Time to panic-buy again?

 

It’s quite wonderful to watch how our MSM are uncertain what the next fear message should be. Apparently, yesterday’s ‘we’re all gonna die’ – of flu and covid combined – if we don’t get jabbed again, hasn’t had a huge impact so far. The threat of ‘no Christmas’ however has been picked up cautiously albeit our MSM aren’t quite clear yet about who is going to be blamed.

There’s the energy crisis, of course, but in the run-up to next month’s Johnson’s peacock production, COP26, they can’t make too much of this yet because it’s home-made. We did learn that the switch to that ‘eco fuel’ E10 on the 1st of September was the real reason for the petrol crisis. Some mention was also made that the rocket-like rise in gas prices wasn’t solely due to much higher demand on the world energy market but due to the lack of strategic reserves in this country. We’ve not heard much about that lately, have we? 

There were the outcries about the HGV driver shortages, with the inevitable wail from Remainers in industries and the metropolitan MSM that this was all due to Brexit. There’s a nice little report in the DM this morning on the situation at the DVLA where even now only 40% of public servants are working, where left-wing unionists have had 58 days of strikes this year – all because of covid and the ‘fear’ of covid.

I note in passing that it’s trade unions who have been using covid ‘measures’ as cheap pretext not to work, with e.g. the teachers unions being at the forefront of demanding that life for school kids be made an utter misery and never mind the consequences for their physical and mental well-being. But I digress – here’s a hair-rising umber which puts paid to all the Remainers’ wails blaming Brexit:

“Last week, as petrol forecourts ran dry and the HGV driver shortage became front-page news, it emerged that a staggering backlog of more than 56,000 applications for ‘vocational’ licences (needed by all lorry and bus drivers) had been allowed to build up in the DVLA’s system.About 4,000 of those are for provisional licences, while the remainder covered renewals. “ (link)

Interesting, isn’t it: here was our gracious PM, pressured into providing extra licences for 5,000 EU HGV drivers and calling on the Army to help drive petrol tankers, with the usual Remain suspects in full outcry. Mention of the failure of the DVLA to provide the licences thanks to lefty trade union activists was only made when HGV drivers themselves pointed this out. This is the more extraordinary because it’s been going on for some time, so the MSM and government must have known:

“This followed a year in which thanks largely to the suspension of tests (over which the DVLA had no control) just 26,400 new HGV drivers were approved, some 17,000 fewer than normal, […]. This January, when about 3,000 would typically be granted, a mere 173 were.” (link)

Clearly, the general consensus in the metropolitan MSM was not to blame the trade unions. It worked for teachers unions, didn’t it. There’s another consensus, and it’s odd to see that the big industry bosses are also refraining from pointing at the trade union strangling the DVLA which has effectively created the HGV driver shortage.

Now, with energy prices skyrocketing, industry bosses are moving towards demanding financial support from government, using Christmas as cudgel. There’s the CEO of the Paper industries – toilet rolls, geddit? – who said that “it was ‘very clear’ across all of the sectors that there are ‘serious’ risks factories could stop all activities as a result of the gas prices being too high” (link) while the CEO of UK Steel said that “if Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Government ‘does nothing to help’ firms, rising prices could ‘start to strangle’ production.” (link).

Extraordinary, isn’t it: we plebs are expected to pay and pay to keep our homes warm and cook our dinners even though our home energy bills have already risen to eye-watering heights – without any financial help from government. Huge industries however seem to be unwilling to forego a bit of their profits to keep their factories going. It’s not only those energy-dependent industries – a whole slew of CEOs of such trade associations are crying out about how much they’re hurting. Funny: they’re all Remainers.

Meanwhile, ‘sources’ in Whitehall have been doing their best to get their pet writers in the MSM to blame Putin on the ‘gas crisis’. It seems that at least some MPs have read those articles:

“Ministers are also under pressure to stand up to Russia over gas price rises, with MPs accusing President Putin of trying to make Europe choose between “war or warmth”. The government believes that Russia is choking off Europe’s gas supply to force approval for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic. Whitehall sources said price rises were being used as a “political weapon” to achieve more political leverage over the EU.” (link, paywalled)

Ah yes – an ‘external enemy’ to blame, diverting attention from one’s own mistakes, such as not building up a strategic gas reserve … how very convenient! However, there’s another little piece of information mentioned in an aside. The DM informs us that:

“The natural gas price is currently hovering at around £2.40 a therm – down from more than £4 yesterday – after traders were reassured by Putin hinting that Russia would consider increasing exports.” (link)

How … inconvenient. Doesn’t Putin know he’s got to remain the enemy?  Never mind – here’s the next Christmas cudgel. Allegedly, according to ‘industry leaders’, “we” have a shortage of labour which “may affect supply chains at Christmas, with less choice on supermarket shelves.” (link, paywalled). One doesn’t need to be Mystic Meg to predict that trade unions will greedily use this observation to call for higher wages and threaten strikes.

It’s of course totally unthinkable that trade union bosses and trade industry bosses were working hand in glove to press more money out of us plebs … and anyway, who wouldn’t want to spend and spend for Christmas!

Unsurprisingly, our ‘friends’ across the Channel are also threatening our Christmas, informing us that French fishermen would blockade ports, preventing Christmas goods to reach our shores if French, sorry: EU fishermen weren’t allowed to ravage our fish stocks (link). 

‘Tis strange though: nobody in this government, never mind the MSM, seems to be unduly worried about the prospect that perhaps there won’t be any Christmas goods arriving here, French threats, shortage of HGV drivers or workers in logistics and shops notwithstanding. From far away, i.e. the other side of that huge country across the Big Pond, we hear that China has been cutting power to manufacturing industries and is now doing so on a regular basis, so that: 

“[…] firms now get “weekly notifications of which days they will have no power,” making the cuts look permanent. It must be nearly impossible for supply-chain management to work, even at a local level, when companies don’t know more than a week in advance which days they’ll be allowed to operate.” (link)

China – that’s so very far away! ‘Tis easier to blame Putin, Brexit or both and threaten us peasants with another grim Christmas where there’ll be no heating, no food, no gifts, no money and an NHS overwhelmed because of covid and flu. One wonders if all those bosses, those “Whitehall sources”, those MSM writers, believe they themselves won’t be affected by any of this.

Of course, they don’t mean for us to go and panic-buy food, toilet rolls, any Christmas gifts already on the shelves … of course not! After all, they’d have to blame all those shortages on us plebs then, wouldn’t they … oh wait … petrol queues, anyone?

 

KBO

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email