Another mass panic is at least partly underway here after the government skillfully told people not to panic buy fuel in advance of the upcoming tanker driver strike. Amazingly, it appears, the govenement is too stupid to have learnt from previous panic buying. The two things that it should have learnt are firstly that a whole group of people are actually too stupid to be told anything at all, and secondly that the absolute worst thing you can do is to say “don’t panic buy”, because – of those people who aren’t too stupid to be told anything at all – some of the rest just hear the word “panic” and act on it. The even more absolute worst thing (if such a thing exists) is to announce “don’t panic buy but by the way some stations are going to run out of petrol“. That truely displays mastery of communication.