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Preparedness for when

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  • greenbee
    greenbee Posts: 17,841 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    nuatha wrote: »
    Thank you for that.
    One of the reasons I'd been uncertain about a canner whas whether my hob would take the weight (information that's not readily available from European manufacturers) but I do have access to a couple of standalone cast iron gas rings - I'll investigate further.

    Memory Girl has a canner, so you may be able to help you out on that. I think she uses it on an ordinary gas hob.

    Re. Microchips - as you say, they don't last long. They also move (as anyone who has had their pet chipped will know). As you say, there are plenty of other options out there, many of which work very well. This for example. :cool:
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    :( I was unamused last time I had to sign for jobseeker's allowance for a couple of weeks 10+ years ago and had to produce my passport at the jobcentre as part of the initial procedure. Fine for me, I have a passport; not everyone does. I felt like saying to the clerk; Look, pal, I have lived and worked in this city for 20+ years and was born and brought up all of 20 miles down the road. !!!!!!?

    I can see it coming by increments.

    1. National ID card with biometric data included. Regular stops by Police. Sold to the masses as a way of stopping Them (those who are in the country illegally) from accessing our services. Can see the Daily Wail cheering it on.

    2. Those deemed underclass will be targetted for rolling out of personal microchipping. You want state benefits? Fine, if chipped, not getting anything otherwise. After all, we have to reserve resources for the deserving.

    3. Gradually rolled out through newborns and then schoolchildren, after the population has become accustomed to the idea. Will eventually become normalised. Refuseniks will become the subjects of suspicion and extra scrutiny; after all, if you have nothing to hide, why would you possibly object?

    There are several problems with relying on any data. Firstly, it leads to complacency. The French lost control of a lot of blank ID documents a few years ago; every local authority and the DWP were told to be extra suspicious of anyone with French ID docs as there were tens of thousands in criminal hands. We have nabbed people here who are Algerian illegal immigrants pretending to be Frenchmen of Algerian descent. They caught them with a translator; their French wasn't as she is spoken in La France.

    Then there are the Brazilians loose in the EU with fake Portugese ID, both nationalities speak Portugese, but the Brazilians aren't EU citizens and don't have rights in Europe.

    With automatic numberplate recognition, anyone who drives has beggar-all privacy anyway. A pal of mine stupidly got herself banned for several years for drink-driving. She had a car she valued and didn't want to give up or to have it stand around rotting, so she leased it to a friend in another part of the country. Who got pulled over by the Polis and told You're banned.

    No I'm not, she retorted, producing her license, ID and the lease documents.

    I was once driving a very memorable vehicle on a main road with a blown head gasket. We were belching black smoke and my co-driver was a worrywart who kept whining that the Police would pull us over because of the fumes. I pointed out to him that we were on an A road, there would be cameras on the bridges and that the Police would have already run our plates. They knew who we were, could see from the direction of travel that we were limping home, and could stop us any time they wanted. We went 100 miles at all of 20 mph and they didn't stop us.

    If anyone thinks they have financial privacy, I have news for you. Police and accredited fraud investigation officers working for local authorities and the DWP can demand your bank statements and other financial documents. And they have to be given them, and your bank won't be telling you they coughed it up, either.

    Police officers tend to conduct their personal purchases on a cash basis, since they know it's the only way to maintain privacy.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • Frugalsod
    Frugalsod Posts: 2,966 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary Combo Breaker
    Same thing with governments as with individual people though - finding out just who you can trust and who you cant and its much harder to find a trustworthy govt. than individuals. I'm looking at an individual person I know right now that's expecting me to trust them - now I know they are going to go bankrupt (not sure if they do yet themselves = but its obvious its coming...:cool:), but its en route and I'm laying little bets with myself as to when it will be - and protecting my own personal little finances from going down with them when they go down in flames. Not to mention protecting myself from getting had up for what I'd do to them if they affected my finances in the process....
    I think there is a huge difference between the UK and Greek governments. The risks of UK insolvency are seriously over played. First of all the UK government does not have the problem of blatant tax evasion that happens in Greece, so the genuine need for a cashless society to catch a small percentage of untaxed income is a step too far. It also has a more diverse economy. Eventually the UK could simply print its way out of trouble but the problem will come much later when no foreigners will accept the currency for goods. That is a long way off, but there is the problem that past governments have privatised so much to foreigners that we now have a significant and permanent trade deficit as all those profits are sent to their owners abroad. That means we need to export more to maintain our standard of living. Also who do we export to when the world economy is slowing?

    No matter what anyone says about UK sovereign debt the real problem is the banks still. They are over leveraged beyond what is safe, and there is no bank regulation that will rein them in. Far too much lending is predicated on house prices and so little in small business that the seeds of the next crisis are already sown. So the next crisis will come from the banks even though the UK government might make things considerably worse by imposing austerity. This will make the publics ability to pay debts harder defaults will increase and banks will have bigger losses. Eventually something will give and the banks will have a problem with liquidity again and if they try and sell government bonds to pay off creditors they will discover that it has become a no bid market and the prices will plummet.

    Also the UK state pension system is based on a pay as you go model and the economist models do not adequately cover the future income of generations to pay it. Plus rising retirement ages will counter that problem as well. There are problems brewing in the private pensions industry but that might take some time to be clear for us to deal with. People have simply not saved anywhere near enough to retire and pension fees have simply acted like legalised fraud on pension savers.

    So my primary concern is the banking system not the UK government, though when the next financial crisis hits I fully expect this bunch of no hopers to completely screw things up. Once they discover that austerity is damaging to the economy and will destroy their election hopes they will change policies, because they will want to be elected. So expect lots of lies next election season.

    So clearing existing debts and keeping lots of cash out if the banks is probably all that most of us can do to avoid being bailed in. Keeping food to cope with ups and downs of income and reducing expenditure is the best option.

    If you genuinely do think that pensions will be affected it is far too late to do anything anyway. Pension funds are just as likely to be bailed in.

    The fundamental problem in the West is excessive debt primarily by people and companies that will have significant losses for the banks. When this is realised by people then everything that is dependent on credit will fall to a new lows. Shares that will have been bought on margin will be sold creating a stock market crash, house prices will suddenly be seen to be vastly over valued as incomes fall in the next crisis. Even gold will fall in value because the world will have too many goods chasing too little money. Much of that money will be worthless as the bad debts increase and banks collapse. Greek banks have something like 40% non performing loans and so were insolvent years ago and were only bailed out to stop the rest of the financial system collapsing. So what we are going to face for the next few years will be deflation not inflation as the gold bugs expect.
    It's really easy to default to cynicism these days, since you are almost always certain to be right.
  • Frugalsod
    Frugalsod Posts: 2,966 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary Combo Breaker
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    Police officers tend to conduct their personal purchases on a cash basis, since they know it's the only way to maintain privacy.
    So do MP's :rotfl:
    It's really easy to default to cynicism these days, since you are almost always certain to be right.
  • nuatha
    nuatha Posts: 1,932 Forumite
    Bedsit_Bob wrote: »
    I don't use cards.



    I don't do Facebook.
    The first is in your favour. The second is irrelevant unless you are never photographed, the current software is designed to recognise all the faces in a photograph and make a note of the "associates". If you don't have a passport or driving license then it will be more difficult to identify you.
    greenbee wrote: »
    Memory Girl has a canner, so you may be able to help you out on that. I think she uses it on an ordinary gas hob.
    Thank you.
    Re. Microchips - as you say, they don't last long. They also move (as anyone who has had their pet chipped will know). As you say, there are plenty of other options out there, many of which work very well. This for example. :cool:

    I hadn't come across that one, but have worked with others of that ilk. One of the worrying things about that one is that its designed for churches.
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Frugalsod wrote: »
    So do MP's :rotfl:
    :) Mind your language, this is a decent website, we don't want to be talking about Emm Ps in mixed company, tender minds might be reading along.

    They've been bought long ago, with these darling little pretend jobs and directorships where you get tens of thousands a year for a couple of days 'work' per month (meaning you rock up and have lunch). Why be so vulgar as to give the s0ds envelopes of cash when you can make them a consultant in your corportation and pay them funny money for doing beggar-all?
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • jk0
    jk0 Posts: 3,479 Forumite
    Eighth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :) Mind your language, this is a decent website, we don't want to be talking about Emm Ps in mixed company, tender minds might be reading along.

    They've been bought long ago, with these darling little pretend jobs and directorships where you get tens of thousands a year for a couple of days 'work' per month (meaning you rock up and have lunch). Why be so vulgar as to give the s0ds envelopes of cash when you can make them a consultant in your corportation and pay them funny money for doing beggar-all?

    This video might tickle you GQ. :)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rER44kwW8FU
  • Mind now revolving around why churches would want to know wht events their members had attended???

    Errrm...maybe not so much a church...but summat rather broader than an individual congregation and person-in-charge wanting to see how many of the "faithful" had turned out to protest about our awful "liberal" ways at whatever event it was that some hothead preacher had been urging them all to attend?

    Beyond that....I cant see the reasoning.

    Errrm....tenuous...tenuous...but a "protest church of the Christian variety" wondering how many of their members had been out attending anti-Establishment rallies (eg against whatever the latest war is....). Yep...that's a bit tenuous..

    Nope....any thoughts?
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    jk0 wrote: »
    This video might tickle you GQ. :)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rER44kwW8FU
    :beer: Squirm-makingly funny, ta!
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • Evening all, haven't been on much lately but saw this and thought of you all:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/society-will-collapse-by-2040-due-to-catastrophic-food-shortages-says-foreign-officefunded-study-10336406.html
    Hello to newbies <waves>
    Time for another stock take, the bean mountain is looking smaller than it did, might need to restock. After all you can never have too many cans of beans (or too much ventilation :rotfl:)
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