Britain Considered Putting Troops on the Streets in 2008 Financial Crisis; Well, it's Worse Now

Ex-PM Gordon Brown

According to excerpts taken from his book, ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown feared anarchy during the 2008 crisis. According to the book he said:

We’d have to think: do we have curfews, do we put the Army on the streets, how do we get order back?

If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cash points aren’t working, and people go to Tesco and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode.

If you can’t buy food or petrol or medicine for your kids, people will just start breaking the windows and helping themselves.

And as soon as people see that on TV, that’s the end, because everyone will think that’s OK now, that’s just what we all have to do. It’ll be anarchy. That’s what could happen tomorrow.

Well if he thought that was bad he must be thanking God he’s not in charge now.

There’s no doubt 2008 was bad, but 2013 is worse for the man in the street, even if the government manipulation of figures appears to say otherwise.

As we stumble from one crisis to the next the people are getting restless. Not restless enough for my liking but they are stirring from the deep slumber they have been in for most of their lives.

As costs continue to rise, and people have to make a choice again this winter of heating or eating, they are starting at last to realise that something’s not right.

It was reported in June of this year that the UK will likely face shortages of energy within the next two years. The comments from Ofgem (the office of gas and electricity markets) make grim reading.

In short, spare capacity will be down to around 2% which in a bad winter is almost nothing at all. You can read more here, here and here.

Management Today goes even further and states the risk of the lights going out at double what it was before the Ofgem report.

Energy watchdog Ofgem says we don’t have enough capacity to produce energy – and has suggested rationing might be the only solution.

I suppose it will at least allow people to buy food without worrying about the domestic fuel bills. (sarc)

On the subject of food. How can it be that major supermarket chains can charge £2.79 for a 4-and-a-bit pound bag of small and very mediocre tasting potatoes? Not the 5-pound bags we are used to. The standard 5-pound bag of potatoes have shrunk since kilogrammes got written on the wrapper. Have a look if you don’t believe me.

Same with baked beans. A standard tin should hold 453g of beans, and it did, once, a long time ago. Now it holds 420g. Same size can, same picture, same everything except more money for less produce. Canned tomatoes are even worse, they on average contain 400g. Again, have a look if you don’t believe me.

So, going back to Gordon Brown. Power failures will prevent people accessing cash, power failures will cause illness and death, will create havoc on the roads and at service stations. It will affect everything we have come to take for granted. The benefit system will grind to a halt, payments will be late or lost in cyber space, supermarkets will have freezers full of spoiled food. the list is endless. There’s no doubt that lack of fuel security will cause more problems than the crash of ’08.

When this happens, as many are sure it will, the people of Britain will finally shake themselves awake and look around. When they see what’s going on, that they can no longer keep their kids warm or even cook them a meal, when they see how they are being fleeced at every turn, then David Cameron and his Eton-educated cronies may have a bit of a fight on their hands.

Contributed by Lizzie Bennett of Underground Medic.

Lizzie Bennett retired from her job as a senior operating department practitioner in the UK earlier this year. Her field was trauma and accident and emergency and she has served on major catastrophe teams around the UK. Lizzie publishes Underground Medic on the topic of preparedness.