I am listening once again to all the forebodings about our future in the face of a no deal Brexit. No deal now seems the most likely outcome and this means some sort of planning for continuing to live safely and comfortably in the future.
This has taken me back to other times when faced with shortages of food and drink. I can’t now remember what worried me back in the past when my children were growing and needed their food more than adults....but I do remember some basic stockpiling.
I made sure we had enough powdered milk, flour and sugar to last for weeks if needed. I kept these safely stowed away and then forgot all about them so that after we’d moved house about a year later I remembered that my husband had stored the basics in the roof space...and there they had stayed. For all I know they may be still there!
That was my only attempt at trying to ensure that I could feed my family.
Now in the face of possible shortages there is only me...with a tiny appetite. No need for any stockpiling. If the worst came to the worst I could eat out once a day...if the hotels stayed open....
These gloomy thoughts arrive at times to surprise me...are we really getting ready for a no deal position? The thoughts of what may happen in emergencies such as leaving Europe are not reassuring anyone right now but still we seem bent on becoming the Great Britain we thought ourselves to be in glory days of old.
Have we as a country taken leave of our senses? It does sometimes feel like that...especially now we have an impulsive Prime Minister.
I fear that Boris will see it as an enhancement of his reputation to get us out of Europe. But the lies he has spoken in the past give me no feeling of security.
So be it...I can live with insecurity now I have no one else to look after. If it’s only me and no husband, children or animals to feed then it’s easy...no need to stockpile. I might keep a couple of bottles of scotch somewhere safe though.. ahem!
2 comments:
It has always seemed to me that we do not need a 'deal': what a terrible word. Surely 'agreement' would be better; 'terms of departure', perhaps. This is not load of Green Shield Stamps we are going to get or may be give way. It is not 'buy one get one free'. Who has made up this word; the TV folk after that deadful box-opening programme? 'Understanding' would be better. I suppose, like a marriage that ends in divorce, there has to be a working out of who gets what, but the EU appears to be imposing a huge bill upon us leaving - why? That is why we want to leave - they are crooks IMHO!!
As for shortages: if these come about it will be because of panic buying. We will not be at war. I do think that this harmful talk of gloom is undermining the government. We ought to be supporting Boris who has taken on the role of PM at a difficult time. Give the fellow a chance and we must stop talking down the UK. If the previous PM had bothered to work out a strategy for leaving the EU without an agreement we would not be in this position. I blame Edward Heath.
Not sure about shortages of food. But worrying that shortages of vital medicines could impact on the NHS. Already some medicines are in short supply and presumably importing vital medicines will attract tariffs which will imply additional costs for them for the NHS and for prescription charges etc.
I believe that we have wasted three years of negotiating, basically we'd been so comfortable for 40 years of argument about the EU, while taking what we could get from them. Now the crunch is on, they say No as there is nothing to negotiate, Mrs May has signed a deal, which stands. They say that the Political Declaration (about future relationships with the EU) is negotiable, but cannot affect the backstop.
Mr Johnson finds himself in the same bind as Mrs May, an immovable object meeting an intractable solution. There is no where to go, but to leave without a deal, with all the consequences that might entail, which frankly, nobody can give a straight answer too.
We have the Commonwealth to fall back on for food supplies, with a no tariff option for imports, so I don't see a long term issue. But other trade will involve tariffs, unless the government makes the UK a Freeport environment with no tariff in the hope of reciprocal arrangements under WTO rules, but that is a thin hope. Our biggest, closest trading partner is the EU, who will impose tariffs immediately we leave with no deal.
On the other hand, leaving with no deal, also means no obligation to pay the 39 billion £ divorce bill - which will hurt the EU more than us. If we are worried about paying the pensions of long term EU employee's etc, that can be sorted by accepting responsibility for those who are from the UK, but at normal British economic levels, not the inflated EU levels. Some will be poorer as a consequence, particularly those former politicians who held senior posts in the EU in early years. Oh Dear, Never Mind!
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