[Taf]

Like most people, my parents didn't have a bank account, and pay was paid in cash weekly. They saved cash for Xmas, for the summer holiday and bought coal during the cheap months to see us through the winter. There was a stash of dried and canned goods that was only used in dire emergencies such as the severe snows of '62 and '63 and the floods that came with the thaws.

In the RAF there was always a local stock of everything we could need, with ration packs from the 50s being rotated into use as new boxes arrived. Every site had its own generators and fuel in case the public power went out.

The Home Office tech depots used to be well-stocked, then most of that vanished as the London bean-counters played with "creative accounting" that wrote off almost everything by declaring it "too expensive to store". I still cannot understand how that worked.

In civvy life I have always used spare cash to stock up on many things food-wise, mostly due to the threat of icy winters disrupting stocks, and the ever-present reality of inflation. When the covid restrictions came in, we were not that fussed about shopping, as most of what we needed was already here. As long as the power, gas and water were unaffected, we were OK. Since that period, we have restocked, beating inflation many times over.

I was amused to hear Burnham saying we needed wind-up radios. As if we would spend our time listening to his political drivel if the s hit the f.