In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
Dave, you're older than I thought :-) When I started, I think it was
6/6 or possibly 6/8 a gallon. More than twice the price of a pint, anyway. Then, a pint was 2/11 or less, so one gallon of fuel was more than two pints. Now, the reverse is true.
We had this discussion a few weeks ago. When I started to drive, petrol was 4/11d a gallon if you knew where to buy it.
Ye gods! Here in East Anglia, our Syndicate for Heating Oil got a price of 31.6ppl at the end of July, vs a standard price of 37.45ppl (that happened to be me doing the bargaining). Petrol 10 days ago was 112.9 at Tesco. Morrisons and Tescos are the cheapest suppliers. I thought Aberdeen was supposed to be cheap, as that's where the industry is based.
I'm nowhere near old enough to remember fuel at that price - indeed I was only 7 when we got decimal currency, which is too young to have been aware of fuel prices in £sd before that.
But even in the 22 years I've had a car, I've seen prices increase from about 45p to about 145p (*) per litre. I wonder what the true increase has been, allowing for changes in the value of money over that time.
To be fair, the fuel economy of my cars has improved over that time from 35 mpg (1800 petrol) to 55 mpg (1600 diesel), so the pence-per-mile figure hasn't increased at quite such an alarming rate.
(*) At the peak - they've come down a bit since then! I can vaguely remember the days when diesel cost about half the price of petrol, as opposed to several pence/litre more than petrol. Is the change in relative price due entirely to change in fuel duty rate, or have manufacturing costs of diesel relative to petrol also changed over the years?
In most other European countries diesel is cheapr than petrol and always have been, so it would seem that in the UK duty is biassed then other way.
In message , Davey writes
Hah! Our oil comes from Huntley, but Aberdeen prices tend to be the same. Captive market out here - no gas.
Re petrol, we're 45 miles from Aberdeen, and our local independent was
115.9 this morning. Ten miles towards Aberdeen, local independent there was 113.9. Next town, which hosts the nearest Tesco and Morrison, was 115.9 at both.We were in Suffolk for a couple of weeks last month, and noticed lower petrol prices.
FFS, you are all bloody _ancient_.
I'm in my mid-forties, and I wasn't even born until after decimalisation...
Duty is exactly the same on petrol and diesel here.
57.95p/litre + vatIn message , Adrian writes
Oh come on Adrian. Decimalisation wasn't that long ago! Well, maybe twenty years, but surely no longer? :-)
Next, you'll be trying to tell us you don't remember the first time you saw The Beatles on TV
About the time I started with Pump Maintenance. Those prices were getting very close to the maximum you could set on the Veeder Root head prior to decimalisation IIRC. (about 7 bob wasn't it?) Lovely summer spent around the Bournemouth area because the old fitter down there wasn't interested in doing conversions. Happy days.
larger
A lot of the North Sea infrastructure support etc is there but that doesn't refine the crude into useable product. Nearest refinery to Aberdeen is Grangemouth, a fair stride...
At one time, North Sea crude was sold or used for other products than petrol or deisel being a high quality light crude. Most of our road fuels came from imported heavy crude.
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