The English are fucking sheep. But not like the Welsh.

This article was first published on kenandgeoff.com in December 2005. At the time there were fears of a fuel shortage in the UK.

For centuries, the Welsh have been the butt of jokes by the English, accused of all kinds of dastardly deeds, the most prominent of which being the fornication betwixt a man and a ewe. The practice of bestiality has been around since the dawn of time. In 1683 Denmark passed a law that in one swift move outlawed both homosexuality and

bestiality. The punishment for such an infraction; being burnt to death. Although not an aficionado of sausage-fests, it seems a little harsh to tar both gays and animal-rapists with the same brush.

Anyway, I'm not talking about copulation with animals, the point I am trying to make is that the English are behaving like fucking sheep, like Lemmings leaping from a cliff.

Last September, a proposed barricade around certain petro-chemical plants was suggested. This call to arms was not taken with the same vigour as the previous action in September 2000. However, what seems to be the vast majority of England who read The Sun and The Daily Mail, were suddenly spurred on to a spate of panic buying.

For two days I was driving past ridiculous queues at Petrol Stations, looking on in awe and disbelief. Had I got it wrong? Was I being complacent and not preparing for the imminent fossil-fuel-free catastrophe? Well, no, in a word. I was exercising a degree of intelligence sadly lacking among many of my fellow countrymen. Let's not be sexist, there are a shit-load of dumb bitches out there too - you know who you are.

On the first day of panic-stricken citizens buying as much petrol as their cars could hold, I surfed over to the BBC and got the heads-up on what was going on out there. The official report from the Beeb was that two thirds of fuck-all was happening. Interesting. What were all these jizz-masters doing at the pumps?

Anyway, things carried on this way until practically every local Petrol Station had exhausted their supplies of unleaded. Then came the real "news" reports. The juicy gossip. Although I always try to prevent more than the average number of brain cells dying daily, I did happen to catch the frontpage of The Sun, running a headline along the lines of: "They told us not to panic, now the pumps are dry!". I know exactly what you're thinking, and you're right. That isn't a Sun headline. There are two things that give it away. One being the use of more than four words, and Two being the use of words containing in excess of one syllable. There is a very good reason that The Sun stick to their incredibly successful formula: LCD. Always appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator.

So, let's take a look at the facts. The country was told not to buy excessive amounts of fuel. However, doubtless millions of people did buy far more fuel than usual in a very short space of time, far exceeding the normal demand for petrol. When supply cannot keep up with demand, stocks fall short, end of story. So the headlines should have read something along the lines of: "They told us not to panic-buy. We didn't listen and now we're going to have to wait a couple of days for the Petrol Stations to get their next delivery. What in God's name is wrong with us?" But that would obviously require far too long an attention span, and be far too close to the truth for a tabloid headline.

The people queuing at the pumps, all doubtless tuned in to Galaxy 102 reminded me of not one, but ninety scenes from Shaun of the Dead. The vacant, yet determined stare of the un-dead, hell-bent on filling up with 95 Octane.

I try to explain people's actions in order to make them more bearable. Chinese Whispers is the best excuse I've thought up so far, the media being the whisperer and the general public being the whisperee. Not the usual Chinese Whispers, where a phrase such as "My Hard drive light is always on" translates to "It's a long hard night when I bring the porn." But the all new 'noughties' Chinese Whispers where "Stay calm, this is a temporary problem that will be resolved in no more than a few days" translates, quite understandably, to "omfg, wtf, go buy shit-loads of fuel as the entire industry is about to grind to a halt. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, what am I going to do?"

I dread to think how the public will react when an Extinction-Level Event hits our shores. Oh wait, we've already had the Avian Flu story, unfortunately there was no simple answer to the problem so most everyone just, well, conveniently forgot.

To conclude, the English public generally behave like a donkey following the carrot on the Media's stick. However, much like when you pretend to throw a ball for a dog and it runs off over the horizon at a rate of knots, the public thought they saw the ball go in the direction of 'Catastrophe', whereas the media had actually thrown it gently towards 'No Great Shakes'.

*No media moguls, members of the Great British public, dogs, donkeys, sheep, lemmings or even Welsh people were harmed in the writing of this article.

**The Sun is far from the worst offender. I remember seeing them running anti-BNP headlines a couple of years ago. Kudos to them.