A bit of union bashing is always a good way for a Tory Government to gain a few points in the polls, especially when they’re 10 points behind Labour and seemingly about to be abandoned by every newspaper apart from the Telegraph. Even the Sun seemingly dumped Cameron in it a few days ago. You can take our NHS, but you will never take our VAT free sausage rolls!
The government has, for the past day or two, stirred up as much anti-union hysteria as possible, and we’ve been told that soldiers will drive fuel lorries under police guard, that ambulances and fire engines will be unable to run, to stock up on as much fuel as possible, and that people will die! Well, it turns out that, contrary to what brainless twat Francis Maude said, hoarding fuel in your house isn’t exactly a great idea – and is illegal if you have more than 20 litres. They really went into overdrive about this, when all that actually happened was a vote was passed – the drivers have to give seven days notice, which they haven’t done.
The fact is that having stirred up enough panic, people have gone out to buy fuel like the world might be about to end any day, and so now there’s not any fuel in the fuel pumps. That’s just great for the Tories really, because I’m sure it won’t be long before the unions are being blamed for that as well, rather than the mismanagement of the government. You’d not only think there’d been a strike by lorry drivers, but a pre-emptive strike against Iran by Israel, everything really does seem to have gone slightly mad.
Cameron and his mates have tried to spin this in order to bash the unions, but I think it might’ve played a relatively strong hand to a union that’s not really demanding all that much from the government. Cameron + co. have obviously played into the hands of the drivers, by demonstrating how incompetent the government are, and how they simply could not handle an actual strike. It probably helps Cameron that they’ve managed to raise a year’s worth of fuel duty in several days thanks to the panic buying. I can’t help but think that if this is how we react to the vaguest possibility of not being able to fill up over the bank holiday weekend, we ought to wait for about 10 years, when petrol will be a rarity.
