Future Britain – Fifty years time, the Infrastructure

The population will rise to seventy plus million because everyone wants to come to Britain.

People will flock to Britain because we provide freedom of speech; we protect our people and their property; we have the finest education, health and medical care; we have the best culture, sport and entertainment and we’re a successful nation with low tax and minimal government interference.

We will have re-invented the British people, to be powerful, fair, and honest.

The challenges we face are:

-         potential increase in sea level of one to two metres, and higher later

-         self-sufficiency and sustainability in food

-         self-sufficiency and sustainability in power and energy

-         powerful defence forces

-         excellence in telecommunications and air transport

-         twenty five per cent more housing

The initial schematic for a possible solution includes:

- Construct a rampart similar to the one round the Zuider Zee in Holland along all the low lying coastal strips and across all the river mouths particularly The Solent, the Severn, The Wash, the Thames Estuary, The Firth of Forth, Morecambe Bay, the Clyde, Carlyle Bay and The Wirral.

- Reclaim all the land inside these ramparts and convert to agricultural use

- Adapt the average diet so that people eat less red meat as this gives an improvement in food productivity of twenty-five to one. If we also re-create our fishing fleet we may be getting close to self-sufficiency in food

- Build the two aircraft carriers as soon as possible, plus recruit and train infantry so that we can make our armed forces available for guard and defence duties wherever we have a client

- Create mini-towns at each motorway junction, if we build two mini-towns each year they will each need to house and provide offices, restaurants, shops etc for one hundred thousand people (say thirty thousand homes)

- Provide express buses to link them with the existing cities and with rail and air transport facilities, plus powerful new audio-visual conferencing and meeting facilities to reduce the demand for transportation

- Create a new broadband network along the motorways linking these mini-towns, plus along all the new ramparts to give an inclusive network, possibly build new international cables

- Build clean coal-usage, nuclear and gas-fired power stations as near to the conurbations as possible, plus domestic solar power units for as many homes as possible

The scenario starts bringing into focus the choices we will need to make, though I think protecting our people is the primary objective.

We have the manpower, the skills and the ability to do all this. All we need is the decision to do it.