Travel teaches you history, geography, cookery.
We hear a lot of complaints about big business. But there's nothing stopping you from being a hermit in a remote place. You could be Robinson Crusoe and catch your own fish and live in a thatched hut on the beach. But some stranded sailors recently wrote the sign Help using palm fronds to summon aid from planes overhead.
So why did the Irish starve during the potato famine? A friend of mine visited Ireland and came back asking, Why did they not catch fish to eat?
Socialism worries about the distribution of wealth. I am more interested in the creation of wealth. If you were to kill or rob the richest people and give all their money to the poorest, you would have a situation like that shown by lottery money given to somebody who did not know how to save or invest in the film Spend, Spend, Spend.
In some families you have a rags to riches story. In others you have a descent from riches to an early grave.
What shocks me is that millions of people are unemployed and lack food and clothes and housing and roads and drinking water and toilet until somebody else from some other country comes along to help them. We have education and smart phones and Skype.
A worldwide scouting movement or schools movement should be teaching everybody to grow their own food, make their own clothes and build their own transport. Do we really want to live like those tribes in the Amazon, with no clothes, short life expectancy, fighting wildlife?
Or do we want to live in a city with public transport clothes, cars, buses, soup kitchens, pensions and a welfare state? I just look back at my grandparents who were born at the time of the Brontes when you had three dresses and your mother died in childbirth and you died at the age of 30 and I'm glad to benefit from civilisation and if you want to help you volunteer for charity or start one.
The biggest problems are:
Global Warming
The Haze
Overpopulation
Natural Disasters
Fights; Genocides of unarmed or pacifist civilians; Wars between armed groups
Overpopulation in the good years so that people starve in the lean years with poor harvests. Thousands of years ago the writers of the bible had identified the problems. Joseph in his dreams saw the problem and solution to the seven rich harvest years and the seven lean years. Moses was born in a time when the rules saw the population (of slaves) was growing too fast. Before birth control the way to control the population was to kill babies. (Like in India in modern times.)
We have dealt with smog in the past in London. I hope that with modern communication about problems and solutions and population control, with so much communication, knowledge, power, we can create beautiful cities with healthy long-lived, happy people.
Tax is a perennial problem. Nobody wants to give away their money or work for free one day in ten and five days our of ten, paying ten per cent tax, or fifty per cent tax, in income tax where you were born and want to be buried with your ancestors, tax in the country where you are living because work takes you there, and you have got used to it and all your friends are there,, sales tax, inheritance tax, sale of property tax, goods and service tax, import duty, travel tax, health tax, more tax, stealth tax. Some take the attitude that other companies should pay more tax.
But what happens when individuals leave the country (brain drain), or companies place their head office or main businesses elsewhere. To attract business to a neglected or remote area, governments offer tax breaks. If you want big business to set up factories in your country, you have to compete with other countries. By paying less tax elsewhere or in your country, they are able to set up business in more countries and establish themselves worldwide.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
We hear a lot of complaints about big business. But there's nothing stopping you from being a hermit in a remote place. You could be Robinson Crusoe and catch your own fish and live in a thatched hut on the beach. But some stranded sailors recently wrote the sign Help using palm fronds to summon aid from planes overhead.
So why did the Irish starve during the potato famine? A friend of mine visited Ireland and came back asking, Why did they not catch fish to eat?
Socialism worries about the distribution of wealth. I am more interested in the creation of wealth. If you were to kill or rob the richest people and give all their money to the poorest, you would have a situation like that shown by lottery money given to somebody who did not know how to save or invest in the film Spend, Spend, Spend.
In some families you have a rags to riches story. In others you have a descent from riches to an early grave.
What shocks me is that millions of people are unemployed and lack food and clothes and housing and roads and drinking water and toilet until somebody else from some other country comes along to help them. We have education and smart phones and Skype.
A worldwide scouting movement or schools movement should be teaching everybody to grow their own food, make their own clothes and build their own transport. Do we really want to live like those tribes in the Amazon, with no clothes, short life expectancy, fighting wildlife?
Or do we want to live in a city with public transport clothes, cars, buses, soup kitchens, pensions and a welfare state? I just look back at my grandparents who were born at the time of the Brontes when you had three dresses and your mother died in childbirth and you died at the age of 30 and I'm glad to benefit from civilisation and if you want to help you volunteer for charity or start one.
The biggest problems are:
Global Warming
The Haze
Overpopulation
Natural Disasters
Fights; Genocides of unarmed or pacifist civilians; Wars between armed groups
Overpopulation in the good years so that people starve in the lean years with poor harvests. Thousands of years ago the writers of the bible had identified the problems. Joseph in his dreams saw the problem and solution to the seven rich harvest years and the seven lean years. Moses was born in a time when the rules saw the population (of slaves) was growing too fast. Before birth control the way to control the population was to kill babies. (Like in India in modern times.)
We have dealt with smog in the past in London. I hope that with modern communication about problems and solutions and population control, with so much communication, knowledge, power, we can create beautiful cities with healthy long-lived, happy people.
Tax is a perennial problem. Nobody wants to give away their money or work for free one day in ten and five days our of ten, paying ten per cent tax, or fifty per cent tax, in income tax where you were born and want to be buried with your ancestors, tax in the country where you are living because work takes you there, and you have got used to it and all your friends are there,, sales tax, inheritance tax, sale of property tax, goods and service tax, import duty, travel tax, health tax, more tax, stealth tax. Some take the attitude that other companies should pay more tax.
But what happens when individuals leave the country (brain drain), or companies place their head office or main businesses elsewhere. To attract business to a neglected or remote area, governments offer tax breaks. If you want big business to set up factories in your country, you have to compete with other countries. By paying less tax elsewhere or in your country, they are able to set up business in more countries and establish themselves worldwide.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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