Most households operate with a just-in-time philosophy even if they are unaware of it. Households' inventory suppliers are their supermarkets, which are run, too, on just-in-time principles, though more consciously so. What began in Toyota in Japan has become the predominant life style of advanced, highly urbanised societies. Just-in-time has brought great advantages: standardised quality of goods; higher urban densities as storage and processing space is reduced; economies in storage and processing costs as these are supplied further up the supply chain; optimised use of various production factors.....
Unfortunately just-in-time is intensely vulnerable to the slightest disturbance in the supply chain, or any feeder supply - like petrol and diesel and, consequently, the transport system.
So get in your car, fill it up with petrol, then fill it up inside with staples of all and every kind but, especially the heavier things like washing machine liquid and other household detergents, tinned goods like tomatoes; packaged water; flour, rice, pasta, dried pulses, sugar; and do the light but unwieldy stuff too, loo paper, other household papers, breakfast cereals, nibbles and crisps...
Outsourcing inventory saves money, but when prices are rising as household supply prices are, and the government has succeeded in allowing a dispute about pensions, for those who are not yet employed by a company, to result in cutting off the Forties field and closing down 40% of the United Kingdom refinery capacity, it is time to act against the madness of Brown before he reaches right into your larder and empties the shelves.
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11 comments:
I rather like this from Matthew Parris
Mr Brown is unlikely to go quietly. He may be mad but he's quite used to being mad, he's been mad for a long time, he doesn't see it, and on some ghastly level the prognosis is stable
Sensible advice HG: reminds me of how life used to be in some of the poorest parts of Africa. The road between Pretoria and my garage was well worn and the suspension on the Land Rover would creak and complain all the way home, especially over the huge, steep escarpement along the way!
But I never thought I would see the day when these conditions would become almost the norm in Britain.
Just filled up my car at 7.10 am. Is it a coincidence that there were 3 other motorists, all grizzled fifties, filling up at the same time? Or could it be that the Sunday Express' lead article, which speaks of "panic buying" and threats of "rationing", was read by older early birds who woke up with less vicious hangovers than their juniors?
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/42609/Labour-plan-to-ration-petrol
Poor old Brown. I said many times that Tony would only pass him the orange when he'd finally sucked out all the juice. Now Fate is taking the pith.
When starting Angels one of the earliest posts was on the madness of Brown and what is the matter with him. I missed picking out the stability of the condition, ND. As 'lack of self awareness' is characteristic of his kind of brain he wouldn't see it, would he? He'd find his condition and its fluctuations entirely normal.
One of the finer aspects, I've thought, of Stanislaw's declamations on Brown is the recognition that Brown can't help it, he's surrounded by worse people cynically and cruelly using his characteristics.
I consulted Mr HG, who knows the east of Europe well, about what happens, and he reeled off lists of inventory, and then described some weird barter and informal exchange systems that existed there.
We are closer to the GDR than we think Nomad. Brown has found the secret of time travel and the whole country is inside his infernal machine.
he's surrounded by worse people cynically and cruelly using his characteristics
then again, powerful men are always surrrounded by jackals and hyenas
speaking of earliest posts, HG, my very first at C@W, 6 weeks before Brown's accession to the Throne of Misery, was to urge Labour MPs to heed Lenin's words and think better of elevating McStalin
Rationing! S.
Who has thought about rationing and its implications since Reddaway and Champernowne?
ND, now you've done it. I went to look and started reading City and you from the earliest times to the present day.
It's like turning a page of bound-together articles to find wholly unrelated accounts of horrid practices in distant parts.
"We are closer to the GDR than we think Nomad. Brown has found the secret of time travel and the whole country is inside his infernal machine."
Quite so. My first reaction in seeing - belatedly - The Lives Of Others, on the reign of the Stasi in the GDR, was that this was Brown's wet dream.
He is certainly mad. Happy to contradict himself and to come out with the most preposterous assertions, chief amongst them recently being blaming his sale of gold on the Tories, and claiming that the sale meant that we were diversifying into gold. Quite so.
I would also hazard he has a personality disorder of some sort, probably minor autism. Thus his clear lack of empathy for his fellows. Unless he is a lizard, in which case, I guess he would be mostly antipathetic to humans.
bitter & twisted, moi ?
and horrid practices, we don't have any of those, dear me no ...
The whole economic set up is mad, HG. It wouldn't matter under which government or which crisis. As it happens it's an economic crisis, but an environmental one would have led to much the same situation.
I've always feared 'just in time' supply - its worst effect is that it enables stupendous population levels (which it has) and yet can cut our throats within two days. It's why I moved away from London though I'm not sure that had much point to it with hindsight.
As for your shopping list. Washing powder ? Do you think that will really matter ? I notice a gun is absent. Instead of burgling for your video or your high-fi the starving lawless will be after your food.
Forget everything about what was, what's gone ...
We even need to forget that we might be impoverished but must concentrate on restoring/preserving the rule of law. So long as we have that we can get through and maybe even rebuild.
Most of all we musn't forget that things might not be so bad either.
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