Food for thought

During the run up to the 2014 referendum in Scotland, amongst the wildly inaccurate plethora of scaremongering, the threats and doom forecasts of Project Fear, I heard a story, I don’t know if it was true, of an elderly lady being so frightened by the spew of British state propaganda, a conglomeration of TV, radio, newspapers and shameless dodgy New Labour types on her front step filling her head with rubbish, that she withdrew all of her savings from the bank and spent it all on stocking up on tins of non-perishable foods to keep her going for an extended period of time. She had been told that if Scotland was to become an independent country everyone would run out of food, and some would starve.

My thought at the time was, Bastards, fucking Bastards. Did those in on the cosy Bitter Together Tory/ Labour/ Liberal unionist pact realise that they were playing with people’s lives?

This incident was one of the many motivators which spurred me on personally to continue my very small part in the cause we are all still fighting for today.

I read an article today from a recent edition of the Guardian which highlights, thinking back to 2014 and stories about food supply, how things have changed since then, and exactly how arrogant and incompetent those that we allow to govern Scotland from another neighbouring country really are.

Last week Dominic Raab, recently appointed to, and then just as quickly punted to the side of, the Brexit ministerial role, advised a Commons select committee on Brexit that his government will be working to ensure adequate food supplies in the event that the EU don’t cave in to Britain’s threats to not pay their debts, and no deal is forthcoming.

This will involve stockpiling foods, a task Raab suggests will be carried out by the UK food industry. Bear in mind that currently 30% of the UK’s food is imported from the EU, and overall only 49% of the food consumed in Britain comes from Britain, this is a big ask.

A big ask particularly when spokespeople for the various parts of the U.K. Food industry who would, you would presume, be involved in such a mammoth task, are baffled at Raab’s comments as they haven’t been consulted about any of this grand Brexiteering plan. No contact and not a word. The Food and Drink Federation, the British Retail Consortium, the NFU, haven’t heard a peep out of them.

In response for a start, say the experts, there is no storage space available. The UK, like many other major developed nations manages its food supply on a just-in-time basis, get it in, get it out to the stores, get it sold to the consumer. There is nowhere suitable to store vast quantities of food that wouldn’t stop much of it perishing.

As the head of one of Britain’s leading food manufacturers put it, when describing Theresa May’s government, ” that lot couldn’t run a fish and chip shop.”

It doesn’t take much to cause a disaster in the food supply chain, and any disturbance in the flow can lead very quickly to scarcities and shortages, It is clear that food industry experts consider that Whitehall bureaucrats are clueless.

This is further evidenced by the inference made by Raab that nobody needs to worry, the UK will just call on the assistance of other nations outside of the EU to make up the shortfall of food, namely the land of the big orange faced balloon, who can export out to his Limey pals thousands of tons of tinned chlorinated chicken, yum yum.

However in answer to that the Centre for Food Policy at the University of London pointed out that currently the USA is only the 10th largest exporter of food to Britain, and in order to make up the shortfall they’d need to send convoys across the Atlantic of the size and logistics exceeding the numbers of the huge flotillas sent during WW2!

Be under no illusions folks. These Brexiteers are going to rip up the calendar and restart it at 1932, and a lot of people are going to suffer as a consequence.

Scotland must escape this. We have the key to the door. Let’s use it.