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Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

reuters.com

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Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#31

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

TomGullen wrote: post #17

Unlike the toilet paper panic buying there is limited capacity people can buy, so I would expect this to naturally end short term when people don’t have capacity to buy any more. What concerns me is government planning to address this looks a lot more forward looking than a few days/a week, so I can see it getting worse. Interesting how the government say it’s not a shortage, if the refineries were running low you wo…

The government really mis managed this - they keep saying there is no shortage yet all the stations have run out - they can’t spin this and ignore it until the next disaster distracts from this disaster.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#32

Post by bayesian_horse »

sgt wrote: post #19
Bud wrote: post #7

This is all actually due to the initial phases of the inevitable collapse of the Galactic Empire, as foreseen by Hari Seldon.

How can we counteract this. Should perhaps one or two settlements be created at the opposite ends of the Earth be established? In order to make ready for the new empire?

One in Cornwall and one on the Orkneys should be enough.

It's more of a local British problem...

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#33

Post by jack_riminton »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24
TomGullen wrote: post #17

Unlike the toilet paper panic buying there is limited capacity people can buy, so I would expect this to naturally end short term when people don’t have capacity to buy any more. What concerns me is government planning to address this looks a lot more forward looking than a few days/a week, so I can see it getting worse. Interesting how the government say it’s not a shortage, if the refineries were running low you wo…

I think it was unclear as to why there is no gas. Is it because there are no drivers to drive the gas to the stations or because the general energy supply for GB currently sucks?

The official line is that there is a lack of truck drivers, which is mostly true because Brexit has prevented a lot of the foreign drivers from working

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#34

Post by fallingknife »

thinkingemote wrote: post #8
pjc50 wrote: post #2

Appears to be _mostly_ a mediagenic phenomenon: the driver shortage caused a few stations to run out, a minister told everyone not to panic buy, so they immediately started panic buying. Like the great toilet paper shortage. The lorry driver shortage inflicted by Brexit is starting to cause problems, though.

People on the whole do not know what "panic buying" actually is. I've had multiple conversations which run along the line of "I'm not panic buying, I am rational. I'm only buying this because others are panicking and there wont be any left for me. "

Sounds like they do understand panic buying. The issue is that it's completely rational on an individual level. "Panic" buying isn't really a good term for it.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#35

Post by rich_sasha »

sgt wrote: post #21

TBH I still think Brexit is a good choice for Britain. The EU is a terribly inefficient and hopeless organization (but perhaps I am a bit biased, I've always been opposed to the EU because it's far too heavy weight). Of course, they will suffer economically for a while, but that was part of the game with Brexit. The voters however - were slightly lied to regarding the immediate downsides. It's probably important to k…

> The EU is a terribly inefficient and hopeless organization

Compared to what? Efficiency always scaled poorly with size. For what it's worth, bureaucracies of US Federal government, not to mention those of China, India, Russia etc. are far worse, it seems.

It's not about the EU's throughput of things, but things it enables. Things like efficient allocation of resources via a single economic area, for example.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#37

Post by bayesian_horse »

mschuster91 wrote: post #25

Well... looks like the UK are the next in line to discover that paying people in essential industries shit wages leads to said shit outcomes. Over many decades, employees in easy-to-learn and especially easy-to-outsource jobs were treated as disposable cogs, and now after Corona and other crisis crunches the whole house of cards comes crushing down.

They would still be in the UK doing their shit jobs for shit wages, if they had a better visa situation...

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#38

Post by teamonkey »

davzie wrote: post #4
pjc50 wrote: post #2

Appears to be _mostly_ a mediagenic phenomenon: the driver shortage caused a few stations to run out, a minister told everyone not to panic buy, so they immediately started panic buying. Like the great toilet paper shortage. The lorry driver shortage inflicted by Brexit is starting to cause problems, though.

I honestly think Brexit was only a very small part of this. It's probably also a combination of IR35 making the entire endeavour not worthwhile for UK AND European workers and the government not having enough HGV tests available to bring newly qualified drivers into the workforce. It's a combination of a lot of different things.

I find that a strange take. There is a HGV driver shortage solely because a lot of drivers have left, due to Brexit. The UK wouldn't need so many extra HGV licences without Brexit, because drivers from the EU would be qualified. The IR35 issues are because people in the UK are used to cheaper labour from mainland Europe, which is no longer available, due to Brexit.

That's not to say that the UK government isn't characteristically unprepared, despite months or even years of warnings about these very issues, or that they couldn't have done better to mitigate problems.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#39

Post by jjgreen »

furyg3 wrote: post #27
simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Not suggesting that there are not other factors (Brexit, Covid etc) but the media have to shoulder the "panic" element of this. E.g. stop publishing photos of queueing cars and cordoned off pumps and report purely on the statistics of the matter. Too many media outlets are entirely hell bent on getting clicks without a care for the furore they induce in the general public as a result. Social media does of course ampl…

If this is true, this should only inconvenience people for a week or two. Unlike toilet paper, average citizens don't really have a way to store 100x more than their normal weekly consumption of petrol. So if there are no supply issues and only some distribution challenges, demand will slump off once everyone has had a chance to fill their tank and the 1-2 jerrycans they may have lying around.

Panic buy Jerry-cans!

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#40

Post by wp381640 »

pjc50 wrote: post #2

Appears to be _mostly_ a mediagenic phenomenon: the driver shortage caused a few stations to run out, a minister told everyone not to panic buy, so they immediately started panic buying. Like the great toilet paper shortage. The lorry driver shortage inflicted by Brexit is starting to cause problems, though.

You can have one ass and buy a thousand rolls of toilet paper. You can't have one car and buy a thousand liters of fuel.

This is pure supply shock

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