Petrol prices set for record high, says AA

This comes straight from the BBC website – just what I don’t need – more damned scaremongering about fuel prices…

And it doesn’t help with things like this being promoted on BBC Breakfast this morning. Me being me thought “oh, I’ll go to the fuel station before I head into the playpen. Not a chance. The queues were stupid, and people were getting quite bad tempered.

I wouldn’t object, but most of the price that I pay for my petrol at the moment (£1.13 a litre) is tax of one form or another – the theory being that this would go towards maintenance of the roads – the way my road theft (sorry road fund) licence money is supposed to.

It was revealed last week, that to repair a pot hole properly, it costs £50. Well, in that case, can someone please repair the 4.2 pot holes that are owed to my family because we fork out enough in dratted taxes for this to be done.

Ah well, on to the post….

Karen

Now some things you hold on to - and some you just let go
Seems like the ones that you can't have
Are the ones that you want most

************************************

Petrol prices could hit a record high of £1.20 a litre in the next few weeks, according to the AA.

Increases in the wholesale price of petrol since January are to blame for the rise in forecourt prices, the motoring organisation said.

It urged the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, to postpone the introduction of a planned 3 pence rise in petrol duty due to come in on 1 April.

The AA said families now pay £52 a month more on petrol than a year ago.

The average petrol price is currently just over £1.15 a litre.

"The UK is barely out of recession, yet petrol prices threaten to rise to record prices seen during the boom of 2008 - shortly before the collapse into recession," said AA president Edmund King.

"If families, drivers on fixed incomes and those on low pay were unable to cope with record prices then, they are even less likely now."

'Complete disgrace'

The price of oil is a major determinant of the price of petrol, and yet the current oil price of about $80 a barrel is far below the $147 a barrel-high seen in the summer of 2008, the last time petrol prices neared £1.20 a litre.

This has led many to question why petrol costs so much right now.

Lindsay Hoyle, Labour MP on the Commons business committee, told the Daily Telegraph: "Crude oil has gone up this year, but nothing like the rise in petrol prices.

Motorists are being legally mugged at the forecourt by petrol companies."

He called the current high price of petrol a "complete disgrace".

Analysts said increased refining costs and the weakening of sterling against the dollar - the currency in which oil is priced - helped to explain some of the increase in petrol prices.