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Leaver or Limpet – How long with Johnson lead? – politicalbetting.com

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  • ClippP said:

    Scott_xP said:

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.

    Brexiteers will blame someone else for their folly till the day they die...
    I'm sure they'll be happy to take the credit in the unlikely event that Brexit is a success.

    The responsibility for Brexit lies firmly in the hands of those who campaigned and voted for it. If it is a success, they can claim the credit; if it is a failure, well, they are to blame.
    And maybe the remain campaign should have done a lot better
    The Remain campaign was run by the Tories, Mr Wales. It was a shambles.
    .
    Happened to be discussing the apportionment of blame with a good friend this morning.

    We agreed that you must start at the top with the most blame allocated to those with most power, so that would be the EU itself. At the bottom the voters, whilst not blameless shoulder the least responsibity. In between, Cameron, the ERG, both major Parties, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Press are all well-worthy of mention, but you can add your own favorites according to taste.

    Corbyn and the Labour Party figure quite high for me because they are supposed to be representing and helping the very people most vulnerable to the consequences of Brexit.
    Good post
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,209

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884
    alex_ said:

    Lol @ PT’s “people won’t notice gaps on supermarket shelves because they’ll be hidden with other stuff” argument.

    Most people tend to go into supermarkets with shopping lists of things they want to buy. When they can’t buy half the things on the list they’re not going to just shrug and say “ah well, obviously there just wasn’t space for the supermarket to fit them in”!

    And actually supermarkets won’t just cover all the gaps - because that will just make customers even more angry that they’re wasting time looking for stuff that isn’t there. At least an empty shelf, clearly labelled, saves them the bother of looking.

    Even more to the point, at the present, no gap usually means the supermarket has stopped stocking your favourite. For good. Screw you, loyal customer.

    Unless of course you go to Lidl whose shelves are in more flux than a sloth with diarrhoea.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    I have no idea what the actual supply situation was in March. According to the supermarkets, there might not have been an actual problem, but there were those empty shelves nevertheless. Now, it is likely, although I appreciate this is coming from experts so we're slightly in limbo here, that we will have actual supply chain disruption in January.

    So previously we (might have) had no actual disruption to supply and panic buying resulted in empty shelves for a matter of weeks. In Jan we might have actual disruption to supply. What do you think might happen then?
    I have already said what will happen - product substitution.

    The UK has enough products from domestic production and non-EU imports combined to keep shelves full even if all trade with the EU halted overnight. It won't though.
  • ClippP said:

    Scott_xP said:

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.

    Brexiteers will blame someone else for their folly till the day they die...
    I'm sure they'll be happy to take the credit in the unlikely event that Brexit is a success.

    The responsibility for Brexit lies firmly in the hands of those who campaigned and voted for it. If it is a success, they can claim the credit; if it is a failure, well, they are to blame.
    And maybe the remain campaign should have done a lot better
    The Remain campaign was run by the Tories, Mr Wales. It was a shambles.
    .
    So Labour stood on the sidelines again then
    Of course, Peter Mandelson wanted to launch a full-scale assault on Boris and destroy the very dark heart of the Leave campaign. But Dave, nice chap that he was, couldn't bring himself to be beastly to an old school and Bullingdon pal. I bet Dave bitterly regrets that now - for the sake of the nation if not himself.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,413
    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    couscous or noodles are the fastest thing youll cook aside from bread and wraps


  • The supermarkets will find a way to keep the shelves full, even if there's some substitution.

    Some spoke about a shortage of parmesan, if need be people might see supermarkets selling "Italian style hard cheese" instead. 🤷🏻‍♂️
    https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/greenside-deli-italian-hard-cheese-525275011

    Supermarkets can't afford to keep shelves empty for long so they put something else in - and if the shelves are full people won't see it as being empty.

    Greenside Deli Italian-Style Hard Cheese - Origin: Produced from Hungarian milk

    There's a review of it on Amazon: "Pretends to be a kind of cheese in likes of parmesan, but it’s an ordinary not-so-hard cheese. And not a tasty one."

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greenside-Deli-Italian-Style-Cheese/product-reviews/B08D8FFBD1/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews

    But otherwise, good point. I'm sure that, as in wartime, we'll find some imaginative and inferior substitutes for the normal shop.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    Whether I can cook or not is not the point (though you must have been away on a march or something when we were discussing the use of white glober turnips in mutton or hoggety stew). It's the sort of person who cannot cook because they simply do not have the time in the glorious gig ecnomy that really concerns me.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    I have no idea what the actual supply situation was in March. According to the supermarkets, there might not have been an actual problem, but there were those empty shelves nevertheless. Now, it is likely, although I appreciate this is coming from experts so we're slightly in limbo here, that we will have actual supply chain disruption in January.

    So previously we (might have) had no actual disruption to supply and panic buying resulted in empty shelves for a matter of weeks. In Jan we might have actual disruption to supply. What do you think might happen then?
    Europe's fattest nation gets to lose some weight.

    Oh the horror
    Well I prefer that approach. At least it's honest.

    Yes there will be shortages of supermarket frozen pizzas but you fat bastards need to lose a bit of weight so result.

    A touch too long for the side of a bus but certainly a powerful message.
  • Pro_Rata said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Tory members will cling on to Brexit, and will want someone who can articulate what Brexit is actually for

    BoZo was that guy

    Brexit was for "getting done"

    It's done.

    And it's shit.
    You think your former fellows aren't mad enough to cling on to the precious in the face of a much higher tsunami of reason? This is the Tory membership, not the general public. Never overestimate them on this subject.


    Boris was never a true believer, it was just ambition, Sunak is the real deal etc. etc. Blame anything but Brexit

    This is the ruthless election winning machine that once chose IDS after all.
    This is the ruthless election winning machine that never let IDS anywhere near leading them into an election....
    Actually IDS did better than expected at the locals, gaining hundreds of seats, but the plotters were not to be distracted by mere plebs voting and replaced him with Howard, who duly flopped at the next election.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884
    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    Most of our risotto rice comes from Italy.

    And where is the protein to come from? It can't all come from rice.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,102
    edited December 2020
    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    Maybe BDS

    And some of it is bordering on hysteria
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208



    The supermarkets will find a way to keep the shelves full, even if there's some substitution.

    Some spoke about a shortage of parmesan, if need be people might see supermarkets selling "Italian style hard cheese" instead. 🤷🏻‍♂️
    https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/greenside-deli-italian-hard-cheese-525275011

    Supermarkets can't afford to keep shelves empty for long so they put something else in - and if the shelves are full people won't see it as being empty.

    Greenside Deli Italian-Style Hard Cheese - Origin: Produced from Hungarian milk

    There's a review of it on Amazon: "Pretends to be a kind of cheese in likes of parmesan, but it’s an ordinary not-so-hard cheese. And not a tasty one."

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greenside-Deli-Italian-Style-Cheese/product-reviews/B08D8FFBD1/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews

    But otherwise, good point. I'm sure that, as in wartime, we'll find some imaginative and inferior substitutes for the normal shop.
    I did try the Morrisons Danish Parmesan once. Yuck! It and the Hungarian version don't even solve the Kent Lorry Park problem
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,751

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Also, that was a one-off demand spike; people bought loads because they didn't know how long they were stocking up for. And after that, demand went down. Partly because people had stuff at home, but also because people stayed home because they were afraid to go out. So after the wobble, most things settled down again very quickly.

    Here, the concern is about a permanent change to the equilibrium- what things are going to be more expensive to bring into the country, what things aren't going to be worth attempting because of delays or the tiny margins that supermarkets run on? That's going to take much longer to stabilise.
    The supermarkets will find a way to keep the shelves full, even if there's some substitution.

    Some spoke about a shortage of parmesan, if need be people might see supermarkets selling "Italian style hard cheese" instead. 🤷🏻‍♂️
    https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/greenside-deli-italian-hard-cheese-525275011

    Supermarkets can't afford to keep shelves empty for long so they put something else in - and if the shelves are full people won't see it as being empty.
    You really are every bit as stupid as I thought.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,413
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    Whether I can cook or not is not the point (though you must have been away on a march or something when we were discussing the use of white glober turnips in mutton or hoggety stew). It's the sort of person who cannot cook because they simply do not have the time in the glorious gig ecnomy that really concerns me.
    frankly every one can cook, they just have to learn some fast recipes. People inventing tabloid horror stories isnt real life.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,773
    Carnyx said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    Most of our risotto rice comes from Italy.

    And where is the protein to come from? It can't all come from rice.
    You might just be stretching your argument.

    Not so much protein in rice.
  • felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    I have no idea what the actual supply situation was in March. According to the supermarkets, there might not have been an actual problem, but there were those empty shelves nevertheless. Now, it is likely, although I appreciate this is coming from experts so we're slightly in limbo here, that we will have actual supply chain disruption in January.

    So previously we (might have) had no actual disruption to supply and panic buying resulted in empty shelves for a matter of weeks. In Jan we might have actual disruption to supply. What do you think might happen then?
    I have already said what will happen - product substitution.

    The UK has enough products from domestic production and non-EU imports combined to keep shelves full even if all trade with the EU halted overnight. It won't though.
    I'd be interested to see the numbers on that.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884
    Omnium said:

    Carnyx said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    Most of our risotto rice comes from Italy.

    And where is the protein to come from? It can't all come from rice.
    You might just be stretching your argument.

    Not so much protein in rice.
    That is the point I am making - more protein is needed. Eggs? Cheese? Milk?

  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    couscous or noodles are the fastest thing youll cook aside from bread and wraps
    My favourite quick and cheap meal is an omelette. It is dead easy and if you do it right, a sophisticated dish.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    To be clear, I have no idea to what extent there will or won't be food shortages. In general, my belief in Brexit has remained unchanged for four and a half years. There will be value destruction but pretty similar to another 2p on beer and fags. People will be poorer but it won't really be noticeable.

    That said, it does appear to me that the risks are on the downside. And if that downside transpires then it might be quite severe. I suppose the government feels lucky.

    Oh and this is with a deal. We won't no deal. We will either deal or have an extension.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,653
    edited December 2020

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    Whether I can cook or not is not the point (though you must have been away on a march or something when we were discussing the use of white glober turnips in mutton or hoggety stew). It's the sort of person who cannot cook because they simply do not have the time in the glorious gig ecnomy that really concerns me.
    frankly every one can cook, they just have to learn some fast recipes. People inventing tabloid horror stories isnt real life.

    It's not your real life or mine, but that does not mean it is not other people's.

  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,298
    rcs1000 said:

    Cummings is right about the superforecasters book, it is excellent.

    But the funny bit is that Cummings seems to be the antithesis of what it recommends. Superforecasters recommends rapid evolution, frequently making small changes. It says iteration works and revolutions don't.

    The messages that I remember were:

    1) mistrust subject experts (particularly lawyers),
    2) try to be a jack of all trades,
    3) look at previous historical evidence to anchor your expectations
    4) make sure you write down and go back to your predictions.

    By those metrics, Cummings scores okay.
    I don't think editing blog posts to look more prescient is recommended though...
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    Indeed. But I remember that, historically, the mutinies in the Royal Navy and British Army often came when food was inadequate in quantity or was substituted with stuff that was unfamiliar in itself. I wouldn't be too confident about whether it doesn't matter to people.
  • felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
  • I have an old book of recipes from WWII, which I bought years ago in a junk shop. I hadn't realised it would come in useful one day.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884

    I have an old book of recipes from WWII, which I bought years ago in a junk shop. I hadn't realised it would come in useful one day.

    Well, the whale recipes can be crossed out at once (unless you visit Iceland or somewhere like that).

    THis might also be handy -

    https://the1940sexperiment.com/
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,298
    Scott_xP said:
    Not the first time Johnson has caught crabs?
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    Whether I can cook or not is not the point (though you must have been away on a march or something when we were discussing the use of white glober turnips in mutton or hoggety stew). It's the sort of person who cannot cook because they simply do not have the time in the glorious gig ecnomy that really concerns me.
    Throughout the restrictions I've mostly had to cook 7 meals a week - none have taken more than 30 minutes including prep time and most have used cheap ingredients because you don't need a fortune to make really tasty food. Typical cost of a meal per head well under €2. Could easily have spent less by using less meat more often.
  • FeersumEnjineeyaFeersumEnjineeya Posts: 4,429
    edited December 2020

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
    Don't forget normalcy bias - the irrational tendency to believe that things will go on pretty much as normal despite evidence to the contrary.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    Carnyx said:

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    Indeed. But I remember that, historically, the mutinies in the Royal Navy and British Army often came when food was inadequate in quantity or was substituted with stuff that was unfamiliar in itself. I wouldn't be too confident about whether it doesn't matter to people.
    Three cardinal rules of war:

    1. Don't mess with soldiers' mail or food
    2. Don't march on Moscow
    3. Don't kick the volleyball
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,773
    Carnyx said:

    Omnium said:

    Carnyx said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    Most of our risotto rice comes from Italy.

    And where is the protein to come from? It can't all come from rice.
    You might just be stretching your argument.

    Not so much protein in rice.
    That is the point I am making - more protein is needed. Eggs? Cheese? Milk?

    Yes please. Add some pasta and some good wine.

    But of course you mean failing all these things, but there are loads of sources - lentils, chickpeas it seems.


    My GP told me that in his view we'd be healthier if we lived on berries and nuts - I'm sure he was discounting the odd steak and chips with a bottle of red along the way, but equally I'm sure he had a point.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,413
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    I have no idea what the actual supply situation was in March. According to the supermarkets, there might not have been an actual problem, but there were those empty shelves nevertheless. Now, it is likely, although I appreciate this is coming from experts so we're slightly in limbo here, that we will have actual supply chain disruption in January.

    So previously we (might have) had no actual disruption to supply and panic buying resulted in empty shelves for a matter of weeks. In Jan we might have actual disruption to supply. What do you think might happen then?
    Europe's fattest nation gets to lose some weight.

    Oh the horror
    Well I prefer that approach. At least it's honest.

    Yes there will be shortages of supermarket frozen pizzas but you fat bastards need to lose a bit of weight so result.

    A touch too long for the side of a bus but certainly a powerful message.
    I find it quite amusing that the impact of horror stories post Brexit are precisely those being promoted by the liberal middle class.

    Lose weight, drink less, cut carbon = food shortages, closed pubs, no cars

    Its almost as if the bad things only apply to people you dont like whereas you have all the virtuous upside.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,821
    edited December 2020
    FF43 said:


    My favourite quick and cheap meal is an omelette. It is dead easy and if you do it right, a sophisticated dish.

    Indeed, my omelette with cheddar and spears of roast asparagus is a dish fit for a emperor. Even a straightforward cheese omelette, if done well, is a dish fit for a king, and it takes hardly any time.

    Ideally you need really good, fresh, farm eggs. And of course the key thing is not to overcook it, you need to be brave and take it off whilst it's still quite runny. Delicious!
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    Not for a supermarket - for a manufacturer, having worked for various manufacturers supplying the retail sector for nearly 20 years. Supermarkets being "dynamic". Philip may want to chose any supermarket and observe the overall layout. Some areas have shelves - ambient products. Some areas display fruit and vegetables - produce. Some areas are fridges for fresh products. Some are freezers. We aren't going to run out of frozen food (though we have run out of frozen storage nationally). We aren't going to run out of ambient. Fresh and Chilled though? Different issue - we import an awful lot and pack in the UK (with Philip's Union Flag) products imported from other countries. A huge amount of food that is made here uses imported ingredients.

    So this dynamic supermarket. Philip seems to be suggesting they will face over an empty chilled aisle with tins of beans. They won't...
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,413

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    Is that a royal we ?
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    On your last point .. if only we could wait and see without the silly hype at the moment.The wolf howling atm is way ott.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,773
    Carnyx said:

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    Indeed. But I remember that, historically, the mutinies in the Royal Navy and British Army often came when food was inadequate in quantity or was substituted with stuff that was unfamiliar in itself. I wouldn't be too confident about whether it doesn't matter to people.
    I don't think that's right. Food was always a factor, but not the major one.
  • felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
    Don't forget normalcy bias - the irrational tendency to believe that things will go on pretty much as normal despite evidence to the contrary.
    I expect changes and disruption but not the armageddon predicted by some on here
  • FF43 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    couscous or noodles are the fastest thing youll cook aside from bread and wraps
    My favourite quick and cheap meal is an omelette. It is dead easy and if you do it right, a sophisticated dish.

    Toast and marmite with scrambled eggs on top. A bit of cheese on top of the toast that melts on impact with the hot egg if you are feeling particularly sophisticated.

  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
    Don't forget normalcy bias - the irrational tendency to believe that things will go on pretty much as normal despite evidence to the contrary.
    I expect changes and disruption but not the armageddon predicted by some on here
    Scott won't be content without riots in the streets like.... say....in Paris every w/e :smiley:
  • Carnyx said:

    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".

    You haven't been to a supermarket recently, have you Phil?

    I was in my local Aldi earlier today. Every single shelf was full. Union Flags galore.
    I bet you didn't notice or even think how many items are currently being given double shelf space to hide gaps?
    And isn't Aldi a supermarket which has all sorts of changes from week to week anyway? One won't notice gaps because they exist all the time. It's places like Tescos where the gaps will stick out, either visually or when one tries to find one's favourite tomato sauce or pineapple pizza.
    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,463

    ClippP said:

    Scott_xP said:

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.

    Brexiteers will blame someone else for their folly till the day they die...
    I'm sure they'll be happy to take the credit in the unlikely event that Brexit is a success.

    The responsibility for Brexit lies firmly in the hands of those who campaigned and voted for it. If it is a success, they can claim the credit; if it is a failure, well, they are to blame.
    And maybe the remain campaign should have done a lot better
    The Remain campaign was run by the Tories, Mr Wales. It was a shambles.
    .
    So Labour stood on the sidelines again then
    As I recall the Tories said they could manage.
  • QuincelQuincel Posts: 4,042
    Scott_xP said:
    Initially I misread the final sentence as 'Typical' and thought 'Bit harsh...'
  • felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
    Don't forget normalcy bias - the irrational tendency to believe that things will go on pretty much as normal despite evidence to the contrary.
    I expect changes and disruption but not the armageddon predicted by some on here
    I think there is a reasonable possibility, not of Armageddon, but of actual food shortages during the first few months of next year. That's why I've been stocking up on essentials for the past few months. If my fears turn out to be unjustified, then no harm done - we'll just eat through the stocks. Do you think this is unreasonable? Are you doing something similar, or simply trusting that all will be well?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
    Don't forget normalcy bias - the irrational tendency to believe that things will go on pretty much as normal despite evidence to the contrary.
    I expect changes and disruption but not the armageddon predicted by some on here
    I think there is a reasonable possibility, not of Armageddon, but of actual food shortages during the first few months of next year. That's why I've been stocking up on essentials for the past few months. If my fears turn out to be unjustified, then no harm done - we'll just eat through the stocks. Do you think this is unreasonable? Are you doing something similar, or simply trusting that all will be well?
    No, noit unreasonable - jsut see what @RochdalePioneers has just posted.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,798
    edited December 2020
    FF43 said:

    Panic-buying isn't the medium term issue for Brexit; it's shortages of some foodstuffs. There will be less choice and what there is becomes more expensive.

    Brexit Britain is East Germany without the Stasi. Most East Germans got on with it.

    Yes I have no real deep concerns about the post-Brexit food situation for me personally. But I can cook a wide range of meals from scratch and if the price of my food purchases doubled I could still easily afford them. On the other hand, I am sure there will be shortages of some things and prices will go up, which is annoying for me but will be devastating for some people.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,001
    Ben Swain to the rescue...
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,223

    On topic: Yes, in general, Stuff Doesn't Happen*. I seem to recall making a series of profitable bets that Gordon Brown wasn't about to leave office, despite the obvious merit (from Labour's point of view) of ditching him and the various Snow Plots and other amusements. One of the important reasons for this is the one Pip mentions: Various factions may dislike aspects of [the] leadership, but if they agitate for his removal they risk an even worse (from their perspective) replacement.

    And yet, and yet... We're about to enter a scenario completely unprecedented in peacetime, one where a major Western country and complex inter-connected economy voluntarily imposes massive economic and practical disruption on itself. Someone is going to get a hell of a lot of blame for that from every side. For the Brexiteers, as well as blaming the EU being bastards for having the temerity to take back control, it will be the wrong deal or the wrong sort of No Deal which causes the chaos. Farage is already on the case. For everyone else it will be the whole principle of Brexit, or at least the particular chaotic and bungling form of Brexit which the UK government has blundered into. Either way the buck stops with Boris. Enough to displace him? It doesn't look like it at the moment, but the chaos hasn't hit yet. Who knows?

    * Until it does, of course. Then it can happen fast.

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.
    Collective is better. This is a Tory thing. Brexit = Tory. It's all about them. The Tories.


  • Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,413
    kinabalu said:

    On topic: Yes, in general, Stuff Doesn't Happen*. I seem to recall making a series of profitable bets that Gordon Brown wasn't about to leave office, despite the obvious merit (from Labour's point of view) of ditching him and the various Snow Plots and other amusements. One of the important reasons for this is the one Pip mentions: Various factions may dislike aspects of [the] leadership, but if they agitate for his removal they risk an even worse (from their perspective) replacement.

    And yet, and yet... We're about to enter a scenario completely unprecedented in peacetime, one where a major Western country and complex inter-connected economy voluntarily imposes massive economic and practical disruption on itself. Someone is going to get a hell of a lot of blame for that from every side. For the Brexiteers, as well as blaming the EU being bastards for having the temerity to take back control, it will be the wrong deal or the wrong sort of No Deal which causes the chaos. Farage is already on the case. For everyone else it will be the whole principle of Brexit, or at least the particular chaotic and bungling form of Brexit which the UK government has blundered into. Either way the buck stops with Boris. Enough to displace him? It doesn't look like it at the moment, but the chaos hasn't hit yet. Who knows?

    * Until it does, of course. Then it can happen fast.

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.
    Collective is better. This is a Tory thing. Brexit = Tory. It's all about them. The Tories.
    riiiight which is why all those Labour voters went OUT
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,223
    edited December 2020
    Any updates from John Redwood on the fish?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884

    FF43 said:

    Panic-buying isn't the medium term issue for Brexit; it's shortages of some foodstuffs. There will be less choice and what there is becomes more expensive.

    Brexit Britain is East Germany without the Stasi. Most East Germans got on with it.

    Yes I have no real deep concerns about the post-Brexit food situation for me personally. But I can cook a wide range of meals from scratch and if the price of my food purchases doubled I could still easily afford them. On the other hand, I am sure there will be shortages of some things and prices will go up, which is annoying for me but will be devastating for some people.
    Especially6 those in the shite because of the economic impact of the pox.

    I rfeel some people on this board are being unsympathetic, not to mention inhumane, about the likely impact of Brexit on the poorest in society (not to mention a lot of folk who were until very recently middle class).
  • Carnyx said:

    FF43 said:

    Panic-buying isn't the medium term issue for Brexit; it's shortages of some foodstuffs. There will be less choice and what there is becomes more expensive.

    Brexit Britain is East Germany without the Stasi. Most East Germans got on with it.

    Yes I have no real deep concerns about the post-Brexit food situation for me personally. But I can cook a wide range of meals from scratch and if the price of my food purchases doubled I could still easily afford them. On the other hand, I am sure there will be shortages of some things and prices will go up, which is annoying for me but will be devastating for some people.
    Especially6 those in the shite because of the economic impact of the pox.

    I rfeel some people on this board are being unsympathetic, not to mention inhumane, about the likely impact of Brexit on the poorest in society (not to mention a lot of folk who were until very recently middle class).
    There has always been a strong Let Them Eat Lentils tendency on PB.
  • felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    To be fair it is not clear just what will happen post 1st January in a no deal scenario and as is so often the case it is rare for some of the catastrophising views on here to become reality
    Don't forget normalcy bias - the irrational tendency to believe that things will go on pretty much as normal despite evidence to the contrary.
    I expect changes and disruption but not the armageddon predicted by some on here
    I think there is a reasonable possibility, not of Armageddon, but of actual food shortages during the first few months of next year. That's why I've been stocking up on essentials for the past few months. If my fears turn out to be unjustified, then no harm done - we'll just eat through the stocks. Do you think this is unreasonable? Are you doing something similar, or simply trusting that all will be well?
    I have not taken action to stockpile and while concerned will adapt if and when it is necessary
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,699

    kinabalu said:

    On topic: Yes, in general, Stuff Doesn't Happen*. I seem to recall making a series of profitable bets that Gordon Brown wasn't about to leave office, despite the obvious merit (from Labour's point of view) of ditching him and the various Snow Plots and other amusements. One of the important reasons for this is the one Pip mentions: Various factions may dislike aspects of [the] leadership, but if they agitate for his removal they risk an even worse (from their perspective) replacement.

    And yet, and yet... We're about to enter a scenario completely unprecedented in peacetime, one where a major Western country and complex inter-connected economy voluntarily imposes massive economic and practical disruption on itself. Someone is going to get a hell of a lot of blame for that from every side. For the Brexiteers, as well as blaming the EU being bastards for having the temerity to take back control, it will be the wrong deal or the wrong sort of No Deal which causes the chaos. Farage is already on the case. For everyone else it will be the whole principle of Brexit, or at least the particular chaotic and bungling form of Brexit which the UK government has blundered into. Either way the buck stops with Boris. Enough to displace him? It doesn't look like it at the moment, but the chaos hasn't hit yet. Who knows?

    * Until it does, of course. Then it can happen fast.

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.
    Collective is better. This is a Tory thing. Brexit = Tory. It's all about them. The Tories.
    riiiight which is why all those Labour voters went OUT
    A minority of Labour voters voted Leave.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603
    Scott_xP said:
    But.....

    The provisions of the Internal Market Bill were only needed if we have no deal.
  • No chance of hard Brexit
    No chance of no deal Brexit
    No chance we won't cope with no deal Brexit

    Is that the Leaver journey, more or less?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,699
    kinabalu said:

    Any updates from John Redwood on the fish?

    https://twitter.com/johnredwood/status/1335832985422229504?s=21
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205
    We've seen the power of propaganda in the USA recently. Perhaps a more limited version could be used here.

    Boris gets on every trawler & visits every fishmonger going proclaiming how wonderful the deal is for our fisherman and whatever the reality is is thus less important as the pro EU side neverly overly cared about fishing to dismiss the falsehoods pumped out by No 10 on folding the cards ?


  • Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    You can freeze milk and bread - we have a freezer dedicated to just that. And if you have a bread making machine, you can easily make bread from stockpiled flour. You can buy packs of ready-frozen vegetables. Not as good as fresh, admittedly, but a lot better than no veg.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603
    Quincel said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Initially I misread the final sentence as 'Typical' and thought 'Bit harsh...'
    A photo-op with Boris and crabs. What could possibly go wrong?
  • Listening to Penny Mordaunt at the dispatch box she should be in the cabinet
  • kinabalu said:

    Any updates from John Redwood on the fish?

    https://twitter.com/johnredwood/status/1335832985422229504?s=21
    I'd love to think that Johnny R. used the word 'scaled' deliberately there, but I fear not.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,223

    kinabalu said:

    Any updates from John Redwood on the fish?

    https://twitter.com/johnredwood/status/1335832985422229504?s=21
    :smile: - Ah excellent.

    "They have just had four and a half years of our fish."

    Probably my favourite tweeter right now.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    You just don't understand the supply chain.

    We saw an initial blitzing of certain product categories - Pasta, Toilet Rolls, Paracetamol where people went mad and bought stuff they didn't need. After that we saw major shortage across a significant number of categories caused by the major modal shift in how people eat. The lockdown closed pubs and restaurants and workspaces - all the meals that used to be eaten out were now eaten at home. Pack formats became a major issue - there wasn't a shortage in beans but there was a shortage in retail cans and a surplus of huuuuge catering cans.

    Retailers were working flat out as were manufacturers trying to respond to wild swings in demand with a supply chain full of holes. Through this longer phase the gaps were not caused by panic buying at all - they were caused by supply chain disruption. We are about to have a major supply chain disruption which will cause not just short term inability to move products / materials but a long term need to try and restructure what comes from where and when.

    Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers - all expecting long term issues and price rises. What do they know about it...
  • Scott_xP said:
    File under: No shit Sherlock.

    That has always been obvious.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,223

    No chance of hard Brexit
    No chance of no deal Brexit
    No chance we won't cope with no deal Brexit

    Is that the Leaver journey, more or less?

    "Won't be Armegeddon".
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603

    kinabalu said:

    On topic: Yes, in general, Stuff Doesn't Happen*. I seem to recall making a series of profitable bets that Gordon Brown wasn't about to leave office, despite the obvious merit (from Labour's point of view) of ditching him and the various Snow Plots and other amusements. One of the important reasons for this is the one Pip mentions: Various factions may dislike aspects of [the] leadership, but if they agitate for his removal they risk an even worse (from their perspective) replacement.

    And yet, and yet... We're about to enter a scenario completely unprecedented in peacetime, one where a major Western country and complex inter-connected economy voluntarily imposes massive economic and practical disruption on itself. Someone is going to get a hell of a lot of blame for that from every side. For the Brexiteers, as well as blaming the EU being bastards for having the temerity to take back control, it will be the wrong deal or the wrong sort of No Deal which causes the chaos. Farage is already on the case. For everyone else it will be the whole principle of Brexit, or at least the particular chaotic and bungling form of Brexit which the UK government has blundered into. Either way the buck stops with Boris. Enough to displace him? It doesn't look like it at the moment, but the chaos hasn't hit yet. Who knows?

    * Until it does, of course. Then it can happen fast.

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.
    Collective is better. This is a Tory thing. Brexit = Tory. It's all about them. The Tories.
    riiiight which is why all those Labour voters went OUT
    A minority of Labour voters voted Leave.
    "A minority" = Boris with an 80 seat majority.....
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,223

    kinabalu said:

    On topic: Yes, in general, Stuff Doesn't Happen*. I seem to recall making a series of profitable bets that Gordon Brown wasn't about to leave office, despite the obvious merit (from Labour's point of view) of ditching him and the various Snow Plots and other amusements. One of the important reasons for this is the one Pip mentions: Various factions may dislike aspects of [the] leadership, but if they agitate for his removal they risk an even worse (from their perspective) replacement.

    And yet, and yet... We're about to enter a scenario completely unprecedented in peacetime, one where a major Western country and complex inter-connected economy voluntarily imposes massive economic and practical disruption on itself. Someone is going to get a hell of a lot of blame for that from every side. For the Brexiteers, as well as blaming the EU being bastards for having the temerity to take back control, it will be the wrong deal or the wrong sort of No Deal which causes the chaos. Farage is already on the case. For everyone else it will be the whole principle of Brexit, or at least the particular chaotic and bungling form of Brexit which the UK government has blundered into. Either way the buck stops with Boris. Enough to displace him? It doesn't look like it at the moment, but the chaos hasn't hit yet. Who knows?

    * Until it does, of course. Then it can happen fast.

    The person to blame is David Cameron, he called the referendum.
    Collective is better. This is a Tory thing. Brexit = Tory. It's all about them. The Tories.
    riiiight which is why all those Labour voters went OUT
    No Tories, No Brexit.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,773

    FF43 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    couscous or noodles are the fastest thing youll cook aside from bread and wraps
    My favourite quick and cheap meal is an omelette. It is dead easy and if you do it right, a sophisticated dish.

    Toast and marmite with scrambled eggs on top. A bit of cheese on top of the toast that melts on impact with the hot egg if you are feeling particularly sophisticated.

    The better you cook your eggs the less need for cheese and marmite. Fantastic toast is the key, and some butter on the toast. Then perfectly cooked eggs. A hint of shaved cheese perhaps and the slightest taint of marmite on the buttering knife.

    All this celebratory bake off crap and you can't buy a decent loaf of bread!

    We need a blokeish bake-off. Bread for cheese and pickle sandwiches, bread for bacon sandwiches, buns for burgers, buns for hotdogs. Bread for pate, and we need to get the good pate's back for this bread.

  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603
    Omnium said:

    FF43 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    couscous or noodles are the fastest thing youll cook aside from bread and wraps
    My favourite quick and cheap meal is an omelette. It is dead easy and if you do it right, a sophisticated dish.

    Toast and marmite with scrambled eggs on top. A bit of cheese on top of the toast that melts on impact with the hot egg if you are feeling particularly sophisticated.

    The better you cook your eggs the less need for cheese and marmite. Fantastic toast is the key, and some butter on the toast. Then perfectly cooked eggs. A hint of shaved cheese perhaps and the slightest taint of marmite on the buttering knife.

    All this celebratory bake off crap and you can't buy a decent loaf of bread!

    We need a blokeish bake-off. Bread for cheese and pickle sandwiches, bread for bacon sandwiches, buns for burgers, buns for hotdogs. Bread for pate, and we need to get the good pate's back for this bread.

    I can cook faultless boiled eggs, time after time: whites set, yolks runny.

    Food of the Gods.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    You just don't understand the supply chain.

    We saw an initial blitzing of certain product categories - Pasta, Toilet Rolls, Paracetamol where people went mad and bought stuff they didn't need. After that we saw major shortage across a significant number of categories caused by the major modal shift in how people eat. The lockdown closed pubs and restaurants and workspaces - all the meals that used to be eaten out were now eaten at home. Pack formats became a major issue - there wasn't a shortage in beans but there was a shortage in retail cans and a surplus of huuuuge catering cans.

    Retailers were working flat out as were manufacturers trying to respond to wild swings in demand with a supply chain full of holes. Through this longer phase the gaps were not caused by panic buying at all - they were caused by supply chain disruption. We are about to have a major supply chain disruption which will cause not just short term inability to move products / materials but a long term need to try and restructure what comes from where and when.

    Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers - all expecting long term issues and price rises. What do they know about it...
    Yes there will be disruption, again no shit Sherlock, I have always said there will be disruption.

    The invisible hand will work its magic and we will adjust. Some things may become a bit more expensive, some things may become a bit cheaper and some customers will substitute from more expensive goods to cheaper ones - and life will go on. The wheel of time will turn.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,223



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    First two should be ok imo. But I'm less sure about root vegetables.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,755
    edited December 2020



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    There were shortages of bread flour (for retail purchase as flour, I didn't notice any shortage of bread) in the spring. We mostly make our own bread (bread machine) because it's more convenient to churn it out on demand than either go to the shops every few days or have a lot of freezer space for bread (and also because you can make a lot of fun things). I assume that was due to a spike in demand for bread (stockpiling?) or drop in supply of flour. A fair bit of wheat is imported for flour - 15% [1], largely for bread flour and some other specialised uses, but most bread flour wheat imports are from Canada so should not be affected directly, only perhaps indirectly if there is general chaos at the ports.

    TLDR: Bread, possibly, but not that likely. Worst case UK bakers probably mix in a bit more of the less strong flour produced from domestic wheat. Also fairly easy for bakers to stockpile, I'd imagine.

    [1] http://www.nabim.org.uk/imports-and-exports
  • kinabalu said:

    No chance of hard Brexit
    No chance of no deal Brexit
    No chance we won't cope with no deal Brexit

    Is that the Leaver journey, more or less?

    "Won't be Armegeddon".
    "It's all the fault of Remainers."
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603
    kinabalu said:



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    First two should be ok imo. But I'm less sure about root vegetables.
    Horses move down the food chain for carrots.

    Oh, the inhumanity....
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    So the IMB clauses which caused a huge loss of trust on the EU side will be withdrawn if negotiations end up with a deal .

    This is the first time there has been written confirmation of this but still ignores the fact that the NI protocol was always intended to be mainly used in the event of a no deal .
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,884

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    You just don't understand the supply chain.

    We saw an initial blitzing of certain product categories - Pasta, Toilet Rolls, Paracetamol where people went mad and bought stuff they didn't need. After that we saw major shortage across a significant number of categories caused by the major modal shift in how people eat. The lockdown closed pubs and restaurants and workspaces - all the meals that used to be eaten out were now eaten at home. Pack formats became a major issue - there wasn't a shortage in beans but there was a shortage in retail cans and a surplus of huuuuge catering cans.

    Retailers were working flat out as were manufacturers trying to respond to wild swings in demand with a supply chain full of holes. Through this longer phase the gaps were not caused by panic buying at all - they were caused by supply chain disruption. We are about to have a major supply chain disruption which will cause not just short term inability to move products / materials but a long term need to try and restructure what comes from where and when.

    Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers - all expecting long term issues and price rises. What do they know about it...
    Yes there will be disruption, again no shit Sherlock, I have always said there will be disruption.

    The invisible hand will work its magic and we will adjust. Some things may become a bit more expensive, some things may become a bit cheaper and some customers will substitute from more expensive goods to cheaper ones - and life will go on. The wheel of time will turn.
    And the people already on the bottom? They can't substitute the cheapest onion at Tescos for no onion at all.

    Perhaps I need to start donating to the local foodbank, given the picture you draw.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,773

    Omnium said:

    FF43 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    couscous or noodles are the fastest thing youll cook aside from bread and wraps
    My favourite quick and cheap meal is an omelette. It is dead easy and if you do it right, a sophisticated dish.

    Toast and marmite with scrambled eggs on top. A bit of cheese on top of the toast that melts on impact with the hot egg if you are feeling particularly sophisticated.

    The better you cook your eggs the less need for cheese and marmite. Fantastic toast is the key, and some butter on the toast. Then perfectly cooked eggs. A hint of shaved cheese perhaps and the slightest taint of marmite on the buttering knife.

    All this celebratory bake off crap and you can't buy a decent loaf of bread!

    We need a blokeish bake-off. Bread for cheese and pickle sandwiches, bread for bacon sandwiches, buns for burgers, buns for hotdogs. Bread for pate, and we need to get the good pate's back for this bread.

    I can cook faultless boiled eggs, time after time: whites set, yolks runny.

    Food of the Gods.
    Although 'faultless' seems a boast, and although my boiled eggs are ok - I'm quite envious.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,798
    edited December 2020
    Selebian said:



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    There were shortages of bread flour (for retail purchase as flour, I didn't notice any shortage of bread) in the spring. We mostly make our own bread (bread machine) because it's more convenient to churn it out on demand than either go to the shops every few days or have a lot of freezer space for bread (and also because you can make a lot of fun things). I assume that was due to a spike in demand for bread (stockpiling?) or drop in supply of flour. A fair bit of wheat is imported for flour - 15% [1], largely for bread flour and some other specialised uses, but most bread flour wheat imports are from Canada so should not be affected directly, only perhaps indirectly if there is general chaos at the ports.

    TLDR: Bread, possibly, but not that likely. Worst case UK bakers probably mix in a bit more of the less strong flour produced from domestic wheat. Also fairly easy for bakers to stockpile, I'd imagine.

    [1] http://www.nabim.org.uk/imports-and-exports
    My view is that if you can afford to stockpile food you will probably be able to afford the higher prices as a result of moderate shortages. If there are extensive shortages of food then whether you have stockpiled or not will probably be the least of your worries. And the stuff that is most likely to be in short supply will be perishable items which are hard to stockpile. Bottom line, I don't think stockpiling is really necessary. Having said that, I always try to have a 10kg bag of rice and plenty of bread flour in the house, so we don't starve.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,877
    Carnyx said:

    Omnium said:

    Carnyx said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Scott_xP said:

    TOPPING said:

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.

    People called 999 when KFC ran short

    Food shortages due to Brexit will not be met with stoicism
    How many people did? Did 17.4 million people call 999 due to KFC ?

    The UK did react to food shortages with stoicism as recently as March. We got through it and life went on.
    I don't think you realise how hand to mouth - and how dependent on processed food - a lot of families are because of cash and time pressures. Not being able to get a pizza, for instance, can disrupt plans and routines. That is what is being ignored in the discussion, I think.
    given half the UK is being told to stay at home where are the time pressures ? You cant actually go anywhere much except the supermarket.
    People have to go to work and children to school. It's common to have a family with the children home and hungry at 5pm, and one adult not till 7, and so on ...

    Meals such as pizzas and so on help a lot, but if they cannot be obtained reliably ... it will be interesting to see what happens.
    I take it you cant cook.

    Knocking up a hot meal is a doddle whatever your budget.
    So long as you like risotto.

    (The ultimate 50p meal.)
    Most of our risotto rice comes from Italy.

    And where is the protein to come from? It can't all come from rice.
    You might just be stretching your argument.

    Not so much protein in rice.
    That is the point I am making - more protein is needed. Eggs? Cheese? Milk?

    Protein from all the lamb beef and fish we are told we wont be able to export anymore
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Selebian said:



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    There were shortages of bread flour (for retail purchase as flour, I didn't notice any shortage of bread) in the spring. We mostly make our own bread (bread machine) because it's more convenient to churn it out on demand than either go to the shops every few days or have a lot of freezer space for bread (and also because you can make a lot of fun things). I assume that was due to a spike in demand for bread (stockpiling?) or drop in supply of flour. A fair bit of wheat is imported for flour - 15% [1], largely for bread flour and some other specialised uses, but most bread flour wheat imports are from Canada so should not be affected directly, only perhaps indirectly if there is general chaos at the ports.

    TLDR: Bread, possibly, but not that likely. Worst case UK bakers probably mix in a bit more of the less strong flour produced from domestic wheat. Also fairly easy for bakers to stockpile, I'd imagine.

    [1] http://www.nabim.org.uk/imports-and-exports
    It wasn't flour itself that ran short, it was the retail-size bags for it.
  • Selebian said:



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    There were shortages of bread flour (for retail purchase as flour, I didn't notice any shortage of bread) in the spring. We mostly make our own bread (bread machine) because it's more convenient to churn it out on demand than either go to the shops every few days or have a lot of freezer space for bread (and also because you can make a lot of fun things). I assume that was due to a spike in demand for bread (stockpiling?) or drop in supply of flour. A fair bit of wheat is imported for flour - 15% [1], largely for bread flour and some other specialised uses, but most bread flour wheat imports are from Canada so should not be affected directly, only perhaps indirectly if there is general chaos at the ports.

    TLDR: Bread, possibly, but not that likely. Worst case UK bakers probably mix in a bit more of the less strong flour produced from domestic wheat. Also fairly easy for bakers to stockpile, I'd imagine.

    [1] http://www.nabim.org.uk/imports-and-exports
    I've taken the approach of stockpiling all the things we eat on a regular basis, or substitutes for them. This is because I find it extremely difficult to determine what we might run short of due to the complexity of the supply chains and factors like the aforementioned packaging issue, which hadn't even occurred to me. In doing so, I am acknowledging my limited knowledge of the food distribution industry!
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,755
    IshmaelZ said:

    Selebian said:



    Not for the last 5 years plus. Aldi are just another supermarket when it comes to the majority of their products - they have a central buying team, stores are laid out to a "planogram" showing which product where and of how many facings. They do have food special buys but mostly in ambient in the centre aisle.

    As for Aldi and the union flags, they are a great champion for British sourcing. But so many of those british made products use imported ingredients / packaging. Many of the shortages we saw earlier this year were because there was a national shortage of plastic film used to form the bag that so many kinds of product come in. Almost all of the raw plastic used by UK packaging producers is imported. As are foil trays for produce and fresh foods. And don't get me started on the supply situation for wooden pallets...

    Can I ask a purely practical question? I have been very gradually building up supplies of food for the last 18 months (since Johnson became PM), and I reckon I have enough for 3-4 months. There are just 3 things which I don't have so much of:
    Milk
    Bread
    Root vegetables

    I can't see any reason why those should be in short supply, but would be interested in what those more expert then me think?
    There were shortages of bread flour (for retail purchase as flour, I didn't notice any shortage of bread) in the spring. We mostly make our own bread (bread machine) because it's more convenient to churn it out on demand than either go to the shops every few days or have a lot of freezer space for bread (and also because you can make a lot of fun things). I assume that was due to a spike in demand for bread (stockpiling?) or drop in supply of flour. A fair bit of wheat is imported for flour - 15% [1], largely for bread flour and some other specialised uses, but most bread flour wheat imports are from Canada so should not be affected directly, only perhaps indirectly if there is general chaos at the ports.

    TLDR: Bread, possibly, but not that likely. Worst case UK bakers probably mix in a bit more of the less strong flour produced from domestic wheat. Also fairly easy for bakers to stockpile, I'd imagine.

    [1] http://www.nabim.org.uk/imports-and-exports
    It wasn't flour itself that ran short, it was the retail-size bags for it.
    Ah, that's interesting. We did buy a few massive bags in Aldi, at least double normal size, as those were all we could find. Figures.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,410
    edited December 2020
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    You just don't understand the supply chain.

    We saw an initial blitzing of certain product categories - Pasta, Toilet Rolls, Paracetamol where people went mad and bought stuff they didn't need. After that we saw major shortage across a significant number of categories caused by the major modal shift in how people eat. The lockdown closed pubs and restaurants and workspaces - all the meals that used to be eaten out were now eaten at home. Pack formats became a major issue - there wasn't a shortage in beans but there was a shortage in retail cans and a surplus of huuuuge catering cans.

    Retailers were working flat out as were manufacturers trying to respond to wild swings in demand with a supply chain full of holes. Through this longer phase the gaps were not caused by panic buying at all - they were caused by supply chain disruption. We are about to have a major supply chain disruption which will cause not just short term inability to move products / materials but a long term need to try and restructure what comes from where and when.

    Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers - all expecting long term issues and price rises. What do they know about it...
    Yes there will be disruption, again no shit Sherlock, I have always said there will be disruption.

    The invisible hand will work its magic and we will adjust. Some things may become a bit more expensive, some things may become a bit cheaper and some customers will substitute from more expensive goods to cheaper ones - and life will go on. The wheel of time will turn.
    And the people already on the bottom? They can't substitute the cheapest onion at Tescos for no onion at all.

    Perhaps I need to start donating to the local foodbank, given the picture you draw.
    It's a good thing to do.
    PS. Cash is best. It enables your local food bank to buy what is short when they are short of it.

    Edit. Assuming there is owt available...
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,222
    Carnyx said:

    felix said:

    I dearly want a deal and am certains there will be some bad consequences from no deal - however, there is the teensiest danger that some of our more prolific sufferers of DRS are hyping the dangers up to a degree of absurdity that will look very silly in the weeks and months to come if they don't happen. It reminds me a lot of the Remain campaign which had so many good things it could have said but didn't...and lost.

    I think we are all agreed on the consequences of a No Deal - reduced supply, less choice and higher prices - the issue is whether it will matter to people or not. Some of us believe it will, others are less convinced. We'll see.

    Indeed. But I remember that, historically, the mutinies in the Royal Navy and British Army often came when food was inadequate in quantity or was substituted with stuff that was unfamiliar in itself. I wouldn't be too confident about whether it doesn't matter to people.
    National Grog Ration.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    You just don't understand the supply chain.

    We saw an initial blitzing of certain product categories - Pasta, Toilet Rolls, Paracetamol where people went mad and bought stuff they didn't need. After that we saw major shortage across a significant number of categories caused by the major modal shift in how people eat. The lockdown closed pubs and restaurants and workspaces - all the meals that used to be eaten out were now eaten at home. Pack formats became a major issue - there wasn't a shortage in beans but there was a shortage in retail cans and a surplus of huuuuge catering cans.

    Retailers were working flat out as were manufacturers trying to respond to wild swings in demand with a supply chain full of holes. Through this longer phase the gaps were not caused by panic buying at all - they were caused by supply chain disruption. We are about to have a major supply chain disruption which will cause not just short term inability to move products / materials but a long term need to try and restructure what comes from where and when.

    Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers - all expecting long term issues and price rises. What do they know about it...
    Yes there will be disruption, again no shit Sherlock, I have always said there will be disruption.

    The invisible hand will work its magic and we will adjust. Some things may become a bit more expensive, some things may become a bit cheaper and some customers will substitute from more expensive goods to cheaper ones - and life will go on. The wheel of time will turn.
    I do not understand how at your claimed age of approx 40 (I think) you have so little understanding of the basics of how the world works. Why not spend just half an hour in a supermarket looking at the little labels on things which tell you their country of origin? Or consider this rather succinct list from wikipedia, and factor in the concept that all crops are seasonal?

    "Crops commonly grown in the United Kingdom include cereals, chiefly wheat, oats and barley; root vegetables, chiefly potatoes and sugar beet; pulse crops such as beans or peas; forage crops such as cabbages, vetches, rape and kale; fruit, particularly apples and pears; and hay for animal feed."
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    edited December 2020
    I can’t quite believe what I’m reading.

    Brexiteers rationalising away food shortages?!!!!

    These nutters are more nutty than a corbynite nut roast.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,222
    .
    rkrkrk said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Not the first time Johnson has caught crabs?
    Or passed them on ?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205
    ping said:

    I can’t quite believe what I’m reading.

    Brexiteers rationalising away food shortages?!!!!

    These nutters are more nutty than a corbynite nut roast

    Could the various vaccines that are supposed to be en route in 2021 get stuck in the continent without a deal ?
  • Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    If we get No Deal - which is starting to look horrifying possible - then the pressure for Boris to resign will be formidable. It will amount to the greatest political failure in modern British history, making Black Wednesday look like a pasty tax in comparison. There will be absolutely no reason, either for himself or anyone else, for Boris to hang around a moment longer.

    Not sure. We have now normalised empty shelves via Covid. Plus no one* will notice the extra administrative burden, to whatever degree it manifests itself, save for a "weren't these Stroopwafels a bit cheaper last week" type of thing. So there is a lot of leeway for absolute total fuck up that Boris can paint as near-normal.

    I have been prominent on here saying he will go (I have nine more months of my bet to run) on the basis of logic. It was obvious from the moment that TMay took office that she was manifestly unfit for it and hence was, to quote a noted newspaper editor, a "dead man walking".

    Boris is equally unfit to be PM. And he will fall. Just not in 24-hr rolling news time. People who are manifestly unfit for high office generally don't stay as PM for that long. cf J Corbyn.

    That said, he does look sticky because all his failings are often waved away as the behaviour of a lovable scallywag.

    *no one apart those who are filling out the forms and adhering to the new system, obvs.
    Ordinarily he and many of his cabinet colleagues would have been marched out of office by now. Lying and corruption aren't usually politically survivable, yet the bar to serve in a senior role appears to be having been sacked for one or the other previously.

    People won't realise how bad this is until it slaps them in the face. Customs checks whether under a deal or WTO will bring the UK supply chain to a crashing halt. When it gets untangled we'll find that we're paying a lot more for less things and every retailer and manufacturer and supplier will be saying why, intercut with the reporters embedded with the 48 hour queues to cross the channel.

    "This isn't the Brexit we voted for" - big price rises, mass shortages, mass unemployment. You can't hide the impacts of the end of the free market and free customs, or blame it on the other party, or positively spin it as better than what we had. As reality collapses in on people Johnson will be gone. At speed.
    There usually needs to be a catalyst and your final paragraph paints a reasonably possible picture of that catalyst. But as I said we have had empty shelves in very recent memory so I'm not 100% sure he won't have a get out.
    There is another factor that means we won't have empty shelves - supermarkets are quite deliberately dynamic. If a produce is unavailable and won't be available for a while they don't generally just put an "out of stock" label on its spot and leave that bit of their shelving empty - they fill the space with something else. They put a different product up instead, or they fill in with other products that would be next to it instead. So the shelves remain "full" (depending upon normal variance of how recently they were restocked) even if products are "unavailable".
    @RochdalePioneers literally works for a supermarket, doesn’t he?

    But of course, you know best.
    If Rochdale wants to say I am wrong then let him say how I am wrong and why.

    EG am I wrong and does his supermarket deliberately leave shelves empty when a stock is unavailable for a significant period of time or am I right and the supermarket will change the tickets and put different stock on the shelves instead?
    Phil this is what the real world looked like earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51883440
    Thanks to panic buying which stopped in a matter of days because then people had full fridges and freezers. Its a self-correcting problem that can't go on forever.
    Exactly. I appreciate it when you agree with something rather than try to argue the opposite. Thanks.

    There were empty shelves because of panic buying. That's just the public for you I know what can you do but don't forget a lot of these people also voted for Brexit so we can't make any calls on their intelligence or common sense.

    There were empty shelves then and there may very well be empty shelves again.
    Yes if people react to no deal with panic buying then there may be some empty shelves for a few days while people panic buy.

    Then people's fridges and freezers will be full and they will stop panic buying and the supermarkets will have full shelves again. Just a few days later.

    Exactly as happened earlier this year. We didn't go for months with empty shelves, nor will we for months or years to come post-Brexit.

    If people start panic buying in the first week of January do you think come the May elections we will still have empty shelves and panic buying going on? Don't be ridiculous! 🤦🏻‍♂️
    You just don't understand the supply chain.

    We saw an initial blitzing of certain product categories - Pasta, Toilet Rolls, Paracetamol where people went mad and bought stuff they didn't need. After that we saw major shortage across a significant number of categories caused by the major modal shift in how people eat. The lockdown closed pubs and restaurants and workspaces - all the meals that used to be eaten out were now eaten at home. Pack formats became a major issue - there wasn't a shortage in beans but there was a shortage in retail cans and a surplus of huuuuge catering cans.

    Retailers were working flat out as were manufacturers trying to respond to wild swings in demand with a supply chain full of holes. Through this longer phase the gaps were not caused by panic buying at all - they were caused by supply chain disruption. We are about to have a major supply chain disruption which will cause not just short term inability to move products / materials but a long term need to try and restructure what comes from where and when.

    Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers - all expecting long term issues and price rises. What do they know about it...
    Yes there will be disruption, again no shit Sherlock, I have always said there will be disruption.

    The invisible hand will work its magic and we will adjust. Some things may become a bit more expensive, some things may become a bit cheaper and some customers will substitute from more expensive goods to cheaper ones - and life will go on. The wheel of time will turn.
    And the people already on the bottom? They can't substitute the cheapest onion at Tescos for no onion at all.

    Perhaps I need to start donating to the local foodbank, given the picture you draw.
    Do it if you can (I realise it's more difficult if you live rurally). My partner and I decided to allocate Xmas present money (apart from token gifts) to a foodbank last year and will do the same this year.

    Virtue signalling over, normal service will be immediately resumed.

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