Petrol prices in the UK
Petrol prices in the UK have been going only one way over the last few months. Conversations in my house tend (rather monotonousl) to have followed the pattern ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever got £50 worth of petrol in the car’, to be followed swiftly by ‘That’s the first time I ever got £60 worth of petrol in the car.’ With that in mind I paid a visit back to Petrolprices.com to see how much difference it could actually make to my weekly fill up. Petrolprices is a typical Web 2.0 interface, the classically Google-simple front page simply offering a large type-in box where you enter your postcode. Register, the work of moments, and you are given the five cheapest filling stations for your unleaded, diesel, premium or whatever.
Now Ive been slightly sceptical about fuel price comparison sites in the past. The way I buy buy petrol is 1) I notice I’m low and 2) pull in at the next filling station. The idea of driving out of my way to get to a cheap petrol station (thereby using petrol notice) has always struck me as counter productive and distinctly ungreen. I’m also wary of becoming the sort of middle-aged man who obsesses about petrol prices and discusses them with his workmates. Such conversations often continue with the relative merits of leaving the M6 at Junction 5 or Junction 6. But with local variations from 105p a litre up to 118p, I’m saving around £6 a time on each fill up. Using my unreliable maths, I work out that the additional driving I’m doing is costing me 30p … though is it worth an extra 30 minutes of my time to drive there and back? A complex sum which you’ll have to do for yourself.
Incidentally, a quick look at the petrolprices.com blog (I kid you not) reveals the usual litany of ‘NuLabour are a bunch of thieves’ and ‘this country is finished, I’m moving abroad’ complaints, so I’ll not be lurking there for long. But petrolprices gets an honourable mention as this week’s financial deal of the week.
