Kwitcherbitchin'

Filled up at the nearby Exxon station and paid $4.499 per gallon of gasoline (who do they think they're fooling with that 9/10ths of a dollar stuff, anyway?).

Last time I filled up at the same station on May 27th it was $4.019 for the same stuff, and back on March 13th it was $3.539. That's a 12% leap in the past 2 weeks, and 27% jump in 3 months. Unpleasant, but it could be worse.

You could be dealing with a strike of tanker drivers on top of higher prices as they are in the United Kingdom.

Things I noticed in the article that struck me funny . . .

1st, only 30M cars registered in the UK? We have 30M vehicles registered in California alone. That 30M is all cars and trucks, don't know if the UK number is a comparable measure, but autos alone in California count close to 19M (and yes, it's quite believable that there's nearly a vehicle per person here in the Golden State).

2nd, prices seem so much less horrible when priced in pence per litre. That puny average yesterday across UK pumps (as reported by AA) of 117.56p per litre of petrol seems much more manageable than the $4.499 I paid this week. As long as you ignore the fact that in terms of dollars per gallon that comes to $8.676 using current exchange rates, and I think that excludes the VAT which would add another 17.5% to that price (add that in and UK consumers paid an average of $10.194 per gallon for petrol yesterday, and an even higher $11.359 per gallon of diesel, at least I think that's how it works since in the article it mentions that a few p more and diesel will be above 6 pounds per gallon, and that only works if you add an additional 17.5% to a price of 134p/litre, the current price of diesel is 131p/litre).

3rd, if you read enough articles in British papers, you start to think spelling liter with the last two letters reversed is perfectly normal, and all sorts of words should have an extra 'u' thrown in four nou gooud reasoun.

4th, unions suck, as usual, and Britain needs a new Thatcher to thwart the thtrickers (err, I mean strikers).

5th, the best way to cause people to hoard an item is to report that other people might be considering hoarding an item (see the recent rice 'shortage' right here in the USA, a good take on that, here).


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6th, what is this sentence doing in the article? "The Shell chairman Mr Smith sought to beat the strike by cycling from his luxury home in Walton on Thames to the town's station where he caught the 8.06am fast train to London Waterloo - a stone's throw from his company's Thameside headquarters. " I can almost imagine the next sentence being, 'and if you want to throw a stone at him, he'll likely be repeating this cycling commute for the duration of the strike and can be found at the intersection of Adelaide Rd. and Ashley Park Rd. between 7.46am and 7.56am weekday mornings . . .' (good thing this article wasn't in the Guardian, or they might have given those specific instructions)

7th, according to the article, "Brendan McLoughlin, founder of PetrolPrices.com which says 55 areas in the UK could be without fuel as the forecourts run dry, said: ‘Motorists need to stay vigilant and make sure they don’t fall victim to profiteering. I’d like to think that forecourt owners won’t take advantage of the situation, but there are those prepared to hike prices and make a profit out of drivers’ misery.'". He's got it backwards. You want the stations to jack up prices, that's the best way to get people to do the things you want them to do, such as avoid hoarding, conserve what fuel they have, and seek alternative means of going about their business. Setting artificially low prices always causes shortages, those damn laws of supply and demand can't be repealed simply because the resulting 'profiteering' may seem distasteful (and the WSJ editorial board is on my side on this one, so I must be right)

8th, I forget what eight is for, and . . .