‘We never drop below 30 toilet rolls’: the Britons stockpiling for a crisis

Oliver Dowden this week advised people to stock up on certain supplies – but some people have been doing it for years

Kathryn is a firm believer in the 19th-century adage that we are only ever nine meals from anarchy. Having learned the skill of stockpiling from her wartime parents and grandparents, her first mini-foray was in preparation for Y2K.

“That was mainly candles and biscuits, because I didn’t really take it very seriously,” she said. “But it did mean that I was already halfway there when I realised I needed a substantial, genuine Brexit stash, which then morphed into a Covid stash, which in turn became a cost of living store, then an ‘Are we going to run out of electricity?’ store when the Ukraine war kicked off, and is now a general, all-encompassing everyday/WW3 stash.”