Well-wishers jammed phone lines to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital after hearing that Reggie Kray, the former East End gangster freed from jail on compassionate grounds last week, was too ill to go home. Kray, 66, who was serving life, has bladder cancer. The hospital in installing a separate line to take the calls.
Space alert for junk and gales
The MoD’s defence evaluation and research agency is studying the feasibility of a European space weather service to track hazards such as magnetic storms and man-made debris which threaten power grids and satellites. The Rutherford Appleton lab in Oxfordshire is leading the study.
Police hunt for dancer’s killer
Detectives hunting the killer of Heather Tell, 17, a dance student found asphyxiated on Saturday in a Tamworth park, yesterday interviewed her friends while continuing house inquiries and forensic tests.
Rain sends rail travel west
Flooding on the East Coast line at Granthouse, Berwickshire, caused delays and diversions for southbound trains from Scotland. Passengers could use their GNER tickets for Virgin’s west coast trains but were warned seats were scarse because of the bank holiday.
Eco-friendly float by the sun
Ra, a 30ft solar-powered boat, is offering tourists “silent” cruises on the Norfolk Broads as an alternative to the environmentally damaging diesel craft.
Hauliers cut France’s fuel lifeline
Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday September 6, 2000
The Guardian
Petrol stations around France ran dry yesterday as a countrywide blockade of refineries and fuel depots by road hauliers choked off supplies.
Drivers queued bumper-to-bumper at the dwindling number of stations still open by late afternoon, on the second day of the blockade, or drove miles looking for top-ups. In many regions, the authorities imposed a J15 limit per vehicle, or ordered attendants to serve only doctors, firefighters and the emergency services.
“It’s mayhem and it’s been like it all day,” said Christophe Dupis, a weary pump attendant at a supermarket petrol station in Stains, in the northern suburbs of Paris.
“Usually people spend about J15, now its J30 or J40. We’re already out of unleaded. We’ve sold 12,000 litres since lunch-time, when the normal average would be 3,000.”
As the beleaguered transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot, headed into late afternoon talks in Paris with the haulage firms, who are demanding a backdated 20% cut in fuel taxes to offset soaring world prices, oil company Total said that 70% of its 6,000 petrol stations were dry and the figure could reach 90% by the end of the evening.
The blockade is supported in many areas by taxi drivers, farmers, ambulance firms, driving schools and removal companies. “This is my fourth attempt to fill up,” said Eric Bouchet, a plumber, queuing at the Stains station. “The others had run out of diesel. No fuel means no work.”
Mr Gayssot had earlier said that the EU and the European central bank should signal to oil producers their discontent at prices that have hit a 10-year high of more than $30 a barrel.
“Europe as a bloc – and the ECB as well, because I’d like to hear it on this issue and not just on plans to raise interest rates – should show its determination to discuss the matter, including with the Opec countries,” he said. “Things cannot carry on as they are.”
The blockade of some 80 depots and refineries was inspired by the success of a fishermen’s blockade of most French ports that stranded thousands of British tourists last week. That ended when the government agreed to generous compensation for fishermen, including cutting social security charges.
The lorry owners dismissed out of hand an offer of a 10% cut in state fuel taxes, made late on Monday night. “We can keep going for at least a week,” said Reni Petit, head of the National Federation of Road Hauliers. “Hundereds of firms will go out of business before the year end unless their fuel bills fall.”
The old industry federation said the protesters, who needed only to park a couple of articulated lorries and a tractor or two outside a fuel depot’s gates to cut off supplies, had blocked off all sources of wholesale fuel.
The blockade hit regional airports too, with officials at Nice and Mulhouse-Basel saying they had only enough aviation fuel left for one more day. Orly and Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airports in Paris were not affected as they are supplied by pipeline.
The hauliers say France’s heavy fuel taxes, second only to Britain’s in the EU, and high world prices mean they cannot compete internationally.
