Think petrolgas is expensive in your area

Cross-posting removed

Hi!

Sir Lex

*grin*

Seriously though, the high fuel taxes in Europe do have an advantage these days: fuel prices at the pump didn't rise as outrageously as they did on the other side of the pond. They went from EUR 1.25 per litre to 1.45 for premium unleaded in my area. That's merely a 16% increase. It's not fun, but it can be lived with. (And it's begun to come back down already; I've seen 1.39 yesterday, albeit after having filled up for 1.42. Sigh.)

Granted, it's something like US$ 6.50 per gallon (buttuming US$ 1.20 per Euro), but we've learned to cope with such prices (or at least prices approaching that level) long ago. Consequently, my daily driver gets 35 miles to the gallon (and it has 129 bhp for less than a tonne and a gasoline engine too, so it's not exactly an econobox totally devoid of fun to drive :-). The cost of my daily commute (25 km round trip) has risen by all of 34 Eurocents (41 US cents).

OTOH, the truck I drive for work (a Unimog 1200) routinely uses up around 100 litres of Diesel a day -- but that's merely risen from 1.12 per litre to 1.17 or so, thanks to you guys over there not driving Diesels and consequently not buying it away from us on the Rotterdam spot market. So here's a big thank you from my employer, who coincidentally just traded his 3 litre gasoline-engined Opel sedan for a BMW Diesel SUV about a week before Katrina hit. I think he has still not stopped laughing. :-)

Yours, Erik. -- Just one would do. If you could get it to stand on the back bumper without collapsing anything.... -- Thomas Malmevik in r.a.m.v.a.