Catastrophe this Winter?

Isthepopecatholic

Wood burning stoves are terrible for your health and for the environment. Time to get rid of them.

That is an exaggeration. Asthma and other respiratory diseases were far more prevalent in the years we relied on coal for heating.

There are so many things that we all do that are polluting the atmosphere - breathing, for example. There are strict levels on the use of solid fuels in conurbations and stove design has been majorly adapted in recent years to make emissions of all kinds minimal, Recently the rules governing wood sold for domestic use have alsobeen tightened. Most owners of wood burning stoves only light them up for a couple of hours on winter afternoons and over Christmas.

I am unsure why people are so focussed on wood burners when every other garden has charcoal barbecues, fire pits, pizza ovens etc burning all kinds of old rubbish with no flus or burner controls at all - and in these hot summers more aand more people are eating out and developing garden kitchens.

We have just had a new wood burner installed because as our houses are more and more dependent on electricity, we need an alternative fuel as back up should there be power cuts.

In our previous home , one November we were without a gas supply for two weeks and had several more gas outages. This meant no cooker or heating. We had already experienced horrendous bills when we had to relie on electric heating in our kitchen one winter and did not want to think what the bills would be if we had to heat 3 or 4 rooms with electricity for uncertain long periods, so we lit our stove and because it was a very old house with a huge chimney stack going through the centre of our house, the whole stack heated up like a huge storage radiator after a few days and we heated the whole house from one stove. Much of the electricity we didn't use would have been generated by gas and biofuel, which also cause emissions.

Wood burning stoves are terrible for your health and for the environment. Time to get rid of them.

monami

We have oil, the government won't open it, it will rain heavily after September, we have lots of food stocks, it's all part of the brainwashing and many fall for it, people existed fine before all the modern comforts, we will do so again, think of the blessings, no cars more exercise, no food less fat jabs etc. peace at last

Sorry but that sounds very naive to me, and I don't think I am particularly brainwashed.

Yes it will rain heavily after September when the tropical storms start - as we are in El Nino it is expected that there will be more of them this year and they may be much heavier than usual. So we can expect some flooding. The rain is too late for most farmers. Reservoirs will start to fill but it can take two years of good rainfall to fill our reservoirs because we are using them as fast as they fill.

Where exactly are these food stocks? The whole of Europe has suffered as we have, sometimes worse. Record numbers of agricultural and fishing businesses have closed in the UK over the last year and only about half have been replaced. Some of ours farms have converted to growing things like sugar beet, which is not going to keep us fed.

There is only one generation left that has ever experienced rationing, apart from power cuts such as we had in the 70s. People rioted just to buy toilet rolls a few years ago - what do you think the younger generations who have never had to do without will do if they think they can't get the food they want? These are not in the main people who grew up working 12 hr days 6 days a week and living in homes with no central heating.

Peace? I don't think so.

I'm not a doom and gloom merchant, but I am responsible for myself so I would rather err on the side of caution and be stocked up and ready for some hard times rather than blaming the powers that be because there isn't a tea bag left in the house.

Marg75

The OP is genuinely worried, why would you make snide remarks like that? It is right, there's many things we should be worried about, no less a PM who wasn't even an MP who so far has no opposition at all because there's no Parliament sitting. I suppose someone will make a joke about that.

Because he/she sounds like one more doom-monger trying to scare people but with absolutely nothing new to say.

S, we are ALL keyboarders. One of the few things we can do is to clear down our historic data held on line. This is a major consumer of water and power.

I don’t think there’s much in the way of food stocks.

We’re still a comparatively rich country though. It’s not us that will go hungry.

Way back someone said other countries will look after their own. I don’t think that’s so.

Follow the money…..

monami

We have oil, the government won't open it, it will rain heavily after September, we have lots of food stocks, it's all part of the brainwashing and many fall for it, people existed fine before all the modern comforts, we will do so again, think of the blessings, no cars more exercise, no food less fat jabs etc. peace at last

So what and where are these food stocks? Are you a farmer? What do you know that the general public is not being told?
This is interesting.

Don't panic. We now have Andy as PM and Milliband has gone from Energy. What cd go wrong?

JenniRen

Is Gransnet representative of the population as a whole?

I'm glad you're not pointing a finger at me as that does not apply.

Governments have the power to act.

It always seems to me to be pretty representative of the over 60 generations, with a wide range of experiences, political beliefs and academic achievements.

Whether or not we represent the population as a whole is an interesting point, but even if we don’t I think we’ve had a strong influence on the way that UK has developed by being key voters, commentators, politicians and consumers from the 1970s on. Our influence is waning of course, as did that if our parents in that period, but we do, I think, bear much responsibility for what the UK is now…

We have oil, the government won't open it, it will rain heavily after September, we have lots of food stocks, it's all part of the brainwashing and many fall for it, people existed fine before all the modern comforts, we will do so again, think of the blessings, no cars more exercise, no food less fat jabs etc. peace at last

Is Gransnet representative of the population as a whole?

I'm glad you're not pointing a finger at me as that does not apply.

Governments have the power to act.

JenniRen

fancythat

We reap what we sow.

Not always - it's weather dependent!!

But I do know what you meant. We should have been planning for the future but governments have failed to do that for a long time.

Considering that there has been huge resistance to the growing evidence of climate change I find that somewhat ironic.

I'm not pointing a finger at you, Jenniren, I don't know what your views on climate change are, but even here on Gnet there have been posters pooh poohing it. Net Zero hasn't been particularly popular yet here we are, reaping the result people's reluctance to do much about it.

What are you quoting from, FGT?

fancythat

We reap what we sow.

Not always - it's weather dependent!!

But I do know what you meant. We should have been planning for the future but governments have failed to do that for a long time.

We reap what we sow.

Reservoir capacity in England hasn't kept pace with population growth in half a century, and every serious proposal since has been fought through the courts and the planning system by the same environmental lobby that now expresses shock at hosepipe bans covering 27 million people. You cannot simultaneously block the infrastructure that stores water and then act surprised when there isn't any.
Food security used to be treated as a strategic asset, on a par with energy and defence. Somewhere along the way it was quietly relegated beneath biodiversity targets, tree-planting pledges and rewilding schemes, worthy in isolation, reckless as a substitute for growing enough to eat. Self-sufficiency isn't nostalgia; it's insurance, and Iran, El Niño and Panama Canal shipping disruption have just shown why.

None of this is a plot.
It's simpler and worse: a department that has spent years optimising for the priorities its loudest lobbyists cared about, and food production wasn't one of them.

It’s not just crops. Hay and silage are in short supply. Some farmers are already feeding hay that’s supposed to be for winter fodder.

It's not a good year in the garden for vegetables or fruit either.

I got rid of our vegetable planters when we had our decks removed and re-placed with tiles. Perhaps I should invest in some new ones 🤷‍♀️

"I'd be investigating growing food wherever I could, buy in lots of seeds"

I bought two packets of cress for egg and cress sandwiches!
That's my greens sorted.

Camp coffee!

I liked the pictures on the bottle.

Yes, me too, I will never forget not being able to get decent coffee for weeks on end, that’s what made me realise why it’s better to do it in advance and be out of that madness - although if there is power outage the supermarkets will be closed anyway.

How many remember rationing?
It went on for fourteen years in total.

I cannot get out of my mind going for walks during lockdowns and seeing the household food bins overflowing with uneaten fruit, vegetables, bread products along with many other food items.

A soon as people are told to stock up we shall see empty shelves in supermarkets as panic buying sets in. Which of course will hit the elderly and those who live hand-to-mouth…

I don’t think this is part of a trend Lathyrus, it’s because external threats to the UK have markedly increased in the last few years. A cyber or energy infrastructure attack, or war which affects oil supply would make us all vulnerable. I don’t believe in going overboard, but I do believe in being prepared for any short term crisis situation.