Petrol prices have hit their highest level in the UK at almost £1.22 a litre of unleaded. Is the price of fuel hitting you hard, or have you already bit the bullet and ditched your car?
How much will you have to pay for a litre of unleaded petrol in 2011? Well, it’s expected to be over £1.25. You could probably get hold of a decent litre of orange juice for that.
Will a litre of petrol really reach £1.25? Since prices have already hit a record average of £121.76 a litre, as said by Experian Catalist, I’d say it’s almost a dead cert. In fact, it’ll probably go even higher.
Fuel duty and VAT to add next year
January will not only bring new fuel duties (add 1p a litre) VAT is also going up (add another 2.5p on top of that). Oh joy, us drivers have got to put up with a lot don’t we?
Actually, I’m being a big fat liar – I don’t drive, and I’m not that fat due to all the walking I do. In fact, I don’t even have a driving licence. Some people think that means I’m some kind of second class citizen, or that I’m a scrounger for getting lifts off others. But really I use public transport when it works, and I utilise my legs the rest of the time.
Anyway, that’s veering just a little off topic. The price of petrol is higher than it’s ever been and that should quite rightly prompt a gasp. The AA even estimates that it already costs £6 more to fill a car’s tank than at the beginning of the year. That’s two beers, or three Tesco ready-meals.
Use your car less or give it up entirely
George Marshall-Thornhill in the Which? Cars team has already argued that we should think more about the fuel we burn rather than moaning about the costs. This is an argument that some of you didn’t welcome.
Chas Lankester thought that higher petrol prices hit rural areas and people on lower incomes worst, ‘If the petrol increases keep on coming, only the rich will be able to live there’, he adds.
And Malcolm Murray doesn’t even think raising fuel duty will make us use our cars less anyway:
‘The government seem to think that making fuel more expensive will force us to use public transport, but until this is convenient, reliable, cheaper, coordinated and practical, this will not happen’.
But then there are those of you who believe we could try harder to get around in other ways. Robertino says that it’s not rocket science, ‘you simply decide to travel less by car and arrange things differently by adjusting your lifestyle accordingly.’
And Ronald Dewhirst thinks ‘the car is a destructive dodo’, so he’s given his motor up for a bike and hasn’t looked back since. Maybe we could take a leaf out of his book? Or perhaps you rely on your car so much that you have no way out of these rising petrol prices?
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