Preparedness for when

Doveling

Happydays89 - well done on the prepping . I wish I had the space to store that much wood and coal.
I've found it's so much easier to handle things when I can retain a sense of control, so know where you're coming from.
I read an article on how people are running to stand still IYSWIM. Can't just find the link

GQ - thanks for that link - very useful.:)
Can you recommend a good basic gardening book for fruit and veg.Had a look online but there is such an array.
I need the idiot's guide of when to do what with what
Thought I might try some spuds in an old green bin.
Working out where the best place to put a greenhouse would be.

Sad news that four people are missing in the wood mill blaze.
Treasure each day, folks.

Nuatha - you ok?

GreyQueen

Just running out the door so will be brief - excellent primer is by Dr D G Hessayon, The Vegetable Expert and The Fruit Expert.

He did the famous book about houseplants and there's also one about building stuff in the garden which is pretty handy, too.

Whenever I see The Veg Expert in a charity shop I buy it to give to newbie gardening friends. Laters, GQ xx

ivyleaf

Welcome happydays89 So sorry you're facing this worrying time, but at least you're very well-prepared.

GQ When you said this stupid woman was releasing urban foxes into the countryside, my first thought was that apart from anything else they wouldn't last long because, as you say, they don't know how! We have some round here - they live on, or rather in, the railway embankment. Sometimes (like today :mad:) I come down in the morning to find one of them has done its business in the cat's outside water bowl, which seems an odd thing to do, fouling one of the foxes' own sources of water, since they drink from the bowl too.


ETA Doveling Just seen your post - as well as the Hessayon books GQ recommends, I've also seen people recommending the ones by Carol Klein - I believe they're called Grow your Own Veg and Grow Your own Fruit .

greenbee

GreyQueen wrote: »

the cake, my farmer friend did the haymaking two weeks ago, just before the weather turned, and it made him very happy. He was less happy to talk to a gamekeeper in the area who caught a lady who had driven a van of 26 caged foxes captured in one of the inner London boroughs out to our area (several hours' away from London) and was about to release them onto the farm. She said they were a fox rescue charity.:mad:

He pointed out to her that it's a criminal offense to release vermin onto other people's land, that they had lambs who were being killed by foxes and that he shot foxes on sight, plus they run a shoot and he'd just released several thousand pheasant onto the land, with a value of £4 each. She still did the release, right in front of him, and he shot 9 immediately, and the rest the following night.

Silly mare. He got her numberplate and I hope the Police get sicc'd on this fox rescue place. That farm had 11 lambs dead or dying in a field one day this week. And the urban foxes were easy targets out in the fields, they had no rural survival skills.

ivyleaf wrote: »

GQ When you said this stupid woman was releasing urban foxes into the countryside, my first thought was that apart from anything else they wouldn't last long because, as you say, they don't know how! We have some round here - they live on, or rather in, the railway embankment. Sometimes (like today :mad:) I come down in the morning to find one of them has done its business in the cat's outside water bowl, which seems an odd thing to do, fouling one of the foxes' own sources of water, since they drink from the bowl too.

Releasing urban foxes into the countryside isn't 'rescuing' them. They can't survive without bins to feed from, and they usually have mange and other nasty diseases that can infect the local fox population.

Released urban foxes are often found huddled together where they have been left, which I guess at least makes it easy to put them out of their misery. I'm betting the fox 'rescue' people aren't a genuine charity. Just people who think they should be one...

[Deleted User]

Urban foxes released into a country location will stay where they are dumped, and usually get shot the very next time someone with a gun sees them. None of them have the knowledge or experience of how to survive in a countryside environment and they have been known to starve to death as a consequence of this. What we really need is a sensible attitude to keeping the numbers down in both locations which will keep the breed healthier all round and take away the misplaced movement of urban animals to what is to them an alien environment.

GreyQueen

We have a lot of urban foxes in the city, even in the concrete jungle which is Shoebox Towers. If you come back into the block late at night and you often see them, particularly a big ole dog fox, up on the communal skip bins.

People ring the council because they want us to do pest control on them. Not to kill them, they make that quite clear, but to somehow remove them to another place without hurting them. Thing is, there is nowhere you can put them, and you can't discharge firearms in urban and suburban areas to shoot them, gassing isn't popular and you can hardly bait them with poison. Imagine children or pets getting into that.

We don't 'do' foxes, other than picking dead ones off the public highway. They're pretty at a distance, but very smelly. The gamekeeper was grimly amused that Ms Fox Rescue had driven for several hours with 26 of them stinking the van out - he reckoned that was a punishment in its own right.

Some people want us to also magic away rodents and wasp nests without killing them either, as if that's possible. I'm a country girl living in a city and I do find some people here are soppy about things which they ought to be concerned about. A lot of fellow-allotmenteers have had to give up keeping chickens, despite building chicken-colditzes, because the foxes kept getting in and killing them.

Been hanging with pals in various places today. There seems to be a city-wide euro-drought as people are trying to buy ahead of need as the rate is presently good, plus a run on gold bullion coins from people professing concern about Greece/ the euro/ global financial circumstances in general.

The tin-hatters are out in force. I bought a precautionary tin of corned beef. Governments come and governments go, but corned beef is a steady unit of value.

silverwhistle

GreyQueen wrote: »

The tin-hatters are out in force. I bought a precautionary tin of corned beef. Governments come and governments go, but corned beef is a steady unit of value.

So were mars bars; an economist's favourite measure until they started mucking about with the sizes. I've also used pints of beer as a relative measure in the past, but they've suffered much higher inflation.

It used to be 1.5 mars bars=1 pint in students union bar, 3.5 pints = 1 match day ticket at the local footie club. Now it's 6/1 and 10/1!:D

jk0

Did anyone see this on PP?

http://phys.org/news/2015-07-robots-wise-men-puzzle-degree-self-awareness.html

Anyone enjoying 'Humans' on Channel 4? I find it fascinating. Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4mwlTUXnc

silverwhistle

Thanks GQ for your post about foxes: there really are some stupid people around.

On a related note about tin-hatters and bank runs, I find it ironic that the very precautions people take and talk about in their own lives have an impact on the issue they are worried about and exacerbate them.

To take the Greek banks as an example: to be honest €60 a day should be enough for day to day living and 1800 a month was much more than I had to live on when I lived in the eurozone, and that was with paying rent. But most of the significant money had already left Greece. The lack of liquidity of Greek banks has a great deal to do with Greeks themselves: they neither trust the banks or the government or their own economy. Unfortunately nor do the governments (and people, in many cases) of other countries.

I'm not sure what the solution is, and to everybody saying austerity isn't the answer I'm inclined to agree with, but they never come up with any reasonable solution. It was interesting to see Tsipras squirm when the leader of the liberal group in the EU parliament spoke: 13 new education commissioners appointed and 12 were affiliated to Syriza and the other's political ties weren't known: cronyism continues. The leaked list of Swiss bank accounts still hasn't been investigated. Tax collection is still poor and it's still the PAYE and pay cheque types who are the easy targets.

What happens if the debts are written off? Will behaviour change and what incentive will they have to do so? Who will lend to them in future? So many people saying the banks were irresponsible... OK then, they'll stop lending, which would be the sensible response.. What then?

Poor Greeks maybe, but Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia with their smaller GDPs are _really_ not happy with having to contribute to yet another bail out. Just like in gambling you don't chase your losses; you don't throw good money after bad. There have been huge amounts thrown at Greece, and for all the talk about the banks being the beneficiaries there's still a lot of money that has gone elsewhere. The very lack of transparency as to where it has all gone is part of the issue.

Frugalsod

I have been reading Zero Hedge again and the bottom of this article struck a chord with me.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-17/bankruptcy-planet-accelerates-–-24-nations-are-currently-facing-debt-crisis

Especially this nugget

So we will see twin $200 trillion debt and $1.5 quadrillion derivatives implosions. That will lead to the most historic wealth destruction ever in global stock, with bond and property markets declining at least 75 – 95 percent. World trade will also contract dramatically and we will see massive hardship across the globe.

While the UK is not on that list it could soon be as spending cuts will have a negative impact on the economy. Its debt to GDP has been rising ever since the 2008 crisis.

I already had estimated UK property over valued by 50% along with stock markets substantially overvalued. So much for re balancing the economy. Bond markets are priced for a continuation of current policy. Yet if nothing changes at all then those owning bonds stand to lose substantial sums as they are repaid at par which is far below current prices. Since lots of these bonds are probably in your pension fund do not expect to retire once the markets collapse.

So the crux is that when this strikes incomes will collapse significantly even if you keep your job, but the value of debts will bankrupt millions. So to avoid that fate clear debts so that even if your home is reduced in value by 75% then you do not owe anyone anything it will revert to its correct value. A home is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. If no one can buy then is it really a million pound house?

Next, be aware that your money in the bank is not your money until you can actually get it out. So even paper fiat money in your wallet or purse will have more worth than anything in banks, as the banks will become insolvent if property values collapse to this extreme. The only question will be how will corrupt governments respond?

Remember governments through the public under the bus to bail out the banks in 2008. Germany did it in 2010 to its citizens to bail out its banks when Greece became a problem. When you borrow you are foregoing future expenditure to spend today and the same applies to governments when they make tax cuts. They are foregoing future spending yet they never tell you that. All the tax cuts since 1979 baked in the necessity to cut spending later when it could be blamed on the next government. So while you had your tax cuts now they were also cutting your pensions in the future but not telling you that. If you lost your job they in future the benefits that you thought you would get are no longer there.

Banks are heavily leveraged to the property market and a 5% fall will wipe out the capital of most if not all of them. A bigger fall that that will mean that even if you are paying your mortgage in full every month banks depend on ALL its customers to keep paying in full to stay solvent. If 25% become unemployed as in Greece, how will that impact your property values if a quarter of your neighbours homes are foreclosed and boarded up with no one able to buy? The very wealthy with no mortgage debt will be hit as hard as the rest of us as their homes will only be worth what someone else would be willing to pay. Also remember that the pain will not be distributed evenly so if you are in the lower income groups you will find things tougher than any other group. Though you might be better mentally prepped for it than those wealthier than you.

Bail ins may probably hit people well below the deposit protection limits so the only protection will to have blown it on goods that would still be useful like food and preps.