How to Create A Panic

You couldn’t make it up. The unions threaten to go on strike in a week or two, although nothing is yet decided. The country is quietly going about its business. Then a Cabinet Minister goes on the radio and insists that NOBODY MUST PANIC. No, we must not panic, but we should keep our petrol tanks full, fill up at every opportunity, and possibly keep jerry cans of petrol at our homes – ‘just in case’. But we MUST NOT PANIC.

We listen to this important man, and the great British public, phlegmatic to a fault, thinks to itself that there might be more to this than they are being told. So, maybe, it would be sensible to pootle down to the petrol station and fill up. ‘Just in case’. Unfortunately, lots of us think this. So when we get down to the petrol station there is a queue. Quite a long queue. And one of the pumps has no petrol left.

Suddenly, we are not so sure. Maybe the nice man was right. Maybe he knows something we don’t and was trying to warn us in a quiet, un-melodramatic, way. So we start talking to each other, suggesting to friends that keeping the petrol tank full might be a good idea. And those queues at the pumps grow longer, and more pumps run dry, and suddenly, the Government has a mini-panic on its hands. So the nice man comes back on the radio and tells us that WE REALLY MUST NOT PANIC. But that jerry cans are a really good idea.

Unfortunately, jerry cans are not at all a good idea. And very soon another nice Government man, who actually knows what he is talking about because he has been a fireman, comes on the radio and tells us that the first nice man got it wrong and that we should NOT keep jerry cans because they are dangerous.

Until today, this was a funny, ridiculous, story, which left me wondering whether to laugh or to cry. Today, all the laughter went out of it. One poor lady was decanting petrol in her kitchen, when it caught fire. As I write this, she is critically ill in hospital. Now, nobody knows for certain if the two things are connected, but it is an inescapable fact that, despite appeals from the fire service, the Government has not issued an official warning about the dangers of keeping petrol.

Some things are too important to be played with: people’s lives are certainly in that category. No Government Minister, or Government, should allow itself to put amour proper before the safety of its citizens. I am not suggesting that anybody did that here – there is insufficient evidence – but I am suggesting that some people believe that the facts could bear that interpretation and, therefore, that there should be an investigation. Also, that the advice given was plainly both wrong and dangerous. I can remember a time when honour would have dictated a resignation for that.