Petrol station queues remain across UK

Sep 29, 2021 - 11:36

A Shell garage in London which has run out of fuel © Getty Images

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps blamed the public for panic-buying and the coronavirus pandemic, which saw tests for 30,000 drivers delayed and foreign truckers return home.
But even as deliveries slowly resumed, motorists like London taxi driver Divyesh Ruparelia, 58, faced an anxious time trying to fill up.
"Today, if it's anything like yesterday, then I will run out of fuel," he told AFP.
Paramedic Jennifer Ward, 21, said she had to try five different garages in Norfolk, eastern England, before she could fill up her ambulance.
"We work a stressful job and we don't need any added anxiety," she told the Daily Mail.
Healthcare bodies said "urgent action" was needed, as doctors, nurses and other staff were increasingly unable to get to work.
"We can't be waiting in queues for two or three hours for petrol or diesel when we have patients to see," BMA deputy chairman David Wrigley told Times Radio.
Britain's biggest public sector workers' union, Unison, said the government should use emergency powers to give key workers priority.
Even normally supportive sections of the British media voiced anger at the government's handling of the crisis, which Johnson blamed on "a misleading account of something which got leaked and caused a surge in public demand".
The Sun said mixed messaging was hitting public confidence and accused the government of being "asleep at the wheel" on fuel, as well as lacking a strategy to deal with surging numbers of migrants crossing the Channel from France.