Bastad coalition ministers, I've a good mind to sue Ed Davey.

[iThe Energy Minister, Ed Davey, today advised motorists to top-up their vehicles with fuel when they are half empty.

Speaking to the BBC Mr Davey said,

"I think our major advice is that people just need to do the sensible thing if they're going into the petrol station, they should get a full tank of petrol, not a half-tank of petrol, and they should top up where necessary."[/i

I've just followed his advice and I've now got £90 worth of unleaded in my diesel car's tank

Because you're the one invoking the 'changed economic conditions' in general.

Let's remind ourselves of exactly what you said:

"Greed and an unwillingness to reflect the realities of the economic world applying to them are the causes of this."

It is simply being pointed out to you that it is not 'changed economic conditions' for everyone. And indeed, for some, greed is still absolutely the order of the day – even when that directly impacts on those who are being affected.

And you have not, apparently, been able to answer the following: in these 'changed economic times', with the cost of living rising, perhaps you'd care to actually explain how reducing the amount of disposable income people have will actually do anything other than further damage the economy? Y'know – the economy that's something like 3/4 based on the service sector (including retail, finance, entertainment etc etc etc) and people's ability to have disposable income to spend on/in it?

Divide and conquer, sadly, still works.

That said, I think the upcoming OECD figures are the bigger bearing on this. Squeeze every last drop out of this quarter and then, technically, on a matter of semantics rather than economics, the country will not be in recession.

The dispute hasn't been caused or affected by Government. The panic buying has however, which I acknowledged.

Indeed you did and I apologise the misunderstanding.

The vast majority are on neither final salary pension schemes or £50k+ wages. Even then I would hazard a guess that those few who may be on £50k+, their subsistence allowance (night out money) is also included in that figure.

Some dirvers have had up six different pension providers in as many years. Imagine how it would feel for you to be doing the same job, driving the same vehicle to the same deliveries but for a different employer, with different T&Cs on an annual basis.

There is also the safety aspect to consider. I wouldn't be happy knowing that someone is piloting 25,000 litres of extremely volatile liquid, at an ever increasing speed, just to satisfy some accountant's perception of what can be done to secure a margin on the contract they've just won by undercutting the incumbent.

Some appear to be, some absolutely are not.

Where do you fit in? Prepared to take a real pay cut to assist the more vulnerable? Have your conditions changed so you're working longer for the same pay in a less safe environment?

Or should the only people who have to be the ones who might affect your little world?

Are the employers of the fuel drivers "all in this together" with them and having their terms and conditons altered?

....unless you have to drive to Cornwall over Easter on your annual rugby tour along with around 65 other families.

You don't seem to have noticed Cod'ead's response to your earlier rant - this dispute isn't about pay bargaining, as far as I know they aren't asking for any more money at all and there is no "deal" as you intimated earlier, its about H&S and increasing pressures on drivers to fit more and more work into the same number of hours.

Thats the thing with HGV drivers, there is a clearly defined limit to the hours that they can drive, so assuming that an employer is flogging them to the limit each day there is only one other way to make them produce more - make more deliveries, and there is only one way to make more deliveries - be faster at the point of delivery or drive faster to get there.

Now think about how you would achieve that when you're driving a truck full of petrol.

Thats what the dispute is about.

Seriously though, public support for tanker drivers will evaporate faster than the volatile hydrocarbons they transport if they actually strike. I suspect there will be non of the bollo*k$ we saw during the last fuel dispute where 2 taxi drivers were all that was required to "blockade" an entire refinary while the police looked on completely "helpless" - now we all know what would have happened if they had been miners don't we? All that will happen is that a lot of ordinary people will get shafted while supplies are "prioritised".

Get around the table and get it sorted, currently the government look like the t00ls. Let's keep it that way.

I'm sure the various shop stewards and union leaders are sat round a table now gleefully discussing bringing the country to a standstill.

Just for those too young to remember, rlthis is what happensrl when one tanker full of explosive liquid/gas explodes on a roadside.

Obviously not on the scale of the above but there have also been increasing indidences of mis-fuelling at forecourts over recent years, where delivery drivers have pumped diesel into gasoline tanks and vice versa. It can be an expensive mistake in terms of potential engine damage but there's also the problem of adding a volatile fuel to a relatively benign one. You need a burning torch to get diesel to catch but add gasoline in the right ratio (70/30 gas to DERV is about right) and you've got the potential for some serious fireworks.

The Los Alfaques disaster involved LPG and many forecourts also dispense this fuel. The problem with LPG is that it's heavier than air and it will always run downhill or seep into drains and could manifest itself miles away from the original problem. IIRC (from my Hazchem training in the mid-70s) there was a disaster involving a crashed LPG tanker and a Scottish primary school.