Dialogue: Venice the place to beat fuel wars

Wars have been fought over oil as long as it has been a commodity, but now the battle is being fought in Britain and the entire country has been thrown into chaos as petrol stations everywhere run dry.

Unwilling to accept exorbitant petrol prices any longer, angry British farmers and truckies warn of a "winter of unrest," blocking oil refineries around the country in imitation of the tactics bringing France to a standstill.

A protest, organised by a small but vocal group of farmers and professional road users, has created a national crisis. Their primary aim: to bring British petrol prices down.

One of the most outstanding features of the situation is the speed at which the wheels have come off. It began two months ago with the Dump the Pump campaign, a call to road users not to buy petrol on Mondays. This programme enjoyed moderate success and led to the latest chaos.

A bunch of us were walking home from the pub in Brixton the other night and we were amazed to see the forecourt of the local Esso station jammed with people. The queue out onto the street was more than 40 cars long, although things were still pretty orderly.

When another flatmate came home, he wondered if he should fill his own car. Better safe than sorry, we all thought. Going along for the ride, we got there just as another station ran dry.

The frazzled attendant in his security booth began to freak out. He had no more gas, there was nothing he could do. But the people who had queued for hours up Brixton Hill did not take kindly to the situation and fights began to break out.

A gang of scooter boys tried to kick in the door until the police turned up and things cooled down. That mood, however, is not confined to Brixton. All over the country people try to fill up cars, cans and even bottles. Some suppliers are putting a $5 minimum on purchases.

The ramifications are huge. The entire country could stop in its tracks. One of my housemates has had to put his managers into hotels because many of them have to travel up to 100km to work each day, a journey that will no longer be possible.

Also, if his suppliers can't deliver food and beverages, he will have to shut down his club. Consequently, panic buying, not just of gas but of food and other necessities, has brought about a culture of consumer madness which is bordering on civil emergency.

Supermarket shelves are being stripped as people fear that deliveries will stop. Petrol theft is naturally on the rise ,and you can guarantee that there is already a black market somewhere charging even more outrageous prices than the ones Britons have to bear.

But something really did have to happen; in more remote parts of the country petrol prices have risen to more than $3 a litre while the average cost is about $2.50. Most of that is, of course, tax. Aside from generating revenue, some say the higher taxes were put on petrol to deter people from driving so much. But higher prices don't always change behaviour - look at cigarettes, $12 a pack, but Britain still seems to be going up in smoke.

In two days Britain went from being a well-oiled society to a stopped clock, the media speeding the slowdown by instilling a spate of panic buying in consumers. Although suppliers were always going to run out, they have done so much more quickly.

And while it is really serious, perhaps, too, it is an opportunity for us all to consider just how dependent we are on a finite resource. Sure, the oil has to start flowing and the country needs to run again but maybe, also, alternatives need to be found to this energy crisis, the likes of which hasn't been experienced since the 1970s.

Minicab driver Hassan, of Notting Hill, told the Evening Standard that he had been queuing for gas for 45 minutes.

"Next year," he said, "I am going to buy a camel so I can get my kids to school."

And my answer to the troubles? I grabbed a super cheap flight to Venice, a carless city of exquisite canals, and if the crisis follows me here there is no shortage of handsome Venetian gondoliers to ferry me about.