Another fake shortage

In a rerun of the toilet paper fiasco, people are now filling entirely unsuitable containers with petrol and in many cases will be turning their homes into potential infernos.

Why? Same reason as the toilet paper game. The media have told them there is a petrol shortage and petrol stations are going to run out of fuel. The result, again as with the toilet paper game, is that everyone rushed to fill their cars and anything else they could find with petrol, bought it all and… petrol stations ran out of fuel.

What kicked this off was a report that BP and Texaco were finding it difficult to employ enough delivery drivers so they were going to temporarily close ten petrol stations.

Ten. In the whole country. Ten out of over 8000 petrol stations. Now they are all swamped with idiots convinced it’s going to run out, and not realising they are the ones causing it to run out. As with the toilet paper, again, there is no real shortage. There is plenty of petrol waiting to be distributed and it is being distributed. The problem is the surge in demand – which means it’s disappearing from stock faster than it can be replaced. Give it a week and all those petrol stations will be back to normal. I look forward to the idiots trying to take their stock back for a refund.

More importantly though, some of the photographs show people filling actual petrol containers, others show them filling any plastic container they could find. Some of them will be corroded by the petrol and leak. And they are not small containers.

I live on a farm. I have a small stash of petrol for garden tools and I can store it well away from the house. Many of those people filling dodgy containers are likely to live in houses with attached garages, or even in flats. So what happens when the containers start to leak, the electricity goes off (almost inevitable this winter due to the Green lunacy) and they light candles? Terraced houses and flats are likely to go off like gigantic firecrackers.

They can’t return the petrol to the garages. They can’t safely dispose of it – and at current UK fuel prices they really aren’t going to try anyway. It’s just sitting there, waiting for a spark. Just as I wrote in May of 2020…

So why this fake media-induced shortage and idiot-driven panic buying? Several possibilities have emerged. One is the idea that if you can’t get petrol, you’re better off with an electric car but with looming electricity outages, that doesn’t really work. Not being able to buy petrol really isn’t any different to not being able to plug in your car. And how many can afford those battery powered toys anyway?

One that does seem likely is that, to get the new crap E10 petrol loaded up, the government wanted to clear out the forecourt tanks so the new petrol won’t be diluted by the old stuff. I’ve been running on the new E10 for at least one full tank now. The car runs fine, but the mileage is already very noticeably down. So I’ll have to burn more of it to go the same distance as before. Green? This stuff is nowhere near ‘green’. Buring ethanol produces – guess what? CO2. So it will actually increase emissions. It will, incidentally, also increase the duty and VAT take because the same tank of fuel won’t take you as far as before.

I’d have thought that gradually diluting the new E10 with the old stuff would make the drop in mileage more gradual and less noticeable. This clearout is going to make it really, really obvious to anyone who wasn’t really paying attention before.

But then, sensible policy has never been the cornerstone of government. We vote them in and they think they are bloody emperors.

Soon, we are likely to have another King Charles. I have a very strong feeling that history, ignored as it is by many these days, could well be about to bite some political arses.