It was only a month or so ago that the pundits were warning of a £1.20 a litre petrol. Well, it has not only arrived, but beyond already.

My local garage, (called Why Not for some weird reason) the most expensive around here, is already at £1.24, but I use either ASDA or Sainsbury’s at approx 3p cheaper but the question arises, how long can we continue to pay out these exorbitant prices for fuel?

I was in the local garage recently when I borrowed a van and was putting a tenner in. I said to the regular girl that we took bets in the Pub to see which day he would bung up another penny, normally at least once a week.

She said, it depends ‘on when a delivery comes in’ !!! So, every time he gets a delivery, he bungs another penny a litre on? So is he doing it, or Esso? As there is another Esso a few miles away, he is actually cheaper, by a fraction.

BP are easily the most expensive and ripping the public off big style. They have imported hundreds of workers from India who they trained up and put in all their filling stations nationwide at min wage but max profit. It must be very rare now to find a BP service station that does not emply indians, bloody cowboys! Needless to say, I do not use them.

Shell in Birmingham city centre, usually a place of high prices, is actually cheaper than most but only just.

Now, the government does not add tax on on a weekly basis, so who is ripping us off? The Oil companies or the individual owners? Its well known that garages ‘collude’ together locally to fix prices, its been going on for years.

Now we have a new, elected, prime minister, I hope Cameron/Clegg takes the proverbial bull by the horns and reintroduces the Govt watchdogs that Brown abolished and regulates companies a lot more closely. And also bring back the Monopolies commission, but thats another topic.

There is only so much money in the wallet, how we are supposed to fund these price hykes is becoming intolerable. I need my car, buses do not allow me to commute to various sites especially as some are in other towns.

In the Pub last night, politics and sport were the dscussion items, and a gent said that if a party had promised a 20p drop in fuel, they would have won by a landslide!!

Tags: asda, BP, esso, garages, petrol prices, sainsbury, shell