The Quest for Diesel

I don't generally subscribe to the idea that the media spends its time deliberately suppressing news stories but, having spent an inordinate amount of time today trying to find a local filling station that had diesel, let alone any kind of fuel, I'm perplexed as to why this isn't a news story?  OK, it might just be localised (although according to what I can glean from  online sources, it isn't), but not even the local newspaper here in Crapchester has seen fit to even mention the severe fuel shortages here, which have left drivers queuing at those filling stations still open, being forced to pay extortionate prices.  You'd think that this would be a major story, both in print and on TV, yet I can barely find a mention of it anywhere - I mean, it has been like this for at least the past week.  I did eventually ascertain that these shortages have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, but rather disruption to UK oil depots and refineries being caused by the loons from 'Just Stop Oil' and 'Extinction Rebellion' protesting at them.  To which my reaction was: what protests?  Despite being widespread and causing so many problems, these too have been barely covered by the media - just the occasional passing reference.  So what's going on here, is this a deliberate policy?  Are they trying to deny the protestors the 'oxygen of publicity', like they tried to do with the IRA back in eighties and nineties?

As for these 'protests', well, I'm as concerned about climate change as anyone else and I'm usually sympathetic to environmental protests - except when the affect me, obviously.  Actually, my main problem with these protests - apart from the disruption they have caused me - and 'Just Stop Oil' generally, are that they seem to be usual bunch of over-privileged middle class twats playing at being protestors.  They are basically the same arseholes who spent the past few years on the Corbyn bandwagon, destroying Labour's chances at the polls and thereby perpetuating these Tory bastards in power.  Now that Corbyn has gone and they can't play at politics any more, they've moved on to their next phase: environmental protests.  But, once again, they are going about in the most counter-productive way possible, guaranteed to alienate the wider public and allowing vested interests to dismiss the whole anti climate change movement as a bunch of raving bastard lunatics out to inconvenience the public.  Rather than chaining themselves to pipes at oil depots, or obstructing oil tankers, perhaps they should try chaining themselves to the gates of Downing Street or obstructing ministerial vehicles - more effective in publicity terms and more likely to garner public sympathy.  That said, probably the most effective thing they could do would be to get their rich mummies and daddies to buy sufficient shares in petrochemical companies that they can start to influence their policies, forcing them to invest in more renewable energy sources.  But that wouldn't get them on TV or in the papers, (not that they are at the moment).

In wider terms, these protests must surely raise questions about the security of oil depots and refineries if these clowns can, apparently, so easily gain access to them.  Moreover, I'd like to know where police brutality is when you need it?  They seem to be treating these people with kid gloves.  Which, of course, brings us back to the sort of people doing the protesting: well off middle class drop outs.  You can pretty much guarantee that if they were ordinary working class people or non-white, (there is a remarkable lack of diversity amongst these protesters), the cops would be giving them a bloody good kicking, falsely arresting them for every unsolved crime on their books, (including, probably, the Jack the Ripper murders), before fitting them up with enough evidence that they would be sure to get thirty years from any judge in the land.  But, they are middle class tossers from 'good' families whose parents are the sort to play golf with the Chief Constable and write outraged letters to the Daily Mail.  Anyway, for what it is worth, I did eventually manage to get some diesel in my tank at a not too extortionate price, (after queuing for some time at a supermarket filling station), which was lucky as I was running on fumes by then.   Which meant that I could come home and write this reactionary sounding post - although I'm only reactionary toward middle class shits who like to play at being radicals, regardless of the consequences for everyone else.  Besides, it is Easter - surely I'm allowed to be reactionary at Easter?