As I saw pointed out elsewhere (can’t recall where - it might have been Private Eye) it is a Brexiteer mantra that the British people are not stupid. Except and until they want to buy fuel when there isn’t enough at the service stations, and suddenly the Brexiteer govt says they are.
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The Johnson government and the Murdoch press (heck, even the non-Murdoch press, which has been ridiculous too) could tell the truth – it’s happening because Brexit and Covid have blown a hole in the supply chain, and self-rationing is essential. Possibly even government rationing.
Instead they are insisting that everything would be fine if only people would believe a little harder in Boris and Rupert.
I think the prediction of Gracchus is right, though. When blaming panickers in general fails, the aim is moving to other groups. Attacks on renewable energy sources have already begun for natural gas supply concerns.
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What will he do when the people who grow carrots run out of petrol?
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Anyone know this gentleman’s tune? Did he learn it at his local pub and then change the words?
More like his local terraces, a bit like this
btw Desperate plugging for the album
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Put the carrots in the same incinerator as all the culled pigs then make a joke about not liking carrots anyway.
The lack of drivers is an emergent property of the supply chain rebooting itself after the pandemic. It has similarly caused a world-wide shortage of shipping containers.
Delivery companies have been caught by a perfect storm of increasing demand, drivers (average age, 50) not wanting to return to work after furlough coupled with tax changes which mean they can no longer avoid some taxes by operating through a limited company, and a backlog of licence applications at the licensing agency, which essentially shut down due to covid.
One supplier found they were having difficulty keeping some small independent petrol stations regularly stocked, which was gleefully announced by the media (never waste a good front page), and in a badly thought through response, people were told there was ‘no need to panic buy’.
Predictably this immediately triggered a run on the pumps, tripling demand overnight. It was a self-limiting issue though - you can only fill up as quickly as you consume. Ten days later, the petrol station queues are pretty much back to normal.
There’s a Brexit factor too, in that some EU drivers who previously worked in the UK chose to return to their native country during the covid lockdown and can’t now return; but they too would be hit by the tax changes, so it’s not clear cut that they would want to do so. Before the pandemic they formed about 12% of the workforce; currently it’s about nine.
It’s a complex interaction of many issues: saying ‘it’s all Brexit’s fault’ is a gross over-simplification.
And yet I didn’t say that. If you want to pretend that Brexit didn’t make all the other contributing factors (the supply chain constraints, the lack of drivers and workers, the general bungling of the COVID response by the Tories) a lot worse than they had to be don’t expect anyone except the kind of sucker who voted Leave to buy it.
Also, to be clear, the media outlets pushing the panic buying narrative are the same right-wing tabloids that told readers how wonderful it would be for the UK to leave the EU.
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Wow, funny how the emergent property turned out to be exactly the kind of thing people predicted Brexit would cause.
I presume this is kind of like how hurricanes are emergent properties of a chaotic system and it’s a gross over-simplification to say any given one is the result of climate change…but the truth is they are undoubtedly worse because of it.
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We don’t have any truck driver problems in my city; Philadelphia.
That seems very UK/brexit related. Not pandemic.
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“What’s got four legs and a prick on its back?”
“A police this guy’s horse.”
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Now, now… you can’t predict such processes like the supply chain… they are, after all, a force of nature, and not at all subject to actual decisions being made by human beings. If we would just learn to accept the wisdom of the invisible hand of the market, even when it destroys people’s lives, then humanity would be much better off…
All hail the power of wealth, the only REAL morality! /s
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It is also not leading to public disruption in the rest of the world, including in Northern Ireland which is part of the UK but insulated from Brexit effects due to the NI protocol.
Of course there are logistical challenges everywhere right now but only the UK is actually suffering in any way that is not behind the scenes. Saying it’s not Brexit’s fault in the light of the Northern Irish evidence is something I only usually see from unrepentant Brexiters, a species I hadn’t expected to see here.
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But see, Brexit didn’t create the problem! Brexit just left the UK vulnerable to problems that everywhere else seems to handle without much difficulty. And you can’t blame them for that…surely nobody could have anticipated there would ever be challenges that cooperation might help with.
So many damn countries throwing away what they have because they can’t stand the thought of letting in foreigners. (No, Brexiters, I haven’t forgotten what this was really about.)
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BP issued a statement that they had had to close 4 stations. BP!!
That’s what kicked it all off, when it was reported on national TV news.
5 of the 9 petrol stations I passed today had no fuel. (Not having any fuel is a good way to get rid of a queue, I guess.)
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Let me be completely clear, (imho) brexit was a stupid and unnecessary act of self harm. But it happened and here we are.
Some of this seems eerily familiar –
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/a-trucking-crisis-has-the-u-s-looking-for-more-drivers-abroad
That’s paywalled - so no can see. But it’s dated from two months ago. Still not seeing that here. No problems with gas stations. Stores are stocked. 
Not like last year with supplies. But gas was fine last year.
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