I remember paraffin heaters and the occasional coal fire. Our home was never warm. When money was very tight, after my father left, the TV and telephone were taken away. We barely had pocket money for the train fare to school. My sister and I coped because that's the way it was and we didn't know any different. Very few of my friends had divorced parents.

When I have a few luxuries in life now, there is no sense of privilege. It's because I've earned it. I have enough money to live a decent life and don't need any more.

I remember scraping the frost from the inside of the window to see what it was like outside. My father left when I was very young leaving my mother to look after me and my five young brothers, so my gran played a big part in helping to look after us and feed us. Yes, sometimes I look at my relatively 'privileged' life today and thank God for the nice comfortable home we have here today. People are definitely spoiled today compared to when I was young but that's progress for ya   

I certainly valued things that I was given, and bought surplus bags of components so that I could tinker with electronics from an early age. My first effort was to replace the puny amp in the Dansette with something more powerful. Then I started building my hi-fi system from kits and ideas. Elektor magazine was a great source back then. I pretty much got on with tinkering in my room, never a bother to my mum (who was best steered clear of most of the time) and not going out much unless I could afford the bus fare to see my friends. That was normality for me.

Yes I think so. As individuals? Not everyone. As a society? I'd say yes, though it's complicated because why wouldn't we always be striving for better/more?

Entitlement exists. I believe I've witnessed moments of entitlement by individuals and probably from myself as well.

My most morbid view of it though is that we should be happy to not exist in almost constant agony. There may have been times for humans where mayhem and bizarre cruelty and punishment by nature was nearly constant.

By dumb luck we've dodged that here. We live in a goldilocks zone in time.

We all expect health care. Understandable. But as the world's population grows it will all only become more complex to sustain.

There are 7 billion of us. When it's 20 billion what will living conditions be and how much of what we have now should we still expect?

I'd recently heard amazing stats that I can barely recall about how long it is estimated for humans to have reached a population of 100,000. And how much longer it took to reach 1 million. Then it just speeds up so fast on the timemine to a billion in the year 1830. That was only 200 years ago.

Sorry for long rant but I'd boil it down to this: may be it's ok to expect a lot, in a world where we see some individuals can reach a lot for themselves through luck and effort. But also we should probably prepare to start living less comfortably in the future.

I don't think people are thinking about the planet in going about their daily lives.

What I do see is enormous greed from the few who want more power and more money. If their wealth was spread it would greatly help to feed most people on Earth. However, the birth rate contributes to misery. Why is it necessary for any family to have more than two children? Why be so selfish when resources are limited?

Still trying to grok what the close family are doing, all intelligent punters, aware, but seemingly not aware of any small changes they can make.

Some families need to have more than 2 kids as replacement to keep the population as is works out around 2.5 kids per family.
That .5 is always awkward

I've always been a seeker after value for money, cheapskate even. That remains.
Fortunate for me I love sitting here listening to the system but if I was into going places I would cut back.
My car is gone due to probably being unfixable but mostly as I barely used it.

Rather than buy new there is always Freecycle, Ebay, Gumtree.
Some of the stuff I see being given away on Freecyle amazes me.
There is also the tip. When I took stuff down there before it appalled me what was being thrown.
Dragged out 2 CD racks and brought them home

The poor can't afford to be "green," and the rich don't give a toss.  The trouble is, in today's society, there are a lot fewer people in between those two extremes.  As for your last point, that's the first step on the road to advocating state-enforced sterilisation.  Note that I said "the first step on the road," not that you are advocating it yourself.

The BBC? Educate? They seem to have long abandoned that responsibility, although they're still happy to take the licence fee.

Slinger I take your point, and I'm not advocating any kind of enforcement, but birth control is freely available and limiting the birth rate with advertising (even by guilt) is something the government should actually be doing. Plus stopping any benefits beyond those for two children.