Preparedness for when

Butterfly_Brain

2tonsils it sounds like what the Tory scum are doing here:mad::mad::mad:, but much much worse. It makes me think that all of this hardship is being ordered by the banksters, cartels and massive corporations :mad: and the politicians are in the pockets of the money men. Greece would be better off going bankrupt and leaving the Euro at least then they would qualify for humanitarian aid from the UN.

2tonsils

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

2tonsils it sounds like what the Tory scum are doing here:mad::mad::mad:, but much much worse. It makes me think that all of this hardship is being ordered by the banksters, cartels and massive corporations :mad: and the politicians are in the pockets of the money men. Greece would be better off going bankrupt and leaving the Euro at least then they would qualify for humanitarian aid from the UN.

It's horrendous and just getting worse all the time. I am torn between never reading the news again or reading it and being prepared for anything happening next. I honestly don't think the people can take it any longer. I have personally seen people taking food to eat from the bins outside Lidl in the winter. We are just coming up to the winter period now, the last few tourists leave next weekend. I think delaying tactics are being used on any manner of things till after the US election on November 6th.

The S is going to HTF before very long but I am not sure what is going to happen first. The government have to get the new measures voted in next week. The bailout will go straight to the banks so still no money for pensions and health care or people owed money to. They are collecting all manner of taxes but we are seeing no improvement in the country and now the foreign banks want to take all the taxes as well.....so where will that leave the ordinary people?

I don't know whether to warn all my friends here to stock up on food, fuel and medicine as well as emergency money or not.....do you think I should? I got called some really nasty things and got accused of scare mongering about a month ago, but now they know I was telling the truth about the matter in question. Should I tell my friends how bad things are, or just let them carry on pretending nothing is wrong and burying their heads in the sand?

I do think its not just Greece that its happening to , I have heard similar from friends in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and now you are all talking about the cuts, rising food bills, and unemployment.

lally666young

I know the MOD and local authority sometimes sell them. Sadly life is going backwards. I am glad I was brought up in the middle of nowhere and we were taught backwood skills, such as collecting rainwater, making fires, making do and mending, making a trap and we learnt one day how to make shelter. Todays society is so annoying a bugs the life out of me. No wonder we are running out of things such as oil and gas. Food will be happen to be next. I think we should all learn how to grow fruit and veg. It is quite simple. I cant wait till feb comes as this is when I start growing things.

GreyQueen

2tonsils, it's a helluva thing and makes me very worried about political extremists feeding off the rage and misery which are/ will shortly be, the reality for so many people. The last thing we need is countries to de-stabilise politically.

Regarding whether you choose to share your very real concerns with your friends, acquaintances, neighbours, that's a hard one to call. Especially as you mention getting grief for "scare-mongering" already.

My approach (and it's only a suggestion) is to think about the people I'm considering talking this over with and asking myself how I would feel if they sleepwalked their way into a crisis.

Would I feel guilty that I could have said something and didn't? Would I choose to say something if I saw them about to drop a big sum of money on something unnecessary, when I believed we were on the edge of a disaster and that they would need that money very badly within months or a couple of years?

As Cassandra of Troy found out in legend, you don't win friends by telling people things they'd rather not hear. Doesn't mean time won't prove you right. Even it it does, they may not thank you for having mentioned concerns ahead of time, especially if they chose to ignore them, and suffered for it.

Only you can make that decision, but I would want to think carefully about each individual person/ family you were thinking of talking-to, rather than think that it has to be all or nothing.

That's my twopen'rth anyway.

I've often thought that the social welfare system in the UK haas been effectively hush money for a long time, a low but consistant bribe to ignore certain unpalatable truths about who controls the resources of the country and who profits. A steady dripfeed of income, never enough to win free of the System but enough to keep the wolf from the door. Bread and circuses to distract and satisfy the Roman mob of ancient times, "the social" and the TV to distact the modern person.

I wonder if TPTB have any idea of the possible outcome, even among us laconic Brits, of depriving people of their subsistance, their distractions and a modest roof over their head? I wish I could remember where I read it, but I can't, but it was a comment about how you must always leave people with something to lose if you want to control them. People who've lost everything are going to be very dangerous to society.

In terms of how people in the UK would cope if the SHTF, I find I encounter a lot of people who barely cope on a day-to-day basis, right now.

In some cases, people are vulnerable because of learning disability or mental and/or physical health issues. In other cases, people are physically-well, mentally-normal but are emotionally very weak, peevish and brattish. I think a lot of this is that they have never in their lives been challenged by the kind of minor discomforts which were the norm for a lot of people even when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.

They've never lived without c.h. and constant hot water on tap, they say that their home is uninhabitable because they have no carpets (and they are being utterly serious from their POV). They can't do the simplest DIY job and are outraged that we don't send qualified electricians out to change their lightbulbs for them. If their electicity goes off at home and we can't get it up within the hour, they act as if TEOTWAWKI has already come.

How would these individuals cope if the grid went down for a whole day or even a whole week?

The cottage where I and my brother was born was built in the early 1600s. It originally consisted of one room downstairs, with a pantry at one end built under the stairs. Two bedrooms above, the smaller leading off the larger and a ladder-like stair from the smaller into the full-height attic. At some time after the original build it had acquired a kitchen, built onto the back and on a different floor level.

It was just-about wired for electricity by the 1960s but the only water was one cold tap in the kitchen. If you wanted smallish amounts of hot water you boiled the kettle. If you wanted large amounts, you bailed water by bucket from the cold tap to the "copper" built into the corner of the kitchen and lit a fire under it. There was no bathroom and the bath was a tin one which lived on a nail outside and was used in front of the living-room fire. You baled it in clean and you baled it out dirty.

The loo was a bucket privy outside, contents collected once a week by the soil truck. In the decade before, human waste was buried in the garden, as it had been for centuries.

All this isn't the dark ages, just English country life in the 1960s. There was also an old well under the garden and a manual pump in Grandma's house which was only about 50 yards away. If the grid goes down on that kind of lifestyle, you don't have too much to lose, do you?

I think we have never been less prepared, as modern people living in the affluent West, to have our little applecarts overturned. It will be interesting, in the terrible way that car crashes are interesting, to see what will happen in the next few years.

mardatha

Tonsils, personally I'd think if your friends had half a working brain cell they'd see what's coming and start prepping themselves. Why put yourself out for them just to take potshots at ?

the_cake

Great posts tonight 2t and GQ, thank you. So much to think about ...

JKJ

Wow Greyqueen that is one awesome post......I agree with every word and am in deep admiration at your abilities to see what needs saying and then write it so very eloquently .

My hat is off to you

jamanda

2T

If I remember rightly, the troika reckoned the tax people hadn't been doing their job well enough so they were bringing in "hit men on bonuses" (my phrasing). Apparently a quote from one of the existing tax men said "how do you collect taxes from a pensioner who has nothing?"

It has been worrying me for a day or two and I didn't know whether to mention it.

Anyway, if you get stuck, I think there are a few of us on here who would be ready and willing to help you if possible.

Edit - found the link (if it works - never done it before)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-22/troika-demands-all-greek-tax-collectors-be-fired


Good luck

Jane

D&DD

*visions of CRAPROLLZ heading out to Greece to rescue 2T with GQ driving the double decker*

fuddle

Eeeh GQ, I found myself enjoying your post too much, a little bit too much of the old fist throwing in the air in agreement. You know what? I sit here and pride myself over how I think I will cope if the elec went down or we found ourselves isolated... but look at the state of me these past few weeks cos I've got a bit of mould on me wall. I still have oooodles to learn, so much to experience about it being tough not just being entertained watching the nifty things people used to do to cope.

I think I will cope with whatever comes as long as I have a minimal amount of food, a little water and a roof. I just hope, hope, hope I don't have to cope with civil unrest. Now that would see me curled up in a ball.