Panic Buying

Barrychuckle

Administrator
Staff member
I'm not sure what it's like in other parts of the country but pretty much all the stations in Shrewsbury are out of fuel tonight. I desperately need fuel for work meetings next week so ended up paying £1.51 per litre of diesel and even this was capped at £30 maximum fill. The world has gone utterly crazy once more, I'm wondering whether the panic buying idiots are the same ones stashing their cupboards with toilet rolls last year.
 
Its a woeful situation and set to deteriorate , hybrid and electric cars are being promoted as the future but with the fuel crisis , issues around energy supply and the abysmal network of charging points perhaps we need to return to days of yore .

flintstones-car.gif

Sadly joking aside we are totally dependant on cars just look at any road on any day so any hint of issues in supply induces panic despite attempted reassurances from the companies who provide fuel that there is and will be supplies if people remain patient but that never happens .
 
At the moment electric cars are cheaper to run, if you can afford one in the first place, but don't think for one minute that once they become commonplace that electric prices wont rise! Then, when there's a drop in fuel duty & road tax revenue...... bang, road toll charging per mile driven will be introduced. It's on the cards & technology will deliver it.
Where's Heathcliff, time to get him back out of the stables.
 
But we don't have the infrastucture for electric vehicles. You try to find a charging point and look at how long it takes to fully charge a car. I know some people have come round to the idea of electric cars, but most will not until the infrastructure is there and the vehicles themselves can be charged much faster. We won't see the end of traditional petrol and diesel vehicles for a long time yet.
 
At the moment electric cars are cheaper to run, if you can afford one in the first place, but don't think for one minute that once they become commonplace that electric prices wont rise! Then, when there's a drop in fuel duty & road tax revenue...... bang, road toll charging per mile driven will be introduced. It's on the cards & technology will deliver it.
Where's Heathcliff, time to get him back out of the stables.
Can you not convert Edies Herald to electric? I saw a beautiful Aston Martin DB6 the other day which had been fully converted to electric, that said part of the attraction of a car like that is the amazing roar of the exhausts!
 
I wouldn't do it to Edie, it would lose it's character. Anyway I think the weight of the battery pack would bend her chassis. The low mileage that classics drive makes their emissions negligible.
 
I do have a safety small point to make about electric cars and it is simply you cannot hear them coming . It's unnerving sometimes crossing the road because they sneak up to you stealth like and its so easy to step out unawares that a car is coming along the road , with petrol/diesel cars you can always hear them coming some distance away.
 
I do have a safety small point to make about electric cars and it is simply you cannot hear them coming . It's unnerving sometimes crossing the road because they sneak up to you stealth like and its so easy to step out unawares that a car is coming along the road , with petrol/diesel cars you can always hear them coming some distance away.
I'm a regular cyclist and I can usually hear them behind me because most of the sound comes from the tyre roar rather than the engines. Believe it or not some of the sports car manufacturers are developing artificial sounds so they can emulate the sound of V8 or V12 engines!!!
 
Although not visiting 'till next month, my other half tells me that Holmfirth & Morrisons at Melthan are out of diesel at the moment. Info via facebook.
 
Some stupid woman has been captured on film at a petrol station.

She goes in the shop, buys large plastic bottles of mineral water.

Empties the water into the BIN.

Then fills the plastic bottles with fuel.

Her car is parked by the pumps, no doubt that has been filled up fully too.

I don't think plastic water bottles would even hold the fuel for very long before perishing.
 
Last edited:
Ah, let's see what you can do with electric cars? Well, if cars are electric, then the next step is to make them DIGITAL!. You won't need to fiddle with power cords because they will be powered with pulse power. And when cars are digital, all sorts of things can come into play --- the good, the bad, and the ugly. But one thing is sure, the electric car is a part of a bigger plan that has not been revealed. Yes, it's just a stepping stone to something else.

The Jetsons -- here we come!!
 
News shows people with huge billy cans filling them as they fill up their car and then lugging them into the boot of their car [mostly driver side petrol caps and on the pumps furthest from the station building looks obvious if your car has a passenger side cap and your car is pointing in the opposite direction to everyone else so they can conceal what they are doing] meanwhile key workers like nurses are struggling to get fuel and allow them to go to do their vital work . It cannot be too long before there are designated petrol stations for key workers which was a key tactic in 2000 .
 
I maybe different but the future of electric cars doesnt excite me 1 little bit... Apart from sitting round for hours, and look at your phone battery - they deteriorate badly if you dont fully charge them all the time.
I raced mx/enduro/road bikes for ~15 odd years and rode them since i was 10... I had a bike for 10yrs before getting my first car.. Theres not many things to me as good as the sound of a perfectly tuned 2 stoke racebike on song... Try listening to Formula E (Electric) - its like listening to my old Hornby train set.

Petrol strikes in Aussie in the 80s they went with Odds and Even Number plates so Monday was Odd, Tuesday was even etc etc It sorta worked... but these days with stolen # plates happening as it is - would only grow.
 
I agree with your comments Bruce, I'm a self confessed petrol head and I've owned both V12 & V8 cars in my time so love the roar from the engines. I test drove an I-Pace a few weeks ago and although it accelerates very quickly I found it soulless and due to the weight of the batteries the handling wasn't the best. That said this is something we're going to have to learn to live if we want to address global warming and in the UK as all new cars will have to be electric from 2030.
 
At the moment electric cars are cheaper to run, if you can afford one in the first place, but don't think for one minute that once they become commonplace that electric prices wont rise! Then, when there's a drop in fuel duty & road tax revenue...... bang, road toll charging per mile driven will be introduced. It's on the cards & technology will deliver it.
Where's Heathcliff, time to get him back out of the stables.
First of all, if all the cars become electric, then they will have to come up with a different way of collecting a tax and charging by the mile could be in the cards. Second, if the power should go out, for whatever reason, you're toast. You've just put all your eggs in one basket. With gas powered cars, if the power should go out, you're still able to use the car.
 
First of all, if all the cars become electric, then they will have to come up with a different way of collecting a tax and charging by the mile could be in the cards. Second, if the power should go out, for whatever reason, you're toast. You've just put all your eggs in one basket. With gas powered cars, if the power should go out, you're still able to use the car.

There's also the question of whether we have enough power generation to cope with the increased electric demand.
 
Back
Top