can't afford to prep for brexit

[paintinmyhairAgain]

wrong board but the preppers will probably flame me, as you will might for mentioning it on here .
i was wondering if things goes toes up and there are food shortages, what happens with people who can't afford to -hoard- store up goods i.e the elderly and people on very tight budgets already living hand to mouth relying on food banks ?
any thoughts ?

In the past when there were rumours of a shortage of sugar there was immediate panic buying and the shelves were emptied almost overnight.
The same will certainly happen with other goods if supplies are held up at ports.

FitzChivalryFarseer - thanks, that's a decent starter list but easily more than £20 as user187656748 points out.

A couple of suggestions to anyone doing this:

10x 2kg bags of rice may be a bit more expensive than 1x 20kg sack, but it's easier to store and more practical. The same applies to flour, sugar, etc.

Remember any special diet requirements, both because they may be more expensive to purchase now and may be harder to source later. My own list is substantially more expensive as our household requires gluten-free pasta and flour, so almost 10x more expensive for those items, and they're pretty much all imported.

Don't forget your pets. You can eat them if things get full on zombie invasion bad. They need feeding too.

And if anyone has tips on how to get your GP to prescribe a three month buffer of any essential medications, please share.

It is a worry. It might be useful to have some spare tins and the Like in the cupboards and maybe store some vitamin tablets too

Also I would recommend things like loo roll. Apparently lol roll is very !such JIT and not much is warehouses at all. I would not want to go without loo roll.

*very much JIT

Oddly enough I've just listened to an article on the radio about the UN's report on Poverty in the Uk. Some people
Don't recognise this as being an issue as they just don't see it.
Yes some people are well off and yes we are a rock westernised nation. But there are a lot of people right now who can't afford to love day to day let alone prep.
Sorry just the responders who have said 'we are a developed rich country and this is the 21st century' etc etc don't seem to have a very holistic view.
Should you prep or not? Up to you. If you can afford it 🤷🏽‍♀️

If all of those who CAN afford to Prep do so in a sensible manner
then those who CANNOT will have better access to essentials in the first few days of April.
By stockpiling we are in fact taking pressure off the pinch point in the system.
And if there is no hard Brexit then we have spent money a few months earlier than we would have done anyway.

@Dotty

The thread is not about the homeless, you could start a different thread on that if you like as it is a totally different topic. This thread is about whether, late March next year, we will soon find our food supply to the country as a whole, has dried up.

You think the UK is not a rich country? Embarrassed for you.

And if anyone has tips on how to get your GP to prescribe a three month buffer of any essential medications, please share.

Not three months, sorry. But when I went on holiday it was at a time when I would have collected a repeat prescription for inhalers so I asked if I could have it in advance. But a quirk of computers meant that, while I got my inhalers in advance of my holiday, my regular prescription schedule hadn't altered so they were also waiting at the pharmacy for me when I got home. So, I have a months worth ahead of me now.

Not that I'm recommending this - cough.

user187656748 and doginatent

That's a decent starter list but there's no way you can get all that for £20

I didn't try and price it up, just looked for the list but I have always found that Jack underestimates the cost of things. Where she reckons 50p, it always seem closer to £1.50 for me. I only posted it because people were asking and I thought it might be a useful starting point.

yes dont forget the pets

apart from fresh /perishable what other food may be in short supply??

ive started stocking Marmite/Netella.Coffee /Tuna etc

start with the basic staples and then add to them. Its likely to be the case that as soon as people see empty shelves they will buy more of everything.

My aim is not to need to go near the shops at all for a few weeks.

What do you really love in your house? If, for example you are dairy fans, get some Nido (full fat powdered milk) or some nut milks that don't need refrigeration.
Any particular cereal you like? Does the house eat porridge either alone or with jam - I only say porridge because it takes up less space.

Lord she's a twat. "This is all my own work". It's a camping trip shopping list you giant bellend - not the cure for cancer.

It is only the people who are well off who think we should get a grip. Easy to preach to the struggling.

User187’s prep list from this morning-

I think everyone should be assuming that we will have problems. If nothing else, buy

10 x 500g bags of value pasta - £2.90 total
10 x pasta sauce - £3.90 total
10 x tins beans - £2.30 total
5 x 1kg bags rice - £2.25 total
10 x curry sauce - £2.80
1 x vitamins 120 pack - £2

Total £16.15

I've done that using asda prices - lower prices may be available elsewhere.
................................

While I think this list is a good basic start, I’m going to stick my oar in and point out the biggest problem with this list (as I have on other threads), is lack of calories (and protein). And maybe salt.

I’ve thought about this a lot. While you do want to focus on long shelf life stuff that you would eat anyway, if things really go tits up you want NUTRIENT DENSE foods that will stretch your emergency supplies to last longer (not just thinking Brexit here but say, exceptional weather events etc).

ie, if a portion of rice has, say 200 calories in it, you could double that by frying in oil - typically you wouldn’t want to do that but hard times, it makes sense. Shelf stable oil/ghee/coconut oil to add calories to your cooking will make your supplies last longer.
Tuna (in oil) and corned beef (5 year shelf life but in reality it will last even longer!), for nutrient dense protein too.
Big bags of nuts, and chocolate bars - a great mix of protein to fat to carbohydrate and cheap to buy in lidle/Aldi...

Whats things you’d normally eat, so for us it’s:
Tins (beans, toms, potatoes, tuna, corned beef)
Flour, dried yeast, salt (bread making)
Pasta, jarred sauce
UHT Milk
Freezer: lots of frozen veg
General: loo roll, matches, candles, batteries

This is stuff we get in bulk and run down anyway.

I should point out that isn't my prep list (I have a very long list), it was simply showing that you can spend circa £15 and have the basics on hand.

Of course you can buy better food but this was more to address the concerns of those who have no money to spare.

thanks, plenty to source

The truth of the matter is no one is certain what impact Brexit will have in it's entirety.

Food supplies could be unaffected, but some jobs and businesses could be negatively impacted. Household incomes would then reduce. Food or fuel prices could go up, so even if your income stays the same you may be able to buy less for your money.

You might get sick (totally unrelated to Brexit, I know) and your household income could plummet.

I'm not in any way saying that all of this will happen , but it might happen. I don't see any harm in having some supplies set aside to help deal with these sorts of eventualities.

My husband thinks im mad havin extras in the house just incase ( we live in the middle of nowhere )

So i told him that if it happens he can’t eat it.

As I said I have stuff as we do live in a little village in the middle of nowhere. But I will stock up more if the deal doesn’t happen. And I will not wait till the week before we leave to do it either

Xenia - if you don't eat dairy do you use substitutes and if so where do THEY come from?

Plus I can see gardens and allotments being among the first places unprepared people head for to steal food from as less secure than farms and shops!

Plus if we get another bad winter I can't imagine crops will be doing too well - remember the likely timing and what weather was like that time and in lead up this year.

Surferjet - jpurnalists (msm presumably?) vs industry insiders inc one poster on here who's husband works for defra, friends of mine who work in retail supply & border control hmm know who I'm listening to and it ain't the journalists!

Also if you think jpurnalists are "very clever people" I think you need to change what your idea of "very clever people" is!

Wow! And you're listening to someone from the telegraph? Which is an unashamedly pro-tory pro-brexit publication owned by billionaire tax exiles?! Yea they really know what life is like for the poor, hell even just for ordinary lower middle class folk! If the shit hits the fan in uk they're perfectly fine & dandy in their Monaco mansion!

Ahhhh dia chakravarty - a former tax consultant & barrister who went to Oxford who's never worked in any area related to supply chains etc - yea eminently qualified - not!

"It wouldn't be though if people suddenly can't get the other things they buy in addition to carrots. All of a sudden carrot demand is going to increase..." Exactly!

"Oh, & I wonder how any other country outside of the EU survives? We must make a documentary about this mysterious phenomenon." Are any of them former eu countries who were heavily reliant on eu supplies, with a govt who a mere 4 months before leaving haven't the first fucking clue how it's going to work?! I think not.

Thanks for the Jack Monroe list. Most of that is stuff I have in anyway. I need to organise some crates for storage in bedroom as kitchen tiny and full just with normal stock levels.

Alfie190 why? Do the homeless not need to eat too?! As has been said repeatedly if those who are able to do stock up and organise themselves then those unable to can be better prioritised for emergency provisions. Bloody selfish if you can but won't imo!

The U.K. Being an overall wealthy country hasn't protected those at the sharp end who've been left suffering unnecessarily as a result of austerity policies (and if we're so rich why were they even brought in?!)

People are going to die as a result of this fuck up! At the very least we should be aiming to keep that death rate to a minimum by not acting selfishly.

And even IF it turns out not to have been necessary or the length of time there's problems isn't that long, then you've simply reduced your shopping bill for a while until you use up your stocks. No harm in that.

"It is only the people who are well off who think we should get a grip. Easy to preach to the struggling" yes I've noticed that and not just on this thread.

People are going to die as "a result of this fuck up?!" Wow, that's a strong claim presented as fact with no sources when you have absolutely no idea if that's true or not.
Talk about trying to whip everyone into a hyperbole mass panic.

Haven't had chance to read all the thread, but on this one are people hoarding food and burying it in the woods?
As another thread on AIBU about this subject did. Nowt wrong with a few extra tins of spam and beans etc, but that seemed a bit excessive.

I am a remainer, before anyone asks and I am older than many on this thread (60) and would remind you all that, before we were in the EU we managed OK. It did not take 'days' or 'weeks' to get through border points. We had tariffs etc, just as we do with some countries now. Granted there could be quite a lot of paperwork which had to be carried
(any one remember filling in 'carnets' in 100 x triplicate ?). We had enough food, medicine, white goods, etc etc.
Stop creating scenarios that don't/didn't exist.