Do we actually need to get two weeks of food in?

I think Labour lost that election because he said that. Too many people did see through it.

@RedToothBrush we were in the same position in 2007, we were looking at moving out of rental into buying but as we had debt it would have been a 120% NR loan which at the time was an entirely acceptable thing to do (I was carrying post grad debt). I listened to those who knew more than I did and was very grateful when it all went tit's up, NR went to the wall and I was made redundant from my commercial property related career. We'd have been in a proper mess if we had bought.

As you say, everyone has choice, we were also stocked up ahead of covid which was good as we had an elderly parent with us who wasn't on the shielding list so we didn't get priority for home delivery- we were reliant on what we had in and the children of kind neighbours who shopped for us whilst we looked after their parents as the kids worked in the NHS.

What happens now won't be covd, it won't be 2008 but it will be its own scenario and I'd rather see it coming and do what I can. I was already concerned about weather related food inflation, the oil scenario amphlifies that concern.

I didn’t say it was? Did you read the comment I was replying to?

My parents were mis-sold an endowment mortgage in the late 1980s / early 90s (not sure when they got the mortgage). They later got compensation but it was pitiful compared to how much it impacted their lives and how many extra years they had to work and what the impact was in their eventual retirement.

I learnt that you shouldn't trust anyone to necessarily be acting in your interests if they financially benefit. That was an important life lesson.

So what got me about 2008, is when the Northern Rock mortgage guy I mentioned about told us "well the bank wouldn't lend me that much if I couldn't afford it". Such was his belief that the bank had any interest in his welfare. We tried to say that wasn't the case.

I've talked about the oil stuff over the weekend and the possibility of shortages with friends. And there was the comment that "the government wouldn't let that happen". As if the government have the ability to stop a shortage or end the war in the middle east.

This is naive. It's a form of denialism which is routed in faith rather than previous evidence or likelihood based on current information. It troubles me when people start doing this. I hope it doesn't get that bad, but history tells us, unrest in the middle east can lead to supply shock and shortages and thus we should not dismiss the possibility with such ease.

COVID should have taught people that government can make good and bad decisions. And that sometimes they get it terribly wrong and the UK has demonstrated we have inadequate contingency planning in certain areas. If anything, we should expect it to be in a worse state giving tightening budgets. Contingency planning is often the easiest thing to axe, because it's expensive and might never be needed so is invisible.

I learnt that bad things can and do happen to ordinary normal people when I was younger than most. I'm a realist rather than a pessimist though. The distinction is important.

People find it very, very hard to believe that things really can go alarmingly tits up. In their own lives as opposed to it happening somewhere else to someone else. I'm always amazed when you see people on the TV interviewed after some disastrous event saying - things like this don't happen round here.
Like they think they are immune, different, special.

History tells us otherwise.
Just the last hundred years or so:
World War 1.
World War 2.
The Holocaust.
The Balkans.
Syria.
The middle East.
9/11.
Covid.
And so on.
Every single one of those events was peopled with optimists, pessimists, and realists.

Being an optimist doesn't protect you from events. Being a pessimist doesn't make events happen.
Being a realist helps you prepare for many eventualities without panicking.
None of this is easy.
I've always tried to look reality in the face. It hasn't made for an easy, happy-go-lucky, sunny outlook. I'm old now. On the whole I'm glad I see things as I do.

There's a point that the European Jews who looked at what Hitler was doing and did their best to get out early were the ones with the best chance of survival. They saw and anticipated that their future where they were wasn't safe. They saw the risk, calculated it wasn't worth staying so moved, often leaving everything.

On 9/11 There was time to evacuate the second tower before it was hit. There was a veteran in the tower who had tried to get his company to move after the attack in 1993 because he recognised it was a high risk building. They didn't do this but he made his company rehearse and evacuation monthly which was hated. On the day of the attacks, the Port Authority told everyone in his building to stay put. He overruled them and ordered his company out. They all survived bar a handful. The handful were this guy and a number of others who went back to check everyone had got out. He saved hundreds of lives.

The denial, disbelief and the inability to comprehend what is happening rather than process and take action based on actual events and risk profiles is a very human one. Some people are better at seeing risk profiles than others and acting accordingly because they are willing to accept that yes, it really might go tits up with awful consequences.

This "oh it will never happen" attitude is one that I've never had the luxury of as an adult. I find it difficult to process tbh

Darwin selfies and videos are the ultimate example and becoming increasingly common due to this inability to identify personal risks and instead rubber neck rather than getting the head out of a situation.

@RedToothBrush

There's a point that the European Jews who looked at what Hitler was doing and did their best to get out early were the ones with the best chance of survival. They saw and anticipated that their future where they were wasn't safe. They saw the risk, calculated it wasn't worth staying so moved, often leaving everything.

Yes, indeed, lots did, including singer/actor Olivia Newton John's family, her mother and grandfather being Jewish, lived in Germany until they moved to the UK in 1933 upon realising the growth and risks of the Nazi's.

I remember listening to radio interviews of people in Ukraine immediately prior to the invasion.
While they were prepared to go, most, if not all, genuinely thought it wouldn't happen.
It's very human to have a normalcy bias.