Preparedness for when

daz278

i know that i cant use my santander card to withdraw money from post office, yet they accept most others, at least im back on my laptop now ....with a wi fi dongle not my isp its 3g as well so very slow.... but saves me accesssing the site from my fiddly but faster phone......while works on my block continue my dad is still prepping for me with 3 tins of staples (food) a week.... would my sawyer filter bottle been any use last weekend in blackpool? take care daz378/278

ALIBOBSY

Just a little update from the land of STILL boiling our water. The mainstream media seem to be ignoring the fact that large numbers of "northerners" still can't drink the blummin water coming out of their taps.

There is no end in sight and the UU statement hasn't been updated for a couple of days.

Used all the bottles of value water we had stashed and the same again bought in. Got another lot and am still boiling like crazy.

Thinking if this happened again more kettles would be useful.

With 6 of us this is a real pain, just washing up is a slog each day.

Baking with the kids yesterday was hard work not being able to quickly rinse stuff off for reuse :mad:

Keep retreating to the garden, the beans look great, toms starting to pump out of the GH and courgettes aplenty. Trying climbing peas and mangetout this year and they are fab, think running beans/climbing french beans but with pea pods, they keep producing and growing. I grow my climbing stuff over a frame between two raised beds OH knocked up for me. Also got sweet peas mixed in as well so stood underneath the "arch" part smells lovely lol.

Ali x

[Deleted User]

Coming back along the motorway this morning there were many cereal fields in process of being combined, many large lorries with bales of straw on them as a consequence of this too! It's hard to tell from the standing crop in the fields what the quality of the grain will be but there's certainly plenty of it this year be it wheat, barley or oats,it looks like a good even crop, saw all three and vast quantities of oil seed rape ready to go too.

We got home to buckets of apples on the drive, and an answerphone message offering more still. I've just washed and chopped 3 sacks and 3 buckets of apples which are being blitzed and pressed out in the garden (wasp alley) right now. It's good to make use of what would otherwise be dumped and the cider would certainly be useful barterage if the need arose. We'll go to the neighbour who offered all her bramleys this year later on and see what's fallen from her tree, can't use too many for juice but they'll get cooked and frozen as flat packs for using later on, great with porridge!

1Tonsil

This could so easily be Greece with the currency controls... http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuelas-food-shortage-keeps-getting-worse-2015-8#ixzz3j3BE3qdy


Meanwhile the Greek bank bond holders are taking a beating now they know there is not going to be a bail in from deposits....they are currently valued at just 33 cents in the euro. The eurobank is doing the worst, with the pireaus bank a close second. The second bank is the one we have had issues with. .... makes you wonder!

Frugalsod

My earlier comments about UK pensions have a similar situation in the US. Even Goldman Sachs are concerned.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-16/goldman-weighs-americas-pension-ponzi-contributions-must-rise-100-billion-year

Basically the exact problems I identified with UK pensions and the 8% (7.7% in the US) rate of return.

Then the results of the US retailers are looking horrendous.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-16/american-malls-meltdown-economic-recovery-complete-utter-fraud

Much of the so called increase in share price has been down to financial engineering and massive share buy backs.

It might only be a matter of time before the US stock market suffers a crash with figures like this.

thriftwizard

Interesting link, thank you, Frugalsod. One thing the commentator didn't seem to pick up on, though I completely agree we are still in "recession" and have been since '08: maybe people are just fed with buying "cheap Chinese crap"? Never mind being debt-averse or just leery of spending money you don't have to spend, there's a large & growing number of people here in the UK at least who just don't want any more junk in their lives. They've totally lost faith in shiny new all-singing all-dancing stuff and are seeking out good, solid basics instead.

I've been wondering for some time if we are lurching towards the end of the "consumer" era, and a slow but fundamentally unstoppable wave of common sense is spreading across the land. People are beginning to see where unrestrained spending and easy debt leaves you; we may have to rethink the criteria for judging how our economy is performing, not because the academics say so, but because people are fed up with being conned out of their hard-earned cash!

Karmacat

In some ways I'd agree with you, thriftwizard, but I was in a big south-coast shopping city on Saturday, and I was horrified, to tell the truth - I was out of there by 1pm, but it was completely, utterly rammed, and the cheap clothing shops were doing the best trade - all teenagers or very early 20s, from the look of it, I suppose. I think there's enough of them to keep the bubble going a while longer

[Deleted User]

Those who can't see or won't see the bubble are those who will be hit hardest when it pops! With most of the economies who are producing the cheap imports we get are on the brink of their own crisis I wonder for how much longer they will be able to carry on making those goods so cheaply? As mineral resources etc. are depleted and fuel resources become more scarce and expensive to obtain I think that in the not too distant future the 'easy' money will not be enough to source the throw away society that is prevalent now. It's going to come as a really big shock to at least 90% of the population of the western world, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Better by far to get used to a different lifestyle from choice before it happens, buy as well as you can IF you have to buy and find your priorities in life and learn how to make a good life from less, it's in your own interests and makes sense, no?

Karmacat

I totally agree, Mrs LW - for instance, I watched a programme on iplayer last night, about a musician I'd never heard of buying a smallholding in Camarthenshire. The ignorance was apparent after a minute or so, and it even stopped being funny it was just awful. The programme had put them in touch with experienced people living there permaculturally, and you could just *see* them so plainly, gritting their teeth at the complete detachment from reality

Frugalsod

thriftwizard wrote: »

Interesting link, thank you, Frugalsod. One thing the commentator didn't seem to pick up on, though I completely agree we are still in "recession" and have been since '08: maybe people are just fed with buying "cheap Chinese crap"? Never mind being debt-averse or just leery of spending money you don't have to spend, there's a large & growing number of people here in the UK at least who just don't want any more junk in their lives. They've totally lost faith in shiny new all-singing all-dancing stuff and are seeking out good, solid basics instead.

I have known that the recession never really ended. The main reason was the lack of a debt clear out when the recession hit. The reason why we did not clear the debts was the influence of the financial sector in government policy. The government was corrupted and the bankers wanted to save their own jobs. The outcome of the policies was to maintain asset prices (house prices) at levels way above their real worth. This was essential to stop the massive write offs that would have wiped out the banks. QE has merely been a continuation of this policy.

While many might not want any more junk in their lives I think that is part of the reason but not all of it. I suspect that the vast majority are simply at their financial limits, ie they cannot get any more credit even if they wanted it. It has been US sub prime loans that has boosted the car sales for the last few years with loan periods of 84 months on a new car purchase. Now even sub prime borrowers wanting a car cannot afford one. If people could genuinely afford a car they would have a bigger deposit and try and clear it as fast as possible. They would also have the means to clear it faster.

There are many who are now opting for a clean living diet which is cooking from scratch and so reducing demand for high profit margin food in stores. The fact that it eliminates additives is a plus for many of us. This is what I have been doing. In fact the only time I get a ready meal in a supermarket is if it is deeply discounted and wears a yellow sticker. Basic food items like flour have lower margins and are so better value for consumers. This saves a lot of money and maybe why food retailers have been struggling these last few years.

There are a few high earning middle class who account for most of the spend overall, but the majority are pay cheque to paycheque. That is why I think the economy is much weaker than claimed.

thriftwizard wrote: »

I've been wondering for some time if we are lurching towards the end of the "consumer" era, and a slow but fundamentally unstoppable wave of common sense is spreading across the land. People are beginning to see where unrestrained spending and easy debt leaves you; we may have to rethink the criteria for judging how our economy is performing, not because the academics say so, but because people are fed up with being conned out of their hard-earned cash!

If that were to happen then the prospects for businesses would be dire. For most products they can only be as cheap as they are because of the purchases of the majority of people. This spreads the cost of production out as efficiently as possible. If few people can buy then every product becomes custom made and significantly more expensive. Without the numbers using a service it comes impossible to run that business. Imagine only billionaires used mobile phones now they could afford the cost of the handsets but with only a few people using the service the overheads of running a network become exponentially higher. So the standing charge would be high and they might be able to make calls free as the marginal costs are insignificant when you have so few customers.

What we have created with current government policy is no prospect for getting on the housing ladder for millions and without that they know they have to move regularly so why buy much? With more of peoples wages going to support rents then they in turn will have less to save for a deposit. They will then have less for any other expenditure like food clothes etc. Also with increasing pressure on incomes people will have less personal space to live in so will not even have the scope to buy even if they had the money. The biggest concern about this is that when people have no stake in a society they can leave or turn violent which means the fall of governments. This is what the US realised in the thirties when they created housing ownership schemes. They were concerned about a rising militancy in the public who had no stake in society. The government soon realised that owning a home was a stake in society. That is why governments push for home ownership, it creates stable nations, and why current policy is not a help even if they call it "help to buy".

This has further ramifications in that it will slow down household formation as couples find that they cannot buy a home together and so will delay family creation. Now since these children will be the ones paying our pensions the fact that there will be so few of them means that the state pension will collapse unless they keep raising the retirement age.