`There are problems right across the food chain." Well, now. When a New Labour minister responds to a question about the prospect of empty shelves at Sainsburys as though he were talking about an ecological apocalypse, you know they're having a "Bad Blair Day". But for hyperventilating journalists - the sort who love to say "Bad Blair Day" - this week's ever-escalating fuel crisis in Britain brought some very good days indeed. It's been a long time since they had a story like this, a divisive and robust confrontation that affected and mobilised huge numbers of ordinary people. (Eamon Dunphy really took notice on Wednesday when he heard Premiership matches might be postponed.)
Early in the week, the references to The Winter of Discontent and the miners' strike were already being hauled out, but with a sneaking sense that broadcasters believed they'd better employ the comparisons early, before the thing dissipated entirely. However, by late Wednesday, they could scarcely believe their luck: Tony Blair's "24 hour" gambit was looking highly unwise, and we all wondered if Anna would be able to get all the supplies she wanted for her last-night party in the Big Brother house.
The fuel crisis is, arguably, the first really big domestic running story BBC Radio 5 Live has had since its foundation a half-decade or so ago - leaving aside predictable set-pieces such as elections, and just possibly excepting Di's death, which was less a running story than a prolonged reaction to a single event. Moreover, the fuel story hits 5 Live where it lives: whereas the rest of the Beeb is inescabably metropolitan, the news-and-sport medium-wave station always gives the impression that its soul resides in traffic on the slip-road approaching the A429 at Chippenham. And by and large, the station made a remarkable success of its coverage this week (even if slightly hamstrung by a surfeit of sport), merging seamlessly with its behind-the-wheel constituency to catch both news and mood particularly well. In fact, if anything, this was a State broadcaster that erred in the direction of disregard for the government's point of view.
Into that category falls the bizarre decision to put that loudmouth, John McCririck, the racing tipster from Channel 4, on Tuesday's Late Night Live (BBC Radio 5 Live). For him, the lesson of the crisis was that the government was ripping-off Britain's drivers to keep a lot of undeserving loafers on the welfare rolls. And he wasn't content to make that point in the abstract. When a single mother came on the line to talk about the high costs of running a car, he interrupted her: "Are you on benefit?" When she replied that she was, she then tried to proceed with her point, he interrupted again: "What's the father doing?"
Nonetheless, the same programme, as it wound into the wee hours of Wednesday, produced the more sophisticated single discourse on the crisis I heard all week. It came from Steve, an otherwise anonymous tanker-driver from somewhere in Norfolk, and he conveyed the subtleties of a socially and politically complex dispute. Steve, like most of his colleagues, had phoned in sick on Tuesday, with his employers' clear connivance. He felt the pressure from government, however, would reach him via the refinery and put him back on the road. He was sympathetic to the "blockade", but scarcely regarded it as a significant obstacle: "These aren't miners - they're not going to block lorries or fight the police."
And, as other callers pointed out, the police seemed none-too-eager to fight them either, what with them not being miners and all. Green-minded listeners might generally support high fuel taxes, on the "polluter pays" principle. They might also be inclined, as a reflex, to take the opposite view to that of the oil companies. These listeners would have done well to hear another of the programme's guests, who explained how these taxes had quietly crept up as a counterbalance to years of Tory cuts in income tax, a trend New Labour has continued.
In other words, the British state (like the Irish one) has cut ostensibly progressive, redistributive taxes, disproportionately benefiting the rich, and compensated itself by lorrying-on taxes that hit the 89 Escort as badly, or worse, than the 00 Merc.
Another apparently regressive form of taxation was, meanwhile, getting a ringing endorsement from an impeccably progressive panel on Tuesday's Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday). Anthony Cronin, Fintan O'Toole and Eamonn McCann all agreed that RTE should benefit from a big increase in the TV licence fee. Go on, double it, no problem. Hey, why not a fiver a week for quality telly, Eamon Dunphy asked rhetorically (that's near-nuff quadrupling, lads). Not a soul demurred.
Come on now. Why not simply fund the State broadcaster from the Exchequer - to a guaranteed level - rather than pile more payments on poor people? After all, as McCann was well able to point out, the ringfencing of the licence-fee revenues has scarcely managed to guarantee RTE's editorial independence from political pressure over the years. It's an odious position, whichever way you look at it: only last week, decent journalists in RTE found themselves beat up (in the pages of this newspaper, among other alleys) for daring to interview - and tough enough Marian was, too - a convicted IRA bomber, Patrick Magee, who has served his time and had interesting things to say. I could rehearse my old line about the American war-criminals who never did their time and have got the full butt-waxing at Montrose, but that's another day's argument; point is, the illiberal attack on Marian Finucane was in the name of what was "appropriate" use of the State broadcaster and the licence fee.