Preparedness for when

Frugalsod

EmmaHerts wrote: »

A home like that wouldn't keep you safe from the public though!

Yes but would there be much risk from the public? If I were in such a home I would not be fearing the public.

EmmaHerts

Frugalsod wrote: »

Yes but would there be much risk from the public? If I were in such a home I would not be fearing the public.

I am talking in terms of this being the ISHTF thread. The biggest threat if s*** hits the fan is from other people.

mardatha

http://news.sky.com/story/1219302/ukraine-russia-approves-military-action

GreyQueen

Frugalsod wrote: »

I do the same especially when it comes to birthday and Christmas cards. I try and give them personally if possible.

Too right. My family have been doing this for years, our determination reinforced by the disappearing birthday card phenomenon (and no, they didn't contain cash or vouchers).

I will be visiting my folks before Mothering Sunday and will take Mum's gift and card then, and will use intra-family mail to get someone's anniversary card to them before the day. I can't believe the cheek of the PO. I bought a large amount of stamps a couple of price hikes ago and shouldn't need to buy any more for years, given the few snail mails I do send. And I shall be looking to reduce them even further.

I can well remember working in the voluntary sector when they sent out those ridiculous posters with the diagrams and slots in them, your item must be no bigger than this nor no deeper than that. Drove us nutso. Seems to me that RM don't want to serve their customers, they just want to drive them away. Nothing against individual posties, btw, have done that job as a temp and it's bliddy hard work delivering 100 kg of mail in 5 hours............

Kid Bruv runs a small biz online and he was being inconvenienced last year by random strikes at the crown post-offices. Here in this city, colleagues say things like 'I'm going up to the Post Office, I might be late back'. PO is 5 mins away but even if you go there at the start of your lunch hour, you can't guarantee to be back again in time.

Today I have planted peas (Feltham First, if anyone wants to know) and have placed all my wonderful twiggy sticks for them to climb up. I have high hopes. I don't think peas are economic to grow, compared with how cheaply you can buy frozen ones, but they are rather attractive plus you haven't lived until you've eaten a pea plucked straight from the vine. I've sent a few sophisticates down the lottie to do that very thing, and they look a bit dubious about eating raw veg until they try it and their eyes light up with surprise at what they really taste like. The sugars in fresh peas apparently turn to starch in 30 mins after picking, so they're at their nicest eaten raw right in the veggie patch.

I have also had prowlers on the lottie again, although nothing was taken and my shed was undamaged this time. Can see where they've been in the freshly-dug and raked soil around the shed. Which is kept in that condition just so's I know if something like this has happened.

Various sheds entered in early Feb are still unrepaired and just propped up/ closed, and some of these have been re-opened, just in case some shed-owner reacted counter-intuitively to the earlier invasion and added a whole lot of valuables.......... drives you spare, doesn't it? Barstewards.

Never mind, I have been to the Magic Greengrocer and turned one fine English poond into a carrier bag of fruit, so scuvy will be allieviated once more. Plus I have some chard from the allotment. This was a self-sown plant which appeared late last summer and grew humungous and overwintered quite happily. The outer leaves are leathery and battered, suitable only for famine cuisine or feeding to the animals, but the inner ones are new and tender and have come home to participate in supper.

I would say that if anyone is looking for a perennial veg, you could do far worse than chard. I let a pkt of Rainbow Lights go to seed 3 years ago and have chard popping up all over the place. Although the parent were multi-hued, the self-sowns are 95% silver to 5% ruby chard.

It seems to survive all sorts of weather, keeps on germinating from scratch and most people don't know what the hell it is, so won't be stealing it. I used it to hide last year's strawberry patch - this year's is hiding in among the peas and beans.

Righty need to see if the hall floor is dry yet (am doing proper housew*rk) as the maid is skiving off again. GQ xx

mardatha

I grew it one year but didn't know what hell to do with it so just left it there!

ALIBOBSY

Nargleblast wrote: »

Don't worry mardatha, only a year or so to go then this mob will be out on their lugholes.

TBH I am not sure it will make much odds who is in power. OK so some of the policies around the margins will change, but fundamentally the issue is we won't go back to a massive boom as we are past peak oil so the existing benefit system is simply unsustainable. Although I think the money left could be allocated better I can't see ANY polictical party sending it any where near us folks at the bottom sadly.

I just can't see any party doing what needs to be done, they need to admit the fact that our current way of life cannot continue. Things need to change and they will never do that.

Ali x

[Deleted User]

I think that we'll see lots of distractions from TPTB as the situation becomes more acute be it peak oil or debt or just plain lack of availability of food/electricity/cash etc. that causes it, it will be Circus and Carnival distraction techniques and lots of things like the Dance Marathons seen in the great 1930s depression, which I see in the glitz and glamour of programmes like Strictly Come Dancing etc. a big spectacle to take your eye off day to day problems of living in 2014 and all that entails. I think there will be a proliferation of competitive programmes offering valuable prizes and the lottery will become an attractive option to desparate people with debts they can't service. I can't get my brain round the fact that the whole world except us preppers seems still to be dashing at the cliff edge with all the other lemmings shouting 'Eat drink and be Merry for tomorrow we'll die and then we won't have to pay for what we did today!!! We may be slightly insane by other peoples standards but I see us as the only viable option this crazy world has, no one else seems to have noticed the steepness of the downhill slope or the degree of slipperiness they are accellerating down because they still have their pink tinted glasses on!!! Cynical I know as a post, but HELP!!!!! what else can we do???

GreyQueen

Well said, MrsLW.

It isn't at all uncommon for me to be in a little Tosspots store and watch some threadbare man or woman spend about £20 on lottery tickets. From the banter between them and the staff, it's clear that this is a continious habit. Their clothes are worn-out and they look thin and badly in need of a few square meals. And yet they 'play' on.

When William Wilberforce was asked what his next campaign would be after seeing off slavery, he apparently said 'the lottery'. And you'll recall how the lottery was used to manipulate ordinary people in 1984.

Expect to see a lot of puffery of lottery winners, and ever larger super lotteries emerging, offering mind-blowing wealth. Plus lots of glitter and fuss about the tiny minority who make their way from rags to riches, whilst there will be a deafening silence as the working class (my lot) slip into poverty and the middle-class sink into the level of hardship and uncertainty that they believed the hard work and prudence of themselves and their forebears had inurred them from.

Life in a crowded world grows ever more expensive. In this city, what were built as single-family middle class homes in the early twentieth century, designed to be afforded by a single professional wage, are now being carved into micro-flats and bedsits, ramming people ever tighter. The cost of these places is extortionate per sq foot that they offer. I know people ekeing out troglodyte existances in basement flats with almost no light or ventilation, or stuffed into attics with a bathroom converted from a cupboard. And paying through the nose for the privilege, too.

In this city, the council is having to take enforcement action on chancers who turn their garages and sheds into squalid digs, often let to people who are newly in the country and don't know their rights. It's a constant battle to stop the slums which were expensively cleared between WW1 and WW2 reappearing. And yet we are told that this is one of the world's wealthiest countries?

Pull the other one, mate - it's got bells on.

Nargleblast

Just get on with it, I suppose. What we were worrying about yesterday is now history, we got through it and are now worrying about what's in store tomorrow. It's the old story - today's big news story is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapping. (Although the amount it costs nowadays for a bit of fish and a few chips...ooh, don't get me started...)

I suppose as long as you make sure you have food in store, adequate housing, heating and clothes, and whatever else you need to keep alive, then just live for the moment, enjoying the simple daily pleasures (cup of tea, radio programme, good book, warm bath, clean sheets on the bed, sunny days in the garden, home cooking, the company of children, animals and good friends......)

mardatha

Well, there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between us lot and Baldrick in Blackadder, is there? We are 13th century peasants in different clothes. Keeping heads down and scraping by!