Western Morning News (Saturday)
Clare Ainsworth on Saturday We need to work out what the new normal is
CARRY on as normal” .... those immortal words from Transport Secretary Grant Shapps yesterday floated around in the breeze as drivers rushed to fill up their cars and huge queues were reported all over the Westcountry.
Forget shortages of bread and toilet paper, the prospect of closed petrol stations sends us Brits into a proper frenzy. Plus, does anyone really know what normal is these days?
With some forecourts already putting out the closed pump signs, Mr Shapps might as well have run across a field shouting “don’t panic Mr Mainwaring!”
You don’t need to be very old to remember another autumn when fuel shortages did bring the country to a virtual standstill.
Protests over a sudden rise in prices led to the pumps running dry on many filling station forecourts.
Farmers and lorry drivers blockaded refineries and motorways were blocked by lorry “go slows”. The NHS was put on an emergency footing and doctors and nurses were forced to go to the picket line to plead for an end to the blockades.
Incredibly that was only 21 years ago, in September 2000 but perhaps too long ago for our ‘young’ Transport Secretary to understand why people might be a bit jittery about another fuel crisis.
The Transport Secretary was giving lots of interviews yesterday after BP was forced to close down some of its forecourts on Thursday.
Tesco – now we’re getting really serious– also closed some of its filling stations while there were long queues reported at open ones. Albeit that Asda, Morrisons and other supermarkets were reporting no shortages yesterday, it’s a fair bet they won’t have much fuel left today as everyone rushes to fill up for the weekend.
There is already talk of rationing so don’t bother looking out those old petrol cans in the shed.
Mr Shapps’ assurance to the BBC’s Today programme that he would “move Heaven and Earth” to make sure lorries kept up supplies of both food and fuel was a lot more exciting yet he didn’t actually have any answers to how the problem was going to be solved, either in this life or the next.
Perhaps he is thinking about bringing in the Army to stem the shortage of HGV drivers for both lorries and buses. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to use their expertise to put some drivers through the ‘crash courses’ that many army recruits receive.
But do we have sufficient numbers of suitable candidates waiting to fill
The pandemic brought home many truths about modern life – these shortages of food and fuel should do the same
the shortage of 100,000 drivers estimated by the Road Haulage Association required to stem the problems?
It seems not and perhaps in the short, as well as the long term, the Government needs to get more creative in thinking of ways to stop the country grinding to a halt.
Despite trying to stem the climate emergency, the UK still relies on roads for the movement of food and other goods. And we hear ridiculous examples of “food miles” with produce being moved up and down the country due to complicated supply chains.
The Western Morning News has long championed “local food” and supporting those producers who sell their food within a few miles of where it is made.
While our campaign started on the back foot it’s fair to say we ended up being the heralds of a food revolution and at the cutting edge of a modern way of shopping and eating.
The problem is that while supermarkets, who remain the major suppliers of food, have paid lip-service to supporting local suppliers they haven’t really cracked cutting out the food miles.
So it’s likely that tub of Cornish clotted cream you bought in Truro has had quite a trip around the country before ending up in your local store.
The Covid pandemic brought home many truths about the way our modern lives have spun out of control and has resulted in some changes that will never be reversed.
The current shortages of food and fuel should do the same.
Rather than “carrying on as normal” we need to find out what the “new normal” is.