Can we please stop all the bashing of “stockpilers”

[Notcontent]

Reading all the threads, it seems that anyone who has bought more than a week’s worth of food is being accused of being a selfish stockpiled responsible for all the food supply issues we have at the moment.

I think that’s slightly unfair. Yes, people who went out and bought 10 big packs of toilet paper in one go are probably responsible for the shortages. But many of us simply bought a few more things over a number of weeks.

I am one of those people. I have friends with families in Europe and I was closely following the progress of the situation since early January. Back in February, when lots of people I spoke to thought it was all an overblown drama, I started buying a few extra things every time I did a shop. Why? Because I don’t have any family nearby to help out and I usually rely on supermarket deliveries for most of my needs (no car). I would be really stuck now if I didn’t have some extra supplies as I am reliant on some small nearby shops.

@DilysMoon think I'll start being one after this. I will come out of this learning a lot of lessons if I make it out alive

@inthedarkx , if you have access to Twitter, take a look at Jack Monroe. She is doing something every day to help people make something out of random bits and bobs of food lurking in their cupboards.
Here's a link to her website. cookingonabootstrap.com/

And inthedarkx , I am really sorry if I have said anything in grumpiness that has upset you. It was on my mind a bit last night.

I do worry that I’ve upset you too, that wasn’t my intention. I’m actually angry that other people have left vulnerable people in this situation.

Have you checked out local restaurants on Facebook? Many have stock they want to get rid of and are making up boxes of food to deliver. We just ordered one for £10 for my MIL and it was huge. It was from a catering company in their town.
Worth also checking out the rotary club near you, any local churches, primary schools and searching “community aid”, “mutual aid” or “coronavirus/covid response” with the name of your village, town or county on Facebook as more resources are popping up every single day. We have set up a community mutual aid group locally which includes donations but also people running errands for those unable to safely get out.

Again if you live in the NW of England I am able to help you out if you are able to get to me.

Some people are really selfish though. I can honestly say that I have never bought more than what we actually need week to week. When loo roll finally appeared in the shop I bought one pack. I refuse to become part of the pack mentality of me, me, me.

A lot of selfish stockpilers have stockpiled food but are still nipping out to buy fresh food. Er no love that’s not how stockpiling works - you use the food you have already hoarded in your cupboards firsr

I’m buying fresh fruit and veg and bread. Just like I do normally.
That’s how social distancing works, with stockpiling. Should we have to go into isolation, then we’ll just live off stores.

I love your posts, btw, GrumpyHoonMain.
They are invariably sour, negative and indeed, grumpy. They replace my sherbert lemon habit nicely, with no calories. A bitter little zing.

No you don’t! You save it for if you have to self isolate. If you have a family or 3 or 4 and you all get CV in turn, you might be self isolated for 3 weeks or more. That’s when you use your stock.

Gently channelling my Welsh grandmother here. We have only a small freezer section in our fridge freezer, and limited cupboard space. We normally manage mainly on fresh food, with a lot of fresh fruit and veg, but have some granny-style cupboard stocks in. We need them because we have respiratory disease in the family and I don't want any of us competing for the ventilators. No one has been out in the past week, and we could not get a delivery slot till Thurs, but we are managng. I am deliberately eating a bit less myself and it is not doing me any harm,

More likely to get CV if you’re always nipping to the shops to deprive non-stockpilers of fresh food

Someone is sitting in the grumpy tree today.

Stockpilers need fresh stuff the same as everyone else

But Grumpy can live in hope that my weekly trip for veg will give me CV. Needs a little spark of joy in her life.

I dont give a shit what people say. I've bought extra as I need extra. It's not selfish, it's survival and every last bit is getting eaten with zero waste. Don't worry yourself about the bandwagon jumpers who are clearly living on thin air because they're just so selfless

I'm a prepper and bloody hell, am I glad I'm one! I started about 18-24 months ago on a well-publicised FB group that was introducing people to preparing for shortages as a result of Brexit. Back then, I started making lists of things I thought might get a lot more expensive in the shops or even not be there for a while when Brexit happened. I did a few larger-than-normal shops - the sort of shops you might do if you lived in an isolated rural area a good hour from your nearest supermarket. Very few people were prepping alongside me and of course supermarkets were stocked to the gunnels. So this was ok. I then started adding a few items to each regular supermarket shop I made, and gradually stocked up on dry goods that way. This was ok too, because it was slow and few at a time and supermarkets will adjust to gradual demand changes.

You need to keep rough records of what you have and remember to 'rotate' things like flour and boxes of cereal to make sure your emergency stocks are as fresh as possible (buy another bag of flour to swap around with the bag of flour you bought 6 months previously). This all seemed sane and sensible. DH scoffed at me a bit. I didn't give a monkey's.

Then of course we had all the shillyshalling around with Brexit and who knew what was happening? and I stopped really stocking up. I started nibbling away at my emergency stores if I thought 'bugger it, I've run out of tomatoes but there are 15 tins in my Brexit stores'.

Luckily, the nibbling away stopped before the attrition got too bad! Being a born-again Prepper sharpened my twitchy instincts and I started wondering about the possibility of a pandemic halfway through January, as I'm sure a lot of us did. I started again gradually building up supplies of tins and pasta in January and the first week or so of Feb. By the time people were routinely sweeping supermarket shelves bare into multiple trollies, I had stopped buying supplies and was happy with my stockpile, and wasn't in there. This is one of the main reasons we prep - we don't WANT to add to food shortages caused by panic-buying. We don't WANT to be in the supermarkets when the shit hits the fan.

I haven't bought toilet roll since, what, first week in february? I already had a 9 pack in the Brexit box (one of the things I'd nibbled away at, sadly) and bought, from mid-Jan to early-Feb, two more 9 packs. Of these, I've given several rolls to my mum. And I'm now using the naffly-termed 'family cloth' to make what we have go further. I haven't bought a tin of tomatoes since early Feb. Or pasta. My Amazon orders info shows me that I bought a large canister of hand sanitiser towards the end of January, and then a week later, some aloe vera gel and isopropyl alcohol. They were by then trending in popular purchases on Amazon and the prices had hiked up, but you could still buy it in some of the high street shops too.

I hope this long and self-indulgent post shows what preppers actually do. We don't sit in bunkers with one hand on our rifle and the other on a bible. We don't all believe that there are global conspiracies afoot. Most of us aren't even that freaked out about natural disasters, freak weather or this sort of eventuality, partly because we know we're part-way prepared for it. We are not panic-buyers and we didn't contribute to the current food shortages.

I'm now using the naffly-termed 'family cloth' to make what we have go further

Sod that. Hats off to you preppers, I am not so low on the old roll as I'd manage that

There are many ordinary people who prepped as they saw this coming a couple of months ago - how did the relevant people working in supermarket supply chains not have an inkling that this was going to happen?

I imagine there has been too much "I must not think bad thoughts ". First over No Deal Brexit. Then over this.

how did the relevant people working in supermarket supply chains not have an inkling that this was going to happen?

I think they did, they just couldn't stop it anyway...

www.wired.co.uk/article/stockpiling-supermarkets-coronavirus

Please explain where in our just in time food distribution system, there is space for supermarkets to carry masses of stock and take the financial hit for doing so?

Today 14:41 GlomOfNit

I'm a prepper and bloody hell, am I glad I'm one! I started about 18-24 months ago on a well-publicised FB group that was introducing people to preparing for shortages as a result of Brexit. Back then, I started making lists of things I thought might get a lot more expensive in the shops or even not be there for a while when Brexit happened. I did a few larger-than-normal shops - the sort of shops you might do if you lived in an isolated rural area a good hour from your nearest supermarket. Very few people were prepping alongside me and of course supermarkets were stocked to the gunnels. So this was ok. I then started adding a few items to each regular supermarket shop I made, and gradually stocked up on dry goods that way. This was ok too, because it was slow and few at a time and supermarkets will adjust to gradual demand changes.

You need to keep rough records of what you have and remember to 'rotate' things like flour and boxes of cereal to make sure your emergency stocks are as fresh as possible (buy another bag of flour to swap around with the bag of flour you bought 6 months previously). This all seemed sane and sensible. DH scoffed at me a bit. I didn't give a monkey's. grin

Then of course we had all the shillyshalling around with Brexit and who knew what was happening? and I stopped really stocking up. I started nibbling away at my emergency stores if I thought 'bugger it, I've run out of tomatoes but there are 15 tins in my Brexit stores'.

Luckily, the nibbling away stopped before the attrition got too bad! Being a born-again Prepper sharpened my twitchy instincts and I started wondering about the possibility of a pandemic halfway through January, as I'm sure a lot of us did. I started again gradually building up supplies of tins and pasta in January and the first week or so of Feb. By the time people were routinely sweeping supermarket shelves bare into multiple trollies, I had stopped buying supplies and was happy with my stockpile, and wasn't in there. This is one of the main reasons we prep - we don't WANT to add to food shortages caused by panic-buying. We don't WANT to be in the supermarkets when the shit hits the fan.

I haven't bought toilet roll since, what, first week in february? I already had a 9 pack in the Brexit box (one of the things I'd nibbled away at, sadly) and bought, from mid-Jan to early-Feb, two more 9 packs. Of these, I've given several rolls to my mum. And I'm now using the naffly-termed 'family cloth' to make what we have go further. grin I haven't bought a tin of tomatoes since early Feb. Or pasta. My Amazon orders info shows me that I bought a large canister of hand sanitiser towards the end of January, and then a week later, some aloe vera gel and isopropyl alcohol. They were by then trending in popular purchases on Amazon and the prices had hiked up, but you could still buy it in some of the high street shops too.

I hope this long and self-indulgent post shows what preppers actually do. We don't sit in bunkers with one hand on our rifle and the other on a bible. We don't all believe that there are global conspiracies afoot. Most of us aren't even that freaked out about natural disasters, freak weather or this sort of eventuality, partly because we know we're part-way prepared for it. We are not panic-buyers and we didn't contribute to the current food shortages.
X
High five. Maybe I didn’t go as hard as you, but I was preparing when stores were fully stocked. I also bough 2 months supply for my 2 cats. That’s why I have some baked beans, loo roll etc. I was just buying one at a time. Tin here, tin there. But I find it a problem stocking up on fresh fruit and veg. DP went to coop today and said there are some leftovers. I am hoping we can get potatoes or hummus!

The government should have talked to the supermarkets as soon as the empty shelves in other countries came to light. It was inevitable that people would panic.
The government could have stored extra food on behalf of supermarkets or withheld /ordered extra for the vulnerable to distribute themselves.
People used to laugh at Brexit Preppers but they aren't the ones looking for loo roll.

The government should have talked to the supermarkets as soon as the empty shelves in other countries came to light. It was inevitable that people would panic.
The government could have stored extra food on behalf of supermarkets or withheld /ordered extra for the vulnerable to distribute themselves.

Maybe, but this is not the government people voted for. They/we voted for a Conservative government and - all political affiliations aside - that is a Small State government. A government whose ethos is to stand back and not restrict business with too many laws, limitations or interference. That's what this country voted for when they/we voted as they/we did.

Very true about Tories not being the interfering types.

I wonder if we'll ever know why it took the supermarkets so long to implement item limits? And whether the items that went out of stock in other countries followed the same pattern as it did here?

I just hope that there is planning going on for the food supply when No Deal Brexit kicks in