To think we are being lined up for something?

Something i did notice in my local Morrisons last week, a worker with a brand new hi vis with the writing social distancing ambassador (or something like that) on the back. That was new. It did make ponder I must admit

Given what's happening in Lithuania, Russia's recent announcements, Iran's PM being assassinated, recent airport passport issues, train network outages and the election being announced so soon, it's not insane to be suspicious of perhaps a large scale cyber attack or something that brings down any of our vital infrastructure. However given how high the risk of that happening is, I imagine something would have been put into place to minimise the effects and chaos it would bring.

Myself and a couple of friends have noticed people panic buying water, batteries and tinned food though so people are clearly twitchy, the government prepare campaign and recent TV/newspaper stories on being prepared isn't helping

This, I suspect it's an absolutely shitty election campaign to frighten voters into "choosing" the status quo.

This is a certainty

Agree, it is going to be bad by all accounts, I have read that not much can be planted due to the gound being water-logged after the endless rain in April. When there will be good news? Everything seems to be endlessly grim

Just more brexit dividends as the border checks we voted for are finally brought in (the Tories have been delaying them for YEARS to avoid the fallout of what they caused. Prices will inevitably go up at the checkout as a result.

And the quality gets worse, sick of buying so called fresh veg to have it go off in around 2 days, tomatoes are awful, have all but given up buying them, had some green beans the other day and never got to eat any of them as they were turning black and going slimy when I got them out of the fridge. Interestingly, the Tories aren't campaigning on the myriad success of Brexit!

Exactly this!!!

But they might if the next pandemic is more lethal. If covid 2 came along with a death rate of 2% I'd think twice.

If bird flu came out with a death rate of say for random 25% I'd be shitting myself into compliance. Not all viruses are equal.

Also, if they string it out and make voters wait longer to bin them off, they will lose by a greater margin as resentment of the tory shit show builds.

This sounds like a really sensible reason why the supermarkets would be ordering in bigger deliveries then. Hopefully this is what is causing it. Thanks for posting this.

They've called the election now because things are going to be worse this winter. Maybe food and fuel shortages if the Ukraine war escalates and Putin starts sabre rattling even more. Things certainly aren't going to get better under the Tories. It might for Sunak and his mega rich family. Their wealth is in the hundreds of millions and growing all the time. Who even needs that much money.

RenegotiatingT&Cs is what usually happens if your company is financially at risk -it’s what finished Woolworths. Tbh I’d forget the political stuff and take a look on line at my company’s accounts and start uploading my cv to job sites if the profit margins are going down and the debtors’ amounts are increasing year on year.

I live roughly 20 miles away from Sellafield as the crow flies, so no point prepping, we'd have around 120 seconds ☠️

BOG OFF 😂

EVERYBODY! GO OUT AND BUY LOO ROLL!!

Could well be right although it was 10 in the morning so would these people not mostly still be at work. Someone else suggested the bank holiday weekend which could be having an impact and another suggestion was there are distribution problems with supermarkets at the moment. So lots of reasons why it is probably nothing. Still I can't lie - I did stick a couple of extra tins of tuna in my trolley!

When you put it like this, OP, I start thinking.
😐
I don't think you are paranoid, that's unnecessarily harsh.
Years ago I would move back to Prague, where I was born. However, it now belongs to Ukrainians.
Furthermore, one of my abusive parents is still alive and I simply don't want to spend my time around them.
Grim, I know.
Are we fucked, as a PP said?
Me thinks yes, here or there.
😁

I'm more worried (not very worried really just aware) of med shortages. I was in local pharmacy and both people in front of me couldn't get their prescription med. One was clearly on their second attempt and the pharmacist said they can't even order the item at the moment - no idea what it was. Lots of spaces on the shelves. I was trying to get GSs favourite dandruff shampoo (he gets terrible dandruff and nitrozil is the only thing that seems to work) and the assistant said they haven't been able to get it for a couple of months. We can live without dandruff shampoo but it does upset GS when he looks like he's been in a snow storm but why all the shortages?

I know there has been talk of HRT shortages for ages.

@spuddy4 so encouraging people to use their homes as warehousing?

I'd also think that a bit of casual stockpiling is good for the economy.

😐I was just explaining why it doesn't work for everyone because you said you don't understand why some people don't do it. It doesn't work for us for the reasons I outlined, so we don't do it.

I work in retail and there's strikes in distribution that are impacting our deliveries so to bypass this they are sending bigger orders out. I don't know if it will affect all supermarkets though but it's been a nightmare this week for us.

If you had read my post you will have seen that we lived in a built up urban area but got snowed in for a week! Floods, snow etc can happen anywhere not just rural areas.

We live fairly rurally now but previously have always live in urban areas (London for over 20 years) and always had a stock of food and other items.

We probably would not have struggled to get what we needed in lockdown but, as I said, we did not need to go out at all. No queueing for shops, no looking at empty shelves, no joining the panicked buyers.

Also having a decent stock of items is NOT panic buying

It’s because people are mind blowingly stupid. The supermarkets have massive amounts of data, they know when problems arise and can trade trends back against elections etc. We also know that around election times people start coming up with stupid conspiracy theories and talking about us being “lined up for something” online, which causes people to go out and stockpile. It’s pretty basic really.

In fairness it does kind of work that way. Why wouldn't it? If the government knows something big is coming they prepare for it, it would be irresponsible not to.

The problem is when people then start seeing "preparations" everywhere!

I agree with the above poster, they probably want the summer off. But isn't it funny how we all accept that there is a reason, and it's a reason they're not being transparent about, and it's a reason that's self interested? Not one of us think it's in summer for the good of the country, we accept it's tactical in some way.