Show me where I said carers expense accounts should be restricted - you are just a sheep tagging onto Mintball's flock - sad individual really incapable of actually constructing and argument that involves his own thought processes.

Not that long ago I worked for Wincanton guess what they do?

No, buckets and donkeys is the way to go.

One thing that has come out of this Government inspired seven day petrol panic is the fact that delivering petrol to the consumer these days is done strictly in accordance with the best Japanese "Just in Time" techniques in that the stocks often held on the forecourts represent in "normal" circumstances only 24 hours worth of fuel - some busy outlets revealing last week that they have two scheduled deliveries per day.

A comment from the petrol retailers spokesperson last week revealed that the main cause of such understocking was cash flow, he quoted a figure of £50,000 for a tankful and for most retail operators its much better to spread the cost of that over several days and several deliveries especially in these days of tightened or no overdrafts and no relenting from the banks.

Now personally I'd expect a minister of government to know that before suggesting a run on the petrol stations but maybe I'm being too naive to expect him to check first ?

Well they certainly know now how much stock is available to the rest of the country should a strike emerge from the talks next week and they know now the enormity of expecting a few hundred soldiers to keep up with the demand.

Frankly, there is no answer.

Stop talking Sal you're just embarrassing yourself. You happily pretend to be the font of all knowledge on various subjects mostly employment related and then are found wanting when challenged.
No you didn't say carers expense accounts should be restricted. What you were doing though was being a patronising pillock at the time by suggesting you and only you knew what things were like "in the real world". You were then shown up by your assertion that carers should use their expense accounts to get from one job to another. Displaying a clear lack of knowledge of what kind of pay and conditions the majority of carers are on.
You've done the same again here. Whilst attempting to be patronising and belittle other people you dug yourself into a hole again with pretending you knew all about this issue.

I note that your response to Chris 28's question basically boils down "I'd look at whats wrong and improve it". Thanks for that insight.

You would imagine that when someone changes ID on. Site like this, they'd try to improve how they were viewed, wouldn't you ...?

As you're so knowledgeable on the subject of Kaisan, then I'm sure you'll appreciate that there comes a point where all bottlenecks are removed and the system runs as smoothly and profitably as possible. This, after all, is the object of Kaisan.
Perhaps this

shows the effect that Kaisan has had on this industry - minimal stock is carried, it is transported from A to B with the minimal need for storage for any length of time.

Kaisan is a wonderful system but if you were as aware of how it works, other than the two day course you seem to have gone on, then you would appreciate that there is only the possibility to remove all AVOIDABLE obstacles to smoothflowing throughput using it. The important word has been highlighted for you there, even the best laid out system will have potential problems inherent in it.
The transport system for fuel is one such inherent obstacle, but is the best available method there is - if it was possible to pump it safely along underground pipes with no risk or explosion or theft, then I'm sure Shell would have started using it before now.

All I know is that last week every petrol station in town was full of idiots (and the odd person who actually had to put petrol in their car) and the price went up by 12p a litre (it went up 4p from Saturday morning to Saturday afternoon). Maybe a reduction in fuel duty would be appropriate here seing as they are responsible for the chaos that allowed oil companies to shove the price up.

On the plus side there are now millions of pounds worth petrol sitting in peoples garages waiting to explode (sorry Bluesky - "combust rapidly"icon_wink.gif. Insurance companies must be feverishly modifying home insurance policies as we speak to remove cover for fire as a result of following government advised petrol hoarding (it's not the 80's, it's not coal and we aren't power stations).

What did you do there?

Wander around with a sack over your head?

Because you sure seem to have a very poor grasp of just how logistics work

What you seem to be saying there is that you don't know what you would do exactly beyond applying some management techniques to that are useful tools for considering and implementing process improvement. We could all say that after a management course. I was being specific. What would you do [iprecisely[/i to improve the process of transporting fuel?

As a layman I don't know.

You really think that such an obvious idea hasn't been considered before and rejected? Off the top of my head I'd suggest that the up-front cost of installing a dedicated pipeline network that reaches to remote locations, coupled with the inherent risks involved with pumping an extremely volatile liquid and exposure to risk of theft makes it a non-starter.


I speak as someone who actually has real-life experience of engineering issues rather than a few days of theoretical training. And someone with some basic common sense and understand of the underlying principles.

I'm loving the idea of a network of underground fuel pipelines. For comparison, water pipelines cost around 1M per 100m and that's not in particularly urban areas. Now think of how frequently they leak and of the costs involved in putting in a suitable specification pipe to supply petrol to a dozen or so outlets in every town and city across the UK. Based on that I think tanker drivers are safe in their jobs for now.

Coming soon to a town near you, courtesy of Sal Paradise Civil & Pipeline Engineering

We had a burst water pipe up our street two weeks ago and it ran for hours before Yorkshire Water turned up.

I'd have been straight down to B&Q for their entire stock of buckets if it had been petrol that was leaking out - problem is, would it have been diesel, unleaded or premium unleaded that I was scooping up out of the gutter ?

Just my luck it would have been bloody diesel and no use to me at all.

Simple way of finding out: take a match to it. If it burns your eyebrows off - petrol (flammable, you see). If the match fizzles out - diesel (not flammable).

You might be suprised by the extent that pipelines are already used in the UK to transport fuel. OK, it's predominantly primary distribution (refinery to storage site) rather than secondary distribution (storage to retail), however it is a huge volume.

Look at the UK Petroleum Industry Association website for detailshttps://www.ukpia.com/industry_information/distribution.aspxrl

Here's the map of the main existing pipelineshttps://www.ukpia.com/Libraries/Download/UK_map_of_refineries_and_terminals.sflb.ashxrl

I'm pretty close to this dispute - my department manages the secondary distibution of approx. 150 million litres of fuel each week to our forecourts. Whilst I'm not involved on a day to day basis with fuel (I manage our rail network), I have been more involved in the last couple of weeks: trust me when I say that H&S is NOT the main reason for this potential industrial action.