The Brexit Bunker

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There's been much speculation of late about the U.K. crashing out of the E.U. without a deal and the ensuing chaos that will inevitably follow. The various press reports have included stark warnings amongst other things about food shortages and whilst Dominic Raab, the Brexit Minister, may have sought to reassure everyone that ingredients for the BLT sandwich will still be readily available, the technical notices issued by the government today did little to assauge concerns.

It seems that there are people who have begun to stockpile in readiness. Presumably if we all follow suit, shortages will become acute sooner whilst making a healthy profit for the supermarket. Not wanting to miss out on frenzied accumulation, I have spent the last week filling my freezer with beans from the garden and today stained my hands red as I bottled jar after jar of beetroot. Whether the Risover family can survive on a diet of beans and beetroot is questionable and my motivation was of course little more than a bumper crop of both.

Someone did ask me the other day why I hadn't yet started to add to our pantry reserves (currently not much more than a bag of spaghetti, two tins of sweetcorn, and several cans of baked beans). She suggested that with my taste for simple living, just like the 1940's housewife, a few cans of spam, corned beef and luncheon meat might be right up my street. I told her that I was a condensed milk kind of lady and closed the conversation down with a laugh.

It's funny how easy it is to confuse the simple life with nostalgia for a time gone by. Also how frightening is it when people begin to adopt a bunker and hunker down mentality with a dash of Dad's Army spirit thrown in for good measure?

Simple sustainable living is nothing to do with the past; it's about the future, embedded in the politics of the planet and global equality. Sometimes it's hard to remember that our sad, heady, consumerist existence is actually a trade-off for happiness and global responsibility. Reduce, re-use, recycle; fair shares for all.

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