h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At about 10pm, on my way home from last night's football match, I noticed some pretty large queues of cars on the roundabout outside the town's main branch of Tescos. They were all trying to get into the 24 hour garage to top up their fuel tanks. I reckoned that the ones at the end of the queue would have a 2 hour wait before they made it to the pumps, so I didn't bother joining them.

I saw a number of other garages that evening, all with signs saying "no fuel", or "Diesel only" and the like. I wasn't that panicked by the whole thing, as I knew I had a quarter tank of petrol and I don't need to do any long journeys until the weekend.

This afternoon I was out and about, and I passed a garage that had fuel and didn't have a queue of cars trying to get in. So I thought I might as well top up seeing as I was in the area.

30.11 litres of fuel cost me £30.08. That's 99.9p per litre. That's appalling!

..and Tescos is only 93.9, hence the queues.

Wait, *only* 93.9???

I had to queue on Monday at Tescos, at the time I was seriously considering buggering off and paying more, the trouble is when you're stuck in the queue you're there for the duration.
What really annoyed me though was that I was genuinely empty, I seriously doubt the rest were. What a bunch of plonkers. I'll drive by and laugh in the three weeks before I have to fill up again.

*mutter*

Grimsby was gridlocked earlier this week, our Tesco garage is shut for alterations, till the end of the month.
Because I took notice of the flyer in the place, I filled up on the 3rd Sept. I still have between half- and three-quarters of a tankfull, so I've been smirking as I've driven past the queues.

Plonkers.

"That's 99.9p per litre. That's appalling!"

Supply and demand GD. As an accountant you ought to know that prices go up when something is in short supply relative to a previous period. I know it's more complex than that in the case of oil, but that's ultimately what it boils down to.

Now I wish I'd bookmarked the BBC news page I looked at yesterday showing (as far as I could tell) that the percentage of government tax making up the price of a gallon of petrol is less than it was... recently. If I've got time later today I'll go through my browser's history and see if I can find it.

The fact remains that their is no fuel blockade of the magnitude of 2001.

And the panic-buyers, by the law of supply and demand, are driving the price down. Yay!

B

How come Yoda did the title to this piece ?

I fortunately filled up last Wednesday - at 89.9 plus a 5p a litre token - 75 litres.

Tesco have now stopped doing the 5p tokems though.

"..the BBC news page... showing... that the percentage of government tax making up the price of a gallon of petrol is less than it was..."

This one? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/business_petrol_pricing/html/4.stm

Interesting.

Kinda makes a fuel duty reduction harder to justify.

That's the one Thanks coelocanth.

What about if the VAT was only applied before fuel duty is added to the cost per litre rather than after like it currently is? That'd knock the price down by almost 10p a litre.

Unfortunately I can't see it happening myself, Gordon Brown's even more anti mess with VAT than he is with fuel duty.

Yes, I'd seen that graphic. It just goes to show that the Treasury screws the motorist and always has done.

The only difference is that due to pressures on raw material costs the total package price goes over the psychological barrier of £1. If the reaction to that is that the Government gets it in the neck, then good I say

And another thing. In that same pack of graphics, it shows just how much the governement does not invest the money it screws out of us back into transport infrastructure - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/business_petrol_pricing/html/3.stm

Since I drive about 600 miles most weeks these increases really hurt. My pay is not going up at nearly that rate

The tax difference is due more to unleaded petrol than the government being nice.

Ten years ago we'd have mostly been driving leaded fuel cars, and they wanted us to change to unleaded (so we could die of cancer instead of lead poisoning), so they lowered the tax so that we'd buy that instead. Remember that diesal used to be cheaper than petrol? It's not anymore, for the same reason. There's actually not much stopping them from putting it back up now that there aren't many leaded pumps around.

In the 2001 protests, I was driving the taxi when there was a limit on how much you could buy at the pump, so I was exempt from the limit. Now I drive a car with such a small tank I expect I'll still be under any limit that might or might not be impossed if this continues.

on yer bikes, squires!

Ah yes, the original fuel protest. I remember that as being quite an entertaining week.

For some reason I had to be in the office really early on the day that the panic hit the Sussex. Also that morning I needed petrol as I was running low. At the garage in Hove where I stopped there were no signs of panic, it looked just like a normal morning - a couple of cars and a van filling up, no queues, no nothing like that.

It was later in the day that news of the queues came through. People arriving at work at 9am were telling stories of queues outside of all of the petrol stations. People started filtering out of the office and off to buy some petrol before it all ran out. By 11am the stories had changed to petrol stations running out of fuel. By lunchtime there was only one garage in the whole Worthing area with any fuel left, and he'd taken advantage of his monopoly supplier position by upping his prices by about 20p a litre.

The drive to and from work for the next week was really surreal. A major dual carrigeway best known as a racetrack, and everyone who was on the road was going 50mph tops to conserve their supplies. As the week went on there were fewer and fewer people driving, the roads felt empty. It was almost like being in one of those car adverts where you've got the freedom of the open road ahead of you, and the wind in your hair. Magic

Here's the Edited Guide Entry about it. A735022

And prices have dropped by at least 4p at all my local garages.

*thinks of all those people queueing on tuesday to buy 1/4 tank of petrol at 99p/l*

Some of the petrol stations must have made a fortune; My Father said today that some of the petrol stations near him, had run out of petrol!; not due to any actual* shorttage of supply, but just due to people all going in and 'stocking' up and filling their tanks; which they'd not normally do

Interesting. My bridge partner owns a petrol station. I must remember it's her round.

B