We're here again. The slightest inkling fuel prices have to rise and we get fuel protests. Except we don't. Petrol prices have gone down in real terms so a rise of a penny for the first time in years is not that significant, hey even with the new rise prices are still going down in real terms.

Or maybe todays squib is because the protesters have fatally overestimated their poteential support: with no evidence of a hike at the pump the sort of people who join fuel protests won't notice that there's anything to protest about.

I've always been a Lib Dem deep down. But the fuel protests of 2000 were the catalyst for me finally getting off my bum and joining. Because they weren't being opportunistic yobs, needlesly tough, but having somthing sensible to say. And I could see if sensible people like me didn't make an effort to make the sensible view heard in politics, yobs like the fuel protesters would.