Preparedness for when

nuatha

milasavesmoney wrote: »

For the longest time, after I started reading MSE, I thought you all ate a boatload full of pudding: a dessert of creamy consistency. I think you say custard for this???
It finally dawned on me that your usage of pudding is what we call dessert. :beer:

Some of us use both terms, pudding tends to be stodgier - possibly a form of sponge served with custard - and dessert lighter (or more upmarket). To confuse things further there are black pudding and white pudding - savoury items made from offal that tend to be served as part of a fried breakfast (black pudding is a blood sausage). There's also the pudding club, a gastronomic membership club that celebrates traditional stodgy puddings, but don't confuse that with being "in the pudding club" which is one of many euphemisms for being pregnant.
I'll ignore other variants such as steak and kidney pudding or other forms of suet pudding. Suffice to say that puddings are traditionally boiled or steamed, which tends to result in a denser texture than baked goods would have.
Sweet puddings are typically served with pouring custard, creme anglais, a sauce which may be made from eggs, sugar and milk or cream, or from cornflour (cornstarch) sugar and milk usually in the form of a bought ready mixed powder. There's a separate type of desserts and confectionery that are set custards (and frozen custards that are best known as ice creams)
The pudding that seems so common Stateside, isn't found in the UK, there are similar products ranging from mousses (a semi set aerated flavoured custard) to proprietary products such as Angel Delight or the mess I was recently served that was described on the menu as a pannacotta but had completely failed to set.
To add to the confusion British jelly may be US jello, or it may be a fruit jam where the fruit pieces have been strained out during manufacture to produce a translucent set sweet spread.

...
I'm confused as to why you are voting by postal ballots. Do you also have polls open to vote at on the 23rd. We have absentee postal ballots, early voting, and election day (voting at the polls by machine)...perhaps we over do things a bit...
It seems to me that paper ballots that are mailed (an Americanism) could seriously be the target of voter fraud.

There isn't a ballot system that isn't open to abuse or fraud. The traditional British system of an x on a ballot paper put into a sealed box for later counting is a simple system to break - simply substitute the sealed boxes with a preferred mix of cast votes.
The simple show of hands in a meeting room can be rigged, from a deliberate miscount, to filling the hall with shills, to intimidating (or bribing) a percentage of those eligible to vote.
More technical systems are equally open to fraud, though the current system rigging prevalent in both the US and UK seems to be about re-jigging the electoral rolls and making it more difficult to exercise a basic democratic right (then panicking and extending deadlines with retrospective legislation when it appears that the "wrong" side might win. (both sides seem to have equally complained and wanted the extension, so wrong is, of course, the other)
There certainly has been some postal ballot fraud.

mardatha wrote: »

The ones we canny sort out are what the hell is a biscuit and what do Americans call paraffin. And is house gas and petrol all gas. Or different gas. O god lol my brain.

A US biscuit is effectively a UK scone. a UK biscuit is an American cookie.
Our paraffin is the US kerosene.
UK gas is either Natural Gas, generally referred to Stateside as Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), butane or propane (or mixes) which have the same name both sides of the Atlantic. Confusingly there are vehicles which can be powered by these.
US gas is short for gasoline, which is petroleum or petrol in the UK. (and are liquids, not to be confused with liguid gases which are only liquid because they are in pressurised containers)

Isn't confusion wonderful

pineapple

cheel wrote: »

I do think we will end up leaving as no one I know is planning to vote remain. Not that I ask everyone I meet!

Do you all think its likely food prices will rise? Maybe I should stock up a bit? What about gas and electricity (I'm on keys) ?

Same here Cheel. Though that might just be the people I usually mix with anyway.
I post regularly on a newpaper forum and actually it always seems to be the remainers who are quick with the insults. I would have thought it would be the renegade leavers! Last night's TV debate was no exception. The Leave panel was positively saintly in comparison to the other lot.
There is some potential for civil unrest imo - especially if it is a close vote and even more so if the government backtracks.
However if Brexit wins, I can't see it affecting our imports immediately as we aren't going to leave the EU overnight.
I don't think there will be panic buying at this point though you never know.
In the medium term, there is a massive list of companies owned by other European countries including the utilities EDF, N Power, Eon, EDF and Scottish Power! I will be keeping my eye on these.
And on those threatening to pull out of the UK for trade reasons.
We live in interesting times.

nuatha

milasavesmoney wrote: »

GQ our voting systems are very very similar.... Thanks for explaining your voting methods to me. So many people posting on MSE kept talking about waiting for their ballot, or mailing in their ballots that I thought the entire voting population was voting that way.

In 2000 the law was changed to allow every eligible voter to demand a postal vote (previously this was a very restricted privilege, largely because of worries about fraud)
Subsequently a number of areas decided it was far cheaper to have postal ballots than to staff a large number of polling stations. They decided to impose postal voting across the constituency. After a number of challenges, some have reverted, some offer a single staffed polling station for those who insist on the traditional ballot.
In theory, postal voting leads to a higher voter "turnout"

milasavesmoney wrote: »

This is extremely surprising to me. I don't understand why your government would let foreign companies own something so crucial to your infrastructure. :undecided:huh::think: I'm just really astounded. I'm assuming they are owned by companies from EU members? Surely they must be?

There is no restriction on who owns vital infrastructure or utilities in the UK. The UK government have been in negotiations with a consortium of French business and government and Chinese government bodies about building new nuclear power plants. The British government will guarantee a high unit price be paid per unit generated (whether that unit is consumed in the UK or exported) but will have no ownership or control over the generating structure (until it finds itself with the bill for decommissioning in due course)

We did have nationally owned infrastructure, but the Conservative party are ideologically opposed to this and have sold off what used to be owned by the people of the UK to the highest bidder, regardless of national interests. (The highest bidder being a joke, generally initial ownership has been with conservative party funders who then sell on at a substantial profit) Having sold all the national infrastructure, the same party has put mechanisms in place to do the same with all public land (while removing blocks on how that land can then be developed)

cheel

Can I live in boring times please?

cheel

Oh and us cornish get confused by 'pudding' and 'dessert' so we use one easy word 'afters'

Ie 'Mother what's for afters?'

NewShadow

cheel wrote: »

Oh and us cornish get confused by 'pudding' and 'dessert' so we use one easy word 'afters'

Ie 'Mother what's for afters?'

Then what do you do when you're having pudding for dinner?

nuatha

NewShadow wrote: »

Then what do you do when you're having pudding for dinner?

Have another one as afters

moneyistooshorttomention

pineapple wrote: »

Same here Cheel. Though that might just be the people I usually mix with anyway.
I post regularly on a newpaper forum and actually it always seems to be the remainers who are quick with the insults. I would have thought it would be the renegade leavers! Last night's TV debate was no exception. The Leave panel was positively saintly in comparison to the other lot.
.

My take FWIW is that the Leavers do seem (by and large) to be an older agegroup.

So I think its down to the fact that social mores are (possibly?) a bit different between the two agegroups.Thats just my personal theory on it - ie older people (by and large) might/possibly/maybe have had a greater chance of being brought up with a default setting of "polite"???

I do have to hastily add here that the most charmingly polite person I have ever met in recent times must have been all of about 4 years old:rotfl:. He was delightful:)

VJsmum

pineapple wrote: »

Same here Cheel. Though that might just be the people I usually mix with anyway.
I post regularly on a newpaper forum and actually it always seems to be the remainers who are quick with the insults.

Interestingly, my experience is the exact opposite. Most people i know are remainers (including me) and it is the leavers who are throwing the insults around (known to me personally - not on here).

David Cameron was in my train carriage the other day :eek: I didn't notice for an hour and a half :rotfl:

lobbyludd

I've not seen the debates, as I generally don't find them to be very useful ways of gathering information, and with facts shorter on the ground for this vote than for any other, it seemed doubly likely that the tv/radio debates will simply be smoke and mirrors. Most people seem to react to them along the lines they were already leaning/committed, so I think they are more for spectacle than to inform voters? people are clearly very passionate about their views on both sides of the debate and I've seen very good and bad behaviour on both sides, from young and old - I think that is down to personalities not preference for voting, and "behaviour" is often viewed through the lens of the audiences preference as well. e.g. a counter argument can either be seen as robust or rude depending on whether you agree with their viewpoint!

In contrast to many people on this thread most people I know are voting remain - as will I - I keep wondering where the other half of the country who are polling "exit" are, (other than the multi-millionaire foreign owners of national tory press) because I don't know many of them in real life! So that probably colours our perceptions of the mood of the country (however we are planning to vote), perhaps many of us tend to interact mainly with people who share our political affiliations/viewpoints?

whichever way it goes - this could lead to much more political engagement of the younger generation - like the Scotland referendum - that can only be a good thing?

I also think it's a good thing the voting registration was extended - there is always a spike of registrations in the last day of a deadline before any election - we can ask why, but the essential reason is that it's human nature... given that people in charge of elections know this, and the technology to allow people to register crashed in those crucial run up hours, I don't understand why we aren't all in favour of the deadline being extended?

understand that some might attribute this thinking to my stated voting declaration - and I completely understand why it's a nightmare for those involved in the organisation of it, but I would have supported the extension whatever effect it had on the outcome as I think the most important thing is that most of the country gets behind whatever we end up with, so that we do thrive and to stop endless division - and to that end, as with every vote, I hope everyone possible has the opportunity on the day.