Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

BessieBooBoo wrote: »

Maybe I should join the scouts: be prepared!

You can play with my Woggle if you like.

Hillbilly2

Hi all,

Happily lurking for awhile! Always good to read your stories.

I signed up for the University of Pittsburgh survival awareness course? I'm a few weeks behind but just got caught up.

really nice sensible advice so far!

[Deleted User]

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

If you want a safer way of lighting homes than naked candles, Ikea do a tealight lantern, fully enclosed with glass panels for under £5.

£world do these.

jk0

jk0 wrote: »

Thanks Pineapple.

I have been musing on a theme I mentioned a few days ago regarding the 'Bank of Mattress'. I wondered if more money was being withdrawn than was being spent.

Presumably the Bank of England must be very well aware that this is happening because they will have to print lots more notes. Do you know if a tally is kept anywhere online of the no. of notes printed? Also, is there a limit? Will I go to the cashpoint one day, and it tell me that no notes are available?

Found it! It's here, (assuming they're telling the truth):

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/fromshowcolumns.asp?Travel=NIxSCxSUx&FromSeries=1&ToSeries=50&DAT=RNG&FD=1&FM=Jan&FY=1963&TD=26&TM=Sep&TY=2013&VFD=Y&CSVF=TT&C=28G&Filter=N&html.x=18&html.y=17

The amount in circulation is about £2bn up on this week in 2013 against the same week in 2012.

GreyQueen

You're a very bad man, Bedsit Bob.:p

Jesting aside, and I do like a bit of jesting, I'm getting my remaining (i.e. non-bill money) out of the bank as soon as my DDs have gone off, just leaving a small "float".

Yes, holding your money yourself leaves you open to the risk of robbery (or loss in natural disaster assuming that we're talking quantities you couldn't easily transport) but the two principal benefits to holding money in a bank rather than your knicker drawer* are.

1. Belief in the security and probity of the banking system.

2. Interest.

The first of these is beginning to look postively delusional to some of us in the Tin Hat Section of the millinery department. When a substantial proportion of the rest of the store come into our corner, the jig will really be up.

2. Interest. For the very youngest readers, I should offer a brief tutorial.

Once upon a time, reasonable people kept money in something called savings accounts. This was wealth stored against future need. The bank rented it out to other people, for interest. They gave the savers a smaller amount of interest in return for the use of their money. This often kept up with the rate of inflation so that your money retained some of it's spending power.

Of course, they made a lot more interest than they gave you, which was annoying, but less annoying than having to take up loan sharking on your own account, will all the attendant unpleasantnesses.

Now, with interest on savings below the rate of inflation in goods and services, holding money in the banks is a mug's game.

Read the Nationwide glitch with a certain ruefulness. I've been a bit of a promiscious bank account holder over the past 30 years but no longer have anything with them. But note the comment that money had "disappeared from people's bank accounts" when they went to check their balances.

It hasn't really disappeared because it isn't really there. There is no shoebox under the Nationwide in High Street, Anytown, UK, bearing your personal name and address and holding your personal money. It's swilling around somewhere out there having a life you know very little about. You may never be able to get it back. If that doesn't frighten you, all I can say is that you have cooler nerves than ole GQ.

The best description I ever heard of money is that it's like grease; it makes things move more easily. And the best description of savings is that they are stored energy. If I spend less than I earn, having converted my energy into something someone is willing to pay me to do, and store the rest to release when I am not working (unemployment, ill-health, old age). Or to release to bolster the present energy supply when my outgoings are in excess of my incomings, such as when two appliances die in one calendar month.

We could use anything in place of printed bank notes. They have no intrinsic value. All that is required of something to be "money" is that it is; rare (naturally rare like gold and silver or artificially rare like elabourately-printed and watermarked paper with swingeing penalties against counterfeiting), easily divisible, non-perishable and ACCEPTED BY OTHERS IN TRADE AS A UNIT OF ACCOUNT. Thus oak leaves aren't really viable as they seem to grow on trees all over the place and I doubt I could beguile a shopkeeper into accepting a fistful of them in exchange for a pint of milk.

All sorts of things have served as money; cowrie shells, beads, bent copper nails. We could have a future when the basic unit of exchange is the 200g tin of SPAM (vegetarians will be trading on the Qu0rn standard, naturally).

The GBP, like the dollar and the euro and all other currencies comprised of bits of pretty paper and discs of base metal, is a fiat currency.

There have been many thousands of fiat currencies used all around the world. Every single one of them has failed messily and beggared the holders of it. No exceptions.

My biggest fear is that I'll be left holding pretty paper bank notes when the music stops and fiat dies. Or that the gubbermint (bless their black and thieving hearts) decides to issue a new variant of fiat and make the old one redeemable for a much smaller number of the new one (probably the spondulick). The US government once held a "red dollar" printed in quantity against this very risk of having to replace the greenback dollar at short notice.

* You need a better place than this, in actuality. But nowhere the mice can chew on it.

ETA Jk0, I suspect some of the extra isn't circulating at all, but nesting in mattresses and jamjars across the land.

[Deleted User]

On the matter of currency, I found this.

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

You're a very bad man, Bedsit Bob.:p

You love me really.

GreyQueen

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

You love me really.

:heartpuls Weeell, wouldn't go quite that far, Bob, but I certainly find you interesting and entertaining, which is more than can be said for some people I encounter in that strange place called Real Life. Loving the Hitchhiker's quote btw.

Dunno why it's called Real Life anyway; it's full of implausible events, bizarre occurances and strange people.

At some point in the next few weeks, my local authority call centre will recieve calls complaining that leaves are falling off the trees, and, what's more, they do it every year!!

We treasure these moments.

Just in case you were wondering; your council deliberately goes around your area at night every autumn plucking leaves from trees and tossing them on the ground. We do it out of spite. Nyah!

jk0

GreyQueen wrote: »

ETA Jk0, I suspect some of the extra isn't circulating at all, but nesting in mattresses and jamjars across the land.

Yeah, me too. £60bn between 60 million people is £1000 for every single one of us. I guess I'm not the only one with cash out of the bank.

[Deleted User]

PINEAPPLE you know that old saying ' a finger in every pie?' Hmmmmmm - ducks and runs!!!

KATY 43 Ikea do a solar reading lamp called 'SUNNAN' we've had two for quite a while and they charge on a windowsill in daylight, you don't need direct sunlight. They stay lit overnight as well. Hope that helps, Cheers Lyn xxx.