The cost of fuel in this country is now becoming ridiculous. I filled up yesterday, a task that I carry out three times a month just to get to work, at the exorbitant price of £1.27.9 a litre of Diesel (for those in the US I think this equates to approximately $9.58 a gallon).This simply cannot continue. I've watched the price of a litre of diesel rise by over 10p in the last three weeks, and only the very naive would believe that this price will ever drop, it's here to stay. Yet the government continues to push for a 2p increase in fuel tax! What the fuck is going on!?
I've been with my current employer now for seven years, and I'm now having to look for a new job closer to home because I can't afford to buy a house nearer my work and I can't afford to stay here and drive the 80 miles a day that I currently commute!
I get the environment message, I get the fact that we need to be weaned off oil, I can see the big picture, but punishing the motorist in the short term is NOT the fucking answer.
I work shifts so there's no public transport available at the times I work, therefore I MUST take my car. I have a car that does over 50mpg, and yet my road tax has went up, my insurance has went up, Diesel has went up. I'm rapidly approaching the point where 1/5 of my net pay goes simply to get me to my place of work.
I try to keep politics out of my blog as I think that ALL politicians are self-obsessed, conniving, egotistical, lying bastards, but this is the final straw. Gordon Brown is fucked. Dead man walking.
Now where did I put that car that runs on water . . .
13 comments:
I'm feeling your pain, Inchy. Husband commutes pretty much the same mileage you do, and his fuel bill is over £400 a month. I want to cry. He has to get new tyres this week, and we're coughing up for road tax too.
I've told him to keep the old tyres, 'cos I'm chopping them up and giving them to him for his dinner. I told him to hope he has luck with roadkill, 'cos that will flavour the tyres nicely!
Dinner tonight will be pot noodles - we can't afford fresh veggies and meat... a bloody chook costs a tenner a kilo these days!
Diesel is way more expensive than regular gas, even in the US, and I simply don't get it for a couple of reasons:
1) Diesel is supposedly the most primitive, unrefined part of the petroleum; and,
2) There would seem to be biodiesel that you can make out of french fry grease (at least in the US) and that would seem to offset the petroleum diesel.
But it isn't, so that proves that I don't know $H!T.
Doing some research on ethanol for a post I did, I came across a site that documents the historic US government suppression of ethanol from...BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR.
There was a Civil War tax on "alcohol" that included all alcohol, even wood alcohol.
Later, in the 20th Century, Henry Ford envisioned a fleet of cars that ran on I guess what you would call, "E-50"--50% gas; 50% ethanol.
Then, Prohibition hit and--you guessed it--they outlawed ethanol because it was alcohol, and when they re-legalized it you had to put some additive in so it couldn't be drunk.
Anyway, I thought that was interesting: I know that is not exactly on point, but it sort of is--if you can make corn oil (grease) for a fryer, you can make diesel, and why the f*** aren't they doing it? I realize food costs will go up, but I can almost get a bottle of Chateau Philipe de Rothschild imported from France for what you are paying for diesel.
What about getting a motorbike or is that a facetious question? This is bad...and Gordon should be shot in the balls...but I somewhat naively hope that the current gas price crisis will lead to companies actually manufacturing cars that don't run on petrol.
Zen - I've been running my car on used vegetable oil for the last three years. I filter it and mix it 50/50 with regular diesel and the car runs perfectly, but it's becoming harder to find regular supplies as more and more people catch on to the idea.
Emma - Already got the motorbike, but by definition a motorbike engine is in a far higher state of tune than a car engine, and therefore will use more fuel. This means that my 600cc bike (that's a 0.6 litre engine) still only gets something like 40mpg, and that's if you take it easy, which isn't easy to do on a 170mph sports bike!
Inchy, if you need to borrow 10p, my piggy bank's full of them.
Empress, you are a true humanitarian!
Ban Ki-Moon has nothing on you!
I'm with you - I understand all the arguments for the need to wean us of petrol which will, let us never forget, run out.
The catch is that it'll take at least a decade or two of real political will to develop an alternative. In the meantime, we're all suffering.
I reckon it's a devious plan to deal with the obsession with obesity: this way none of us will be able to afford to eat properly so we'll all end up losing weight!
As if that wasn't bad enough, I've just noticed tonight that the car has a small leak from the fuel tank!
It's like liquid gold that's dripping out!
Jane Fonda's daughter built a biodiesel plant here in Atlanta I think probably originally for "treehugger" reasons--but I would imagine that it is now making money.
Diesel the last I looked was about $4.65 in Atlanta.
It should be about $5 by the end of the summer on the average in the US.
But, $#!t--almost $10 a gallon, that is getting ridiculous--I swear there are really good French wines that are cheaper than that!!
Have you seen those Triac's?
http://www.greenvehicles.com/
Not sure they are legal in the UK--but they are really tempting.
You have to have the $20,000 and you have to get them to wherever you are (from San Jose), I would assume.
But the higher gas goes the more tempting these become--at 2-cents per mile (after you pay for the car.)
Managed to find a petrol station in mid Wales that was selling petrol at 1.13 per gallon... however that's a helluva drive to fill up the tank.
You should hear the yanks over here moaning and pissing about 2 quid a gallon. They haven't seen the half of it yet. Sorry you're struggling mate. Sucks.
It sucks more than a $5 hooker!
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