UK Fuel protests 2005

i will become apoplectic with rage and want to rip the heads off fucking cunts who really believe they have a god-given right to drive a fucking car everywhere. jesus WEPT, fuel protesters. shoot them now.

Oh well.

although seeing that i'm currently considering a career as a lorry driver the thought of the monsters getting even bigger makes my mouth water.

why did the price suddenly go up so quick anyway? this has nothing to do with the katrina thing that shot up the prices in the US (since the UK prices has been rocketing at a very steady rate for several months before that)?

Higher fuel costs will encourage people to change their transport habits and to consider more efficient forms of transpor, it is the only way people will learn.

The farmers who make up a large part of the protest are morons - they don't realise that cheap transport is the one big thing making British farming unprofitable. But then, if they weren't morons, they wouldn't be in farming in the first place, I guess.

(Mind you, I have no problems with SUV owners who, you know, utilize the space.. like for hiking, touring with a band, etc... I just had been feeling ill about the phalanx of SUV owners who bought them because they were just big and cooler looking than "regular" cars.)

(My mum is complaining about gasoline hitting $3 a gallon in Vermont and claims she's walking everywhere now. She lives in a village, I don't know why she doesn't already!)

i wondered this too. anyone?

When I eventually found one, the queue was already building up

see, radio 4/the daily mail/other sources this morning were whacking on about how yesterday was marked by enormous queues. i put petrol in the car at morrison's in glasgow at about 5pm and it was business as usual: same number of cars, price somewhere around 93p a litre. i'm not saying there weren't big queues in other parts of the UK, but it was hardly panic stations.

basically, though, people are getting scared this morning because of, er, radio 4 and the daily mail being ever-so-slightly irresponsible. it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Several other petrol stations being completely out was *not* usual, though.

Memo to fuel protestors: we won the last election. K thx bye.

if they do increase fuel tax will they please use it to make rail travel cheaper?

i mean, it's such a sensible idea ... but now it could never happen, esp with privatised railways.

i wish there is still a cheap and fast way to travel around.. but oh well guess national express it is from now on!!!

a decent railway system is the perfect answer. but - despite mrs fiendish's best efforts, as she toils away working for network rail - we just don't have one right now. (i blame the operators far more than NR ... but hey, NR aren't blameless. still, at least they're not railtrack any more.)

Lots of people here drive diesels, because we've got a big diesel tank behind the office that staff can fill up from.

I bought 10 litres - a quarter of a tank - this morning. That should do me for the week, and after that I'm supposed to be getting my own car back, with half a tank still in it.

the things you hear when you're out without your gun...

thatcher to miners: fuck you, we won the election
blair to anti-war protesters: fuck you, we won the election

jesus! where do you work? cuntland?

ARGH

o god, i despair.

But in the states there is a chronic lack of public transport outside the major cities, and most areas are designed and built around easy access to cars. Not having a car is beyond crippling in a way it simply isn't here, so some solution is going to have to be found that allows Americans to continue to have independently mobile long-distance transportation.

i was planning on going to skye this weekend: that plan's fucked if this kind of thing continues, 'cos there's no way i can do the round trip on one tank of fuel and i'm not risking getting stuck in skye! but my solution is, umm, don't go to skye. re-evaluate the concept of "want" and "need" and act appropriately.

"Hello, I've got an emergency. I can't have everything I want when I want."

OT fucking M. christ almighty, the sooner all of humankind dies out, the better. as a species we are beyond fucking hope.

this depends a lot on the definition of "need", but just like it makes sense to buy bread and milk on Christmas Eve it surely makes sense to buy petrol while it's, er, available to buy. Difference between panic-buying and prudence.

There's a difference between prudence and selfishness, too. One day taking the train. Is it soooo much to ask the owner of an airconditioned sodding tank?

What's wrong with everyone anyway. It's the perfect excuse for a day off work.

There's a difference between prudence and selfishness, too. One day taking the train. Is it soooo much to ask the owner of an airconditioned sodding tank?

What's wrong with everyone anyway. It's the perfect excuse for a day off work

that's a very, very slim line. how about we, as a country, grow up and accept the following:

a) some doss cunts are going to mount protests at refineries. this will lead to fuel shortages in the near future. we don't know how bad those shortages will be, so let's not exacerbate them right now by panic-buying.

b) fuel is expensive, and is becoming more so. there are a variety of reasons for this. none of them are ones over which we, the public, have any direct control. if we're really unhappy, we might want to consider the roots of capitalism itself as the cause. but, you know, that would require some actual thought, and all we care about is whether or not we can do the fucking school run in our fucking BMW.

c) car ownership is a luxury. if fuel is in short supply, how about it's reserved for those who actually need it? as opposed to putting it in even shorter supply by panic-buying (see a).

d) we accept that, as zoe says, "we can't have everything when we want it". this being the most important thing of all.

it's at times like these that my loathing for humankind as a whole starts to choke me.

What's more, this is a cynical view of people. Yes, I'm sure there are some BMW owners phoning up worried about their commute, just as some twats call ambulances to be taxis. But there are also probably plenty of essential people who actually do *need* petrol, who will be calling. Yes, they should know better than wasting 999's time, but ... who would you call? BP?

The problem here is that petrol is too expensive for a society predicated on easy access to cars. We either need to change the society (my preferred option), or make it
cheaper (what the Americans are trying). What we cannot do is pretend that this situation is sustainable. Because it isn't. Shame no-one will protest properly for better trains.

"An estimated 2.6 million people are panic saving, desperately trying to set aside as much money as possible in the last few years before they retire, research claimed today.
Insurance giant Prudential said around 17% of people aged between 55 and 64 who were panic saving were setting aside at least 20% of their monthly income, while 3% were saving at least 50% of it an attempt to boost their pension."

If it means a over-bloated fuel scare, then I'm all for it. Let the poisons hatch out.

I've definitely noticed a big difference within the past year of bus commuters here in Seattle. Bus service between the tech sector in Redmond/Bellevue/Kirkland and Seattle has improved dramatically, and the buses are only getting more full.

yup. scared != in throes of emergency.

inability to understand that calling emergency line ties up operators with non-vital calls = cunty.

so if this logic "says something about me", i'm quite happy.

It's not the assumption that the call is selfish (by its nature it is), it's assuming that the motives are selfish -- they "want their sweets" or "to get to the shops" -- that says something.

this is the same thing GF said! Of coursemaking a non-urgent call to the emergency services is selfish. It is by its nature. Even if they're calling because they need petrol for valid reasons. But that's not what I'm taking either of you as saying. I read you as assuming the reasons they are calling are all vapid and "I like my big car vroom vroom tell me where teh petrol is, yo".

The motive for calling can be unselfish -- "I need petrol to take my rural-dwelling great aunt to hospital and save ambulances for proper emergencies" -- while the action of calling 999 remains selfish.

these people are total and utter piss-stains. re-reading the actual fuel protesters' comments ... hellfire, even THEY aren't threatening shortages! one group wants to block dover and the M4; the other wants peaceful protests at the refineries, but not to block tankers. now, i'm as guilty as the next poster of assuming they're planning to fuck shit up more, but i'm not the one buying fucking petrol i don't fucking need, and thereby CAUSING THE SHORTAGES.

these people deserve everything they get. particularly if what they get is a savage, savage, savage fucking kicking with a pair of hobnail boots :)

fuckwits.

I don't know why panic buying upsets everyone so much. It's like going "my my, there was a big stampede when that man yelled 'fire' in the cinema". Stupid and counter-productive, but fact of life, innit?

xpost: ok, incredibly fucking stupid. god it's hard to love humanity sometimes.

hahaha, no danger of sanguinity here: maybe the protesters really are AN ENEMY WITHIN!!!!

'destablize a government'.

basically, my point is, fuck a government whose one idea to regulate shit is putting taxes on it. that doesn't begin to win the argument. win the argument and cut back drastically on the use of finite and poluting resources. end of. fuck this old labour statist nonsense.

x-post Problem w/buses up our way @ the moment is chronic unreliability. No guarantee that the bus yr waiting for will even turn up at all. Fuckers.

wtf!?

well, it wasn't above belfast on the late bulletins last night. but it's a pretty major story, and it does resonate with more people. the problem with belfast is many people just shrug and go: "oh yeh, northern ireland. been quiet there for a bit, hasn't it?"

of course, the fucking cricket trumps everything, naturally.

Anarchy has been postponed, it seems.

Blummin shots of balls running over a boundary line while "jerusalem" plays. I mean well done and all that, but man! it's a game of crick, one was last year, one will be next year, and all that!

The police were nicking drivers in queues who had curled around the roundabout at the end of Cowley Road yesterday because they were waiting for petrol. It made me happy.

Suits me. Stumps everything p'raps?

But yeah, fuel protests. Bummer. We drove over three hundred miles at the weekend on £30 of fuel just by taking it easy and not horsing it.

£1.049 a litre just outside Oban.

i was hoping i would have one day seen it at £1 exactly a litre, and then i'd go there and play the "fill up the gas and stop at exactly £10" game except this time it'd also stop the litres bit to 10 exactly! aw.

Come on, you can't expect car drivers to care about that

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/business_petrol_pricing/img/3.jpg