Buying everything British - not easy

On BBC TV this morning they featured the Bradshaw family who are trying to buy everything British during 2013 i.e. food, clothes, electrical goods, fuel etc. As most of our manufacturing base has disappeared overseas, mainly to China, to reduce manufacturing costs, it is increasingly difficult to succeed in this challenge. The PC I am writing this on is made in China for a start. I see they have just run out of black pepper and are now stuck for a replacement as most pepper comes from exotic places. Buying BP petrol is a bit of a cheat as this company is really a large multi-national, but short of running a car on chip fat oil made from British grown sunflowers it is quite hard to find British petrol.

In my own small way I'd like to try to emulate them, in shopping if in nothing else, by buying British meats and British vegetables and fruit far more than hitherto.

Can someone explain to me how our economy works if nearly everything we eat, drink and use is imported from abroad? What we export surely does not balance the costs of these goods, so doesn't it mean we are just stoking up our debt still further?

The Bradshaws website is at http://www.britishfamily.co.uk/.

In the limit world trade would collapse if we traded nothing outside our country, but they are trying to make a point that virtually nothing is made in the UK these days. Surely there has to come a time when more of what we need will be made in the UK again?