It would seem that farmers in the West have decieded to become French! 

What's nice about this headline in that media stalwart, the Western Daily Press, is that it manages to combine business as usual news (e.g. "Tailback Terror: Farmer Giles caused a 3 car tailback when he drove his tractor down a little used country lane" or "Bovine Rampage: A cow escaped from old Bert's field.  It took him 20 minutes to find it!") with something that approaches real news!

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FARMERS VOW TO BLOCKADE FUEL DEPOTS  
09:30 - 09 September 2005

Angry West farmers last night threatened to stage mass strikes and blockade refineries in protest at "crippling" fuel prices.

The cost of both petrol and diesel has rocketed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and protesters say they have had enough. Raising the prospect of the huge queues at petrol stations last seen in the 2000 fuel crisis, Chippenham farmer Paul Reynolds said: "If every lorry driver took a holiday for a few days, and the farmers stopped letting any produce leave their farms, the country would be brought to its knees within 24 hours."

Monmouth-based David Handley, chairman of protest group Farmers for Action, said: "Fuel blockades and strikes are a very good way of expressing the anger that is building up at the moment - there is definitely something brewing."

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I was most amused to see that fuel had reached the soaring heights of $3 a gallon in some parts of the US the other day.  There were some very angry american dudes complaining about it vociferously!

Sadly, if you convert that to the price per litre that we pay here in the UK, they're still paying less than us.  And we don't have a fuel crisis on (although the farmers might disagree with that)!