sourassin:

political-chessboard:

This is reality for many individuals. While many in cities look at these headlines, stockpiling for Brexit, army on standby and call it project fear, these people are actually needing to prepare for it, because they are going to be worst affected

(The whole thread is longer:)

I live on a remote Scottish island and we are starting to plan food stores and increased food production because of a Brexit which Scotland consistently opposed.

It isn’t bringing people together in some rustic ideal. Here’s the reality we are facing:

We are at the very end of most supply chains. We will lack fuel and materials and manufactured goods which will all have sold before they reach us.

I and others will suffer and likely die without medication.

We can, however, feed ourselves if we revert two or three generations of behaviour, but this depends on us staying healthy and warm enough to manage it. This island has young people. Many do not.

We are planning on turning gardens into plots. Polytunnels and planticrues are being used. Farmers deciding which animals to kill and which to keep because there is no way to plan a year ahead.

This isn’t some rural idyllic vision of community, this is a pragmatic response born of fear and anger. We didn’t vote for people to die without medicine. We didn’t vote to send the island back three generations.

The arguments against Scottish independence have evaporated. The UK won because of doubts that Scotland could passport through to EU membership. Now we are having out citizenship destroyed against our collective will.

And we can feed ourselves. We have turbines if the power is interrupted and we have fireplaces. People in cities do not. People on islands with fewer young people do not.

It’s absurd that we are even having to consider any of this when we could just not do it.

I’ll be amazed if there isn’t enormous civil unrest in overheated, hungry cities.

With just one single day of political courage, we could avoid this.

We’d better buy beans.

– Howard Hardiman @howardhardiman

I come from Island stock – I know exactly how hard it is to scrape a living on those islands. (Not least because landowners saw they could make more money from sheep than traditional crofting – where he says reverting two or three generations of behaviour, in many cases it will be more because the land has been so wholly given over to sheep. And that’s if the land can recover enough to be farmed) And as he mentions, people in the cities don’t have the resources – or the skills, tbh – to provide for themselves. Over 4 million people – 4/5 of Scotland’s population – lives in urban areas.

We’re fucked.