Diesel Dilemma!

And the fuel crisis continues!

Our regular petrol station is out of fuel again and has been for 36 hours now! It all started with a foolish remark from a politician, who clearly has no experience of living in the real world, to try and undermine a trade union's threat of strike action. Did he not understand that a majority of drivers seem to treasure the freedom that the ownership of a car can offer more than life itself! These people then immediately headed for the nearest petrol station with a boot full of jerry cans like a swarm of locusts decimating a field of crops!

Once a petrol station runs out of fuel, a real sense of panic grips the nation as people hunt for an available supply. Ironically using more fuel to find more fuel!

Any petrol station with a supply is then decended upon, thanks in part to social media and mobile phones, leading to lengthy queues and eventual exhaustion of the supply. The delivery network just cannot keep pace and so re-supply takes hours or even days longer than usual.

So how did this effect us? Well, fortunately we had a spell without the use of our usual fuelling location due to a faulty computer system that had been installed. This took a week to sort out and we had to find alternative supplies. All bus workings have the ability to call at alternative sites without travelling out of their way. Not my prefered scenario but effective none the less.

Some drivers have been able to use their Tesco Clubcards for a change instead of their Shell points cards!

And now it has been announced that there will be no strike this Easter! How long will it take to return to normality...

New Routes - Old Routes

Gloucestershire County Council has recently put a number of routes out to tender. Some were ours, some operated by others and some new!

The results are in and I am pleased to say that we won more work than we lost!

We will cease operating the following routes from this date: -

• 11 - Gloucester to Podsmead (To be combined with route 241 and passing to Swanbrook)
• 205 - Berkeley to Cam & Dursley Station (Combined with new route 207, see below)
• 206 - Dursley to Berkeley (Combined with new route 207, see below)
• 241 - Gloucester to Sandhurst (To be combined with route 11 and passing to Swanbrook)
• 242 - Arlingham to Stroud (Not yet awarded to a new operator)
• 278 - Tetbury to Malmesbury (Passing to a community transport operator)
• 288 - The Wotton Hopper (Passing to a community transport operator)

We will start operating the following routes: -

• 40 - Stroud to Wotton Under Edge
• 207 - Dursley to Thornbury
• 210 - Dursley to Cam & Dursley Station

Less route numbers but more work!!

How Much Information?

How did we live without the internet years ago? Now rapidly approaching my fourth decade I can still remember life without it but I never remember feeling short of information! Maybe everybody talked more or perhaps our interests were not so far reaching!

I occasionally put "cotswold green" into google just to see what has been put online. The internet seems to have a version of everything that is talked about in the world today and this can give me an idea of the general public's perception of how we are doing.

Today just made me think just how much information is out there! My search, narrowed to the past week only, gave me the following sites in less than a second: -

• Youtube - A 9 minute film following one of our vehicles on route 28 (the section between Amberley and Minchinhampton)
• Flickr - Photos of several Cotswold Green vehicles (past and present)
• This is Gloucestershire - A news article about a missing bus shelter on route 36
• Wikipedia - Although an article about a different bus company there was a link to our own page.

A broader search would have revealed hundreds of items, once I had filtered out references to paint colours and property pages refering to a road named Cotswold Green!

Because there is so much information relating to just one small bus company in Gloucestershire it makes me think about the sheer volume of information available at my fingertips. Perhaps this is the main difference since the internet has come of age, I can literally find information about anything that pops into my head without leaving the comfort of my sofa! But what did we lose?