On Thursday Who has most to gain from the fuel crisis?

FUEL shortages? Perception is, as ever, the effective reality. So, never mind the impending zombie apocalypse… the beggars are already here.

And did I hear that right? With scarcely a trace of irony, we’re told ‘essential workers’ will need to have first dibs on the last few meagre litres of petrol in the country. And, as you and I have noticed before, ‘essential workers’ are nurses and firemen and the like, but apparently not tanker drivers. In fact, if you look the list up, it’s all kinds of safely salaried State employees. I’m always tickled that it doesn’t include sewer workers, slaughtermen or fellmongers, fruit and vegetable pickers, jobbing plumbers or sparkies. Nor indeed, personnel trained to safely pilot 40 tonne tankers carrying go-go juice.

Yet such people are all just as essential for society to function. Indeed, unless you’re sick, or your house is on fire*, you don’t need some of them at all. Whereas there are plenty of trades which we all need every single day. As we saw only last year, during the infamous ‘bog roll wars’, the minute there’s the least hiccup, and supermarkets can’t keep shelves stocked, the world goes mad.

(*I’m less vexed about the need for Trumpton, since their fire engines developed a bit of middle-aged spread, and can no longer fit over the narrow bridges to Chateau Coaker. Should my abode catch fire now, it’ll burn merrily to the ground if I can’t make it out myself.)

It’s a pity HM Opposition are busy flagellating themselves in Brighton. Because there are some difficult questions to be asked of the Home Secretary. Government should have been well aware of the fragility of staffing in vital infrastructure, and been preventing such hiccups. It’s happened several times, where industrial action or tax protests by a relative handful of people cause a self-feeding crisis.

As I recall, a few striking Scottish refinery workers discovered they could bring the country to a halt in about three days flat. Studies were commissioned, and subsequent findings presented, outlining the issues. Presumably, if you knew which filing cabinet to rummage in, you could probably find dusty documents which warned of exactly this scenario.

Further, although I’m not any kind of conspiracy theorist – I’m generally an ardent believer in ‘Cock-up’ theorem – I’ve been thinking. As the November COP26 climate change conference gets closer, and Boris tries his hardest to show a shiny green face to the world, we suddenly have a gas shortage clouting people and companies over the head with whacking great price rises. Then a perceived glitch in petrol deliveries showing up our feeble reliance on a ready supply of motion-lotion, and suddenly the sky is falling. It’s enough to make me wonder if someone isn’t pulling some strings to remind us – before leaders get carried away in Glasgow – how much we still absolutely rely on fossil fuels. Certainly, if I had a few million riding on it, I’d be thinking how I could focus minds. Just a thought, eh?

And finally, I must briefly thank Professor Bruce once more. Still exercised about cow burps, he’s obligingly shown us how the number of cows in the UK is currently just about the median for the last 150 years.

Likewise, he brings to our attention estimates of the historic numbers of bison in North America, which, taken with other wild ruminants now displaced, are weirdly similar to the number of cows that have more or less replaced them. He seems to be blaming cows for all of the methane in the atmosphere. Yet seeing oil, coal and natural gas production, along with landfill seepage, account for much more of it, that doesn’t really seem reasonable. Indeed, given that 150 years ago there was precious little of these latter sources, but similar amounts of burping ruminants, I’ve got to wonder how anyone can sidestep the obvious conclusion.

As for global warming overall, I note that, 150 years ago, there were no cars or buses – or petrol tankers! There was no powered flight, no municipal power stations, and a scant few steam ships… which weren’t burning oil. Cement and steel production was a tiny fraction of what it is today, and humans have multiplied seven-fold in this time scale.

But it’s still cow burps.

I am accused of wrongly comparing domesticated livestock with – your phrase – ‘free-living’ species. Why? Are their guts somehow different? Do my cows – adrift on a 26,000 acre uncultivated hill – know they’re not ‘free-living’? Or is there some prejudice at work here?

‘Is someone pulling some strings... to show us how much we rely on fossil fuels?’