LONE protester Andy Wieckowski mounted a one man campaign to stop the fuel demonstrations in Bolton.

The town hall worker tried to single handledly block the path of about 30 taxi drivers as they set off in a bid to gridlock Bolton town centre at rush hour.

When they drove around him on the road outside the town hall square yesterday teatime, he ran ahead of the convoy and sat down in the middle of the road.

Police stepped in as angry taxi drivers tried to steer around him and asked him to move because he was causing an obstruction.

Afterwards Andy said the protest was for personal rather than political reasons.

He said: "I am fed up to the back teeth of this -- what right have they got to disrupt emergency services and stop people getting fuel?

"I have a relative who may need to get to hospital at any time. It all depends on how sick they get but you never know when you may have to take them.

"If I haven't got any petrol and the ambulances run out, what are they supposed to do?

"I have a car and pay the same prices at the pumps as everybody else but I don't believe in holding people to ransom over it. These protests are undemocratic and if a precedent is set, the rule of law will start breaking down and we will have chaos."

But taxi drivers said they had been driven to demonstrate by sheer desperation.

Leader Donna Fearnhead of Breightmet private hire said she was disappointed by the turnout outside the town hall and described it as "pathetic" considering there are more than 1,000 private hire drivers in Bolton.

She said: "They complain that they cannot make a living but they are not prepared to stick together and do something about it.

"We want to cause as much mayhem as possible so everybody understands the problems"

Brian Berry of Telecars said: "I've been a taxi driver for 45 years and I have never known it as bad as this.

"Our insurance has more than doubled, the cost of a badge has rocketed and the fuel prices are sky high. We can't put our prices up because people will not pay them so it's becoming impossible to make a living wage."

The drivers drove around the town centre in a slow convoy beeping their horns but later became divided into small groups. Police say it did not cause any major problems.