Why do people panic buy bread when it snows

[Plun]

There is more food than bread. Yet bready things like English muffins and crumpets don’t get a look in.

Plus tins of soup. Don’t people have store cupboards anymore? I have enough food in for about a month. Though run out of FnV but at the end of the period, it will be any food for any meal

Last night I watched a tv documentary on BBC4 from the 1960s about the Big Freeze of 62/63. Anyone who is mid 60s or older will remember this. Devon, Dorset and Cornwall were the worst affected. 14ft snow drifts, villages completely cut off.

People now can’t cope with a single snowflake ❄️

I remember well the freeze. Where I used to live, you entered & left the town with hills, the traffic was idle on both of them, lorries & cars were just left stranded for ages & people just made the way into the centre of town. You just bought what was going & got on with life, certainly didn’t starve. People just seem to panic at the slightest thing thing nowadays, but you survive

Not everyone. I’ve chosen to wfh today. Which I hate but I hate snow more.

How do you know when someone is panic buying? There are 9 people in my house and we shop twice weekly as a minimum. My trolly would have 3 loaves of bread and 12 pints of milk plus lots more.

The whole "bread and milk" thing always makes me laugh.
Two products that go off fairly quickly.
Bread doesn't even go stale these days - it goes mouldy 🤢
Surely it makes sense to get longer life things like crackers and bottled drinks.
If I was to write an emergency food list perishable foods would be waaaay down the bottom. I'd maybe get some of the long life milk cartons or powered milk.
I always find it bizarre. You can survive easily without eating bread for a few days. Why are people so obsessed with stocking up on it?

If a school is a teacher down, that class can't just be left unsupervised though! They can't just be in the library or 'do craft stuff' on their own. Schools don't have random adults floating around who can step in. We have 30 children to one teacher, some 1:1s for extremely high need pupils with EHCPs, and that's about it.

You do realise that teachers themselves have no say in these decisions? Management and department of education (in Ireland) are the ones that decide.

Welcome to the real world teachers! Everyone else has to drive to work in it.

Rubbish. When the weather is like this, there are endless threads discussing whether people should be allowed to WFH.

There are lots of things we could do as children of the 70s/80s that wouldn’t be considered acceptable now.

We live in a more litigious, health and safety conscious society now and less risk will be taken because of it.

Many people don’t have the money or space to have a plentiful supply of food, those that do should recognise their privilege.

That's brought back some memories! We lived on a farm and I had a 4 mile walk to school. I was 6 so my mother usually walked most of the way with me but came onto the grounds with me that day. She decided that I should wear my trousers under my skirt and take them off when I got to school and she would take them and my wellies home with her. As we weren't allowed into the building until the teacher was there (she drove in and was always late), this happened out in the snow. My teacher witnessed Mum helping me change, saw trousers were involved and tore a strip off her. Mum gave back as good as she got and I started the day cold, with wet socks, and very very upset. The caretaker witnessed all this and grabbed my mother on her way out and said that the next day I could change in the boiler room and leave my stuff there. So the next day, we did that. Said teacher saw me coming out and that day the caretaker got a bollocking! What happened for the rest of that winter, I can't remember, though have a vague feeling that Mum went to the headmaster and sorted it out.

Because we are a nation of ❄️😆zero resilience!

Insurance is another huge issue for schools so one teacher supervising more than their usual class size is no longer an option. Not because they can’t or don’t want to do it but because the school would be open to litigation should anything happen to a child in these circumstances. Same situation for icy school grounds.

I remember 1963. My school remained shut after Xmas because it only had outside toilets which were frozen up The snow banked on the sides of the road was taller than me - this was Cardiff

How has a thread about panic buying bread turned into an attack on teachers?!

Disclaimer - I am not a teacher.

I don't. I usually go to the office on Monday but I am not driving in the snow. Decided to WFH.

Oh and if my employer expected me to sleep on a camp bed in the office so as not to miss work the following day I would be looking for a new job.

People certainly don’t seem to know how to cope with a bit of bad weather anymore, we’ve hardly had huge falls of snow but we have weather warnings about travel and how cold it is. As for schools, I’m not sure they shut purely because teachers don’t live on the-doorstep, it’s as much about access and the ability to keep the schools premises as clear as possible because, as others have said, heaven help the school if someone’s child slips on the ice and actually hurts themselves,

Icy school ground, we used to make it worse by sliding on it Happy days

I think that consumption shifts. My Tesco order has been cancelled which is in the nearest city. I have food but stocked up on milk/ bread as we get through loads locally.

Our school only closed when the coal lorry couldnt get in,and we had no heating.

You can freeze bread and milk and they are still staple foods for many.

In the NE of Scotland there has been a huge amount of snow.

As has already been stated, most teachers do not live within walking distances of schools anymore. Our school in rural Aberdeenshire is shut today, alongside the main A road which gets here, so what's the solution to that exactly?

When I started teaching in the 1980s if our route to school was blocked by snow, we were expected to report to our local school for the day - primary, secondary, whatever. I'll always remember our burly rugby playing head of geography, seriously traumatized by a day in charge of a reception class!
Of course, we worked for the local authority then, not just for one local school.

The "alerts" are fine are just warnings and information you can do with it what you want.

You can blame stamp duty for the school teacher thing by the way. It was very very normal to move for a job before the 90s even if only ten or twenty miles. Now you’d be bankrupted by doing this. Knock on consequence is more people with longer commute, busier roads, more road deaths, more pollution. Thanks Labour.

Can you imagine what would have now if heads decided to open schools regardless?

What would happen if there were literally not enough teachers to staff the place and accidents happened? The laws and regulations for schools are completely different now to how they were in the 60s or even the 80s.

Angry parents would be all over Mumsnet/facebook complaining and people would be telling them to sue the school for not protecting their child. Phrases like 'in loco parentis' would be bandied about. If schools are opening, they must be confident that they have enough staff to keep the children safe and that they can make the grounds safe.