National panic has ensued in supermarkets across the country, as toilet roll shelves lie empty for the first time since the early days of the pandemic.
We sent a reporter down to Aldi, Blanchardstown to cover this bizarre event. One shopper told Oxygen.ie, “I don’t even know why I bought 15 rolls of Andrex ultra-soft.”
The terrified man said, “I just went in to get stuff for tea time and saw people fighting in the toiletries aisle. It was like having a flashback to Vietnam. I went into fight or flight mode and just thought, ‘There’s no way I’m having a repeat of the first lockdown where we had to use kitchen roll for three days!’” Many other members of the public, however, seem to be well aware of the cause of the national toilet roll shortage.
The owner of a local garage spoke of a major increase in new customers following the recent rise in the price of diesel.
“We’ve had at least 25 customers every day for the past week all looking for us to modify their cars to burn paper or wood because they thought it would be cheaper than having to pay for diesel,” they said.
The current diesel shortage has been caused by Brexit disruptions and has already resulted in several punch-ups at British filling stations going viral online.
Currently, no such violence has broken out at Irish pumps. However, reports are still emerging about a riot in the country’s biggest Tesco in Liffey Valley Shopping Centre where at least 30 people were injured.
The garage owner said, “Driving about the other day, it felt like being in the 1900s. I was seeing all these Toyotas and Volkswagens we’d modified to work like old Ford Model-Ts spewing smoke everywhere. I almost felt bad for all the environmental damage I’d contributed to by enabling all these people to burn toilet roll to get to work.”
“That was until I realised that people were getting their kids to stand on the back of the cars and shovel the toilet paper in. I had a great laugh looking at all the little Jadens and Nicoles and whatnot looking like chimney sweeps from Oliver Twist,” they said.
When asked for comment on the crisis, Minister for the Environment and Transport, Eamon Ryan, said, “This is obviously a terrible situation. Not only that Ireland has regressed back to one of the most environmentally damaging forms of fuel, but I can’t even go for a croissant in my local Dunnes Stores without an escort of at least four Gardaí for fear of getting attacked by a mob. It’s actually like Mad Max out there.”
While members of the Oireachtas are unaffected by the shortage due to being granted a lifetime supply of toilet paper as part of their pensions, the Government has officially expressed its disapproval of the modification to cars to allow them to burn paper.
A Government spokesperson said, “It’s really dreadful, but we’ll just let it play itself out at the minute. Let the free market sort it and that type of stuff, you know. Sure it’s worked well for all our other national crises.”
They continued, “Between you and me, none of us ‘government types’ have had to wait at petrol stations since all this began. No sitting in queues in our Range Rovers on our way to Leinster House because everyone’s gone mad buying toilet roll and now there’s actually more than enough diesel to go around. I’m still gonna find a way to put it on my expenses though.”
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