Wednesday 17 March 2010

Moaning about the price of petrol

Oh, where did I read about people being concerned that the average price of petrol was going over £1.20 per litre? I'm not too concerned. A decade ago it was £1 a litre, there were protests and gnashing and wailing.

Inflation's broadly 2.5% so petrol ought to be around £1.30 a litre.

What concerns me more is that petrol is one of these things where through taxes and duty, the government gets more than 50% of what you pay, the supply chain getting the product out if the ground and into the car gets less than half of the price.

The government doesn't put the price up cos they want you to stop using petrol, but cos they know you value the petrol far higher than the supply chain charges, and they can skim this off.

There's a whole host of thing out there, like petrol, where the government gets more than the supply chain:-

Tobacco
Wine, spirits, beer
High income earners

Hmm, its a bit obvious really, but just kind of disconcerting.
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