To wonder why we aren't rioting in the streets?

[Danniz]

So:
The government is about to begin stockpiling processed food in case the country is plunged into chaos by a “no deal” Brexit.
In just over half a year the UK is going to be wrecked for decades to come. We're looking at rationing, for God's sake. Power cuts. Mass unemployment. The loss of our employment and human rights. The new Health Secretary has allegedly received 10s of 1000s from the head of a thinktank that wants to abolish the NHS. There is no plan for the future. Not even the most ardent of the Brexiter politicians that got us into this mess are pretending that we aren't looking at massive economic and social problems.
Isn't it time for us as ordinary citizens who, with our children, will pay for this fiasco to start demonstrating, meeting our MPs, doing anything else that might possibly help to stop this? I don't just mean the demonstration that took place in London, and the others around the country - I mean serious numbers of people, making their voices heard. Because we will all suffer the very serious consequences of this mess.

I agree with the OP - I think Brexit is going to be a disaster of epic proportions. The Leavers will think that Theresa May stuffed it up by not being hardline enough, but that’s not true. It was never going to work by next March. Maybe if she’d given us 10 years to plan it would have, or done a Norway type deal as a short-term measure intending to detangle ourselves slowly over the next decade. (To be clear, I don’t think we should be doing this at all, but if we have to, then this is an insane way to go about it).

That Independent article said we were already spending millions on just preparing our resilience plans. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have given that cash to the NHS, say?

Danniz - my Daily Fail reading friend is all for Brexit - as she is always right (hem hem) you must be in the wrong!

Can't even begin to get my head round some of the thinking here.

How is this even comparable to wartime? Rationing was something people had no choice about. There are CHOICES here, we do not have to have risks of food shortages, we do not have to risk vital industries, we do not have to lose jobs.

So how do planes from countries not in the EU manage to fly?
This comment really exposes the political ignorance of some people and the stupidity of allowing them to vote on an issue that will have such a detrimental affect on our country. Anyone who still believes the effects will be minor or short-lived really needs to read up on the government's own impact reports.

oh but apparently we do HPFA because it's democracy innit.

If we had known that

1. We would be paying a £39 billion divorce bill to exit
2. There was no "magic" £350 million to spend on the NHS
3. That it would be hard Brexit with no free access to the common market
4. That each of us would be £250 poorer even before Brexit had happened.

Would we still have voted for it?

Why don't you advance search me then? I've tried that with a few Brexit friendly posters on here, to find that they're either posting on Mumsnet for the first time, or have chosen names that make them very conveniently unsearchable (such as football coach

You sound stalkery and unhinged

In other news we only joined the eu in 1973 and greenland left the eu in 1985 and are doing fine. London has massive finance from places like saudi, america and russia. It aint going anywhere. And as a side note in ww11 rationed food meant everyone was as healthy as possible. Out of the eu britain has control of its borders and waters so fishing in our waters is only ours. No more fishermen at sea for days and hook nothing because eu boats swooped in caught our rota of fish then sold it back to britain at inflated prices. Ditto our farms. Its not all doom a d gloom and no one has a crystal ball.

People will only riot when they pop to the supermarket and are unable to buy their usual brands and foods at the prices that they are used to. For every person worried about this, another is shouting "Fake News!" and think that we can get what we need from outside the EU.

I'm not fully aware of which items I buy from the supermarket are fully British made apart from meat and dairy (and I know the price of them are subsidized by the Common Agricultural Policy)

@MarthaArthur What about the medicines that we procure from the EU?

Words fail me.

Antigonads - So how do planes from countries not in the EU manage to fly?

This is a good example of some of the issues around Brexit, there are literally thousands of others.

International Air travel is tightly regulated by a number of International agreements to which countries have to adhere to (nothing to due with the EU). Now the responsibility for regulation is with the local regulator.

Now the local regulator for the UK is EASA (European Air Safety Agency.

After Brexit we will not be part of EASA so the CAA will have sole responsibility.

But the CAA does not have the staff, or expertise in a number of areas. Nor has the UK signed up to a number of Air Safety/Travel Agreements such as Open Skies. Until those are in place, then yes we could see UK aircraft unable to fly outside of the UK.

Essentially the CAA needs to duplicate what EASA does but all the cost is born by the UK.

This is a huge deal, not just for air transport but also for the Aerospace industry which employs hundreds of thousands. Each part has to be certified by the regulatory authority. As it stands the CAA is not considered competent (nor it seems is receiving sufficient funds to make it so) so won't be able to certify parts.

This has led to Rolls Royce shifting some jobs and work to Germany so it can still get it's jet Engines certified by EASA. For smaller firms, this may not be an option.

It's a mess, and this is just one small example, there are thousands of others.

rainingcatsanddog
What about the medicines that we procure from the EU?

Will need to go through customs clearance, new medicines would need to be approved by a UK regulator which will duplicate the work of the European regulator (who were based in London, now moving to Amsterdam). Rather than spreading the cost the UK will have to pay for the duplication.

Quick...log it with 101

As for rising prices I have just come back from France and was bloody appalled at their supermarket prices in comparison to ours. They were far more expensive. Of course I a man likening them to Asda I never he north and not Waitrose in London but still, we were much cheaper

Would that not be because the pound is way down against the euro since the referendum? Making our imports and anything we buy abroad more expensive?

When we leave the EU we lose all the trade agreements with non EU countries we are currently part of. Vegetables from Africa for example are part of EU trade deals. We will have to check every single import coming in and most likely charge tariffs. If we don't we will have to not check or charge tariffs on anything regardless of where it comes from. Who wants to give their baby unchecked formula? Who wants to give their child beef with added hormones?

So we either check everything, creating massive hold ups and food shortages or we let everything in. But then who will bother to sign a trade deal with us if we're just going to let everything in anyway? And who will want to buy exports from us if we have no quality controls?

And that's all without the Irish border problems....

greenland left the eu in 1985 and are doing fine.

And Greenland with a population of 50,000 only had one industry, fishing, only had 10 countries to Negotiate with not another 27. It is also part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which stayed in the EU. Even so, that took three years of solid negotiation.

Since you are so well informed MarthaArthur, you will be aware that it was the Westminster Goverment which encouraged our fishermen to sell their boats, plus quota, to other EU countries? Our EU Rep on the fisheries committee only managed to attend 1 meeting out of 42. How's that for representing our interests? In case you have forgotten the name, the Representative was called Nigel Farage.

As for rationing - it's one thing to ration food in a War. Quite another to ration food in times of peace. Was that on the side of the red bus?

What will rioting solve? People breaking store windows, stealing what are not theirs, ruining cars, etc? If we are in deep shit because of Brexit, I blame the people who voted for it in the first place.

The word 'rioting' is too strong for me, but I do wish as a population we would get together and voice our opinions. I work in the public sector (education) this country is a mess on many levels, not just Brexit.

I am so frustrated at the absolute demise of the education system and the inappropriateness of the curriculum. The academy system is an expensive mess which has no impact on improving outcomes for children yet the population is blindly watching it happen, even those in education.

Perhaps we are all to knackered and downtroddenin this country to campaign or demonstrate to air our views. . Years of not being listened to!

You must live perma stressed out lives if you are getting aggressive over stuff you dont even know whats going to happen. And this is exactly why many people voted for brexit. Sick of going through 27 other unstable countries to make any decision some of which were terrible anyway. Everything would need re-negotiating thats normal. But as pp said dont make out the uk will become a 3rd world country.

Actually I'm pleased to hear the govt is stockpiling because it is good that they are acknowledging that major disruption to essential services is a possible outcome. I hope this means that they will do their upmost to avoid major disruption and stop all this "brexit is brexit" rhetoric nonsense. Hopefully the public will see that Brexit will have negatives and adjust their expectations, and the govt will then be able to have realistic discussions with the EU. I am very pro Remain but if we are going to Brexit we obviously need to prioritise not having temporary chaos as the major short term goal.

As a family I haven't started stockpiling or anything (yet). Not sure if we should. At a national level I definitely think the UK should have emergency supplies, but for your average urban family I hope stockpiling isn't necessary. Personally we genuinely don't have anywhere to store it and living in London I think we would be in a better position than other parts of the country to stay well stocked. We don't require any regular medication, if I needed essential medication I would feel more twitchy.

At a personal level my main concern is that transport out of the country will be affected, or access to our money via banks would be limited, as a family we would be able and willing to move abroad at short notice and I would hate that to not be an option. That makes me feel nervous. We are discussing moving abroad in the next 2 years for unrelated reasons, and I keep wondering if we should bring our plans forward.

I try not to panic/ overreact and view it realisticaly, from reading the general press it feels like the public and government aren't having realistic discussions and plans for Brexit and I worry that this means that essential things like food and medicine supplies and aviation/ channel tunnel aren't being discussed. But I'm hoping that discussions and progress behind the scenes is better than what I see in the news.

OP, what have you personally done on a practical level to help vulnerable people in your local community prepare? Organised a storage area, started to stockpile for them, or are you only stockpiling for yourself?

So MarthaArthur which of the terrible EU laws don't you like? It should be an easy task to list them, because we supported about 95% of them, and promoted a good many ourselves.

Of course, if people had taken an interest, they might have voted for decent MEPs in the EU parliament.

The OP is quite right: food security experts like Professor Tim Lang have been raising this for ages:

www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/newsandevents/2017/publications/food-brexit

DH and I have been talking for a while about prepping food and also meds he relies on. You only need to look at Venezuela to see that things in a pretty developed country can go tits up very quickly.

If we are in deep shit because of Brexit, I blame the people who voted for it in the first place

Why are you angry at the people who were offered the vote and took the chance to do so? If you need be angry at anyone it's at the person who offered the vote in the first place. THEY set all this in motion, not the people who voted.