Petrol and diesel set to be the new bog roll. Road Warriors unite! 🚙

British people on a whole have come to expect and awful lot of reward for what they do at work, and the traditionally low paid jobs, especially those that involve a bit of manual labour just aren’t an attractive prospect to many nowadays.

See the comments on this thread about driving a truck being awful and underpaid…

Local petrol station more back to normal now. I rode my bike down in the heavy rain to check they still had diesel and then rode like the wind home to grab my car which had 3 miles worth left on the trip computer. I’m a few miles north of Nottingham City centre. I had heard the other on the bypass was still rammed. One in Eastwood no queues at all as the mother in law was over and had stopped to fill up there.

One in Eastwood no queues at all as the mother in law was over and had stopped to fill up there.

Ia your mother in law so obnoxious she can clear a fuel forecourt? You could monetise that in the current climate of panic.

I read somewhere that 30% of the jobs in the UK require the educational attainment of a 12 year-old. When does truck driving become a GCSE?

British people on a whole have come to expect and awful lot of reward for what they do at work

Where does that assertion come from? The Daily Mail.

What British people can’t compete with – when it comes to fruit picking and similar jobs – is the low wages and terrible conditions eastern Europeans tolerate. Just like the HGV drivers, they were able to come over here, live 8 to a room (or in their cab for months on end) and earn a relative pittance. Remember the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster? How much do you think these cockle-pickers were earning?

A friend at work pointed out then when supplies start to get better, people like him who have not filled their cars up will do so. And be blamed for the next round of shortages.

This will be me. I have around half a tank only really drive on weekends to ride. Need to full up if I want to get out this weekend. Unlikely given lines in SE london are still a bit bad. Its getting better but its still rubbish.

British people on a whole have come to expect and awful lot of reward for what they do at work, and the traditionally low paid jobs, especially those that involve a bit of manual labour just aren’t an attractive prospect to many nowadays.

The average rent in the UK is £868 a month. 40 hours a week on minimum wage would leave you £1275 a month. I wouldn’t particularly find that ‘an attractive prospect’.

I think its more like the fact that its bloody hard work and not too badly paid, British people on a whole have come to expect and awful lot of reward for what they do at work, and the traditionally low paid jobs, especially those that involve a bit of manual labour just aren’t an attractive prospect to many nowadays

You mean they want regular hours, income, careers and to better themselves? Selfish gits.

Not too badly paid compared to what?

With the crop picking how do other developed countries manage? Migrant labour, local labour or machinery?

The average rent in the UK is £868 a month. 40 hours a week on minimum wage would leave you £1275 a month.

I’m not disagreeing with your point but that’s poor use of statistics.

The average rent in the UK is £868 a month. 40 hours a week on minimum wage…

People on minium wage are likely to be renting cheap houses so you’re not really comparing apples with apples.

People on minium wage are likely to be renting cheap houses so you’re not really comparing apples with apples

Most likely renting a room in a house. I’ve had to do it on plenty more than minimum wage.

People on minium wage are likely to be renting cheap houses so you’re not really comparing apples with apples.

Perhaps, but I don’t think it particularly undermines my point. If you can’t reasonably expect to rent ‘an average house’ then I don’t think you should be surprised if people don’t consider it ‘an attractive prospect’.

Pretty sure the cockle picking disaster was illegal Chinese immigrants being exploited entirely illegally. Quite what the **** the point of mentioning that in this context was…. well, I’m not sure, but I reckon it is something similar to this:

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/britain-facing-long-hard-winter-of-it-not-being-brexits-fault-20210923212350

Late Night Mash had an excellent panic report on this.

Guess the fuel ‘crisis’ is over now given the thread has descended into the standard pedantic bickering…

The average rent in the UK is £868 a month. 40 hours a week on minimum wage would leave you £1275 a month.

Not a fair comparison. You’re comparing AVERAGE rent with MINIMUM wage.
Now compare AVERAGE rent with AVERAGE wage, or MINIMUM rent with MINIMUM wage.

^

QED

Guess the fuel ‘crisis’ is over now

It must be as kwasi karting has said ‘…the government has unleashed it’s reserve fleet of tankers’.
Impressive, huh?

If we have a fleet of emergency reserve tankers, would it not have made sense to unleash them before the situation turned to shite rather than as things start to return to some sort of control?

I mean, next you’ll be telling me that the response to a new virus is to do nothing until it’s properly spread into the country and THEN shut the borders……

With the crop picking how do other developed countries manage? Migrant labour, local labour or machinery?

@jamesoz

On holiday down in South Tyrol the apples in the orchards are picked by groups of Slovenians and Serbs.

The vineyards of France are not full of young French picking grapes.

When the harvest was due in Germany last year there were reports of vegetables going unpicked as the migrant labour couldn’t cross the border.

When we’ve lots of material and components to transport across Europe (exhibition and conference work) 9/10 times the driver is from Eastern Europe… Basically anywhere from Estonia to Poland down to Bulgaria. Conditions and pay aren’t dissimilar, hence not many of the locals jumping at the chance to drive.

Europe’s “developed” countries also rely massively on cheap labour from the east.

Fortunately that supply of labour is still welcome and available.

Not a fair comparison. You’re comparing AVERAGE rent with MINIMUM wage.
Now compare AVERAGE rent with AVERAGE wage, or MINIMUM rent with MINIMUM wage.

OK. Remember, the context was someone expressing surprise and/or disgruntlement that these days, people don’t consider a low paid, manual labour job to be ‘an attractive prospect’.

So anyway, let’s say minimum wage is enough to pay minimum rent. I’ve spent more than half my adult life in shared houses, on roughly minimum wage, and I’m in my 40s. It wasn’t ‘an attractive prospect’ then, and it still isn’t now.

You mean they want regular hours, income, careers and to better themselves?

This is literally what the Britannia Unchained mob want to erode through Brexit.

They do not want an educated workforce. They want pliant workers, in less secure jobs, running from sector to sector on low wages to ‘serve’ a smaller cadre of elite ‘managers’. Who just happen to be their mates, relations and people who ‘went to the right school’. Victorian values indeed.

Edit: And they’re just getting started.

Meanwhile back on topic is anyone seeing evidence this is actually easing? I managed to fill up last night, down to less than a quarter full, I was lucky and happened to be in Tescos when the tanker arrived, the four independants I passed were all empty.

Guess the fuel ‘crisis’ is over now given the thread has descended into the standard pedantic bickering…

It is not over where I live as all the stations are still shut. Found small rural station open yesterday when driving somewhere at 17:30 which had massive queues and shuts at 18:00 so didn’t bother. I now don’t have enough petrol to go anywhere else and because all 6 stations localish to me have been shut all week I will have to leave it and see if it improves a bit next week as can’t just keep doing a 15 mile loop around all the stations to find them all closed each day.

Went to the big Sainsbury’s early this morning for a food shop, the woman on the till was saying that their petrol station had queuing traffic outside it from 6.30am on Sunday (it opens at 8) and by 3pm they’d run out of fuel. Normally their Friday delivery takes them through the weekend but they’d run out on both Friday and Saturday. Apparently they’d had to call police on one day to get traffic moving as people were trapped in the supermarket car park by bellends queuing outside and not leaving gaps for fear that someone would push in.

Anyway, no-one there as I was leaving the shop so I nipped in and filled the tank. 🙂

On the way home there was a significant queue building at the Esso, all the way out onto the A6.

Not really.

After holding off until yesterday, as I hoped it would have eased by now, I was down to fumes so had to fill up the car from the can I keep for the lawnmower. That gave me enough range to get to the closest petrol station with fuel.

Dropped OH off at train station this morning and then drove the car back along dual carriage way. Due to low fuel I kept an even more conservative rate of acceleration than usual and found it hilarious I wasn’t immediately over taken or had people driving too close behind, and it was busy!

Not easing at all. Yes the local filling stations are getting some tankers in, but then there is grid-lock followed by the fuel selling out in less than 2hrs.

Anyway, move on, it’s a bacon shortage next. Full-fat Friday in jeopardy!

Still no sign of any issues in Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire as far as I can tell. All the garages I pass seem to be open with no queues, but that’s been the case pretty much throughout. Do our links to the oil industry mean we have better supply or are folk just being more sensible?

I was having the car serviced earlier in the week and had to top up the courtesy car before dropping it back. Buying £5 of petrol is a bit embarrassing at the moment 🙂

Meanwhile back on topic is anyone seeing evidence this is actually easing?

No – Not really – i managed to fill up this morning but i’d passed a number of closed garages on the way to work.

Doesn’t seem to be easing around here. Social meedya of varying flavours seems to allow a locust-like plague on any filling station that is rumoured to have fuel.

Boris Broke Britain.

We probably need to introduce some kind of South East England Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme to replace it.

Chapeau sir!

The two smaller stations closer to work where I would have normally bought fuel were all out when I was driving home yesterday…

I had to drop my eldest to an after school thing last night, The big Sainsbury (just off a motorway junction) on my way home happened to have fuel, so I ducked in and put my normal weekly half tank in (a day early). Diesel was out on half the pumps (considering diesel vans and cars often have bigger tanks?) and there was some cheeky queue cutting and general impatience on display.

I didn’t like it, there’s a bit of an atmosphere at a petrol station these days, everyone is a bit stoney faced like they’re ready for some conflict, and I felt a little shabby participating in the resource grab.

I’m quite keen to drive less at the minute, reduce the need for fuel by using less, unfortunately I am married to quite a lazy woman. It would be good if I could go the next couple of weeks without visiting a petrol station, that’s going to be my goal.

I don’t know how true it is, but apparently bigger stations along major routes are the ones being prioritized for deliveries. What I saw yesterday would suggest that is true.

bacon shortage next

And that really is going to be a total waste.

A friend of mine owned a very successful ham manufacturing business – he went through sporadic bursts of guilt/patriotism about only employing Polish and Hungarian workers (who would organise their own minibuses from 40 miles away), so he occasionally hired a few locals. Within a fortnight more than half of them would be on the sick or just disappeared. So, in the end, he didn’t bother. The Poles and Hungarians always had friends who were up for a bit of skilled manual work.

He sold up about 2 years ago – although his terms dictated he continue to work for the new owners for 18 months.

He now spends most of his time commuting to and from his Sunchaser in Poole Harbour. Smart guy.

I didn’t like it, there’s a bit of an atmosphere at a petrol station these days, everyone is a bit stoney faced like they’re ready for some conflict,

A friend of a friend who is a nurse in uniform was allowed to enter the forecourt yesterday after the staff going down the line saying “no more” saw her uniform and asked for he NhS ID. She was greeted with abuse by other drivers. On the same journey she stopped at a bigger station to get a sandwich for her lunch en route and despite standing at the back of the queue, had a chap turn on her and say “don’t expect to jump the queue because your wearing that love, you ain’t special”.

We really have become a distasteful nation.

We really have become a distasteful nation.

Bet he was out there clapping and banging his little pan last year.

4 of the 5 filling stations I passed on my lunchtime ride yesterday had all the pumps taped off, one (big Tesco) had a queue so assume that had some sort of fuel available.

It seems to have dropped down the priority in news reporting though, which will probably do more to help than 150 army drivers.

Still no sign of any issues in Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire as far as I can tell. All the garages I pass seem to be open with no queues, but that’s been the case pretty much throughout. Do our links to the oil industry mean we have better supply or are folk just being more sensible?

Some shortages in Glasgow but nothing serious.

I think having Grangemouth an hour from where most people in Scotland live makes things a lot easier

I didn’t like it, there’s a bit of an atmosphere at a petrol station these days, everyone is a bit stoney faced like they’re ready for some conflict, and I felt a little shabby participating in the resource grab.

I know what you mean about the resource grab. I’m not a fan of going to the filling station so I usually just fill right up and then run the tank down until the warning light comes on – I last filled up on 9 August. I’m needing fuel now but even if I find a filling station that’ll dispense it it seems a bit mean spirited to fill right up when half a tank will easily see me though the next fortnight. Hopefully things will be better then…

Currently on M25, and ‘no fuel’ displayed on the electronic signs, same along the M4 from Bristol earlier.

I thought the motorways were being prioritised?