u.k. rural gangs move into the oil business

Now from the Guardian;

It may not be quite like the film Mad Max out there, with violent gangs roaming Britain in search of the few remaining drops of fuel, but for farmers like Eddie Cowpe it feels a little bit like it.

He returned to his farm shop in Lancashire recently to find that thieves had emptied his 10,000-litre diesel tank. What they did not take they let drain away on to his stone yard and into the water course, leaving Cowpe facing a bill of almost £70,000 for the fuel lost and the clean-up.

"I said two years ago that this country was going to see serious civil unrest and riots because of food and fuel shortages," said Cowpe. "It's going to come true. It's a frightening scenario. These people are morons and vandals. They just don't care. I don't know where it's going to end."

In the week that Rosemary Dove, a farmer's wife from Co Durham, collapsed and died after an alleged diesel raid, the fuel crisis is hitting farmers, truckers, motorists and householders in the pocket - and making them feel rather less safe.

With oil prices jumping to another record high yesterday to break through the $142 a barrel level, it is likely to become an even more attractive target for thieves.

Oil prices have been on an upward trend since the millennium, when they were around $10-20 a barrel. The huge increases have led to gangs of thieves in lorries or vans fitted with drums and pumps roaming the countryside, often tailing tankers so they can be sure of finding freshly topped-up containers.

It appears that Collapse Criminality is rife throughout the anglosphere....,