Preparedness for when

pineapple

The western Pennine area where I live is forecast a big snow dump - up to 40cm :eek: - with possible disruption to power supplies. Not all of us will be affected though so just check and prep accordingly!
Looks like I'll have to bring the Yeti hat back into service
The Cyprus situation is like a slow motion car crash. Just now they are talking about one of the banks closing. In which case the smaller savers would hopefully be covered but others are going to make huge losses. They have reportedly reduced the ATM withdrawal limit at that bank and some businesses are now only taking cash.
Sales of safes in Europe are going to take off I reckon! I've been thinking of getting one myself but I'll continue to stash some cash whatever as (at the mo) crime where I live is virtually unknown.

GreyQueen

:eek: You did say 40 cm of snow possible? That's 16 inches in old money, isn't it?! Take care and deffo keep the yeti hat on.

Getting a bit brass monkeys here and there was only a single tin of 15p spuds in the supermarche on my way home. I bought it so's it'd have company with the rest of the tinned spud stash. Makes me wonder if the rest of the city has heard that there may be snow incoming...........:rotfl:

Really hope not as was hoping to have a scrabble around on the lottie this weekend.

Re Cyprus, it's a worry and people aren't out of the woods yet. I was listening to a business owner (I think it was cafe or a restaurant) talking a few days ago. People have been paying for stuff with debit cards but he can't access his account to get the money to pay suppliers and if this goes on many more days he'll be in trouble. It's easy to see how chain reactions happen. It's astonishing to watch what seems a stable country turn into a financial basket case overnight. It's an outrage that a banking system, effectively private businesses, can be locked down by the politicians in peacetime.

I fetched a Pratchett novel down from the library today, feel in need of a bit of Granny and Nanny to lighten the mood.

Keep warm and keep well, lovely people.

[Deleted User]

Shazaaym wrote: »

Is that a solar charger?

Yes it is.

Don't spose you've got a link?

Here you go.

katep23

GreyQueen wrote: »

Re Cyprus, it's a worry and people aren't out of the woods yet. I was listening to a business owner (I think it was cafe or a restaurant) talking a few days ago. People have been paying for stuff with debit cards but he can't access his account to get the money to pay suppliers and if this goes on many more days he'll be in trouble. It's easy to see how chain reactions happen. It's astonishing to watch what seems a stable country turn into a financial basket case overnight. It's an outrage that a banking system, effectively private businesses, can be locked down by the politicians in peacetime.

What's the saying, we are only 9 meals from anarchy?

I really feel for the people in Cyprus and can't begin to imagine how hard it is. It brings home just what could happen and how you could never guess the half of it.

I tried asking a group of friends the other day about what can they see happening e.g. civil unrest, power cuts etc and they just looked at me blankly. I think people really have their heads in the sand and believe it can't happen here.

OH laughs at my stockpile of food (not sure if it is prepping or hoarding :cool:) but if a disaster occurred and there was no food in the supermarkets we would be fine for weeks (and have camping cooking facilities and spare fuel to cook it).

He won't let me buy a wind up mobile charger though but I did sneak in a wind up torch which even he admits is pretty good

beaujolais-nouveau

The main-stream media are playing down the possibility that Russia will bail-out Cyprus in exchange for having a strategic deep-water naval base there as well as developing the untapped gas supplies. But on the web, this seems to be the outcome that is expectedly rapidly to come to pass.

Cyprus is just too useful, strategically.

Listen to what is not being said. The MSM reported that the Cyprus finance minister returned from Moscow without having made a deal. I can't help feeling that the opposite is the truth but the Russians won't announce it until all their chess pieces are in place.

beaujolais-nouveau

mrs_lds wrote: »

We think we have it bad on the roads in south Africa my friend says that they are stealing man hole covers to sell Onto metal dealers.

Hundreds of drain covers were stolen a couple of years ago in this part of south-east London, as the price of scrap metal was/is so high.

Butterfly_Brain

Just had to go through my store cupboard and pull out the Asda smart price corned beef to take back tomorrow, evidently it is 50% horsemeat, I paid for beef not blurdy horse:mad: so I will sort out the tesco and sainsbury ones as well just in case I have to take them back too and I am watching the situation on the tins of stewing steak, mince and steak pies :mad: :mad:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296853/Asda-removes-budget-cans-corned-beef-shelves-tests-contain-50-horse-meat.html

GreyQueen

katep23, I know exactly what you mean about blank looks, so much so that I refrain from prepperish issues in conversation in RL. Partly this is because you're risking your future security in the event of a crisis and I intend to see family and self right before others, but partly because it's a hiding to nowhere.

I've talked to my Nan, who had her 2 young children in WW2. She was burned out of one home and in another she and the babies were hiding under a table as an enemy fighter shot up the street (someone had broken the blackout at the same time as an enemy plane had got past our defences). This was a piddly little village in the middle of nowhere. Later in the war a crippled US bomber avoided hitting the family home by a few feet before it crashed.

Another set of relatives were stuck in occupied Europe, yet another went thru the Blitz in the East End. I know people whose families were wiped out in the death camps, parents of one person came over on the kindertransport and grandparents of another wiped out in a Polish village whilst they were overseas.

All of these terrible things are in living memory for our oldest people. My being here is fairly miraculous, considering Mum was in the East End as a tot and Dad was a baby in the countryside and both had very near squeaks. Auntie L was taken away by the Gestapo twice and twice got back. Her brother was taken into Germany as a forced labourer and was gone for years.

I know a woman whose brother escaped being caught up the Kings Cross fire by seconds, someone else whose brother missed the 7/7 bombings by a couple of minutes, someone whose mother escaped the burning plane at Manchester Airport (she doesn't fly at all now). I don't fly often (less than a dozen flights in my whole life) but have had to have an emergency landing with a crippled plane and full bells and whistles. I've also been on coaches where the brakes failed (twice!) and been first on the scene at several car crashes inc one where we had to get a woman from a burning car.

I don't consider that I have a particularly exciting life but stuff happens, like the only time kid bruv came to visit me in Scotland was the day of the hurricane of 1987 and he was MIA for 16 hours somewhere in the transport network and I was going spare.............. He got to mine past midnight.

The point I'm trying to make is that Stuff Happens. It doesn't wait until you're ready and up for it, it just happens slap bang in the middle of everyday life and you have to get on with it with only such resources that you have to hand. Several times in my life I've been told that I was lucky and looked at the speaker with amusement.

What they were seeing wasn't luck, it was the enactment of Plan B or Plan C for when Plan A failed. It had all been worked out in advance and the necessary steps put in place to mean that I could move smoothly from one plan to another.

If you prep, and it isn't needed, you get called a nutjob tinhat paranoiac. If you do need your preps, you're called lucky. Sometimes you can't win.:p

ETA; They've stolen drain covers here in Provincial City too. Not too many now but they were disappearing by the dozen at one point. Not to mention the lead flashing and running around cutting the copper condensate pipes off the houses.

greenbee

2tonsils wrote: »

Has anyone on here had experience of MRI scans, particularly where they inject dye before the image is done? Thanks...just heard some scary reports and I am due to go for one on my shoulder and upper arm soon!

GreyQueen wrote: »

Please don't distress yourself over this.

I have had many MRI scans, inc multiple scans in a single session and one of which included the dye injection.

All I felt was a very faint sensation of "warmth" as the dye went into my arm, like a localised hot flush. It lasted a few seconds and had no other effects whatsover. Once I'd dressed again, I had a cuppa from my flask in the hospital carpark then drove 30 miles home alone on the main roads. No problems.

Unlike GQ I found the dye cold, and wasn't keen on the smell as it went past my clavicle, but otherwise it was fine. I'm well known in my radiology dept for my habit of falling asleep in the scanner apparently they need you to be awake at times so you can hold your breath or something tedious like that. :cool:

DawnW

Brilliant post GQ x