Latest Moan From You and Me 2023

Well they also touched on the fact that now we are out of the EU the subsidies are coming to an end and new rules will apply.

I'm not well up on the shop prices of stuff but I think lamb is pretty expensive.
When you see all the sheep out there you have to wonder why.

 

My Taiwanese friend explained this phenomenon to me a few years ago. It goes like this.

British meat products are highly revered for their superior quality, but quality comes at a price. In certain parts of the world that are traditionally considered poor, things are changing, for some. In China for example, people are used to being poor, but increasingly, folks from poor backgrounds are now quite wealthy. Largely because the rest of the world has recognised an opportunity in getting poor nations to do all our stuff, so some folks have suddenly found new wealth as a result.

Those folks whose parents really struggled to cobble together just enough food from the cheap stuff, now want to demonstrate that they are now wealthy, so they develop a taste for expensive food. British meat is a big part of that. Almost like a status symbol. Just like how British wealthy folks might eat such disgusting fares as fish eggs and sea bogies and drink the expensive Lambrini from the champagne region of France.

Meanwhile, us ordinary Brits can't afford the best meat. So we have to buy cheaper meat from countries with lower standards.

 

If British meat is being exported to the Middle East, it's hardly likely to be nouveaux-riches Chinese eating it! More likely the Gulf states? Isn't it reassuring to think that it's considered worthy?

 

The programme was mostly about making our country more self sufficient

 

It's just the same here, though. In this area, sunflower oil, dried and fresh fruits and wheat are produced by the millions of litres and tonnes, but they're mostly exported and foreign imports substituted. Due to the current situation vis-a-vis Russia the Gov has woken up to the desirability of being self-sufficient. If France can't be, who can? BUT the producers are already struggling to absorb the astronomical increases in energy costs, so given the choice between selling to wholesale exporters at a profit or selling to the home market at a considerable loss, what would you do? Until governments stop the middlemen from racketeering I can't see anything changing. Passing on the true cost of production to the consumer is unlikely to work when the mass market is currently, largely, having to choose between eating and heating.

 

What I can't understand is why shipping costs haven't risen to such a point as to make exporting less profitable than selling at home.

 

Yes, @pete the water charge is for 2 months. I don't know why they don't split it to every month because the reading is transmitted electronically so there is not extra cost to get those figures.

 

I pay my water in two instalments each year, one seems to cover 5 months and the other 7 months for some reason, total for last year came out at around £210 that includes waste water removal.
Apart from in summer when watering I'm probably quite a light user.

 

Bound to be the fault of Brexit, everything is these days.
Or maybe in this case it wouldn't be.

 

Because ships use heavy oil not fuel like we use for our cars also fill up in the cheaper countries were possible
And there is no waiting around with ship's if captain has to leave a port at a time he will leave no messing about even if you have a machine on board he/she sale with it still on and you then will have to pay for it's return
A ship will have a time to unload/load if weather is a problem and can't unload/load then the ship's owner can charge waiting time and that's megger money
The ship is king so no messing around

 

I'm not sure if they are still doing those road trips of live export sheep down to Southern Europe and beyond.
I was hoping Brexit would put a stop to that kind of thing.

 

They were a bargain, then. Cauliflowers have been between €3 and €5 for at least two years, here. Apart from one week when Lidl were selling them for around €1.50. There was a lot of aloo gobi, picallili and Branston made that week
We've plenty of availability (until the latest round of strikes kicks in) but affordability is something else

 

Not exactly up-to-the-minute, but according to this article, no they're not Live farm animal exports to mainland EU at a standstill post-Brexit