SNP Prioritise Private Over Public Transport in Crisis

It would seem that Edinburgh's public transport could almost grind to a halt on Sunday after the Scottish Government has prioritsed the supply at Grangemouth for petrol station forecourts rather than public transport. Lothian Buses

Today as Alex Salmond pormised the people of Scotland at First Minister's questions that there was "ample and substantial" fuel to cope with the shut down of the Grangemouth petrochemical plant, as a result of strike action, he was away of the problems Lothian Buses was facing. During his answer Mr Salmond actually said:

"Assuming consumer behaviour is responsible, then there should be limited difficulties, both in terms of inconvenience and disruption.

"Clearly, it's a time when we need everyone, and the public's cooperation, to behave sensibly and responsibly, to cut out non-essential trips, to use public transport."

Going to a bit hard for the good, sensible and responsible Burghers of the capital to do that Alex especially to get to work on Monday when there are no buses available to take many of them anywhere. Guess we know how green the Nats are with this prioritisation of resources at a time of crisis.

Update: just love when something like this happens. You click publish post and then find this from Lothian Buses which wasn't there when you started. Make you wonder though has Alex done a Gordon Brownesque U-Turn.

Further Update: The Scottish Government are now claiming there was a misunderstanding by BP regarding where the fuel should be prioritised. Lothian Buses clearly did not have a misunderstanding, they had said the supplier had been told not to supply them.

So the misunderstanding has to come from some communication between the Scottish Government and BP or how BP interpreted that to tell this major wholesale customer that they would not get a delivery which would appear to be enough to see them through about half a week, gauging time scales. Just what did the SNP Government tell BP regarding supply at this time? How could this be misunderstood? Why did this misunderstanding lead to such an escalation in panic? And why was this not sorted out at FMQs? Something is not quite adding up as to this 'misunderstanding'.

Even Further Update: It appears the amount of fuel that Lothian Bueses and many wholesale purchasers of fuel will be recieving is to be only 70% of their long scheduled orders. Now one assumes that 30% has not been stockpiled away in case of shortages and that the 100% is required to operate the full service bus, emergency and transportation services require. Therefore we must hope that the rationing to these wholesale customers can be speedily restored following this weekend's industrial action.

However, if there is "ample fuel" until the middle of May, again the question must be why the 30% reduction in supply Mr Salmond?