Fuel shortages, a return to autumn 2000?

[normal rules]

I had to drive to Birmingham and back today as youngest son moving house and he needed a hand shifting some stuff. Drive through Grantham, Nottingham and central Birmingham. Every fuel station we saw was either closed or just petrol. Ques everywhere at those still open. No diesel anywhere.
Just madness. Just how fragile is our network when a bit of fake news goes viral.

[River Don]

Just got back from London.

There's no fuel to be had in North London tonight. Most of the forecourts on the A1 were empty too. I managed to fill up in the middle of nowhere just after Peterborough. They ran out of petrol while I was paying.

[tyke1962]

Proper shyte isn't it .

Shame people won't work for minimum wage anymore or should I say are no longer available to work for MW .

Tough times .

Like managing on MW to keep the country going whilst massively undervalued and still put food on the table .

The system was always proper fecked .

Welcome to reality .

[River Don]

Channel 5 are actually showing an hour long programme called Panic at the Pumps! Of course there is no way the media is exacerbating this.

Everytime they urge us not to panic... The more it sounds like Corporal Jones. Don't Oanic! Don't Panic!

The truth is once these things have started, people aren't really panicking. They are making a logical decision to top up because it really is very difficult to get fuel.

[rich1471]

More than 35 non-league football matches have been postponed due to the shortage of fuel in some areas.

Matches in the Isthmian League and Southern League - the tiers below the National League - have been called off.

The entire programme in the Southern Combination Football League in the ninth and 10th tiers has also been postponed due to fuel-related issues.

[Axholme Lion]

If everyone carried on as normal there wouldn't be a problem. The problem is the media have promoted this non issue into becoming a problem and also lots of people are stupid. It's the same selfish people who are still stocked up with bog roll from last year.

[jamesrover17]

If everyone carried on as normal there wouldn't be a problem. The problem is the media have promoted this non issue into becoming a problem and also lots of people are stupid. It's the same selfish people who are still stocked up with bog roll from last year.

^^^^ This...

[SydneyRover]

''Colaianni asserts that irrational behavior is one of the most difficult behaviors to deal with. When someone is being irrational, they don't listen to reason, logic or even common sense. They are laser focused on fulfilling their need(s). And until that need is fulfilled, or they snap out of it, the irrational person can be unpredictable and sometimes even dangerous. But unless they have some sort of psychosis, there are ways to bring an irrational person back to rational thought. For all intents and purposes, we'll call rational thought "reality." Listed below are some strategies for dealing with the perceived illogical person:''

https://www.daily-journal.com/business/main-street-how-to-apply-logic-to-the-illogical/article_c5c45fcc-db40-59fe-8c3e-aa3fde3b47b7.html

[Axholme Lion]

Boris has been conspicuous by his absence on this matter. It makes me wonder if this has been deliberately engineered to drive people towards changing to electric vehicles to meet his pie in the sky climate change figures.

[Not Now Kato]

[Not Now Kato]

Boris has been conspicuous by his absence on this matter. It makes me wonder if this has been deliberately engineered to drive people towards changing to electric vehicles to meet his pie in the sky climate change figures.

[Axholme Lion]

Boris has been conspicuous by his absence on this matter. It makes me wonder if this has been deliberately engineered to drive people towards changing to electric vehicles to meet his pie in the sky climate change figures.

Not on that beach with the plebs. Hopefully in the sea where Jaws will eat him.

[normal rules]

Hilarious video on social media of a woman filling plastic carrier bags with fuel at a station before putting them in her boot.
You can’t make this shit up.

[selby]

Can we start a rumour there is a jobs shortage, just to see if everyone would rush out and get one.

[normal rules]

How’s about a run on a few high st banks?

[Axholme Lion]

Can we start a rumour there is a jobs shortage, just to see if everyone would rush out and get one.

Not while it's easier to sit on benefits doing nothing.

[Axholme Lion]

I wonder if this is mainly a London thing. I did my weekly fill up on Tuesday in the Subaru and also the Jimny today. I also was specific in wanting Vpower. Some greedy selfish people out there.

[turnbull for england]

Had a meeting today with a bloke from near reading. He couldn't believe the difference round here to his area, said there's queues all day and night

[idler]

A ten minute queue at Morrison’s yesterday when I filled the wife’s up.
Drove from Bradford to Ben Rhydding near Ilkley and every petrol station I passed was closed off.
I filled mine up at Sainsbury’s this morning and there was no queue but the only fuel left was Super unleaded. Cashier said they probably had about an hour and half’s worth left.
At least I won’t have to worry about getting stranded in Donny after the game now.
Typically though, yesterday I was going to get the bus into Bradford and then train to Ben Rhydding to save my fuel. Waitedbten minutes and the bus blobbed meaning I would miss my train. So back home and go in the car. Public transport is a joke sometimes.

[Axholme Lion]

Sounds like people in cities are flapping more than the smaller towns and countryside. Must be a certain type of person.

[Filo]

A ten minute queue at Morrison’s yesterday when I filled the wife’s up.
Drove from Bradford to Ben Rhydding near Ilkley and every petrol station I passed was closed off.
I filled mine up at Sainsbury’s this morning and there was no queue but the only fuel left was Super unleaded. Cashier said they probably had about an hour and half’s worth left.
At least I won’t have to worry about getting stranded in Donny after the game now.
Typically though, yesterday I was going to get the bus into Bradford and then train to Ben Rhydding to save my fuel. Waitedbten minutes and the bus blobbed meaning I would miss my train. So back home and go in the car. Public transport is a joke sometimes.

Talking of public transport, First Mainline have jumped on the no driver shortage now, they have suspended the services at my end of Stainforth, leaving a mile walk to get to the nearest bus stop to go to town

[Sprotyrover]

A ten minute queue at Morrison’s yesterday when I filled the wife’s up.
Drove from Bradford to Ben Rhydding near Ilkley and every petrol station I passed was closed off.
I filled mine up at Sainsbury’s this morning and there was no queue but the only fuel left was Super unleaded. Cashier said they probably had about an hour and half’s worth left.
At least I won’t have to worry about getting stranded in Donny after the game now.
Typically though, yesterday I was going to get the bus into Bradford and then train to Ben Rhydding to save my fuel. Waitedbten minutes and the bus blobbed meaning I would miss my train. So back home and go in the car. Public transport is a joke sometimes.

Talking of public transport, First Mainline have jumped on the no driver shortage now, they have suspended the services at my end of Stainforth, leaving a mile walk to get to the nearest bus stop to go to town

Yes Bus drivers were another group who had massive pay cuts inflicted, I am not surprised if there is a shortage!

[normal rules]

Hilarious story on the bbc online news. 20 motorists started tailing a tanker down the road until it stopped at a building site. Some of the drivers were furious when they later found out it was not going to a filling station , as it was full of cement.
You just can’t make this shit up can you?

Seriously though. We would be proper f**ked if there was a genuine fuel shortage.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Objective truth again.

https://mobile.twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1444619823976222728

One of the reasons that liars like Johnson get away with lying is that we have utterly shit journalists who let stuff like this pass.

You'd think a journalist paid £400k per year from public funds would be able to say, "Supply, PM? I few seconds ago you said it was demand. Are you making this up on the hoof?"

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Surely the two are linked?  There's high demand (problem 1 due to panic) which if wasn't there would be no issue. However in the south they are now unable to catch up the supply so it's a supply issue. It's not bloody complicated is it?

I'd be a terrible politician mind as I'd be unable to deal with the focus on every single world.

[BillyStubbsTears]

If it was basically a demand problem, that is by its very nature self limiting. There is a period over which demand outstrips supply while people who would have been happy to drive with a half empty tank fill up. But demand cannot stay at that level, unless people are using hugely more fuel than usual and therefore having to fill up more often.

So what's happened was initially a supply problem, which, because of the initial panic, produced a temporary demand problem which turned into a much bigger supply problem.

That's dead easy to explain. But Johnson goes into word salad mode and gives the impression of making up responses.

The point being of course, that he gets away with this waffling, whereas other politicians who screw up in interviews are constantly hounded about it.

And the bigger point is, what caused the supply problem in the first place, and why wasn't this foreseen?

[Axholme Lion]

If it was basically a demand problem, that is by its very nature self limiting. There is a period over which demand outstrips supply while people who would have been happy to drive with a half empty tank fill up. But demand cannot stay at that level, unless people are using hugely more fuel than usual and therefore having to fill up more often.

So what's happened was initially a supply problem, which, because of the initial panic, produced a temporary demand problem which turned into a much bigger supply problem.

That's dead easy to explain. But Johnson goes into word salad mode and gives the impression of making up responses.

The point being of course, that he gets away with this waffling, whereas other politicians who screw up in interviews are constantly hounded about it.

And the bigger point is, what caused the supply problem in the first place, and why wasn't this foreseen?

He probably gets away with it because no-one bothers listening to him any longer. Blah blah b*llocks!

There wasn't a supply problem. Two or three fuel stations down south run dry, which we all now happens now and again, it hits social media and before you know it all they idiots have bled everywhere dry. It had to clear up after a few days of madness when everyone had full tanks.

[normal rules]

If I recall, bp said a small number of their sites in very selective areas of the uk were going to have resupply issues due to a shortage of drivers for that particular delivery round.

Cue the front page of the suns headline.  “ we are running on empty”
The rest you know.
God help us if a viral story of a bank running out of money ever got out.
We live in a very fragile society. Toilet rolls , pasta and now fuel.
Whatever next.

[BillyStubbsTears]

If I recall, bp said a small number of their sites in very selective areas of the uk were going to have resupply issues due to a shortage of drivers for that particular delivery round.

Cue the front page of the suns headline.  “ we are running on empty”
The rest you know.
God help us if a viral story of a bank running out of money ever got out.
We live in a very fragile society. Toilet rolls , pasta and now fuel.
Whatever next.

That's precisely why Gordon Brown poured money into saving the banking system when they genuinely WERE on the verge of running out of money. And ever since we've had people asking why he didn't just let them fail because they deserved it. Ignoring the fact that the entire economic system would have collapsed if he'd done that.

[drfchound]

Quote by Normal Rules above:

Cue the front page of the suns headline.  “ we are running on empty”
The rest you know.
God help us if a viral story of a bank running out of money ever got out.




It did happen of course, Northern Rock in 2007.
On the evening news one night and massive queues outside NR branches the next day when people tried to withdraw their savings.