OK, this isn't funny any more. Where's the army?

[Orangejuicemarathoner]

One quarter of staff and students late to school this morning, and 10% didn't get there at all. It has been announced that, excepting physical disability, any student within 4 miles or adult within 6 miles will be expected to walk in, but Its expected to be worse tomorrow with a good chance we will be closed by Wednesday.

AA reporting over 100 "incidents" on the road within a 10 mile radius of the school - mostly roads blocked, and mostly by queues outside petrol stations.

I struggled to get home by bike, because of the chaos on the roads - I got off my bike and walked several miles of it.

I called in at a supermarket on the way home. The shelves were more than three quarters empty. No bread or milk. So I'm sitting here drinking black tea planning rice for dinner instead of cheese on toast.

I know its not a catastrophe that I spent an extra hour getting home, and dont have milk in my tea, but what is that saying about the state we are in?

AIBU to say the army should be called in. What have we got an army for? Surely, an organisation of thousands of fit, capable, organised individuals, with vehicles and capacity and skills in logistics is exactly what we need to be utilised in this situation right here right now.

PS, is it ok to feed dog food to cats? does anyone know?

Relative of a friend works at a petrol station. She had a woman who came to pay for just over £3 worth because "I darent run out" She had topped up a full tank and by the relatives estimation of the queue, must have waited 20 minutes at least to do that, so probably spent the £3 in fuel whilst in the fucking queue

Oh and a customer came into the shop earlier and told me that there had been quite a large punch up at the petrol station round the corner.

What pisses me off is the like of the Scum and the Daily Fail where the ones winding the hard of thinking up at the end of last week and are the very same papers who are now slagging off the panickers! My parents fell for it and I was deeply unimpressed when my father told me that they had both filled up after some queueing. They are both retired and healthy enough to walk. My mother usually does, she has a 3 year old car she had from new and it has just over 7k miles on the clock. I suppose it could be helpful when I cant get fuel and need to borrow her car to get to work I guess.

Four miles and six miles? They really said that? Since when did schools get to dictate commutes?

@Lipsandlashes

This petrol nonsense will stop in a few days. It’s not like being able to hoard pasta and toilet rolls - once you’ve filled your petrol tank you’ve filled it, you can’t keep going back day after day. Also all of the fools filling up plastic bottles and cans need to realise that fuel actually goes off and will end up damaging their engines.

That's what I thought until I realised people keep on coming back to top up unfortunately, god forbid their petrol tank goes below 3/4.

@Bluntness100 exactly that👇100% silly people stop panicking for no reason!

32 million cars in England, approximately.

Tank capacity around 50L for a lot of them.

People who don't do many miles, are usually happy with a half full tank, and fill up as and when.

At the first whiff of fuel difficulty, off they all go to top up, 25L each, maybe 2 or 3 cars per household; that fuel will then sit in their tank unused, rather than being at the pump & available to anyone.

No-one feels they're panic buying, just taking precautions just in case; but that's a lot of fuel gone from the system, and leads to empty filling stations.

Hopefully, with supplies not too bad (so we're told), things will normalise now that the cautious low-mileagers have filled up their tanks 🙄

I'm sorry for all of you who've been badly affected by this - it's all so unnecessary 😞

Walk in 6 miles?

No fuck off.

we need the tories out, thats what we need

NW London here. Queues were on the A40 leading up to a petrol station this evening around 10:30pm. As I was driving on the far right overtaking them, I noticed roughly about 60+ plus cars piled up blocking the left hand Lane trying to access the local BP and I thought to myself, that's dangerous but at least they won't have to wait long and then I realised the bloody petrol station entrance was cordoned with cones and tape and the lights were shut. People were waiting at the entrance of a petrol station on the busy A40 blocking half a mile of the left hand lane camping with their engines on.

At a petrol station that is shut waiting for the next delivery. How the hell is the tanker going to access the petrol station when they've blocked the whole lane and entrance ffs?

There is no shortage of fuel in the UK, there is however a large fuel haulage company who treat and pay their staff abysmally that is currently experiencing a driver shortage (I wonder why) and the petrol stations that they deliver to are now short of fuel, that is why petrol stations that run their own fleets including most supermarkets are only dealing with panic buying not fuel shortages. The government are playing directly into the hands of these hauliers by dumbing down the HGV test (bloody scary) and importing drivers from abroad thereby keeping wages low. It is an industry which no longer attracts young people, it's a thankless job with long unsociable hours where trying to find somewhere to park for the night, get a healthy hot meal and a clean hot shower is near impossible. Unfortunately the media just report what they see and are too lazy to investigate further, though the Telegraph have some interesting pieces on the subject.

No fuel in any petrol stations within a 15 mile radius of me last night. I only have 10 miles left so just sitting tight. Shelves are pretty bare. No bottled water at all.

I'm in the north east

@patkinney I agree.

There will be more short term pain for long term gain, hopefully.

It is impossible to see the long term advantages for regaining the right to govern ourselves again.
Of course there will be hickups as we take back control of our trade which we have outsourced to the EU for decades. It's a colossal job to undertake, even the administrative structures that need putting into place to steam ahead with that change.

Regulations that were put in place by the EU for the advantage of large corperations that monopolised the markets for years making it impossible for small and medium sized buisnesses to grow are going to be very upset about these changes, as we can see with BP.

Free trade will be scary to impliment.

Whoever you voted for during Brexit we have now left and choose not to be governed by an unelected group of people who in many peoples eyes were becoming evermore corupt. However much the remainers wish to call the leavers racist is rediculous. Imigration will not change, there will always be large immigration but now we have the choice of who we allow in our borders to work, we want to be inclusive of all the world.

We can get the best of the best if we wish, not just cheap labour to satify large corperations with their foothold over our economy.

There will be many benefits to young generations if buisneses are allowed to move to Britain and restrictions are lifted. It's going to take years to change this view of training and teaching our future generations the trades and skills needed instead of pushing everybody into universities or at the opposite end of the scale doing jobs that can never be classed as having a living wage in Britain and topped up with tax credits.
Hopefully new trades and skills through a stronger more diverse economy will give future generations the confidence and self esteem to create fewer divisions in our society, being in a worthwhile job helps.

All in all this will take time, to make, find and re new trade agreements with new countries at the same time building stronger links with the rest of the world.
This is global and I think in years to come we will wonder why we were so insular and restricted into thinking we could only survive within the EU.

I don't look at Brexiteers as fools who don't like Europeans rather I look at the British remainers who go full into protectionism mode to keep the status quo, whist teaching the young that it is in their best interest to remain in Europe.
Brexiters love Europeans, they are our neighbours, we just dont want them to be our landlords.

PS. I would let the cat have dog food this one time but I doubt it will eat it, cats have more taste.

I wait for the onslaught.

I wait for the onslaught

Can't be bothered.

I live in London, need to do an essential trip on Thursday (100 miles). Visited 26 petrol stations since last Friday and nothing in any of them

There’s no fuel within at least a 20 mile radius of us (Kent) including the motorway services. Even though our tank was empty before this all kicked off we stayed at home over the weekend, tried to do the right thing and not join the mobs panic buying. Starting to feel like a mug now as we are housebound for god knows how long.

Where the f**k is Boris? When most of the south has no fuel he’s past due to do something. At least make a proper statement and urge people to do the right thing. There are idiots filling up Jerry cans.

That’s a pretty disgusting remark patkinney about WW2 veterans. Those who fought in the war were actually far more likely to have voted Remain, since they understood better than anyone else the value of co-operation and peace between European nations. Harry Price was typical in this regard.

I'm in the black country and I find this crazy as beyond a 15 minute queue for fuel at the weekend, I don't recognise any of these shortages. I haven't stepped in a supermarket in a decade as my food shop is delivered. Everything I order arrives without issue...

Nowhere for fuel in my town. My 13 year old said one of her teachers asked them today where there was fuel this morning, because by Wednesday his fuel tank would be empty.

The school run took me 1 hour and 55minutes this morning (opposed to the usual 35-40 minutes) DDs school is 2.7 miles from door to door. I do have physical disabilities which would make walking the 10.8 miles to and from her school each day impossible until this is over.

Also, not sure if you have one nearby, but I did my shopping in waotrose today. Its quite out of the way, and obviously no petrol station. O thought it would be the best bet for avoiding traffic...most things in stock in our local.

@Willyoujustbequiet Christ, you’ll have to drink tap water

@ImaRetriever There will be more short term pain for long term gain, hopefully.

No, there won't. Brexit was a bunch of lies and there is pretty much nothing we could improve outside the EU that we couldn't have improved inside the EU.

Precisely what was stopping us e.g. training more UK nurses and doctors? Tory government choice.

What was stopping us finding trade deals with the rest of the world? Tory government choice.

You've bought a big load of nothing, I understand your hopes, I don't doubt plenty of Brexit voters thought they were voting to benefit the country, but it was nonsense.

Bring in the army? For a few bits of food and FUEL shortage? What do you think the army run their vehicles on? Fresh air!
There wouldn’t be a shortage if everyone hadn’t run out to get petrol. Scaremongering by MSM as usual. And as always, first world problems. My grandmother used to walk 6 miles to school and 6 miles back everyday. Kids are so lazy these days. I used to walk everywhere.
I’m waiting for the toilet roll next! Baffling smh 🤦🏼‍♀️

The government have put the army on stand by.

I don't care how many miles people's grandparents walked, the country is not functioning normally in 2021.

We can’t guess what WW2 veterans would have voted for can we? Some would have voted leave, some remain.
I think it’s a ridiculous argument involving WW2 and Brexit.
For the record most over 60s voted to leave. So mostly the baby boomers following on from post war Britain.

[quote lannistunut]**@ImaRetriever* There will be more short term pain for long term gain, hopefully.*

No, there won't. Brexit was a bunch of lies and there is pretty much nothing we could improve outside the EU that we couldn't have improved inside the EU.

Precisely what was stopping us e.g. training more UK nurses and doctors? Tory government choice.

What was stopping us finding trade deals with the rest of the world? Tory government choice.

You've bought a big load of nothing, I understand your hopes, I don't doubt plenty of Brexit voters thought they were voting to benefit the country, but it was nonsense.[/quote]
brexit was a much a vote about immigration and free movement as much as anything else , now they can feel good about the fact loads of europeans who worked here went back home , they now moan about all the illegal ones we have coming over on boats via dover that we then have to house and feed who cannot support themselves ,
brexit was and still is a joke

I’m in jersey. And so far we haven’t noticed fuel issues here. However. Food issues. Yes.

The vast majority of our food supplies get here from the uk. On the boats. So they need to be driven to the docks on the uk side. Shortage of drivers and now shortage of fuel means delays.

I assume fuel also gets shipped across in the same way? Never thought about it before.

I am lucky in that a tank of petrol lasts us around a month (small ish island and relatively fuel efficient car). I can work from home if needed and can walk to shop or get the bus wherever (might be late on the bus because bus times are a bit sketchy but it’s doable). Our issue will be when we can’t get fuel on island.