Petrol Buying

They can multi-skill. Drive tankers full of fuel to resupply petrol stations then attend 999 calls for the ambulance service on their way back to the depot.

I've got a couple of carrier bags of diesel I can lend you if you get stuck. Don't worry, they're bags for life, so pretty sturdy.

 

My Croxley correspondent tells me that the Shell garage was expecting a delivery between midnight and 03.00 this morning. At 05.30 it had not arrived, but cars were sat at every pump and the queue was down to Croxley station!

The shell man said, if a tanker arrived it would not be able to unload, because of the cars on the forecourt, who he predicted would not want to move to end up at the back of the queue. He predicted he would sell out within 5 to 6 hours with another delivery not planned until early hours of Thursday.

A proper garage would put in a £40 minimum charge to ensure no topper uppers. That would knacker my correspondent

His dilemma is that his blue badge holder wife who works at Watford General in a day clinic, has a car running on fumes, and he dare not risk joining a queue and running out before getting to a pump. So he needs a jerry cans worth just to be able to drive the car somewhere to refuel. So she is now going to struggle to get to work. Simply because getting to the bus is a struggle for her.

This reminds of the true reports of peoples behaviour during WW2 - not the propaganda of newsreels and dramas but the real contemporary reports of people stealing ration books and mugging people for their weekly provisions.

I predict petrol Will hit £1.40 a litre by the end of October. As demand patterns start impacting the storage and supply of fuel.

 

It is utterly bonkers isn’t it

There is no fuel shortage, most providers have sufficient HGV drivers for normal demand, this is an entirely self fulfilling problem created by people’s utter stupidity and selfishness

 

Yes. It will eventually bugger up your injectors in sticky black residue. But if you had half a tank of diesel and topped it up with ten litres of vegetable oil, you would not notice any difference driving. Not that I would do it myself, well only in a true life or death emergency and that was the only option to get the snowmobile away from the hotel.

a diesel will burn most oils, but vegetable oil is a lot thicker and stickier than diesel and will block the injectors if used routinely.

My in-laws lived in a pit village near Doncaster. When the Carcroft Asda had a special on veg oil they had to restrict its sale as lots of van drivers would buy it at £1 for 5 litres to mix it in their tanks of diesel. Tough people in the South Yorkshire coalfields.

 

Plenty of fuel in Scotland, apparently.

 

This is the precise moment the French have been waiting for to invade. A week from now we will all be eating brie baguette's for lunch and cycling to work with onions hanging around our necks....which should at least help solve the petrol crisis.

 

A station a few hundred yards from my place received two deliveries on Sunday, but had constant queueing all day, and sold out around 9pm.

With two deliveries, and normal, non-panic buying, they would have had enough fuel for a week.

It is, IMHO, all about panic buying, at least in my area or more.

Just glad that I am a steely eyed eco-warrior, and gave up on the car six years ago.

 

Yes I'm planning to drive up there, fill up, and then pop back later this pm. Sorted.

 

What are these people doing? The NHS should dispatch mental health crisis teams to the queues. It'd be like shooting fish in a barrel.

 

Sort of

The viscosity is way higher, so the injectors won’t atomise it properly and you will end up with residue everywhere

Fuel economy will drop off, emissions will go up, and eventually the engine won’t run

When you take it to the dealer they will say ‘warranty?’ and laugh

But if its the end of the world and you need to drive your car and **** the consequences… sure you can

 

Brie, onions and cycling. Now that is a Remain argument that would have had some traction with me. Pity they went for gonorrhoea epidemics.

 

Fill me up an Evian bottles worth while you’re up there will you m.

 

I’d hazard a guess the same people filling up plastic bottles and the like, were the same people pictured wearing plastic bottles and scouring pads over their faces on the tube last February.

 

At least the chances of the tube chumps spontaneously combusting were marginally lower.

 

The Blitz Spirit myth is exactly that, a myth. The crime rate rose substantially during WW2 across the board...

 

Sound like heaven. I'll be starting a "Les Quislings" movement. But, will I be able to start the day with a 'cafe complet' with no-one raising an eyebrow at my 'strange' choice.

EDIT: I've tried to use a google search to get an acute accent on the 'e' of cafe. What the internet details as a 'cafe complet' bears little resemblance to what I've always been served:

Spoiler

large black coffee and a large calvados/brandy.

 

They need to be heading to Downing Street to remove the criminals we have running the country. Seriously, I am down for a military coup at this point.

 

You haven't met many squaddies have you?

 

I believe those self-centred and antisocial sentiments have been taught. It's the Thatcher children of course. We speculated at the time, how they would be. No such thing as society and every man for himself. Loadsamoney! There's generations now who've grown up not really knowing the pleasure and satisfaction of cooperative effort and strong local communities.

 

I feel a bit sorry for the poor bloody infantry. They've already got them driving ambulances, because the ambulance service is short of staff.

When they joined up, I suppose they pictured themselves scaling cliffs and leaping out of helicopters with camouflage paint on their faces, like in the adverts. But when there's even the slightest problem in any aspect of the country, the government has them out strike breaking or driving green goddess fire engines or ambulances or piling up sandbags in the floods or any other type of skivvying that's going.

Made in Cumbria, Born in Yorkshire, Pass through it driving highly inflammable fuel tankers up and down the motorway for a fraction of the wages of a normal lorry driver and none of the employment rights. Join the professionals! Join the Army.

 

Insurance fraud was the crime that went up the most I think.

 

They’ll have them abseiling in through a care home window to wipe some old fella’s backside soon.

 

On the one hand I agree with you, but the sad fact is that among the imbeciles panic buying there are people trying to get to work to do important jobs.

That’s how ****ed up this is. But hey, well done Brexiteers, you sent the forriners packing.

 

Ah, these long queues for petrol makes me nostalgic for the good old days, where society was run on coal, and only lights, heating, refuse collection, grave digging and ambulance services were at risk if 25% pay increases weren't given.

 

That’s a particularly fatuous comment. Because that’s really the choice more than 40 years after the Country was effectively broke, with almost no social mobility whatsoever.

Now we should have a different World. No shortages are necessary.

But hey, you could at least get a decent council home then, something Thatcherites and Liberals have made an almost impossible dream in the interim.

 

HAS YOUR HOME BEEN LEVELLED BY THE LUFTWAFFE AND IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT?

 

What are these tools doing. 8pm dog walk, queue of about half a mile completely blocking the road. 6am dog walk half a mile queue waiting for the pumps to be refuelled. I’ve got half a tank left and then after that I’ll get taxis until the impact of the actions of these d*ckheads washes out of the system.

 

The taxis are probably in that queue

 

I think d*ckheads caused the problem, but now lots of people, reliant on petrol to go to work, for their businesses or to get the kids to school etc are forming the queues.

 

Ah but the imbeciles are going back round again too. Their tanks have dropped into the danger zone (the needle has nudged below 90% and they might have to drive unexpectedly to the south of France tonight to attend to their sick's dog's best friend) and they have 6 massive petrol cans to fill up in the boot.

 

Actually for a loggie trade it's quite well paid - especially £15k for training. £20k before promotion but the cast-iron pension...

https://apply.army.mod.uk/roles/royal-logistic-corps/petroleum-operator

 

It shows what important human qualities empathy, responsibility, guilt and embarrassment are and how unfortunately some people lack any of them.

 

Oh I hope they do priority for key workers. Even if it's just for one day. I'd drive around a bit to empty my tank if necessary, just so I could roll slowly past the steaming queue of personal plated RR Evoques and VW Toerags in the Kremlin banger.

Toot! Toot! Clear the way! Minimum wage carer coming through!

I think I might even get La Cucaracha airhorns and that suspension that bounces up and down in the celebration of such an occasion.

 

...and Shenley Rd/Theobald St/Station Rd junction back to 'normal' - the garage must of had a delivery...