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?

I'm in the northwest nothing like you describe few empty shelves couple of petrol stations shut most open with fuel and £30 limit.

As for shortage of hgv drivers if anyone past there test late 90's they can drive a 7.5 tonne lorry on there car licence the want to see if they can utilise them

@Lex345

Where are you OP? If you are local, I would be happy to share some milk and cheese. I cannot help with the petrol, we have put off putting our usual £20 in this weekend, although when we passed the petrol station it was busy on the forecourt but nothing like on the news. I think it will probably get better towards the end of the week, small comfort now I know

you are very kind!

North Norfolk here. Shelves are pretty much fine, a few gaps but nothing either crucial or completely decimated. Petrol stations all doing brisk business but seem to have plenty of fuel and no queues, Marshall's there to help.

However, no diesel to be had for love nor money. I'm guessing they're prioritizing E5 and E10 as that (I assume)assume is what most cars use.

The queues to petrol stations are/ were causing long delays and I know two people who didn't go to work and asked for annual leave instead for this week.

Most people with cars do need to use their cars. Otherwise, why would they have bought a car? Yes, some people can reduce their use of the car.

Maybe the Queen can deliver a nice speech? I would prefer that over the army.

Please stop blaming Brexit

It's down to covid as well. DVLA need to get their arses into gear and fast!

The cries of 'it's not Brexit' are starting to sound a bit hysterical now.

@mpsw

This. What are the army going to do?

They have large numbers ofqualifued HGVdrivers who are also qualified for hazardous loads, and many of whom are already experienced with fuel handling.

If the shortage of drivers really is a main cause, thus could have been solved days ago.

They also have their own tankers that could be used to augment the civvie fleet

exactly

Unless and until we rejoin single market and customs union this is what we can expect.
And to do that we have to accept legislation about tax avoidance, which wouldn’t suit JRM or the media barons, so we have a rocky road ahead.

@FOJN

The army may be able provide drivers for fuel tankers. A fuel tanker driver needs to have a class 1 licence and additional qualifications to transport fuel because of the safety issues. I believe the government have been considering bringing them in for this purpose.

My feeling is the reason they have said they won't be bringing in the army is although they have enough army personal who can drive HGV, what they don't have is many who have the additional safety training needed for transporting fuel and then refilling petrol stations.

The army is there to help out in emergencies and have lots of qualified drivers. Who do you think refuels army vehicles?

Well in answer to this, I suspect they have some specialists, but certainly not enough to really make a difference on a national level.

That leaves the problem that to train enough army personnel safely to make a dent to the crisis and end it sooner, will take longer than Wednesday.

The government looked into it as an option only to realise that it wasn't going to solve anything, and would be a drop in the ocean of whats needed.

The reality is that the fragility of the petrol/diesel supply hasn't been taken seriously for over 20 years - there's now happened to some degree three times - and the last two times haven't resulted in any sort of preventative system being in place.

That is what civil contigency planning is all about.

By the time you get to the point of saying 'bring the army in' the government has already failed spectactularly.

I’m in the north east. Everything is normal here.

Is this true or are you being extremely dramatic? I don’t know where you are but all was fine near me , I needed petrol on my way home and no queue no limit there was just no diesel.
Nobody where I work didn’t not turn up because couldn’t get to work .
My dh went to supermarket and he didn’t notice no shortages .
The media keep reporting shortages in my area but everyone I’ve spoken to has managed to get petrol .

@bizboz

The usual MN response of the problem not existing because individual posters haven't experienced it 🙄.

Indeed. My daughter has a 45 minute drive to work. There was no fuel on the route. The petrol station opposite her house is also out of petrol and diesel. She did a 2 hour trip down the motorway on Sundeay evening. No fuel in any of the service stations. The situation is real, but probably caused by panic buying.

Took a walk to my two local petrol stations earlier, (on South Coast plus live on a main route out of city) both had no petrol. There were less people driving than usual and those that were only seemed to be in search of fuel.

People saying it’s unreasonable to call in the army aren’t living in the real world. Guarantee Boris calls on the army by end of week (they are already driving ambulances in Scotland btw) No it’s not the army’s job but gov will need to keep essential services that rely on fuel running

London is really bad. Loads of teachers didn’t make it to school today - where I work and at my kids school.

I’m in outer London. Not been able to get petrol since Friday. We fortunately can travel on the tube and walk to shops and school so we are just going to wait until a petrol station gets some fuel locally. Nonsense that people aren’t panic buying. My parents filled both their cars as soon as they heard of shortages, as did my in-laws who only use their car about once a week. Typical boomers!

As others have said we don’t need the army. Rationing might be worth a thought. But what we really need is a government that we can trust, people to be less selfish and a bit of common sense. God knows what Christmas is going to be like the battle of the turkeys.

Small queues here, certainly not chaos to the point of having to walk for miles, I notice you haven't shared where you are?

Council policies give a limit of 3 miles for walking for secondary schools. Over that they should provide transport anyway. Are you saying there's no school transport either?

@HotPenguin

We keep hearing the problem is caused by people buying petrol when they don't need to, but is there anyone who owns a car that DOESNT need petrol? If you have a collection of classic cars then ok, probably don't need to top them all up. But excluding the owners of multiple classic cars, who buys a car that they don't need? Surely the reality is we ALL need our cars, otherwise we wouldn't be shelling out thousands on them, and the number of people who can just forego petrol and wait for things to calm down is very very few?

Me. I put petrol in my car every 3 months or so. I walk mostly and use my car sparingly.

Nostalgia in Brexitannia. Just wait until we get ration cards and powdered egg.

I did some research in powdered eggs during lockdown one when we couldn’t get any eggs. Most of it isn’t food grade so we probably need to start panic buying it yesterday.

Which spice girl can still get petrol? Geri can 😂

@pontypridd

London is really bad. Loads of teachers didn’t make it to school today - where I work and at my kids school.

Really? London? Who probably have the best public transport in the country? Scary.

Pretty sure she went to get her own pint of milk but there was none left.

Bloody hell this is a dramatic post! The apocalypse is not upon us just because we have a temporary fuel logistics issue 🙄

Re 'Its not Brexit'.

Its not just Brexit, but its definitely one of the factors in this.

In making it more difficult and being hostile to EU drivers we fucked it.

The disaster that was Brexit/New Covid restrictions at Christmas was appalling. Many drivers said they would never come back to the UK after the way in which they were treated so appallingly and left firmly up shit creek with no basic facilities such as food, water, toilet, sleeping accomodation.

Add to that, working conditions in the UK and tax issues and why the fuck would anyone do the job of being an HGV driver.

I think it also needs to be noted that this has happened just at the point where people went back to work and demand for fuel went up.

It has to be the case that petrol station suppliers either laid off, furloughed or underpaid tanker staff - leading to them having an issue with driver retention and not having enough staff just as demand increased.

The government should have been all over that, making sure that key industries - including food and fuel were ok. It looks like a massive oversight by government and poor staff welfare and conditions in the drive to keep costs lost by the fuel companies. And thats triggered something huge.

We can’t get fuel for love nor money here , it’s great for those disbelieving this is happening because it’s not happening where they are , but for some of us it’s very real. We had a main route to the hospital closed the other day because of the queues for petrol .

@dementedma

Where’s the army? Busy with helping our UK and devolved powers with Covid tests, vaccinations, driving ambulance and oh, defending the country! Some are just back from sorting out the mess in Afghanistan.

The army that has been decimated by Defence cuts year on year and which is technically no longer an Army as the the numbers are too low to meet that criteria?

The soldiers who are routinely slagged off on MN as “hired killers” are now suddenly to save the day. Again?

They are supposed to provide MACA (Military Aid to Civilian Authorities) as a last resort, not every time the politicians fuck up.

And final point, wtf do you think their trucks and vehicles run on????

Well said!

Give it a month and we’ll have gazillions of posts about not buying poppies for the trained killers who knew what they were getting into!