square kilometres – the equivalent of 22 Loch Lomonds.This equates to 27 hectares of green space per 1,000 people (excluding private gardens) – equivalent to a tennis court size of green space per person.https://www.hortweek.com/green-space-use-scotland-falls-20-amid-reports-decline-quality-study-finds/parks-and-gardens/article/1456085
Quote:I wouldnt say it is entirely down to corporate pirates and cattle barons that wilderness is being encroached upon. Population growth is also a factor although there are complex linkages between these factors. Land grabs for example have displaced many subsistence farmers in various parts of the world pushing them onto ecologically marginal land that then becomes subject to environmental deteriorationI concede i was being a bit too simplistic. But rather than blame it on population growth, i think a more accurate description would be population re-location. The problem of land-grab apart from oil/mining is palm oil, soy and cattle and where do the displaced and dispossessed go – in the main to urban centres. They give up on farming entirely so i don't think we can blame the influx of people fleeing the giant mono-cultural plantations and ranches to marginal land a cause of desertification or degradation. Certainly not compared to climate change events. But i think this thread was originally started to counter those who oppose immigration on the grounds that UK/EU was overcrowded or that supporting more people was unsustainable. Neither premise is true.
Quote:Perhaps separate the forum into two – One for discussing the party's case and one for internal organisation. Simples.What we did have with the Yahoo lists were for non-members read-only SPINTCOM – for party administration and SPOPEN for internal party policy and position debates and WSM FORUM being the only list that non-members could participate in and contribute to.Perhaps there is a case that parts of this forum are made redundant and party-relevant issues are returned to SPINTCOM and SPOPEN but i have to say there will be some who quite justifiably will see this as a surrender to disruptive forum-users and a retreat from the current policy of strict moderation by the existing moderator who's respect i think is increasingly deserved considering the challenges he is constantly facing. I myself found the acrimonious disputes too much to continue as moderator. And i'm nearing the stage that even visiting the forum and witnessing as ALB says, the self-destructive antics of supposed comrades too much to bear. With friends like these, who needs enemies.
Quote:“I will speak as a Marxist. Communist Manifesto: when he says that the communists are being blamed or accused of wanting to take nationality, ethnicity, national pride away from the majority. And he says ‘you cannot take away from them that which they don’t have’. There is a very good leftist, Marxist argument in favour of the transnationality which the single market, and indeed the European Union, is putting forward….“My great fear is that the fragmentation of this already highly undemocratic EU is not going to bring us more national democracy, or improve our circumstances economically, but that the opposite will happen which will only aid the ultra-nationalists and those who invest in division.” ”Yanis Varoufakis http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yanis-varoufakis-s-marxist-argument-staying-eu-tony-blair-a8189151.htmlBut his critic offers a standard state-capitalist response that the EU makes re-nationalisation problematic
Here is a story of Central America and its once teeming population that the "pristine" forests have hidden from us http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/maya-guatemala-jungle-mayan-structures-hidden-buildings-thousands-survey-scan-a8190626.html
Quote:“There are entire cities we didn’t know about now showing up in the survey data,” Professor Francisco Estrada-Belli, an archaeologist at Boston University, “There are 20,000 square kilometres more to be explored and there are going to be hundreds of cities in there that we don’t know about. I guarantee you.”I don't think the topic of this thread was town v, country but it will be an issue that will always turn up, particularly since it was a question first raised by Marx and Engels.https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/town-and-country-marxism%E2%80%99s-answer-problemsUnlike Robbo, i was city born and bred so i have an empathy for the charm of the city. I have also lived in very densely populated countries and recognise the problems.I think the issue is not that many will reject the town and city life but it will be re-shaped into livable centres rather than the shoe-box urban-sprawl and slum shanty-towns.William Morris vision for London was its return to its earlier town and village roots.It isn't inter-nation migration that is the real problem but the internal rural/urban migration that is taken place, depopulating large swathes of regions, leaving the land to the old folk to tend to.Robbo was lucky to be born in the pristine wilderness of the South African veldt. But the threat to such areas it isn't coming from nature being crowded out by people but the arrival of corporate pirates and cattle barons. And don't forget, Robbo, on your trip through the intensive agriculture of the Netherlands, at one time it was under the sea and/or salt marshes.The achievement was indeed remarkable that it was turned into farm-land, in the first place.In China, as the fruits of the one-child policy, there is something called the 1-2-4 problem, one adult child now supporting two parents and four grand-parents.
MightyYoghurt – Another poster who thinks his personal views on another is of prime importance that it is worth sabotaging a very useful thread. No wonder this forum is losing its popularity.
And once again this forum is being de-railed by those who are unable to rise above being baited. No wonder people like Ike treat us like a joke.I would have liked to see other contributorss offer their info on de-population of areas of Britain.Ireland another region that certainly isn't over-crowded once outside Dublin City
I think this is related a bit to this topichttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-42903144[quoted]The agricultural revolution saw people cleared from land in the Lowlands, Highlands and Islands and Aberdeenshire in the 18th and 19th centuries…Community Land Scotland wants to see the land repopulated and for nearby remaining communities to be given greater powers to be able to do that.[/quoted]Not so overcrowded, after all, it seems. Perhaps, a study of the various moors in England and Wales might come up with a similar situation.
