To Be Or Not To Be A Fuel Shortage......

By your standards, i probably am.

 

Unfortunately so are all my friends . I’m sure we’d get on just fine if only you could read faster and hadn’t taken offence at my first comments to you.

 

I'll try to do better on the reading. And i have spent the last 4yrs arguing with remaining traitors, so i have an automatic reaction to any hint of them.

 

I can assure you I ain’t one of them. So we should be good.

 

I'm a remainer........at least I voted Remain. Now I can sit back and enjoy the pantomime, knowing at least it isn't my fault

 

“Oh yes it is!”


Edit: As derailments go, this is a cracker…

 

All good here mate.

 

Only just picked up your question @MICK64 .
In my view many people are behaving abnormally which is creating the fuel shortages, and in my mind they are idiots. The supply chain was coping prior to the media focus. This focus resulted in the scenes that we are seeing at the pumps.

 

You can’t say there are 100000 less drivers AND say there isn’t a supply chain problem…

 

Oh no it isn’t!

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

 

The real idiots are the press and the media who created the whole shit storm in the first place. If no one had mentioned shortage then we wouldn't be where we are now.
Saying there's no shortage so please don't panic buy really helps doesn't it! Tossers

 

Mick, you won. Get over it
Anyway, found a filling station and got to the pump after maybe a 20 minute queue. 50 quid max on diesel, which just about filled up, so my other three calls this week should be ok

 

I don’t care I’m on holiday, just get it sorted by the 6th oct.

 

Agreed @DCS900 , I didn’t say there wasn’t a problem, just that the fuel distribution companies were coping prior to the media attention.

On the TV this morning they were highlighting a shortage of bus drivers ffs. There has always been shortages of bus drivers. Bus companies have always been advertising for drivers for decades.

 

.

 

Well to be honest I doubt that the real figure is anywhere near that. 100,000 is a headline grabbing number. We can only speculate at the correct figure. My total guesstimate would be under 50,000.

 

OK, I didn't put enough context in the original post.

I've been going to the same fuel station every Saturday (except my one week off) since March. I've fuelled up, with petrol or diesel, on average an estimated 8 to 10 cars per week - every week. I have not once in that time seen a queue - not a single queue - it's a large 'ish (6 multi-fuel pumps plus autogas) fuel station/mini market in the middle of a very busy trading estate. Even during the insanely busy summer holiday weekends down here the place was never fully occupied. I did once have to wait maybe 2 minutes while a driver was faffing around with keys, shopping, kids or whatever, and blocking the only available (at the time) pump suitable for the nearside or offside fuel filler on the car I was fuelling. A delay of a couple of minutes and not because the place had every pump in use and queues stretching a hundred yards down the road!

Bear in mind, too, that this fuel station is one of three within a 1 mile radius - one of which is a large Sainsbury's superstore fuel station - and I visited all 3 only to find the same story of long queues on the forecourts and in both directions on the access roads, and this at 0830 on a Saturday morning when many of the stores and outlets on the estate were not even open!

It was, as far as I'm concerned, a singular display of the herd mentality. There is, we're assured, no fuel shortage - so why were/are there queues at fuel stations? That's simply NOT normal behaviour. The overwhelming majority of those people were NOT behaving as they normally would - they were responding selfishly to a misconception they might not be alright, Jack, and that they'd better get out and get their vehicle tank filled "in case" there is a shortage.

Apparently it's a myth about lemmings committing mass suicides. Pity. I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good metaphor for the recent behaviour of the masses here.

Rant.

Over.

 

Actually, a bit of mass suicide by these particular lemmings might not be a bad idea.

 

The trouble is Adie that each one of them IS acting rationally given that they know everyone else will do the same. If they know they will need fuel in the next week, and that there will be a shortage - which there now is - then they have all acted very sensibly from their own perspective.