GAS RATIONING IN IRAQ….Via Henley, Salam Pax reports that Iraq’s oil ministry has responded to a fuel shortage by instituting an odd/even driving regime in Baghdad. If you have an even license plate, you can drive on even days. If you have an odd license plate, you can drive on odd days:
Ah, the memories this brings. The only other time this was done was during the Iraq/Iran war. I mention this just to point out that His Oiliness isn?t even being creative with this decision he just plucked a lesson from the old regime.
….Schools are going to start soon so are you going to, magically from under your turban, produce a fleet of school buses which will shuttle the kids back and forth when their parents cars can?t go on the streets because it is the wrong day? What about government employees? Do you have any idea what the public transport system is like? Oh sorry there is no such thing, I forgot your government washed its hands clean of that sticky situation so you don?t care.
CNN has the MSM version of the story here. They report that taxi drivers are pissed.
Of course, a far more efficient way to reduce demand for fuel would be to raise the price from its current four cents per gallon, but apparently that’s out of the question. There’s a lesson here in the fact that government officials think that raising the price of gasoline would cause even greater unrest than forbidding people to drive on half the days of the week, a rule that I would otherwise think was deliberately designed to cause maximal unrest. I’m not quite sure what that lesson is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good one.
