As I predicted, oooh a long time ago, Nigel Farage has started a new party called the Brexit party and has taken over as leader from his colleague Catherine Blaiklock, who resigned after making what Farage called "horrible and intolerant" comments on Twitter about Islam. Same old, same old....nothing surprising there then. The Brexit party is a "virtual party", i.e. just a website, though it will mobilise at short notice if the UK takes part in the European elections.
I've also been planning a Brexit party, but that was a bit different. After emphasising to Mrs H that we really should be doing some Brexit panic buying it occurred to me that we could hold an Independence Day party on 30 March, if a deal is reached and our exit takes place, using all the contingency supplies that would no longer be necessary. This could have been a nostalgic Spam fritters. Or if it was a no deal exit and the power went off it could also be a warm beer occasion. Better make it a barbecue, just in case.
But now that it looks like there is an extension (or is there? - our law still currently says we leave on 29 March....) unfortunately my Brexit party will have to be deferred. And anyway, so far Mrs H has only stockpiled er - toilet rolls, the majority of which are made in the UK anyway. Ah, but remember, there'll still be no power, water, fuel for vehicles and the plague of frogs to contend with. So I'd better be more proactive next time I go with her to the supermarket in getting the right panic buying done if it's going to be much of a party!
All that Project Fear stuff has really been in full flow recently. As I've said before, I can't see why foodstuffs would not reach us in time before they perish (or we do). No-one has ever actually explained how this would happen. But in last weeks newspapers I read, amongst other things, that there could be problems with water supply because of non availability of chemicals which cannot be stored. The list of such chemicals included aluminium sulphate, which has been used by man since the time of the ancient Egyptians, 2000 years ago. In water treatment it is used as a coagulant to precipitate out impurities. To my knowledge aluminium sulphate is a totally stable compound - it doesn't "go off". It was traditionally made by mixing aluminium trihydrate, which comes from bauxite mined in places like Scotland, with sulphuric acid. The resulting solution is allowed to crytallise in troughs, producing large slabs of the product. I well remember from my first job at a chemical plant the operators known as "cake lifters" whose job it was to dig out these slabs for packaging and sale. Their one necessary qualification was strength. Take it from me: aluminium sulphate doesn't go off, though some more complex polyaluminum forms aren't stable once dissolved. So yes, there might be issues at water treatment plants but certainly not for the specific reason given.
Separating truth and myth is well nigh impossible when we are being force fed so much tosh.
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