The drivers are off the road and, in a manner of speaking, on
the march again. With rising oil prices world-wide, partly
sparked off by recent terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, petrol
is once more the unsavoury topic of conversation at dinner tables
up and down the country. There are rumours of new revolts and blockades. Newspapers are
busy trying to paint it as a huge political issue, trying to use
the grumbling of a few pissed off haulage firms as a means of
battering ‘the oppressive state’. This is, we are told,
the great cause of our time, the issue, the people’s
protest. Iraq was a cause that provoked a real sense of public outcry,
but now we are back to that most engaging and universal of
political causes, the price of unleaded. The hippy protests of
the Sixties really put ours to shame. Their songs were better.
Can you imagine those mad bearded lager louts, who used their
tractors and trucks to block up the roads a few years ago,
sitting down with a guitar to strum out the chords to ‘Where
have all the flowers gone?’ The strange-looking farmers and lorry drivers fighting this
‘war’ tooth and nail can be forgiven their naïve
assumption that cheap fuel is a God-given right. They have their
livelihoods to worry about, and we must humour them when they
childishly vent their frustration by honking their horns as loud
as possible, complaining to everyone that the world is not
exactly as they would have planned it, and that this ‘just
isn’t fair’. To have read some of the papers at the time of the last fuel
crisis, you could have been conned into thinking this was a
really serious issue. And when I say serious, I mean, relative to
world peace, Third World poverty or the environment (the neglect
of all three might have some slight bearing on the fuel debate
itself). Why aren’t the Daily Mail or The Sun, who have tried to
turn these fuel protestors into heroes of the people, jumping on
these rather more serious bandwagons? But then, I suppose without
any petrol, some smart lorry-driver might inform you, no
bandwagons would get anywhere anyway.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004
Thoughts of the Week
