Panic buying

[Andy in Germany]

I've stocked up on Marmite, and I'm hoping to get a lifetimes supply of Brooks saddle.

 

[Threevok]

I have a lifetime's supply of cable ferrules (only because I was sent a whole box and not 10).

What a coincidence. I have a lifetime supply of cable end nipples, instead of the 10 I ordered

Anyone else ? Perhaps we can all open a store between us

 

[Chris S]

Anybody else remember the paper shortage? You had to rule an extra line at the top of the pages in your exercise books and write in the margins as well.

 

[Blue Hills]

If you are old enough to remember (and if not, ask your granny), think back to the shortages of the late 60's and early 70's (before we joined the EEC/EU).

Sugar
medicines
Loo rolls
Road salt
Fuel
The latest "must have" Christmas toy (shows my age)
White goods
Electronics (and the price will increase)
Wine

..... are all ones that I remember as a kid, but there were many more.

My Grandfather bought a warehouse out in rural Hampshire back in the late 1930's to stock with hard to get items (mostly machine tool related, but it also included enough gin that they took 3 years to sell it off during WWII). My father eventually closed it down in 1976 after we had joined the EEC/EU as there would be no more shortages in his lifetime (which excluding coal in the mid 1980's so he was more or less correct)

I wonder what it would cost to set up the operation again .........

Can't help but say you must be posh Brains if a wine shortage was an issue in the 60s and 70s - most Brits hardly knew the stuff existed.

oh - I do remember a light shortage - diddy jackets

all the best

 

[johnblack]

For how long?

She must be the modern day Nostradamus, she's been at it for years.

 

[Andy in Germany]

What a coincidence. I have a lifetime supply of cable end nipples, instead of the 10 I ordered

Anyone else ? Perhaps we can all open a store between us

I turned down an interview this very day for a place making electrical cables. Now I feel a fool for missing the black marketing opportunities you've shown me.

ETA: I don't know what happened while editing this post, sorry about that.

 

[Smudge]

People were panic buying round here last winter when we had a bit of snow. Couldn't get a pint of milk for love nor money.

 

[derrick]

There does not seem to be a shortage of bull sh*t..

 

[welsh dragon]

There does not seem to be a shortage of bull sh*t..

 

[Salty seadog]

I have a lifetime's supply of cable ferrules (only because I was sent a whole box and not 10).

Me too.

 

[Brains]

Can't help but say you must be posh Brains if a wine shortage was an issue in the 60s and 70s - most Brits hardly knew the stuff existed.

oh - I do remember a light shortage - diddy jackets

all the best

England has been importing vast quantities of wine since Roman times.
Tonnage tax, which all ships pay, is based in medieval wine casks landed in the England in the 800's AD ('tun'age tax).
(England rather than the UK, the Scots import Buckie from England! and the Welsh drink Brains )

UK Wine Imports below.
Wine tailed off a bit in the 1930's and 40's, but was back to normal levels from the 50's to the 70's before it went through the roof in the 1980's and has been climbing ever since.

 

[biggs682]

Inner tubes

 

[Dirk]

Fray Bentos pies

Too late......I've cornered the market.

 

[Globalti]

That wine chart is interesting. Have you got the same thing for Johnny Walker exports to Saudi Arabia? (Goes via a neutral intermediary country, obviously.)

 

[Smudge]

I see that wine import chart shot up after the end of the 70's.... Probably when people started to realise you could get wines other than Blue Nun.