Many food items that are flown over from Europe are perishable. Meds may be needed right away. Don’t we even import blood plasma? Even Greta isn’t too fresh after a voyage.
Most of the perishable foods that are flown are exotic or out of season; we must learn to eat seasonal foods and produce more locally instead of sitting on our arses watching Box Sets, playing computer games, listening to music and wasting our time on social media. Gathering food used to be a necessity and now it’s way down the list of priorities.
There are plenty of places in this country that should be producing meds, I delivered to plenty of them as a courier. We have become a lazy nation and it will be/is our downfall.
True.
Unless there is some urgency, the transport of goods by ship is cheaper and more efficient (much heavier payloads and lower use of fuel per weight).
I agree, but we’ve also sold off much of our productive businesses to foreign parts, especially the far east where labour is much cheaper. The only answer to that is for us to agree to pay a little more for our own products. I’d be willing to do that anyway.
I don’t see why we can’t do that as the Germans, for example, produce cars that we are happy to buy, and they seem able to compete with the far east.
They only compete due to eu tariffs JBR!!
Donkeyman!
When we are, once more, a free sovereign nation we will also be able to set our own tariffs.
There now seems little doubt that countries with a much higher average temperature are having significantly fewer cases and deaths.
In addition to reading various articles, I’m in near daily contact with old friends and GF’s who live in The Philippines. In the P.I. there have been only 726 deaths from C-19.
It should go without saying that The Philippines is an incredibly hot AND humid country.
There has been much talk about “over-crowding” as a major factor in the spread of the virus. However, The Philippines is an incredibly crowded country and yet that does not seem to be a factor. I friend of mine once described their living conditions as likened to a box of warm puppies.
In the U.S., states which are the warmest, have the fewest deaths per capita: California, Florida, Texas, Arizona, etc. while New York, Illinois, etc which are still having winter storms have the highest cases and deaths per capita.
Pray for a heat wave. For that matter, pray for global warming.
There could be some truth in the suggestion that higher ambient temperatures can influence the spread and activity of Covid-19. We have been having some really warm weather of late and it appears that the spread of the virus here is slowing.
Hopefully, the warm weather will continue throughout most of the summer.
And yes, sod Greta the Gremlin. Let’s hope for more ‘global warming’!
Hunter gathering worked out ok until we invented the wheel…even the humble spud came from abroad. This is not the time to be retreating into caves.
We could turn the country into the old soviet bloc. Only eat what the workers produce on the land. Lots of Lada’s and trabants in the showrooms, yours after you have saved up for thirty years. Send dissenters to the Isle of Man…etc.
I have no interest in arguing with AnnieS, however, isn’t that precisely what we have been doing ? We may not call it a cave but my apartment has become exactly that. 
All it lacks is a roaring fire at the entrance and a big club to keep the infected at bay.
Yes but we now want to get out of that cave. The US could probably be self sufficient, but that’s not the case for the UK. Not without living in a very primitive way. For hundreds of years now we have had the advantage of imports of essential inputs, foods and materials.
Global Cases 4,256,024
Global Deaths 287,332
Australia
Cases 6,970
Deaths 97
Critical 16
Cases per Million 273
UK
Cases 223,060
Deaths 32,065
Critical 1,559
Cases per Million 3,286
USA
Cases 1,385,834
Deaths 81,795
Critical 16,484
Cases per Million 4,187
NSW had zero new cases yesterday, one the day before and two on Saturday. That is good news because it is the first day with zero cases since the disease first appeared in NSW.
Why do they call irish men ’ Spud ’ Annie??
Donkeyman!
On the Scottish news last night there was a report that there was a serious outbreak of the virus in Edinburgh in February which the authorities kept from the public. Also a Nike conference at the end of February with delegates from all over the world where 25 people were infected including 8 from Scotland.
Why don’t you take it to the extreme Annie…
You know exactly what I mean…
The humble spud can grow in England quite happily, and there was nothing wrong with British vehicles when I was growing up. In fact, the mini was so successful that the germans are copying it now.
I’ve spent most of my life in the country and I can tell you that a great part of farmland is either not used for growing crops or left arable year round.
Oil seed rape and maize which have taken over most of our fields is used for fuel for vehicles; No wonder we have to go halfway round the world for our food. And if we paid farmers the proper price for their dairy and crops it would make it worth their while to start growing them again.
Last night Scot, I was reading on the BBC news that a choir were experiencing covid like symptoms as far back as December after some of their members had returned from China…
‘It may be that we have to become ever more flexible, ever more agile, ever smarter in the way that we tackle, not just this infection, but potentially future infections as well.
Read more: 'No guarantee' we will find a vaccine for coronavirus | Metro News
The rules in place are likely to remain for some time, some permanently.
Which all goes to confirm that this country could once again revert to how we were in the 1950s.
Since that date, several things have happened to cause our present situation.
Unions and strikes - in the 1970s especially we were beset by strikes almost every day. Businesses folded, workers lost their jobs and many people with money preferred to invest in the far east where work could be done more reliably and more cheaply.
Related to above, cheap labour - cheap labour was available in the far east and third world countries. British-made products could not compete in price, so people bought cheaply-made equivalents from abroad. Strangely, Germany can still manage to make cars and compete with Japan and Korea, so why can’t we?
The EU - since the EEC mutated into the EU, our new rulers have consistently taken advantage of us and our own elected politicians have been too soft to stand up for us. Manufacturers have been bribed to move lock, stock and barrel to other EU countries. Our taxes have been used to improve life in other EU countries (compare their roads and rail systems to our own!), and our own resources (notably fisheries) have been handed over to other countries under some sort of trumped up ‘agreements’.
All of this could be reversed if we had a strong and pro-British leadership. Boris looked promising, but now I’m not quite so sure. I wonder when, or even whether we shall ever regain what we once had. Unions, businesses and politicians - could they ever work together for the common good?
We live in interesting times.
We have spent many an hour lamenting where British industry went wrong. There was too much complacency at the top. No ability to change with the times. Poor financial control. Bad marketing decisions, no real strategy. It still seems to happen in British companies given recent closures.
As for farming you can’t force farmers to grow certain crops. They will grow what keeps them paying the bills. The supermarkets have them under their thumb. People have to eat and it’s been convenient to have cheap food for them to eat. If you go to other countries food is much dearer. There’s less of it in shops and it’s not so fresh. If all the supermarkets closed then people would really grumble.
It’s a complex situation and you can dream of going back to the past but I am sure that in the future we will continue to import food from around the world and that the aviation industry will be propped up in some way.
I think the financial set up in the world is likely to change as a result of covid. What is ridiculous is that people can make money from the disaster and that we have ridiculously complex financial trading still going on where people can bet against the market using goods that don’t even exist.