Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

GREENBEE I read your post and feel like I've just been doused in icy cold water. This is real, not media propaganda, not 24 hour pictures on the news of people sitting on a train, not stirring up doubt as to the validity of the 'migrants'. This is a real story about real people who are known by a real person that I've met. Closer to home on many levels. It's easy to sit in our safe and comfortable protected lives and doubt isn't it? not so easy to have to flee the place that is home and leave all of your life behind you for an uncertain and unknown future, that takes real guts. I hope they make it, I hope they make it here and I hope they make a life as good if not better than that they've had to leave, God be with them!

SpikyHedgehog

fuddle wrote: »

Does flour automatically go with suet. I know I always mix it in with dumplings but dumplings is all I know with regard to suet. I'm trying to reduce/elimate grains for while. Any ideas with what I can do with suet?

I'm not sure if you're eating oats, but I've done some suet puddings with oats, herbs & vegetarian suet, water to mix & steamed & served with gravy - it was surprisingly pleasant the first time I made it, which was lucky as I didn't have much else. I think I used finely chopped onion as well.

daz278

I think The EU is a private members club ...where most of the members want it for what they can take out except for Germany who have taken more refugees than anyone but even this can be viewed as self interest as Germany is facing demographic problems down the line . Both Germany and UK are net contributers.......foreign policy is tricky your damned if you do France/Uk Libya and Camerons Syria vote where they didn't

moneyistooshorttomention

Its that human nature thing again I guess:(. I think its very true that the vast majority (probably all) the nations that joined the EU did so for what they could get out of it for themselves. I've certainly watched whats happening in Hungary right now and thought "I bet they are severely regretting that now - as they wouldn't be a country people would be flocking through if they hadn't".

Aside from the fact that Britain will be leaving the EU soon = it hadn't occurred to me to think that previously - but I wonder if the whole EU will splinter apart within the next few years too??

GreyQueen

I spend a few hours a week hanging with a group of people which includes ex-pats from countries like Iraq and Hungary. The Hungarian is sickened to his stomach by the actions of his countrymen towards the refugees (and he has been in the old country as recently as 6 weeks ago).

He pointed out that half a million Hungarians were given refugee status overseas after the uprising of 1956 and now, when others are in dire trouble, there seems to be a collective amnesia about this. No sense that there is a moral duty to help, as they were once helped. He's almost too sickened to speak about what's going on - he's from Budapest and has family there still, so gets the news direct from them.

I don't know the answers. I wish there was some orderly way of refugees applying for asylum from the overloaded safe-ish countries adjacent to the war zone, and transport provided to reach them. It's inhumane to stand by and watch what is going on. It also begs the question of those who don't have several thousands to bribe people-smugglers, and their needs?

armyknife, there was a distopian future novel I read a few years ago, it's title escapes me, where latitudes incl the UK were iced and virtually uninhabitable due to climate change. People were pouring into Africa, trying to cite an African grandparent/ great-grandparent as reasons to be allowed into various countries. It was a sobering thought.

Frugalsod

armyknife wrote: »

A possible SHTF scenario, say over the next couple of decades the North Altlantic Conveyor shuts down and the UK loses 30% of the heat energy it receives; How welcoming will people further south be to those of us who inevitably become climate change refugees/migrants, given how welcoming we were to refugees from the south?

I think that is a very real scenario, and may be happening already. It might take a long time before it reverts to its normal path. It is why have been looking at lots of cold weather gear. So while we might have more extreme summers and winters we will need to be prepared for both. Over time I can see hundreds of millions moving north from Africa as climate change makes life there much harder and drier. In the interim we could have wars over water as it may not land where it traditionally has.

Climate change is real and it annoys me that we have a corrupt government that favours polluting oil industries over cleaner greener energy because they want well paid jobs once they leave politics. Screw the planet I'm alright Jack attitude.

moneyistooshorttomention

I can understand the "help as you've been helped" argument. One comment I've had from the friend-who-plans-on-taking-in-refugee is the "Sins of the fathers" one. That being that we (ie Britain) have gone out rampaging around the world grabbing whatever property we wanted from the native people in the process (ie the colonial era).

I follow his logic. I also know that Britain was far from the only country that did that - errrrm...hang on a minute and present tense is "What about America then? Doing it currently?" I also see that, as far as Britain is concerned, it was past generations of Britons that did this and not us (in our respective older generation, baby boomers, Generation X etc etc) that has done this - it was our ancestors that did it.

Add the cultural integration problems of absorbing large numbers of people from a wildly different culture at once:eek:. The ways of thinking/living between different parts of Britain can be rather noticeably different - and that's between people of the same race (ie British). I've witnessed/heard people thinking that what is a particularly "local" way of thinking that I've never even heard of in our country before now is The Norm and expecting me to conform to it and I think some of them may not honestly realise that that isn't how things are in Britain as a whole.

Multiply that factor up of many people (both British people living in Britain and people of other nationalities wanting to come here) being even more unaware that ways of thinking/living are very different in other parts of the world. We don't realise here in Britain JUST how different our way of thinking is to some of these countries and I doubt they realise in reverse. The obligation is on them to adapt to our way of life/way of thinking - and I don't honestly know how many of them will (but know there will be a sizeable group that wont).

British people moving elsewhere in Britain are still in our own country and no need to integrate unless we choose to voluntarily - and free to think "Each to their own - them to theirs and us to ours" and there will only be the odd clash by people who haven't spent much (if any) time living elsewhere in Britain and aren't very well aware of how different ways of thinking can be just within our own country. But I do wonder what proportion of immigrants will try to integrate with us and change their thinking to ours?

ivyleaf

GreyQueen wrote: »

I spend a few hours a week hanging with a group of people which includes ex-pats from countries like Iraq and Hungary. The Hungarian is sickened to his stomach by the actions of his countrymen towards the refugees (and he has been in the old country as recently as 6 weeks ago).

He pointed out that half a million Hungarians were given refugee status overseas after the uprising of 1956 and now, when others are in dire trouble, there seems to be a collective amnesia about this. No sense that there is a moral duty to help, as they were once helped. He's almost too sickened to speak about what's going on - he's from Budapest and has family there still, so gets the news direct from them.

I don't know the answers. I wish there was some orderly way of refugees applying for asylum from the overloaded safe-ish countries adjacent to the war zone, and transport provided to reach them. It's inhumane to stand by and watch what is going on. It also begs the question of those who don't have several thousands to bribe people-smugglers, and their needs?

armyknife, there was a distopian future novel I read a few years ago, it's title escapes me, where latitudes incl the UK were iced and virtually uninhabitable due to climate change. People were pouring into Africa, trying to cite an African grandparent/ great-grandparent as reasons to be allowed into various countries. It was a sobering thought.

I read that novel too and I can't remember its name either. I seem to recall the main character was called Saul and he was unable to go to Africa and was now an old man, living alongside a group of feral teens, telling them tales of the old days before the cold came, hoping to amuse them enough to be allowed to share their fire and be given some food and be allowed to live a bit longer.

ETA I think it was called "ICE".

[Deleted User]

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I also see that, as far as Britain is concerned, it was past generations of Britons that did this and not us (in our respective older generation, baby boomers, Generation X etc etc) that has done this - it was our ancestors that did it.

Exactly.

At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, blaming us (ie. British people alive today) for slavery, imperialism, etc. is like blaming the German teenagers of today, for the holocaust.

[Deleted User]

ivyleaf wrote: »

I read that novel too and I can't remember its name either.

A Google for "dystopian future Africa", produces a list of "The 10 best (worst) dystopian fictions", only one of which has the word "Africa" in the synopsis.

That one is District 9, by Neill Blomkamp.