Last time I looked down the street in England, I thought the country as a whole could use some severe food restriction.
World War 2 rationing for all!
That’d be one way to cut through the obesity epidemic.
Probably easier to manage than a no deal exit brexit!
Err…
You’re agreeing with me!
I didn’t say discount it entirely, I said use a tonne of salt.
amen.
no one will starve, we’ll just be eating boxes and cans of easily imported [unregulated, non-EU] processed junk, the stuff that gives you zero nutritive value but fills you right up. So in other words, all the non-obese people will become fatties like the obese people who eat cheaply and badly.
I might get a good slingshot and take out the pigeons that keep hanging out in the yard; my mom used to eat pigeon as a kid growing up in Malta, swears they’re delicious. Plenty of worms in the compost, bake them in the bread maker. I hear bamboo is edible, lots of that in the garden, keeps popping up around the neighbor’s fenceline. We’ll be fine.
That’s a significant assumption and even if they don’t starve they may well die. We have a great food safety record in the UK tied to our membership of the EU’s European Food Safety Authority.
I spent time in China and saw the massive problems that they have with Food Safety (3000 deaths and 128000 hospitalisations in 2012)
That’s with some control. It’s not a country that is saying ‘send us any old shit you can find and we won’t be inspecting it.’.
Every spiv with a can of horse meat from the second world war will be trying to get on shelves of dodgy shops. Of course being one of the metropolitan elite they won’t on the shelves of my local Waitrose.
It will be in the local shops and consumed by those that can’t afford increasing prices in supermarkets.
There’s a huge issue with US food too. I wouldn’t touch some of the stuff the FDA pass for US markets, and their production methods are highly suspect. Look at their death lettuce issues and practices around pig farming, its horrendous.
Bear in mind also that if the EU lorries are blocking the ports, the non-EU food won’t be able to get in either.
London Airlift
British flagged carriers have no landing rights in any other country, and vice versa, other than those they enjoy by virtue of EU membership. Just sayin’.
Yeah, there’s an entire industries worth of smallprint on air travel and technical/safety certifications that is still on the to-do list.
The UK is fucked. :(
There’s no reason the eu lorries would be blocking the U.K. ports, as the government could reduce checks, assuming some level of borderline competence… oh right I see your point.
We already are! EU regulations don’t make it any healthier :).
It is, and quite tasty too. But only eat the shoots. Not the grown plant…
Also edible, and in some places a bit of a delicacy I hear.
Total digression but it won’t be long before insects are farmed en masse as a source of protein imho.
I only ever had rabbit. Plenty of that, and doesn’t require much to legally hunt them iirc.
The UK has comparatively low supermarket prices at the moment. Comparative as a share of earnings, certainly compared to where I am (everything is cheaper here, but wages are…about a half on average I think? Or less. I heard 600 euros/month quoted somewhere. It is the poorest or 2nd poorest region of Spain.
Absolutely true.
About food safety standards, I was under the impression Britain was something of a pioneer and standard bearer here, not the EU per se?
900€ is the minimum salary for full time employment, but some asshole employees do pay less (illegally, by saying the worker is working part time but making them work full time). Median in Spain is about 1400€. Both of those are gross and take home income is lower, but in the case of the minimum salary, not a lot (about 820€ after taxes, I think).
You in Andalucia? Andalucia and Extremadura are certainly the poorest by far.
I’m in Gran Canaria.
Stuff here is cheap but the vast majority don;t seem very well off.
There are some stinking rich people here though.
Quick googling says the UK average wage is £550 per week. Which means £2200, or about 2500 euros. That’s almost double the Spanish median
In my experience supermarket food costs more in the UK, but not as much as the difference in wage, so relatively it’s actually cheaper. I.E. food is not almost double the cost!
Spanish average is 1900€ monthly. Average and median are very different. UK average seems 33% higher.
Canary Islands is below Spanish average in GDP per capita, but not by much (9% lower than the country average). It does have a very weird economy, though, and I imagine there’s a lot of inequality in salaries.
I can only speak about what I see, and there is huge disparity based on where you live.
Parts of my neighbourhood are “bad” (have a bad reputation etc.) but there are some parts which are rather posh.
Anyway, going back to Britain, there’s a part of me that wants there to be some chaos regarding very basic things, like food etc, so that people see that there are some consequences. because right now it seems people are either:
or
Count me in the project fear camp. I think it will be an adjustment rather than a catastrophe. It’s a bureaucratic realignment.
“Project Fear” = the conviction that: all trade associations, all professional associations, government agencies, business associations, businesses, regulators and any official body that has warned of the chaos and dangers of no deal Brexit are in fact, in league with each other and have made it up as part of a plot and conspiracy by thousands of independent bodies and people to pretend there will be an issue where there is not. Proof they present: Studies and reports prepared by them.
Those who say it will be fine: Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Ian Duncan Smith, various complete drooling idiots like Leadsom, Farage and his gang and various Colonel Blimps and Imperialist throwbacks from the hard right and far right, and a rabidly racist, xenophobic and jingoistic right wing media. Proof: none whatsoever, just soundbites and references to Blighty spirit and the war.
I think it’ll be more like The Millennium Bug. There has been advanced notice and hence planning and resources allocated to assuage the worst case scenarios.
Then link the proof. There’s a NAO report upthread, how about debunking that with evidence the National Statistics Office is wrong, or lying.