Preparedness for when

moneyistooshorttomention

That will give my mind a good workout for the afternoon - trying to get my head round why someone might be called an "economic migrant" whilst moving from Britain to Britain (ie same country):rotfl:. Moving from England to Ireland, Wales, Scotland is moving around within same country.:cool:

I would suspect that people being affected by "current crisis" will continue to think of it as a blip - in the sense that their thinking probably goes along lines of "Don't know whats happening generally to the country. I, personally, have got temporary money problems - but I'm waiting the chance to sort them out and get on with Life". I doubt many people in a bad situation will think of it as "This is what is happening to my Society and I'm caught up in it too - and that's how it will stay for me personally". Even if you think "this is what is happening to my Society" - you are likely to be waiting and/or working for your own personal life to "get out of that loop" iyswim.

[Deleted User]

They'll have that same satisfaction and pride in making the most and the best of what they have available to them as you do pet, it's bound to be inbred and they'll MAKE good lives because they will see through the falsehoods of 'trendy living' and not be caught by the pitfall of advertised consumerism. They will have the skills, the experience, the drive and the sheer guts to be themselves in a world that wants us all to be clones of one another, they'll make fabulous feet on the ground sensible young ladies when they grow, with you as Mum they'll have pretty good backing too never you fear pet!

jk0

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I
Personally - my greatest concern is our food. What with "fake foods"/ g.m. food/ I've come to realise the trend to growing vegetables in a soil-less way is a bad one.

It's possible to deal with everyday products being at WAY lower quality than normal (ie back in the 1970s for instance) by throwing enough money at what you buy (if you have it available that is:cool:). For instance - I know it used to be possible to buy a pair of Marks & Sp*ncer slippers for around £15 and they would last years. These days - one can still go in there and buy slippers for £15-£18 BUT they wont be "anything like". They will be cheapo cheapo quality and you're lucky if they last a few months and I suspect my usual quality of slippers would probably now be a case of hunting around online for dead basic sheepskin slippers and paying around £80 for them.

Basically = we have rationing by price now. To get normal quality of anything (be it food or goods) costs quite a lot and "normal" will gradually come to cost more and more and we will only be able to buy cheapo quality/fake & mucked-around with food/etc for the sort of price we have been used to paying.

Personally - I don't rate the chances of entering a "renewable age". I do hope I'm wrong....but I tend to think we will just see more and more "rationing by price" and you cant have Normal anything unless you have enough money to throw (quite a bit) of it at getting whatever-it-is (food, goods, housing).

I've found I know when my mother has shopped at Lidl for the Sunday lunch. The meat & potatoes do not have the flavour of even Asda food.

BTW, I also can't believe the speed I get through slippers nowadays. I get mine from Amazon now, having given up on M&S for anything a few years ago. Still, they are lucky to last six months.

[Deleted User]

Real sheepskin slippers made in the UK can be got from LAMBLAND who are based in Devon and I've run on their real leather moccassins for literally years, last pair were £17.99p but because we're previous customers they give a 10% discount code and occasionally they have an unpopular colour at reduced price. The ones I buy have a fabric inner (I don't like sheepskin my feet get too hot) and a hard sole with a tread to let me go outside in them. Wonderful firm to deal with, superb quality slippers and hearty recommendation for value. They do sell on Fleabay but to see all the ranges they produce they have their own website. Really good british made slippers.

jk0

Anyone who watched this series earlier this year might enjoy this. Tonight they have a 1940's, 1950's and 1960's Christmas. Tomorrow they have a 1970's, 1980's and 1990's Christmas.

9pm on BBC2.

mardatha

Greenbee my mother was Irish and I spent many holidays in Galway. I feel just as at home there as I do up here.

ivyleaf

jk0 wrote: »

I've found I know when my mother has shopped at Lidl for the Sunday lunch. The meat & potatoes do not have the flavour of even Asda food.

BTW, I also can't believe the speed I get through slippers nowadays. I get mine from Amazon now, having given up on M&S for anything a few years ago. Still, they are lucky to last six months.

I buy meat at Lidl occasionally and have always been very pleased with it. Perhaps I've just been lucky? I've tried free range chicken, stewing steak, and pork medallions - all excellent.

As for slippers, don't get me started :mad: They all seem to have memory foam in them now, which I find is okay to begin with, but once the soles have moulded themselves to my feet, there is no longer any cushioning and my knees and hips are jarred as I walk.

I ended up last year paying £35 for a pair of German ones with proper "anatomical" insoles. They are still fine and I hope will last for at least another couple of years. My feet nearly sigh with relief when I put them on.

ETA thanks for the reminder about Back in Time for Christmas - I'm looking forward to that.

Frugalsod

fuddle wrote: »

Just to pick up on this point. I don't have my two girls believing life will be better than it is today when they leave school. My two are parented to do the best they can to give them a better chance at keeping their heads above water. We encourage that life can be good with attitude and appreciation but that isn't in terms of progress or gaining.

Maybe I'm too much of a realist, possibly even a pessimist :eek: in my parenting but SHTF and often if you make poor choices. I want for my girls to be aware and avoid poor choices but I don't want to burst their excitement for adult life. It's a fine line really.

That was my point some days ago when I said that the best preps are avoiding SHTF in the first place. Not easy to do when there is a global slowdown happening.

I think it is being realistic in preparing kids for reality. This is the first generation that can overall face being poorer than their parents generation. Some will do better than others but collectively it is not good for the next generation. Yes we all had dreams when kids many of which were unrealistic but it did not stop us making good choices, teaching them how to choose is important.

It is part of my philosophy to have such low living costs that when something appears out of the blue I can cope. Having a financial safety margin when it comes to day to day living helps us avoid being put in situations were we have no options or the options are not good. When you have no leeway then the options can make things worse.

Longer term I am optimistic that we will solve the problems but I do not have any faith in any government other than the Icelandic or Norwegian governments to actually make things better for their citizens. In fact most are making things worse for the vast majority of their citizenry.

Frugalsod

jk0 wrote: »

I've found I know when my mother has shopped at Lidl for the Sunday lunch. The meat & potatoes do not have the flavour of even Asda food.

My parents get their meat from Aldi and Lidl and are very happy with it. The vegetables are another matter but acceptable for the price. You have to inspect them to get veg that are going to last a while but if you are using them very soon then they are fine.

GreyQueen

Evening all.

Interesting discussions and thank you to both Upsidedown Bear and charlies-aunt for their information. I read that quoted paragraph from Bear's post and it's irrational.

It states that it affects only the single childless under 35s, then that it is designed to prevent HB fully subsidising families to live in houses that many working families cannot afford.

:mad:?????????? Did anyone read that back after typing it out? Or is it a slip to give away that it is only going to be restricted to the single childless under 35s for a little while, then will apply to 'families'? Where are these council houses and flats which are so expensive that working families can't afford them, I'd like to know?

The problem is relatively-straightforward; the private rented sector has always failed the poorest in society. Which was why council housing was invented in the first place. What we need a lot more council housing, so that it doesn't have to be rationed to the most desperate and vulnerable of society. And it cannot be sold.

Those who are aspirational of owning their own homes, and who feel they have the means to do so, can then leave for the private sector. Those who are presently being abused by negligent slumlords (present company excepted) will have an option to get away from them. A plentiful supply of decent socially rented homes will force the slummier end of the private rented sector to bring down rents to affordable levels or, more likely, exit the market now that they won't be able to charge money for old rope. And those former BTLs can come back onto the market as homes available for owner-occupiers, who will probably have a vested interest in taking better care of them.

Ahh, but that would suppose that the politicians do not operate with malice aforethought with regard to the non-rich and non-powerful in society. And that certainly isn't so.:(

******************

I enjoyed paging through the BBC worst weather. I've heard about the winters of 1947 and 1963 from the folks, I heard a RL recollection from an elderly schoolteacher in the 1970s about the killing smog in the 1950s in London, I can recall the seventies drought (and the stand-taps) and the outbreak of Weill's Disease in the rivers. In the 1980s, kid bruv travelled up to see me in Scotland just the one time - the day after hurricane. He was MIA in transit across the country from early morning until midnight, I had no phone, I was going spare.

Was talking to my old Dad this past weekend and he was saying, as he has done many times, how sorry he feels for young people today. Yes, he and his peers were born during WW2 and can remember rationing. Yes, they had to leave school at 15 and work, but there was always work to be had. It wasn't a question of being left out of the adult world, or unemployed, you could always get something, and it it wasn't much good, you went and got something else. And things slowly got better and items once luxurious such as carpets and cars, freezers and holidays, became affordable and commonplace.

And now we are truly going backwards, with a lot of people having less than their parents' generation, and their offspring having less than they themselves. And yet when having the luxuries of a consumer societly dangled in front of them in glorious moving technicolour.

This doesn't bode well for societal stability or personal happiness. Thank goodness I know how to make one penny do the work of two.