As a large percentage of the country develop a siege mentality when the shops are closing for ONE day this puzzled me .Walking past TGI Friday's Boxing Day evening the place was heaving with people stuffing their collective faces .Surely they can't have run out of food at home already ?

Maybe they don't have a siege mentality, although you probably only saw a couple of hundred people out of a population of 70 million. Were they all shop keepers, so never run out of stuff?

Is this a serious question?

I've heard some crazy story about people going out for a meal for pleasure (sometimes with friends) – not just when they run out of food.
(perhaps the dishwasher broke)

Loving the sheep mentality of this forum! Baaaaaaaaaah!! 8)

I'm with you oldfart.

I dread entering a food shop in the 2 weeks of xmas and new year. Anyone would think the shops were closed for a month. Everyone buys gallons of alcofrol and then spend 2 weeks in the pub!!

Thanks for the support FC .Thought i was alone voice in the wilderness .

You right about the stoking up for 5 months when christmas comes around, but then to say that people going to tgis on sat is stupid…………..

Maybe they couldn't be arsed to cook another meal so went out for one?

Maybe they had decided to meet friends and / or family at a restaurant. It's the kind of think people do at Christmas, infact I'm going to do it tomorrow. I would advise against walking past the Plough Inn if you are offended by this kind of stuff.

I'm with oldfart and FoxyChick on this, supermarkets round here are jammed with people with overfull trolleys no matter what time of day you go and they are only shut for 1 day. Dont have an issue with people socialising over the festive season but how much of the food they seem to 'panic buy' actually gets eaten and how much gets chucked out ?

Maybe the ones in TGIs didn't over stock as they were planning on a trip out on boxing day, so they had no food left not like oldfart.

Yes I am with old fart on this too! Went into Sainsbury's 2 days before christmas to get some things for the day. Walked straight out again as the shelves were bare! It was quite surreal, as I asked one of the shop assistants where the christmas puddings were and as she directed me to the last few in the shop, there was a bloke grabbing the last few! HOW MANY ***%^ christmas puddings do you need!!!!!!FFS

I panic buy before christmas to avoid all the people panic buying before christmas, and all the people who clog up the shops after christmas because they couldn't buy anything before christmas because all the panic buyers had emptied the shops 🙂

But proper butchers and fishmongers are closed for a longer period.

Well oldfart, it's up to you to be the change you wish to see! Why not do something about this, and turn you local community or village or town into a transition town! Here's an example of something I have been involved in down at Totnes 😀

http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/

You could get involved in developing food resilience, that would be a good project huh? The government are not going to jump and solve the issues, it's down to you.

http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/food/home