Are you going to stock up food for Brexit?

Culture, Media, General Food Media and News
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@Harters

John, et al

No sign of British cheeses in my local grocery which was not a surprise. My local cheese shop (Tastings Gourmet Market for those in the Annapolis MD area) has five British cheeses: a Somerdale cheddar, an Ivy’s cheddar, a Shropshire blue, a Stilton, and a Welsh Red Dragon creamy cheddar. They know Coastal Cheddar and have had it before - they are ordering me some.

The Annapolis Boat Show is imminent (a big deal in my world) and I’m having a number of people over for nibbles. With Brexit looming and my friends being world sailors I’ve decided to “go Brit” in support. Is early evening too late in the day for scones? grin

John and I have been dominating this back and forth. Thoughts? Anyone?

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Get the Shropshire Blue. It’s excellent.

And, if ever they stock Stichelton, get that. Like a Stilton but uses unpasteurised milk.

As for the scones. If you’re making them for early evening, as drinks nibbles, go for a cheese scone, rather than the usual. This recipe is good for them - https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/party-food/canapes-nibbles/tiny-cheese-onion-and-olive-scones

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43

I looked at both ends of the Chunnel, rail and road, on Google Earth and simply don’t see the space for C&I functions. That’s going to be rather a mess unless I’m missing something. Ferries may get a leg up until that gets sorted. Infrastructure people are surely paying attention to those issues.

For my small constituency of long-distance cruising sailors we’ll likely be spending more time in the UK as we’ll be able to reset the EU visa as well as Schengen clocks. This will be good for London, Southhampton, Hamble, and Bristol at least. I’m a fan of Falmouth myself; how can you not love a place with a carved stone in a far Western walkway that says “Welcome to England, please wipe your feet.” The pasties are good also.

If my UK friends, including those here, need anything I’ll be happy to bring it to you. I can only manage about 6 MT a trip and it does take six to eight weeks each way. grin Nothing like Dunkirk or the Manhattan 9/11 boatlift. I reserve the right to dip into the pate on the way across the Atlantic.

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You’re missing nothing.

Do you have English blood by any chance? Reason for asking is that “rather a mess” is one of those masterly understatements that we’re famous for. Had you said something along the lines of “Unless I’ve missed something, this looks like a colossal fuck-up about to happen”, you wouldhave been on the money.

By the by, I’ve used the tunnel on a couple of occasions but prefer the ferry. We usually stay the night before in Dover and get an early ship, having a civilised breakfast on board in the restaurant, rather than the self-serve place. Our usual destinations in France or Belgium are then only about an hour from Calais.

It’s some years since I was last in Falmouth but, if you’re visiting, a quick Google suggests the Star & Garter is serving food as good as I remember it.

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grin By blood English/German/Russian. Lots of travel to the UK and overseas territories. Lived in Yatling for a year. I’ve been known to describe weather conditions as “sporty” when colleagues on other boats said “we’re getting our asses kicked out here.” The capacity for controlled understatement that still communicates severity and confidence in one’s crew seems a skill worth cultivating.

“Hello RNLI Lizard, this is Auspicious.”
“Go ahead Auspicious, RNLI.”
“The heart attack fellow we emailed you about on shortwave is stable. I’m afraid we’ve also had a crew member who broke her arm during the F8 rising 9 coming past Fastnet Rock. Can the ambulance you have sorted take two or do we need another?”
“We can take both. Do you need anything else?”
“The rest of us could use directions to a good pub. Good food and Internet would do nicely.”
“We’ll rustle up a couple of cars.”
“Brilliant RNLI. Much appreciated. So glad you’re here.”

For Americans, much of what the United States Coast Guard does for life safety is done by the volunteer Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in the UK. From our perspective think volunteer fire departments on steroids.

When I make landfall anywhere near an RNLI station I bake cookies and drop them 'round.

John, given my current work I much prefer ferries as well.

best, dave

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Sliding off-topic, but it never ceases to amaze me that only the lifeboat skipper is an employee and everyone else is a volunteer. Most lifeboat stations are open to the public - they depend on donations to keep running - and most have a record of assists given/lives saved, etc - records often dating back over 100 years.

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Which frankly is the real sort of ‘stiff upper lip’ that makes me confident that the UK will come through Brexit in good order and that during whatever minor bobbles there may be neighbors will help neighbors.

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I do not wish to be melodramatic here but this morning’s news is very, very concerning. Suspending Parliament so that MPs cannot debate stopping a “no deal brexit” is a negation of our democracy. When the Brextremists campaigned for “taking back control”, it’s clear they meant by them, not by democratic institutions. If this was happening in some Third World country, the western media would be screaming about it being a right wing coup. I genuinely now fear for my country’s future.

As noted in the BBC report, the Queen does the official suspending, as head of state. The last time the monarch did that, refusing to let Parliament meet, was in 1629. The history books tell us that did not end well - it was the final straw that caused the English Civil War.

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Apparently we are in those turbulence days. Negation of democracy is seen in many parts of the world. Time to protest!

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Maybe you should reconsider stocking some food and water now. Sigh!

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We’ll be doing what we can do. As two people, that’s obviously not much on our own (other than signing a petition to the government that’s started to be circulated this morning). It seems clear that the government is set upon a “no deal Brexit” and is removing all possibility of Parliament being able to even debate it, let alone stop it.

I am thankful that I have one nephew who holds joint UK/Spanish nationality and a niece who could apply for a second citizenship.

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Sad days when you’re thankful family members are citizens of a country other than your own (though I admit, since Jan 20, 2017 I have wished I had Canadian citizenship).

I see the queen has approved the Parliament move. Here’s hoping it doesn’t end in a second English civil war. What a mess.

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That has actually become my catchphrase and that of Hartess. Every night, we watch the late evening current affairs programme on TV and, for literally months, one of us had said that at some point. It has become something of a ritual now

The opposition in Parliament now only has a few days to do anything and it appears to be narrowing down to a vote of no confidence in the government. That in itself is tricky as it is going to rely on enough Conservatives voting against their own government (effectively ending their political careers) to outweigh the number of Leave supporting Labour MPS who are likely to vote for the government (effectively ending their political careers), No good is going to come out of the next period whatever happens. It’s a mess.

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Depending on politicians committing political suicide is not likely to be a successful strategy.

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The decision was taken by a majority of those voting, not a majority of those eligible to vote, who are really the UK cohort. Seventeen million of 46 million eligible voters favored Brexit. The Referendum seemed constitutionally flawed (up or down without warning about, let alone presenting, devilish details). Maybe that’s okay under UK law; but, in the mundane world of corporate charters, capital restructuring or other existential amendments routinely require a supermajority such as 2/3 of those voting or 50%+1 of shares eligible to vote (again, the actual cohort affected). A minority plebiscite forging national economic, foreign, etc. existential policy baffles us across the Pond.

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We are where we are.

Parliament decided there would be no turnout or 2/3 majority constraint on this referendum. That’s not always been the case with all previous referenda. As you say, changes to constitutions of even the local golf club (or my old trade union branch) required a 2/3rds majority. I can’t recall anyone objecting at the time to this not being included.

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I’m going to work really hard to tie this back to food. Please bear with me.

What I see globally is partisan politics overwhelming concern for the well being of one’s country and people. Before anyone yells “look, he agrees with me” I observe the same characteristics across the political spectrum (which I see as a four dimensional space, a discussion not appropriate for Hungry Onion). Politicians are are more concerned with being “right” or “winning” than with the welfare of the country. There seems so little room for accepting that others may feel different paths than those we support are the best way forward. Why can we no longer engage in civil discourse with those we may not agree with?

So we can turn to food, although there are lots of other factors some of which we have touched on including energy.

We (big we as well as HO we) should be able to say, for purposes of discussion, what if we take this path what are the ramifications and how can we minimize unpleasantness. Then there should be the same discussion for the other identified options. Then you send everyone home for the weekend to think of new options. Every option has cascading effects (which most politicians ignore, assuming everything else will stay the same as they fiddle).

We can make some assumptions and talk about the affect on the food supply chain of a hard Brexit. We need to explore (this is called a sensitivity analysis) different boundary conditions. For example Germany and France enter a recession accelerated by reduced exports and Italy becomes more nationalist under the pending government. Tariffs and duties fall far from worst case scenarios of the Remainers. On the other hand, the UK could say “never mind” and still suffer the departure of many financial institutions that have fled London; they aren’t coming back. Of course hard feelings abound. Regardless there will be yet more division between parties (who have platforms) and individuals (regardless of party) who believe things would have been less worse (pardon my grammar) had circumstances evolved more to their liking. sigh

Without respect to the final path and neglecting as much as possible what does this mean for food, especially for individuals especially our UK member friends here at HO? We know that the UK has a robust agriculture that exports as well as imports. We can be confident that there will be enough food. It may not be exactly the food you want, but there will be enough. Brexit or not, food prices will increase some as companies have spent money on plans and developing contingencies for the hard, soft, and no Brexit. Some will have been more efficient in their planning than others. Those costs must be covered somewhere and the only place is at the retail and wholesale outlets. Even if the outcome is ‘no Brexit’ (which I think is unlikely) EU companies will have been working to find other places to send their product and will be meeting those commitments. Even with ‘no Brexit’ some food products may not be available for a while.

In my opinion the biggest impact will be on fresh goods that move by truck and rail (in both directions remember) between UK and EU. Frozen and tinned goods are much less sensitive to time. Moving food by sea is really inexpensive but time consuming. Frozen and tinned food from offshore, both BOTS and third party countries including the US, may well be cheaper than fresh from the EU.

Let’s not forget that we (big we) are not starting from scratch here. Decisions have been made and other decisions made on the basis of those. There are no mulligans. The point is not the politics but that businesses (which are people after all) are making decisions in the face of unknowns. Many of those decisions would be very expensive to undo and right or wrong are likely to be sustained.

Dancing with politics is the reality that immigration directly affects food. Legal (mostly in the current EU that includes the UK) or not (much of the US) immigrants work in warehouses and commercial kitchens. Change that and many other things change as well. Regardless, if you can’t cook to feed yourself you should learn. Immigration is a significant part of Brexit supporters. It’s also a big issue in the continental EU and the departure of the UK will intensify that stress. In the US we have kitchens dominated by Hispanics (this is an observation and not a judgment) while in the EU North Africans are having an increasing presence.

There are a lot of other factors but what is appropriate for HO limits how intimately we should explore them.

In my opinion, Brits will not go hungry post-Brexit. See previous posts on what might be rational preparation. I still think the EU will suffer more from Brexit than the UK. I think that the UK will, within a few years, be stronger independent of the EU. Y’all may actually be able to recover some of the financial institutions that have fled. It’s going to be tough to compete with Rotterdam for shipping but you might win out there also if you can get the right agreements from the EU for Chunnel C&I. It is possible that a hard Brexit that hits the EU hard will improve the UK negotiating position. There are not guarantees.

In the meantime: UK lamb, UK cheese, allotments. grin The real big deal both writ large and for food specifically is going to be the Irish border.

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This is a red herring. The underlying assumption of pundits on any issue who don’t like the outcome is “if only more people voted we would have won.” We simply don’t know that. What-if speculation is simply not credible. You simply can’t change the rules after the fact and have any confidence in the outcome (consider issues surrounding the electoral college in the US).

In my area in semi-rural suburban America we have very little private gardening. There is much less vegetable gardening than where I grew up (40+ years ago) in a more urban environment. Why? Now I can convey my experience that because they are cute people want deer to be protected and object to culling much less hunting. We can set aside the number deer killed in auto accidents and the damage to property. I can say that I think if we allowed hunting of deer, aside from some great roasts, steaks, and jerky, the reduction in predation of gardens would result in an upswing in home gardening. I’m convinced that is true but I can’t prove it.

I will digress for a moment to say that someone not long ago pushed back on my personal support of hunting by saying people should eat meat from the grocery rather than hunting so that no animals would be harmed. sigh Really?

I do think that countries that purport to be democracies, including my own, should be rather depressed at low turn-out.

In the meantime, I have accepted that no amount of fencing will keep deer out of my garden and be exploring community gardening (allotments) in my area. While I am not myself a hunter I support hunting. If anyone lives in central Maryland and wants some easy venison all you have to do is sort out the licenses and you can use my back deck as a hunting stand. Bathroom privileges and I’ll even feed you breakfast and lunch.

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I say the same thing about those deer crossing signs. Why do they place them all along the highway, were deer are going to get hit if they try crossing there. They should only put deer crossing signs where human crossing signs are, then you will see the reduction in deer getting hit by cars. DUH !!!

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I don’t particularly like the taste of venison.
Now elk’s a whole different matter.