Originally published at: Man on horseback mocks fellow Britons panic-buying gasoline | Boing Boing
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Catchy!
The song, I mean. Riding horses and bikes more often should be too, but I doubt they’ll catch on much.
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It’s going to be a hard winter in the UK thanks to the geniuses behind Brexit. I’m sure British Know-Nothings will find some way to blame this on foreigners and the liberal elites.
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What will he do when they run out of carrots?
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Horses for a number of obvious reasons.
We often talk about how much of our urban landscape is dedicated to cars, including how much is required for parking them during the vast majority of the day when they aren’t in use. Now imagine if those cars needed the freedom to graze…
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Yeah, this just feels elitist to me. I’m sure most people would love to have the money and acreage required to own a horse, if not the horse itself. Apple carts and oranges.
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Even in the pre-automobile era most city dwelling families didn’t have their own horses. It is simply not a sustainable model for any society beyond a certain population density.
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Especially a society that has not figured out how to cleat shit-tons of shit from the street on a daily basis. The era of horses in cities was a thoroughly shitty one. Let’s not go back there.
ETA darn - ninja’d by @gracchus
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The “panic buying” narrative is already an attempt to blame ordinary people trying to get by.
The stories alledging “panic” buying to explain long lines at stations are really moral panic stories like stories about pot gummies showing up in halloween candy hauls. What is happening is ordinary people are waiting in line to fill their tanks to get to work, buy groceries, and everything thet always do.
You can get genuine “panic” buyouts of certain goods like bread yeast where it is possible to buy a ten year supply in one fell swoop and stick it in your cupboard.
That’s a terrible way to describe what happens with gas/petrol though. Gasoline isn’t yeast, or sidewalk salt, or bourbon.
Almost nobody can buy a ten year supply of extra gas. Almost nobody can buy a ten day extra supply of gas. The pics you see of people pouring gas in trash bags are almost always misleading old recycled content.
If someone buys gas today to top off their tank, odds are very high they’re not buying gas the very next day. And if they do buy, it’s almost certainly only enough to replace the gas you burned today.
Think of the oft-cited topping off scenario. Suppose you and a friend both burn a gallon of gas a day. You buy a gallon of gas every day, while your friend waits until he has burned ten gallons before filling up. After ten days, you and your friend have bought the exact same amount of gas.
The gas supply is supposed to have enough flexibility to handle substantial day to day fluctuations. And if people shift from occasional big purchases to daily small ones, it only smooths out daily fluctuations instead of worsening them.
Even if you are freaking out for a whole week about running out of gas, your purchases will be limited by the gas you have burned. You can’t buy 50 gallons to replace 5 gallons you burned. And almost always when supplies are tight, people drive less and burn less gas, not more.
Gas consumption in the UK is still down compared to pre-Covid periods. But Johnson’s government and his captive press are pushing a narrative that it is ordinary people who are the problem, not Brexit. And they are trying to tamp down anger over shortages by casting it as panic.
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I was going to say something along the lines of “yeah, plus the human health issues” and then I read this article and OMG IT’S SO MUCH WORSE THAN I IMAGINED!!! (sorry for the all caps, but JFC it was so bad!)
In addition to respiratory issues from the manure being ground to dust and kicked up under all of the hooves and wheels, apparently, there was also a massive horse corpse issue. To the tune of 15,000 per year (or 1,250 every month!).
Edited to add the forgotten link and blur the less than pleasant image.
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This is a whole shtick the rider is doing - mocking petrol-buyers while coming in on… alternative transport:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CUcCUPvDUFA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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Well that bike rider better not get too smug. I was once riding my bike through town and came to an intersection with a big group of unicycle riders. They mocked me as a “wheel waster.”
(This was in a town that has a university known for its unicycle club, among other things.)
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UberHorse. Let’s Ride!
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And poop!
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Queueing for carrots, Queueing for carrots. I don’t need carrots because this is a bike.
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Überhorse? I think Supergirl called dibs on that guy.
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The less said about Comet the super horse the better.
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Toyah was right all along…
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