The recent fuel tanker driver’s strike which lasted all of four days and only affected 10% of the nation’s fuel supplies has prompted the title of this posting.

Having recently returned from doing some work at the new warehouse in the Midlands, as per the Hertz contract, I had to leave the hire car completely replenished.  Unfortunately, virtually all filling stations in Bridgwater were empty – Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, Total, UK.  The BP on Taunton road was just running out after I filled up.  So I’m contractually complete!

The point is that the nearest Shell filling station (excluding the M5 Taunton Deane services about 10 miles away) is at Williton – about 40mins drive away!  There isn’t a Shell station for miles and yet people, like a pack of hyenas, ran to ravage all the fuel in the land to somehow hoard it away like chipmunks.  The fact that everyone did it, despite all the information provided in this highly effective communications world that we have, proves that people are easily panicked like sheep, and never ever look at the broader picture further away than the end of their nose.

It’s desperately sad and shows just how close the base instincts lie beneath our “civilised” modern facade.

Also remember, these are the same people who want terrorism laws increased and freedoms curtailed (75% at the last poll), would be quite happy to see innocent people executed, (“hang everyone” they say, despite hundreds of proven miscarriages of justice), and drive at murderously illegal speeds down motorways and through the towns and country lanes of this “peaceful” land that we live in (“Why don’t the police go and catch proper criminals instead of picking on the poor motorist” , they say).

Now those same people are complaining that the huge cars that they bought on loans backed up by ever appreciating house prices are now too costly to keep running.  They expect the state to keep them in a life to which they’ve become accustomed.  They expect the rest of the world to make sacrifices so that this will happen.  They expect unjust wars to be fought in their name to make it so.  They expect the “right to buy” homes to provide them with an income for life and if they make any mistakes, the state will pick up the tab.

It’s not like that.  We live on a spherical world and any mistakes and bad deeds that people do will ripple out around the world, eventually travelling right round and coming back to the source.

Cause and effect, in Buddhism.

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