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Comment by trollied | Hacker News Reader

For those not in the UK wondering what this is all about: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/24/what-is-cau...

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The overriding sentiment right now is isolated shortages have turned into widespread shortages because of panic buying, not actual shortages or HGV driver shortages.

...actually, its people who did not fill up last week and now have no choice.

That's not what news reports say outside the tame media of the UK's "managed democracy".

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/britain-fuel-cris...

Ah, yes, the NYT, for when you really want the truth...

The NYT does not have an axe to grind with Brexit, an issue for a foreign country. Even when it does have an axe to grind, it's default flex is "to both sides" an issue to the point of parody. Yet even the NYT can see the elephant in the room the UK media refuses to address.

Don't trust the NYT?

https://www.vox.com/22700343/uk-fuel-crisis-brexit-covid-19-...

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/28/business/brexit-fuel-food...

https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/uk-fuel-crisis-chao...

The New York Times has consistently awful UK coverage. And it certainly has an anti-Tory Remainer bias. Personally, I think the shortage is related to Brexit, and it's a short-term consequence of not being able to import cheap foreign labour instead of paying reasonable wages. We do have a driver shortage because haulage firms don't want to pay drivers a competitive salary. Plus, COVID disrupted driver testing and the issuing of new licenses. Plus, some in the media over-egged the problem and created panic buying. It's a multi-cause issue.

> And it certainly has an anti-Tory Remainer bias

And so does reality. Brexit, recent Tory governments are mismanaged unmitigated disasters. Is there anything broadly positive that can be said of them? Vaccination was decently managed, that's for sure.

What do you expect me to say in response? You've stated that your opinion is the only realistic appraisal of the situation. That implies we don't merely disagree in our intepretation of events, but that you understand reality and I am deluded. We can't have a polite disagreement among equals because "reality" is on your side and not mine. Why would I bother to talk to someone who thinks like that?

I'm not trying to convince you, i'm merely stating that it's incredibly hard to look at the Tories and Brexit and come out with positive things to say. If that doesn't match your opinion, i highly doubt you'd reconsider based on an online discussion. Anyone who can overlook everything they've failed at ( be it on a diplomatic, personal or whatever level) - just the corrupt crony contracts they gave for the emergency Brexit ferries or NHS emergency supplies at the beginning at the pandemic and their violation of just signed international agreements by them would be game over for me - either sees things very differently ( e.g. agrees with their generic policies and is willing to accept utter clowns failing at being even remotely competent) or is too stupid/brainwashed/naive/etc. to even consider the reality. I can somewhat understand the first one, but neither can be changed IMHO. And i don't actually care, it's not my country, it's one that's really trying to distance itself from mine, so goodspeed to them.

And note, i'm not in any way saying the other UK parties are somewhat better or would do a better job, i don't have a serious opinion on them. But that does in no way excuse the clown car crash.

One can have their own opinion on whether brexit should have happened, but it’s extremely hard to argue that the tories haven’t been handling this poorly.

Yes, one can certainly argue about whether they've handled the fuel shortage well. However, I'm not sure if anyone else would have handled it any better. One way to look at it is that they've left the ball where it should be: with the haulage firms who must now pay more for drivers. It's not really the government's job to ensure that private haulage and petrochemical firms have as much access to cheap labour as they would like. It was always going to be an uncomfortable adjustment to make.

> One way to look at it is that they've left the ball where it should be: with the haulage firms who must now pay more for drivers.

Of course, this is actually sign of governmental incompetence. Yes, haulage firms will need to pay more, obviously. But the process of raising wages, training, and hiring drivers is a slow process. Even if every haulage firm decided overnight to raise wages high enough to attract new applicants, it will take months to train all of these people to become truck drivers. To expect the supply chain to handle just a sudden shock like this was very, very foolish of them.

Oh, and there's a bunch of non-wage stuff too, like Priti Patel threatening to arrest any truck driver who has an illegal immigrant in their truck, whether or not they were aware of them. I'm sure this won't have a chilling effect on cross-border trucking, will it?

Also, it's not exactly like the Tory party is the party of "you should pay your workers more", now is it?

The NYT is famous for having consistently hyperbolic negative coverage of things in the U.K.

Edit: sources for those who don’t believe me:

What’s the New York Times’s problem with Britain?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-s-the-new-york-time...

The New York Times’ bizarre campaign against Britain

https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-a...

The New York Times is junk.

Both of those have a right-leaning bias, The Spectator in particular. Do you have any other sources?

For context, these are both right-leaning sources attacking the NYT for having negative coverage of right-leaning politics.

The New York Times may well be junk, but you're not helping your argument with articles from Unherd and Spectator, both notorious "rent-a-quote" right-wing rags of ill repute. Next you'll be quoting Spiked.

I've also provided links from other sources if you find NYT unpalatable.

I belived that for the first week. I's harder to stockpile petrol than toilet paper, though.

Classic problem for commodities. Fuel demand isn’t terribly elastic, most of us won’t random change how much we need to drive, but fuel purchases are very elastic. Given a risk of a shortage everyone can decide to top up their tank today rather than next week, and if enough people do that stations can run out.

Of course, it’s not the governance that has failed. The problem is your fellow citizens.

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