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!

@nocoolnamesleft - if you are on prescription meds, is it possible to ask for a repeat prescription a little earlier and build a small buffer in to your supplies.
One of the reasons I am encouraging everyone to try and put some food and simple first aid stuff to one side is that I want the emergency services to be able to focus on people with genuine need. Not people with avoidable dramas. Getting thumped in a fight over loo roll at Morrison's is an avoidable drama.

It’ll be petrol and diesel that I really wonder about, price hikes, shortages and the affect as if it gets trapped in ports this will be the outcome. I remember the last two short lived petrol shortages and that was showing how reliant people are

It's not about the EU 'punishing' us, or mass hysteria, it's plain old just-in-time economics, WTO regs and hard reality. Anyone not at least considering what will happen in the event of a no-deal Brexit should give their head a wobble.

Ian Dunt has set it all out for you here, and this is just food : www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/07/27/this-is-what-no-deal-brexit-actually-looks-like

Never mind medicines, blood and plasma supplies, cancer screening radioactive materials, and practically everything else.

Personally, I'm waiting to see if this period of ridiculous no-deal willy waving will end sometime soon. If they're still being this incredibly knobheaded in January, I'll be buying big sacks of grains and pulses and a gas camping stove.

I don't happen to think it will be no-deal, not least because the Tory fuckheads responsible would be lynched within days. But who knows? Anything could happen with this shower of shite in charge.

Again, petrol is less likely than food to be affected but it's not impossible. If there are people on here too young to remember the early 2000 fuel strikes as adults drivers, we managed. It was shit but we managed. I say that because my dad died before the strikes and my twice weekly visits to him on his deathbed were no longer necessary. Had they been still a feature in my life, it would have been a different story.
Don't store fuel. It isn't safe. Look at alternatives if you think it's necessary. Never let your car go below half a tank of fuel.

No. Just a lot of silly scaremongering.

Anyone else remember the Millennium Bug?

I've been putting together a 'stash' over the last few months.
Stuff that gets used anyway, so rice, pasta, lentils, oats, tins of soup/fruit/veg, some bottled water, toilet paper etc.

I'm covered for the next time we get snowed in, the water is off for whatever reason (happened a few times in the last couple of years), delays in supplies getting to the shops, job loss, or just plain feeling unwell and not wanting to go out... short term emergencies.

I'm not preparing for armageddon, nuclear war, EMP, zombies, or anything else people may have heard mentioned on any Doomsday Prepper type American TV program.

We had issues earlier this year with the snow. There were really only two/three days of the main roads being closed with no deliveries to the main shops. Still bread and milk became unavailable almost immediately, ALL (tin and fresh) fruit and veg followed soon after, and stayed largely unavailable for about a week. Ingredients for baking your own bread etc were also all gone and took time for supermarkets to restock.
This was in central belt Scotland, not some remote area.

It's not ridiculous, or hysterical overreacting to have a supply of food and other essentials available at home.

Can we play bingo with the Millennium bug references? That went ok because businesses planned and prepared.

I'm a prepper and I urge people not to get distracted either by that silly argument or silly zombie shit. No one is talking about fecking zombies.

Bellinsurge what is your reasoning for petrol not to be included?

@extinctspecies - don't want to get stuff in? Fine. Don't expect any help from people who have if you need it.
I bloody hope you are right that it's a big nothing but I am not taking any chances.

It's hilarious (to answer someone who asked me that) because the world will keep turning, we will not starve, if there's shortages of a few things here and there so what... but the way people are talking it's like the world's gonna end. That's why it's hilarious IMHO

If I can't get bread, I'll eat rice, if there's no rice, I'll eat pasta, I just cannot get worked up about things like this, I really can't.

Anyone else remember the Millennium Bug?

Remember it? I was one of the thousands of programmers who worked my socks off to prevent any issues. Brexit is not remotely comparable!!! I wish I could pre-program the numpties who got us into this mess (and those continuing to run headling into it) but sadly that's not an option.

Read the article by Ian Dunt that 2 people have already provided links to (one of them further up this page).

*re-program obviously

I remember in the early 2000s there was a petrol shortage. I worked in a supermarket and people were buying up milk, bread and sugar at a terrific rate in case we ran out - we had loads of stock but people didn't believe us and were panic buying. Of course if enough people had done that, it WOULD have caused us to run out. I think it's better to start getting a bit extra now while the supply chain is solid, and then as people say, if it's not needed after all, then it can be eaten anyway.

I am in no way a prepper, but I have been pretty poor in the past and I like to keep a bit extra on hand anyway if possible, just rice, pasta, tinned beans, tinned tomatoes etc, because it feels like a little cushion against food poverty should something unexpected happen.

@ivykaty44 - there may well be a knock on effect on petrol supply but I can do little or nothing about that.

I won't store it separately because it's not safe to do so. I keep our car at over half full at all times. I have paper maps and stout shoes for walking.

Anyone else remember the Millennium Bug?

I remember my older cousin working his fingers to the bone to stop it.
That’s the point. People worked for bloody years to stop the MB, whereas the government a considerable position of the public think we can just sail through this with a few meetings and a memory of the empire.

@Roussette - do you have pasta (or whatever) at home? Are you planning to get a bit extra in before March? If not, you are taking a big chance that you can always get it.
Do you have any dependants? Are you certain you can just pop to the shops whenever to get for them?

Anyone else remember the Millennium Bug?

Yes, I do.

I remember that it took ten years of careful analysis, planning and development, by thousands of serious and expert people who knew what they had to do, and a lot of very hard work.

Because they worked so diligently and professionally, to an immovable deadline, and because they were all working for companies who knew their continued existence depended on getting it right, and were willing to pay for it, the systems mostly were updated in time and life continued without many failures.

This success led a few dimwits to imagine there had never been a problem and it was all a fuss about nothing.

Now compare that to the Johnson/Rees-Mogg shambles. Have they prepared a plan? have they decided what to do, and got agreement that it will be done? Have they got enough time to sort it out? No, no, and no.

They haven't even got a White Paper as inadequate as Theresa's. All they can do is stand round the outside moaning and making silly speeches.

Try building a bridge like that.

I am making sure my dried and tinned food cupboards are nice and full. Only buying stuff we eat, plus the odd thing we don’t usually but could eg tinned veg and fruit. I am also buying stuff that doesn’t go off at all but will definitely increase in price eg olive oil, toiletries, cleaning supplies.
I don’t think it will be an apocalypse (hopefully!) but I think there will be shortages of some foods and would rather do the minimum supermarket shopping for a while after Brexit until things calm down.

Maybe it will solve the obesity crisis and save the NHS a fortune.

I'm firmly in the Remain camp and hoping for some sort of positive resolution to this absurd fiasco.

But I'm really not worried about running out of food/medicines/fuel. I just don't think even our government could be that spectacularly incompetent in this day and age.

But then again ... they did cause Brexit in the first place.

Hmmm.

I’m in no way suggesting stockpiling of fuel as this is incredibly dangerous.

The effects though would affect many people that have become reliant on private cars

But I'm really not worried about running out of food/medicines/fuel. I just don't think even our government could be that spectacularly incompetent in this day and age. ha ha ha ha ha!
Really?
Ha ha ha ha ha!

bellini if there is no pasta, I will get something else.... potatoes, rice, couscous whatever. If there are no carbs (not gonna happen), I'll make a vegetable stew. If there are no vegetables, I'll buy some tins. You get the picture. You cannot tell me there will be empty supermarkets!

I just think it's daft to think the whole of England is going to starve without stockpiling.

Just think U C and Brexit will hit people at approx the same time in many counties...

onalongsabbatical did you bother to read my next sentence? Or don't you understand irony?