If you’re reading this, I really hope we are in agreement that there is no need to panic buy fuel. And I hope that you haven’t rushed out to get fuel when it hasn’t been necessary. Of course, if it was necessary, crack on. I hope that you and me can agree that really we should only be filling up when we need to and filling up like we normally would. For me, that means some time around Friday of a week, I have to make a trip to the pump and get pumped up full of fuel. And so we come to last week’s reports of a handful, five or less, of BP garages in the south somewhere running out of fuel. With the press of today being click-baiting wankstains, this is magnified to – GARAGES RUNNING OUT OF FUEL! EVERYONE SHIT YOURSELVES! and as we only really look at headlines nowadays, a sizeable chunk of the population have done.
And so off we rush to the forecourt to fill up when we really don’t need to and we see queues backing up along roads and in supermarket car parks. And so those passing start to worry that there will be no fuel for them later on in the week, even though fuel deliveries are quite frequent. And they then join the queues, making even more people nervous whilst those of us who work from home or who have an electric car sit there all smug. And then the fuel runs dry at many more garages due to demand, which those lovely people in the press then report on with more exaggerated headlines without context and so even more people get worried and off we fucking go – the hysterical feedback loop is complete and won’t be stopped until the media decides something else is more important.
And as the loop drives round at speeds far exceeding the speed limit, pieces of shit start to fly off and the responsibility splatters at multiple doors. Brexit! Someone cries as they mop up the faecal matter. And even though that decision by the electorate spurred on by rabid bigots in politics must take some of the responsibility, there’s also Covid! With the backlog of HGV driver’s tests to be taken, and then there’s Poor Conditions for Drivers! as the job is not for everyone. But genuinely even though all of the above are valid reasons for a shortage and have all contributed, all of these reasons were there a week or two before and have been around since January this year and yet it’s only now that there’s an issue. And so the hysterical feedback is looped back to the beginning of my post where some of the responsibility lies with us, the people. It’s hard to remain calm when those around you are losing their proverbial, but we should probably practice a bit more of the calm, because this kind of shit is going to be around for a while and there will continue to be shortages of certain items until an adult gets in charge and makes decisions for the long term that will benefit our country.