Britain's "can't do" culture

I have always admired America's "can do" culture. Britain it seems suffers from the opposite.

The last few days have revealed what a nation of wimps we've become. All because of a few inches of snow....

1. London's entire bus fleet is grounded (this didn't even happen during the Blitz).
2. Heathrow airport is closed
   
3. One in five people are off work
4. Thousands of schools remain closed for days, and this after the road and weather conditions improved:

The Romsey School in Romsey, Hants, was closed because of "hazardous" conditions even though roads and paths nearby had thawed in bright sunshine. The head teacher explained his decision: "I feared a car coming into the car park too quickly could skid and plough into a crowd of pupils, for example."

Younger pupils were asked to stay away from Quintin Kynaston secondary school in north London for "health and safety reasons".

Head teacher Jo Shuter said: "It is so easy for a kid to lose their eye if a bit of ice gets thrown at them."

In addition, we get the usual excuses of: "this is the worst weather we've had since erm... last year". We've had enough snowy winters in last few years, we should be perfectly able to cope.

It's hardly surprising that traders are rushing to sell sterling. This country is simply unable to function anymore.

Worry a little less about sustainable development and a little more about sustainable population growth

The government's green adviser has warned that couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment. Not much really to say, except that this guy has taken leave of his senses. No society can prosper (or even survive for that matter) on negative population growth. How are we supposed to pay for the rising costs pensions or healthcare when you have a declining workforce paying for an ever growing army of pensioners?

Right now, Britain (and most of Europe) is suffering not from population growth but from population decline. Britain is currently below the population replacement level of 2.1 children per couple, and we are having to rely on immigration in order to create population growth. As Mark Steyn has put it in his book America Alone, "we are having to import the children that were not prepared to have".

Perhaps it's time that environmentalists worried a little less about sustainable development, and instead worried a little more about sustainable population growth.