The country has gone mad stockpiling food for Brexit – project fear is in full swing

Brexit has become like a difficult pregnancy, with no epidural or caesarean on offer as the due date looms

Brexit negotiations might lurch from one crisis to another, but citizens can sleep soundly over the coming days knowing that supplies of mini-Magnums have been protected. Unilever have announced they’ve stockpiled the ice cream along with crates and crates of Lynx and Sure deodorant. That’s one bit of really good news among the gloom. Post 29 March, we might be starving, unable to get a doctor’s appointment or buy petrol but we can go to work smelling sweet.

It’s been three days since I stepped off the plane from Australia and been exposed to full Brexit madness. On the other side of the world, all I had to contend with were opinion pieces in a couple of serious dailies – the UK’s problems weren’t exactly top of the agenda in Mullumbimby, New South Wales. Aussies have their own quota of sex scandals, and the usual lacklustre senior ministers. Back home, every news bulletin and media outlet is consumed with stoking our anxieties about 29 March. Reason has gone overboard.

Before I went away, I predicted (along with most of you) Brexit would be a mess. I predicted that whatever the outcome, it would be a typical British fudge. Come 29 March, we will leave the EU but not REALLY leave – Theresa May will tie herself up knots trying to please everyone and satisfy no one. There won’t be a second vote because everyone would still carry on arguing about whatever result it threw up.

I predict that in three years’ time, life in Britain will be more or less the same as it was before the referendum. British pets will still be able to go on holiday in Europe. Foreign students will be keeping our universities solvent. Workers from the EU will still be picking our fruit and vegetables, packing chickens in our warehouses, cleaning our hotels and serving in our pubs and restaurants.

Sections of the media are determined, though, that we must collectively suffer extreme anxiety about our future – and it’s highly contagious. I’ve gone from swimming with dolphins and stroking wallabies to casing out my cellar to see if there’s enough shelving to start stockpiling essentials (only joking!). Project Fear is well and truly upon us, with daily examples of how normal life will be one heroic struggle in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Brexit has become like a difficult pregnancy, with no epidural or caesarean on offer as the due date looms.

We’ve been told that spring is the very worse time to rely on domestic food production – the EU supplies 90 per cent of our lettuces, 80 per cent of our tomatoes, 61 per cent of our apples and 70 per cent of our soft fruit – all being transported in lorries through channel ports very close to the time it goes on sale in the shops. One doom-monger claimed that with longer inspections, shelves “could become empty”.

Given that the UK enjoyed bumper crops of apples, pears and soft fruit last autumn, when everyone knew Brexit was looming, couldn’t we have stockpiled more for ourselves? I tried to store dozens of apples, but about half have have gone soft. Even so, I have plenty of pears and a freezer full of damsons to get through March and April.

I have frozen supplies of beetroot, broad beans, road kill pheasant and rabbit and still a lot of potatoes. My point is, life is more than a series of food shortages. We could just eat differently, seasonally, and give up rocket and lettuce for a while. I even have red chicory growing outside in this freezing weather. Would it be a real trial not to eat tomatoes which have travelled hundreds of miles and which don’t really taste of anything much in winter anyway?

In Australia, supermarkets flog very little imported food, and promote everything that is sourced domestically with giant stickers. Being Australian is seen as superior and desirable. They are not flogging Italian cheese or salami, but their own. We need to adopt the same attitude.

Brexit has made us lose all sense of proportion – with “preppies” stockpiling tinned food as if we were facing nuclear armageddon and not a border dispute. A Facebook group of preppies has almost 8,000 members busily sharing “tips”.

My advice – carry on as normal and save your sanity. Buying dozens of tins of pet food, bags of porridge oats, lentils and pasta condemns you to a very limited diet in the event (highly likely) there are no food shortages post 29 March. A company called Emergency Food Storage UK has sold hundreds of £295 Brexit Boxes containing 60 meals and 48 portions of freeze dried meat, as well as water filters. God forbid these anxious souls go veggie for a few weeks!

The doom-mongers have been very successful in brainwashing large sections of the population – one man, interviewed on television in a street market, actually said “it would do the country good to go without food, make them realise what they had”. Of course, the people queuing up at food banks know only too well what it’s like to to go without food, as do those waiting for their benefit payments or people on the minimum wage. The idea, though, that we are going to face a national food shortage is scaremongering of the worse kind, and all the major supermarkets (Asda, Waitrose and Sainsbury) are guilty of stoking our fears by boasting of their stockpiling prowess whilst bleating to MPs about “disruption to supply chains”.

We got through the war, we’ll get through Brexit. Even if we have to live on a diet of Magnums, tinned dog food and Lynx deodorant.

The interview from hell has worked out well for Olivia Bland

Olivia Bland’s account of her bizarre TWO-HOUR interview for the lowly position of communications assistant at a software company in Oldham has gone viral. She says Craig Dean, CEO of Web Applications UK, called her “an underachiever”, trashed her body language, taste in music, and test results (she had already spent an hour completely an examination on an earlier date).

She fled on the point of tears, and later declined the job, taking to Twitter to claim the process was unnecessary and deeply humiliating, like being in a room with her abusive ex-boyfriend. Over 100,000 people have “liked” her account, with many offering support and sharing their own experiences.

Whatever really happened, three things surprise me. First – how could the process take two hours? That’s longer than my interview to run BBC2 back in the 1990s. A good interviewer can reach a conclusion in less than half that time.

Secondly, two women were in the room throughout the entire process. The company says there was no bullying or intimidation. These workers are saying nothing – so are they too scared to speak out, or is Olivia being overly sensitive?

Finally, if she felt so upset, why did she continue to put up with the aggressive questioning? Perhaps Dean was crudely trying to engage Olivia in spirited dialogue, a defence of her taste and choices? If so, it has certainly backfired. Olivia has been inundated with job offers – which shows a savvy use of social media, even if she does sound a little bit wet.