In September 2000, large, loud-mouthed truckers set up blockades preventing fuel deliveries and set in chain a mass hysteria from the car-driving public.
This time a potential strike by Unite tanker drivers has spooked Government Ministers to play Corporal Jones and actively encourage drivers to start hoarding petrol.
I rather agree with Ed Balls (for once) when he said the Government was having such a rotten week they needed a bogeyman to focus the nation away from their failings over budget and donors paying for access to the PM. It might have worked too if a strike had been called but without pickets, banners and braziers there are no 'militants' to focus the nation's ire on.
Frankie Maude made a right arse of himself suggesting drivers should peer into the far reaches of their "garage" and look for Gerry cans. It may be news to Maude but not everyone lives on Acacia Avenue and drives a Rover.
The panic twelve years ago showed a particularly foul side of the British character, which was irredeeably selfish and paranoid. But Tories had clearly not learnt from it and are still talking up "bringing in the army" as if the military can be deployed as some economic panacea to all industrial crises. The clear inference would be that any strlking union member would be up against our brave lads and so were by defintion unpatriotic if not actual traitors.
A footnote in the news coverage: OECD figures show UK is offically back in reession.
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