UK fuel shortage: ‘Ludicrous’ panic-buyer empties water bottles to fill with petrol

Daily Mail published this video item, entitled “UK fuel shortage: ‘Ludicrous’ panic-buyer empties water bottles to fill with petrol” – below is their description.

Tens of thousands more Britons are working from home today as the fuel crisis saw up to nine in ten forecourts run dry leaving NHS staff including doctors and nurses without petrol and schools planning a return to online learning because teachers can’t fill up their cars. Gavin Rabbitt stopped at Shell garage in Cobham Services on the M25 yesterday and sat in disbelief as he watched a woman fill two 1.5litre water bottles with fuel (main [icture) – seemingly unaware the bottle could explode or melt because it is not a vessel to legally carry petrol. Mr Rabbitt, from Tonbridge, Kent, said: ‘I thought “I can’t believe the stupidity of this woman”. This is the kind of thing that causes the problem. People filling up things they shouldn’t be filling up and no one else can get the fuel because of other people’s stupidity’. And it is proving so difficult to get fuel, thieves have been siphoning it from cars, sometimes drilling into the petrol tank, Shadrack Olaloko, from Birmingham, said: ‘What these guys did was they came and drained out all my fuel in the tank’. Britain’s biggest petrol retailers have said they expect the crisis to ease in the next three days because once people have a full tank, demand for fuel is likely to fall away by Thursday or Friday. And Downing Street again denied there is a shortage of fuel, saying there are ‘ample stocks in this country’. But as the Prime Minister considered emergency plans to halt the petrol panic, Environment Secretary George Eustice has said the Government has ‘no plans at the moment’ to use soldiers to drive petrol tankers amid continuing shortages at filling stations.

Daily Mail YouTube Channel

Got a comment? Leave your thoughts in the comments section, below. Please note comments are moderated before publication.


About This Source - Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market newspaper and news website published in London in a tabloid format. Founded in 1896, it is the United Kingdom’s highest-circulated daily newspaper.

Recent from Daily Mail:

Horrific aftermath of iran village following strikes carried out by pakistan 1

Horrific aftermath of Iran village following strikes carried out by Pakistan

Ukrainian drone destroys Russian oil tanks in Bryansk

LIVE: JAXA attempts the lunar landing of its Smart Lander

In This Story: NHS

The National Health Service is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde.

The NHS was founded on 5th July 1948. Current annual budget: £134 billion (2019).

3 Recent Items: NHS

‘National incident’ declared over measles outbreak

Friday Night with Niall Paterson live: Japan is the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon

Rishi Sunak heckled by member of the public over state of NHS

Leave a Comment

We don't require your email address, or your name, for anyone to leave a comment. If you do add an email address, you may be notified if there are replies to your comment - we won't use it for any other purpose. Please make respectful comments, which add value, and avoid personal attacks on others. Links are not allowed in comments - 99% of spam comments, attempt to post links. Please describe where people may find additional information - for example "visit the UN website" or "search Google for..." rather than posting a link. Comments failing to adhere to these guidelines will not be published.