Back in July this year my car, a 12½ year old Vauxhall Omega Estate (169,570 miles travelled, many over the whole of Europe, original engine, original clutch, original gearbox with one careful owner!!) finally gave up the ghost through having both exhaust manifold gaskets blowing up and requiring a costly engineering job to fix.
After some thought and as I was not really driving many miles any more and as the repair would have cost more than the car was worth, I decided to give up having a car and although I miss it (strange, but true!) we are managing very well with one car.
Although now not owning a car, one thing that does not seem to have changed is the still high cost of petrol and diesel! I was out today for a walk and noticed that my local garage prices were still up at the £1.04/litre for Unleaded and £1.06/litre for Diesel!
I thought as the cost of Oil was still down why are we still paying through the nose for fuel. Somewhere, someone is making money at our expense.
I came across this widget from Oil-Price.net and have added it to my Blog in the left column – you may have to scroll down a bit to see it.
As you can see from the graph Oil, although going up a little bit in recent weeks, remains massively down on the previous high of 24 months ago. So why has the price of petrol become again an expense purchase?
Yes, we do have to conserve fuel resources, yes we have to cut back on emissions and yes we have to save the planet. But we still have to get around and go places.
I could understand if Oil was over $100.00/barrel, but while it remains at $78 ish and an average UK litre of unleaded costing £1.07 and diesel costing £1.09, I can’t help thinking that someone is making a killing. By the way, don’t forget that VAT goes back up in the New Year so there’s another 1.5 pence on a litre to think about. Here’s a recent report from the AA on the cost of fuel and comparisons with other European countries.
I think our high prices are here to stay.
Beasley's Place 