WITH threats to blockade supermarket distribution centres, the fuel protest is in danger of getting out of hand and drowning out what many believe to be perfectly legitimate arguments.

Yesterday, David Hanley, the chairman of Farmers for Action and the People's Fuel Lobby, told the Department of Trade and Industry Select Committee: "In my industry, we are talking about loss of life by suicide. We have had six people under the age of 40 in my area in the last six months shoot themselves or hang themselves because they can see no future in their business.

"I have spoken to a lot of hauliers who are not only going to lose their lorries, they are going to lose their homes and be out on the streets looking for jobs."

These are serious, worrying arguments, put eloquently and raised in the right forum.

To the same forum, the Road Haulage Association presented a similarly valid case. It said that because British diesel prices were so high, most hauliers were filling up abroad but driving on British roads and so the Treasury was losing £1.4bn in duty.

The Government must listen, although it may not be the only villain in this piece. Today, Shell is likely to announce that its profits have almost doubled in the last quarter because of high oil prices and improved refining margins. Is it just coincidence that its pump prices have risen, too?

Yet the Government's case also deserves to be heard. It says a 26.2p cut in fuel duty, as the protestors demand, would cost £11.8bn. It would force up inflation and interest rates, leading to higher mortgage costs and unemployment. To pay for it, there would have to be a 4p rise in income tax, or the loss of thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, and prison officers, hundreds of schools, thousands of childcare places.

The proper place to hear these arguments is in a forum like Parliament as happened yesterday.

Peaceful protest to highlight the arguments is one thing, but rolling roadblocks and food and petrol blockades are another which can only be described as blackmail.

They could be described as anarchy. Pensioners living below the poverty line have equal reason to be disappointed in the Government as hauliers and farmers. To protest about their 75p rise, perhaps they should start blockading high streets with their zimmer frames. Everyone disappointed with a rise in council tax should gather outside town hall depots and stop the binmen collecting rubbish. This way lies anarchy.

A food blockade could even be described as terrorism because angry street confrontations are only a short step away from the violent direct action countenanced by Irishmen unhappy about the peace process.

And just as bombs hurt the innocent doing their day-to-day business, so a food blockade would hit the most vulnerable: the poor without the money to stockpile; the elderly who can only shop once a week.

This is in danger of becoming the self-styled people's government versus the self-styled people's protest, with the real people caught in the middle - up to their necks in water - with no food and no petrol.