Prepping for Brexit thread

[Deleted User]

Tea gratefully accepted, there's not much wrong with anyones world when clutching and sipping a great big steaming hot cup of tea is there, the ultimate in comfort on sad and gloomy days when no matter what you say or do someone will throw mud!

Suffolksue

Thanks for tea ,having just returned from 4 hrs visiting DH( in hospital a week now ) and doing battle with the ward as to what is happening ,I think I need a shot of vodka in it .

Tomorrow I may just tell them that ,having worked in the NHS for 40 yrs ,I do recognise bull sh*t when it is spoken !,

GreyQueen

I have been known to make a nee-naw noise when finding myself listening to this kind of thing. When people ask what I mean by it, I tell 'em it's my b*lls**t detector going off.

Vegastare

On a lighter note partner opened cupboard in spare room and found my hoard 3 x 24 toilet rolls this weekend......recipes for hot curries please.


Me well Brexit is like our British weather changeable and never what they say on telly.

maryb

There is a lovely cartoon in the Torygraph of a local council candidate standing on a doorstep asking " do you have a few minutes spare to rant at me?"



Humour helps in situations like this. For myself, I am marvelling at how quickly one can cycle through the Kubler Ross stages. I'm coming out of depression and getting close to acceptance. Can't influence it, just gotta deal with it

Saipan

GreyQueen wrote: »

I'm sorry you feel that way, saipan.

I have been reading the many articles in the Guardian et al in recent years where individuals who have/ are planning to leave the UK permanantly are given a place to express their reasons, and the majority are not dissimilar to your own.

What I have noted, without exception, is that the interviewees are part of the socio-economic elite, the middle and upper-middle professional classes.

Oftentimes, there is a personal or family history of a close connection with another European country or countries, such as having lived there before, have some family living there now, perhaps even having studied there, owning property or businesses there. Or, being in possession of sought-after professional skills which will make resettlement elsewhere easy while offering professional advancement and lifestyle gratifications.

One could observe that the wealthy and well-educated have choices open to them which are not open to the general run of the population. It was ever thus.

Perhaps it might help to understand the position of ordinary Britons who do not have these many blessings in their lives. The ordinary people who are being crowded out of essential resources such as access to council housing (more than one in ten are presently let to EU migrants) and the appallingly low wages which persist in an economy awash with labour. Labour which can work hard for a pittance in the UK for a couple of years and take home enough to Bulgaria (for example) to buy a house free and clear.I hear this from the workers themselves, btw.

Whereas a Briton will work and work and work for that pittance and still have very little to show for it, and is understandably less willing to bust a gut for the advancement of business owners' profit margins.

I'm not a xenophobe and mix regularly with people from all over Europe. One branch of my family has lived in Belgium since just before World War 1. You really don't want to know how ugly life gets in a continental war when you hold a British passport, even if you and your children have never actually lived in the UK. Heaven forfend we ever see another one of those continental wars, of course, but the members of my family who lived under the close personal attention of the Gestapo have only just passed away.

A point well worth considering, imo, is that what happens when the EU gets its wish to have a pan-European army. Conscription could be part of that, and British emigrees could see their youngsters out on the Russian Front taking part in history in all the worst kind of ways.

I agree with much of what you are saying GreyQueen. My first job in the public sector many years ago was as a social worker (Child Protection) and I am still very much involved in this area, albeit from a slightly different perspective. I have never seen such grinding, relentless, desperate poverty as I have over the last few years, particularly amongst working families, against a backdrop of horrendous cuts to public services.


IMO a complete socio-economic rebalancing is urgently needed - but I see no signs of this on the horizon as I simply do not think governments of any colour have the faintest idea how people live outside the Westminster bubble. I would genuinely love to believe that leaving the EU will change this - however, having weighed things carefully in 2016, I don't think it will, hence voting to remain.


Interesting to read about social housing in your area - I work in one of the most deprived boroughs in England, which has 3 and 4 bedroom houses standing empty as the bedroom tax makes them too expensive for prospective tenants and discretionary housing funds are insufficient to meet local need.


Your comments about the socio-economic elite made me think about whether I come into this category. I don't think I do, as a child of poor tenant farmers, living in tied housing with an outside loo in my early years, who struggled for decades to buy their land, and in the end managed it as much through an unexpected stroke of great luck as by hard work. I was then a very poor single parent in the 1980s working several jobs. I am now professionally qualified though, so maybe that changes things. Either way, we as a family are prepared to take a leap into the dark - no specific links with any other European country - because of the reasons I gave in my earlier post. I find it all very sad.


Thank you for your response, it was an interesting read.

cuddlymarm

Hi guys
On the upside my cupboards, fridge and freezer are full and I have at least a dozen choices of what I fancy to eat. I have enough to last for a while whether we leave on Friday, or the next, or the next.
The small firm I work for has now moved their orders to suppliers in the UK because of the fear of not being able to supply our customers, a shame for the firms that have lost work but good for the firms that have gained. It will be swings and roundabouts for a while I imagine.
As the OP I have long since given up on requesting just prepping no politics but all I ask is we stay civil and any discussion is done nicely.
Have a good and preptastic day
Cuddles

[Deleted User]

Just to set the record straight I have never and will never use the term 'remoaners' it's an insult to peoples free choice and is unacceptable. In any post I've ever made if I refer to people who exercised their right of free choice and voted to remain in the EU I have used the word 'REMAINERS'. Beyond making a different choice of how I chose to vote myself and some folks words online in reaction to that I believe vehemently in freedom of speech and support wholeheartedly the fact that people CAN say how they feel, on occasion I have however wished it was done in a more mannerly fashion.

gettingtheresometime

Saipan wrote: »

A view from a different perspective...


I voted to remain in the EU, as did my extended family and virtually all of my friends and colleagues (I only know one person who voted to leave and he has since changed his mind due to the impact on his business). I can understand the thought that remain voters might feel smugly pleased, but I do not feel this and I don't know anyone else who does. What I do feel is that I don't recognise the country I live in - which is something that I hear constantly from other people, so I am far from alone in this.


As a remain voter, I have been vilified in the mainstream print media (with the exception of the Guardian and the Independent) and frequently insulted by my own government. I am not a 'remoaner' - I have far more important things to worry about, such as the collapse of public services and what this will mean to all of us. Nor am I a 'remaniac' or any of the other frankly silly but nonetheless offensive labels thrown in the direction of those who voted to remain.


What is far less easily ignored are the views of those saying that if you don't want to leave the EU, then you should 'get out' of the UK. I heard this view expressed vehemently on - of all places - the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2, and when I mentioned it to friends they told me that this type of comment is all over social media, accompanied in many instances by threats of violence. I don't 'do' social media but when I looked, I was profoundly disturbed - some of these threats are horrific. And they are not just coming from a handful of people either.


I believe in democracy and my right to think for myself, and crucially, the right of others to do the same. The result of the referendum is what it is and I have prepared in line with what I see as the risks and to protect my own and my family's ability to maintain a good standard of living - no more, no less, privately and quietly, and certainly no moaning.


I also believe deeply in contributing to society as much as I am able to and feel that I try hard to do this - I work 50 hours a week in senior management in the public sector, desperately trying to keep vital health services running against a background of the most severe cuts in living memory (I'm not complaining, btw - millions of us are doing the same). I happily pay tax at a higher rate and fit in voluntary work as and when I can - again, as do millions of others. And yet, because I hold a certain view, I am being told I am not welcome in my own country.


As a family - all three generations of us - we are now seriously looking at leaving the UK and moving to another European country. My adult children and myself are currently focusing on converting our British health/education qualifications to European equivalents if needed to help with this potential move. I heard last week of two senior oncologists planning to do the same.


What this whole sorry Brexit process has shown me is that home is where I feel I can hold a viewpoint and be left in peace with this, as long as I leave others in peace to do the same. Sadly, this is not the UK.

As someone who voted Leave I think it's a really sorry state of affairs that the whole issue has got to this position.....personally I think it's going to be a very long time before any divisions are healed - and I'm sure in some instances they won't.

I also think that the politicians first job the morning after the referendum result was to try and heal the divisions and this was especially the case the morning after the 2017 GE - but unfortunately I think certain politicians saw it as an opportunity to try and enforce their beliefs (on both sides of the argument). I also think some of the comments from the EU have been less than helpful, especially in the last couple of weeks.

As far as prepping is concerned I really don't know what to do.....I feel I have supplies coming out of very orifice yet am twitchy when ever hubby decides to delve into them......if only he knew about the 90 toilet rolls hidden in the suitcases up in the attic.

Obviously the next 24 hrs are going to be the deciding factor though I think I'm done

GreyQueen

Thank you for your considered and measured response, saipan. It's lovely to see that, whatever the rest of the social media world may be doing, MSE is still a place where civil discourse can take place among people of differing opinions.

Social housing is in such intense demand here that there are bids of 70+ to get into a council bedsit. So many of our three and four bed family houses have been sold under RTB that there is an acute crisis which worsens every year. No way would any family not needing the full bedroom allocation ever get near a 3 or 4 bed home, and we have families who could amply overfill those size homes living in terrible conditons, even in B & Bs.

Some people have been 20+ years on the waiting list, and see themselves bumped downwards by economic migrants. The bedroom tax isn't so much of an issue in our area, certainly not for the houses, those affected are mainly the single working-age-not-able-to-work cohort. Some singletons get around it by having another singleton as a lodger, even from the commencement of their tenancies.

In my hometown, which is not this city, people make hollow, unfunny bleak-eyed jokes about moving to somewhere where English is the first language. Many thousands of EU migrants have moved in. Primary healthcare has buckled under the strain, schools are buckling under the strain, the roads are becoming gridlocked. This is little old nothing town in England, not a cosmopolitan centre. When you walk the main shopping street, you walk through people speaking almost exclusively of the slavic languages. You can barely encounter a native speaker of English and would seriously wonder where the heck you were in the world, but for the usual suspects on the shopfronts etc.


People in some areas are feeling like strangers in their own country, and those areas tended to be the ones which went for Brexit by a huge majority.


I could bore for England with RL tales of how the (in my opinion) excessive influx of foriegn nationals is straining the infrastructure of the parts of the country I know of to the limits, and that the burden of that is felt most heavily by those least able to carry it; the poor, the ill, the badly-housed or unhoused, those reliant on state education and state healthcare.........


......... but let me not derail the thread. Instead, can I ask the opinion of OS-ers as to whether they think that loose tea or teabag tea has greater keeping powers?