To ask if anyone is considering stockpiling

[Ninoo25]

Just that really, given that the government asking industry to stockpile food and medicines has been all over the news in the past week, I was wondering how many people are planning on stockpiling themselves and if so what are you going to stockpile and how much?
TBH my main concern is long term medication that I’m on, but as it’s only available on prescription and Dr wouldn’t let me order more than I need, so there’s nothing I can do about that anyway!

Prepping for Tory wankboys (and girls). If your name is Liam, Boris, David, Theresa, Nigel, Andrea, Dominic or tosspot:

Expatriate most of your money overseas. St. Kitts and Nevis is good. Swiss Francs, USD and Euros are good.

Buy a home in the Caribbean, or Geneva, or Tuscany.

Invest in good physical security and body armour. Book up armoured limousines and body guards for early 2019

Book flights to chosen destination.

If in cabinet, arrange overseas meeting for last week in march

This is a very strange problem.

As our government keeps threatening to go for a "no deal" option, it has had to start making preparations for the diaster that it threatens to cause.

But the very people who support "no deal" are complaining that any talk of the preparations are "project fear" because they make the public aware of the scale of the disaster that they want.

So somehow the government has to threaten disaster, and prepare for it, but not let anyone know. Or the rabid Quitters will explode with rage.

Would that be a bad thing?

@PigletJohn - kind of like Santa Claus. Do lots if behind the scenes stuff but don't tell the children.
The Anti Santa (for Father Ted fans).

Part of the problem is that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those of us prepping now will do no harm, but the panic buyers will. See previous fuel shortages and winter weather shortages, for example.

You do realise there will be a deal don’t you? A no deal would be bad for all sides so it won’t happen.

We will pay more to the EU for the benefits we previously had and gradually and stealthily all the previous trade deals will be reinstated at our cost.

By this time next year no one will notice the difference. Oh and immigration will remain the same as the NHS and tourism industry hires more non EU nationals.

It’s in no politicians interests to allow our economy to tank as they are all do intertwined and Germans and Swiss are furious about the immigration policy of their countries so their leaders want calm.

My one ray of sunshine is Boris is finished. So is Gove and Davis.

You really don’t need to stockpile in my opinion. It will all be a damp squid.

Exactly @Motortrader . This idea that prepping =panic is silly. Plan carefully and proportionately now so it is one less thing to stress about SHOULD you need it. Like home insurance.

Thanks for the optimism @Seasawride . Forgive me if I get stuff in just in case.

You really don’t need to stockpile in my opinion. It will all be a damp squid.

Very likely you are right. But then I've never needed to claim on my home, motor or life insurance. A bit of prepping of is a damn sight cheaper than the amount I've spent on insurance over the years.

Seaside, I have been looking for evidence of any likely agreement for a while now. Instead I am seeing the clock running down while the government squabbles with itself and finally realises that's it's running out of time to have an agreement on the terms of leaving, let alone about the future.

I used to think "they" would get it together, but the last few months have sure put paid to that.

You do realise there will be a deal don’t you? A no deal would be bad for all sides so it won’t happen.

I'm just not that sure. I don't trust this current government one bit. Brexit itself is an act of national self-harm, so what's one deal less to them? They won't want interim or transition periods or anything because that endangers their offshore tax fiddlings. Plus, we don't have the actual civil service negotiation manpower and expertise to put in place 300+ international trade deals in 9 months. These things normally take a decade.

On the other hand, as I said above, a few weeks or more of abject food scarcity and the riots and lynchings will begin. The Tory party will have done irreperable damage to its own reputation and likely not govern again for another few decades, if ever.

I'm 50/50 on this as it stands today. So I will be putting food aside just in case. It's an insurance policy and not a panic.

Definitely not stockpiling.

Damp squid? Aren't all squids damp?

(is squids even the plural of squid?)

I think a dry squid is a dead squid.

Squib.

As in a firework that won’t go off.

A dampness of squids

I "stockpile" but it's nothing to do with Brexit - I've been doing it for decades. I don't have my own bunker full with months' worth of supplies, but my kitchen cabinets are certainly "full" with cans, packets, etc that have long shelf lives and quite a few bottles of water and cans of drink in the garage, that could keep us fed and watered for a few weeks if disaster struck. None of that was specifically bought for armageddon - it's all stuff we routinely consume, but I just buy more of it than we'll need and I top it up according to what we've used rather than what we need for the following week. I.e. we use maybe 1 or 2 tins of baked beans per week, but I have about 6-8 cans in the cupboard. I have a few packets of cereal besides the ones that are already open. I have maybe 10-20 bottles of water in the garage. This is just habit and originally happened because I didn't want to be tied down to doing regular shops on particular days - I wanted the freedom to shop when I wanted and have days out when I wanted, so it seemed sensible to have plenty of food in the cupboards. Obviously, I have to shop regularly for fresh foods/drinks for ideal world meals, but in case of emergency, we'd cope perfectly fine as we found out in Storm Desmond when our town had no power for nearly a week meaning shops etc were closed - we barely noticed, just lived on our reserves, whereas our friends and neighbours were panicking and driving around town trying to find a shop that was open (then finding they'd already sold out of most things and their fresh/frozen stuff had been thrown out due to their fridges/freezers having no power!).

Bellinisurge

Knock yourself out

Or a squib as a non magic person?

I prefer that one myself

Seasawride

You say there will be a deal.

That's true, provided that our politicians are not a bunch of incompetents led by vanity and party loyalty.

Oh dear....

Squib :)

I don’t think anyone has a choice but to make a deal. May not be a good deal for us in fact it won’t but it will cobble together.

It’s not just our politicians piglet though it’s not in any other Europeans countries interest for us to crash out either as our trade links and economies are so entwined.

Not sure that they need us as much as we need them.

I haven't heard Barnier say "No deal is better than a bad deal" as if "no deal" was a good thing; rather than the worst of all possible options

Have you?

Our current government seems determined to insist on things (being an agent for the EU and collecting their customs due on transhipping goods; having an Irish Border based on fantasy) that are unacceptable to the EU.

Seasawride, you've just exposed the problem. The way that Article 50 is structured is that we go out two years after triggering it. That's is the default action. We do not go out when we get an agreement, we go out when Article 50 runs out.

The government needs to reach an agreement on withdrawal with the EU by October, and then the agreement needs to be ratified by the 27 member countries which will take a good few months. They may not rubber stamp the agreement, which is why Barnier has to get their agreement FIRST before negotiating with the UK. Going around Barnier doesn't speed things up, because it just makes it more likely that the ratification phase will slow down and we'll miss the Article 50 deadline.)

Part of the draft agreement we reached last December was that the UK would agree the NI backstop so the withdrawal agreement could continue being discussed, and part of that would allow a transitional period for us to negotiate the future relationship after Article 50 ran out. But the government has just renegged on the backstop, so now there is also no transition agreement. We are back to square one, and Article 50 is running down while parliament is off on sodding holibobs.

That is why I am now concerned. I used to think there was no way there wouldn't be some sort of a deal, but this government has worked pretty hard to make sure there won't be. And we get to deal with the outcome!

Hi there everyone,

We're going to move this across to the Brexit topic shortly.