About 90,000 Spanish lorry drivers started a protest at rising fuel prices at midnight last night.
Some trucks trying to cross picket lines have had their windscreens smashed and their lights ripped out and tyres slashed.
French fishermen were, a week ago, ramming yachts in harbour during a protest at rising fuel prices.
There are protests all over Europe – including here in England – at rising fuel prices and the French and Spanish are once again showing how it should be done. I wouldn’t normally condone the use of brute force in a protest but there is a lot at stake here – food and fuel prices (the former is linked to the latter) are spiralling out of control and very soon people are going to start finding themselves in the position where they can’t afford to buy even basic food items.
English hauliers blocked the entrance to the refinary at Ellesmere Port the other day but it went virtually unreported – the national media ignored it and the only reason I knew it had happened was because my local paper covers Ellesmere Port and local hauliers were involved in the action. There appears to be a deliberate media blackout of English fuel protests.
The head of the Spanish transport association federation said:
We are the ones who move the goods that this country needs to keep working. If we stop because we haven’t got the money to buy fuel then the country will stop.
Bang on and exactly the point I made last week. If hauliers went on strike – and this means getting the likes of Eddie Stobbart and Christian Salvessen on board – for a week, the country would be crippled and the British government would either have to forcibly break a legal protest by siezing the trucks and using the army to tranposrt food to supermarkets or they would have to do the decent thing and reduce fuel duty.
Giving in to protesters or bringing in the army to confiscate privately owned trucks – which would Gordo choose? Of course, causing disruption to food or fuel supplies is now classed as terrorism and if he gets his way on Wednesday, any protesters could find themselves detained without charge for a month and a half. Would Gordo have 90,000 lorry drivers locked up for a month and a half for exercising their constitutional right to free assembly and protest? Is the Pope catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods? Does a Glaswegian drink 14 pints of whiskey before starting a riot and then vomiting on a policeman’s trousers? Of course he would – there is no room for dissent in the Brownian Republic of New Britain.
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how well would that work?
tescos and sainsburies have their own fleets, so mostly it would be the wee local shops and producers who would suffer
if you are going for non democratic ways to change the government, why dont we get Bobo of the Bath to advise us?
It was exactly this type of cavaleir attitude towards the democraticllay elected government that earned the miners such hatred, that got them and the rest of the union movement destroyed
What’s undemocratic about protesting? Being allowed to protest freely is one of the greatest tests of a democracy.
Axel, what are the hauliers to do to influence the government? Wait four years and vote on parties and personalities? What say do we have over government policy? This action is all that they can do in response to a massive reduction in living standards.
“There appears to be a deliberate media blackout of English fuel protests.”
I think you are right about this wonko. The protests across Europe have been given minimal coverage.
Axel, all the big supermarkets have their own fleets but I think you’ll find a lot of those trucks are owner-driver operations or agency drivers. They also don’t buy all their stock straight from source – it has to be transported to a warehouse first.
Charlie, there’s some coverage of European protests but virtually nothing at all of English protests.
Charlie- Are you a trucker?
They influence the government in the same way that the miners did in the 1970s.
Oki, we are not going to be sitting in the darkness grumbling about how much we hate the government but it will be a current equivalent. For example, if i had to drink diet coke instead of diet peopsi, i think that wouldf majorly piss me off.
And as our intricately constructed world falls to bits, people will get angry and disaffected. It will be wee things, like having to eat scottish cheddar instead of Red Leicestern or wendslydale.
I do not think we weill be able to summon up much of the old Blitz spirit and tough it out.
Well, those are all positive outcomes Axel. A pissed off population is one that will start taking responsibility for itself and its own destiny. The establishment doesn’t run the country for our benefit or according to our wishes – that’s wrong and some serious disruption will get people motivated.
I agree, we need some serious big bangs and broken things to sweep away the detriuous of previous years.
If it were the previous century, we could rely on the Germans or if it were the previous millenium the french were alway good for a rumble.
I think making the russians the Bad Men to be scared of was not a good choice 🙁