scrubbedexpat143

Eating appears to have become optional in NZ these days.

SO's best friend emailed yesterday. Likes to quote stupor market prices, crowed tomatoes at our local Cole's were AUD$1.90/kilogram yesterday - the usual price is AUD$2.90 but they sometimes go up to AUD$3.90 on weekends when (so we suspect the Cole's marketing tea leaf readers and astrologists have figured out) shoppers tend to buy more of them. Weekday prices are usually lower and Wednesdays being the referred pensioner shopping day prices often lowest of all on select items. Always at least one or two selections of fruit and veg available with heavy discounts.In January avocados were AUD$4.99 (okay, AUD$5.00 then!) for a one kilo bag and I scored two of them. SO threatened an abrupt departure from our household if I made any more guacamole and our cats won't eat them. I am now heartily sick of them and (here in Indonesia where we are this month) happy to note no 'avos' being sold here, at least out of Bali which is still prime guacamole territory. Bliss...

I am now actively pondering the prospect of online flogging fresh produce to Kiwis and shipping by air freight. I mean, with the seemingly endless stocks available from our local shopping mall...

It did make us wonder why people will put up with such nonsensical situations. In the good old days would we not have had for mob riots in the streets, bricks/stones thrown in politicians' office windows and unsigned written threats to hang a few of the same from capital city lamp posts? Joking, of course. Not to be recommended in our safe so-called democracies, but maybe it goes to show how apathetic we as a species have become...

Thoughts only. Seriously considering when (and where) it will all end. With everyone on forced diets? But then during the worst of the Covid lockdowns and supply stream shortages in Ozzz - or have we forgotten the infamous Loo Roll Crisis Of 2020 which made us a global laughing stock for a few months? - the inbound flow of junk food products to our supermarkets went on uninterrupted. Something to think about here.

BristolUK

That wasn't just Australia

scrubbedexpat143

What you had a toilet paper crisis in Moncton too!?! When I was a child in New Bruns in the '50s many impoverished families were using old issues of the Times and Transcript and in the Acadian communities l'Evangeline for loo paper. Or in a pinch one could use maple leaves. (Okay, bad joke, I know, I know.)

As the good stoic I am, when the loo paper shortage hit the supermarket shelves in Ozzz I fell back on an old Chinese saying - "if no beef then you c you eat pork" or some such thing. (I did Google it to find the exact words, but nothing came up, my disclaimer this!).

All the more annoying were the fresh produce prices here as we live in a regional center known for its market gardens. A few roadside shops sell fruit and vegs freshly picked that morning but the prices are two times or more those of the local Cole's for the same products, so no go. Greed is not good...

I'm now in Indonesia and last evening went to a shopping mall supermarket for a bottle of Heineken (at AUD$5.00 this was the most expensive I've paid for it out of Bali in all my years here, hyperinflation oi!) to wash down my evening tablets. Fresh tomatoes 90 cents, exotic fruit from 49 cents, cheese three times what we pay for it back home, ginger $3 a kilo (in the latter case nobody buys it now and it looks like it will rot on the shelf). Considering that supermarkets in Surabaya are seen as the most expensive places to buy food, obviously the profit margins in Australia are sky-high...

According to SO's friend back home, with prices now as they are eating may soon become an optional pastime Down Under.

LittleGreyCat

I assume at least some of you will have read about the fresh veg shortages in the UK.
https://news.sky.com/story/british-t...rower-12817202
Tories say "blah blah blah not Brexit".
Therese Coffey my local MP says why not substitute turnips for tomatoes - they are very nutritious.
Apart from the fact most farmers don't grow them now and couldn't afford to harvest them if they did, I am sure they didn't plant with a view to replacing the tomato crops we no longer have.

Tories say "bad weather in Europe".
Europe says "Brexit regulations make it uneconomic to ship to UK". 17 hours in a lorry to get across the Channel isn't motivating drivers.

Tories say "we must ramp up industrial glasshouses".
Long term greenhouse growers say they haven't planted crops yet because high fuel prices mean that they can't afford to heat the greenhouses in winter.
UK have a centuries long history of growing crops under glass.
Noting that cheap produce from the rest of Europe, especially the Netherlands, has undermined profitability anyway and despite warnings the Tories have done nothing up to now to support greenhouse production.
Also note that wind farms are being paid to turn off turbines because there is too much power. Shame some could't be provided for agricultural purposes at a subsidised price.
For some reason renewables are tied to the wholesale price of gas which is far higher than the production costs.

So the UK is currently being mocked by the EU and beyond with pictures of supermarket and market shelves groaning with fresh produce.
Price is a minor issue if the produce isn't even making it to the shops.

Justcol

And rightly so

Cost of being out of the EU

The UK thinks the world revolves around it. Time is passing and it is becoming very clear it doesn't. The rest of the world couldn't care less about the UK or its self righteous view of itself.

Brexit changed absolutely nothing for the better. Every problem that was used as an excuse to leave, still exists.
​​​​​

BEVS

I agree .

LittleGreyCat

Bear in mind almost 50% of the UK voted against Brexit in an "advisory" referendum which suddenly became "the will of the people" despite all the obvious and now proven lies.