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Passed a closed off Tesco a filling station that had a sign up stating: No diesel.
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It's pretty crazy - people making a big thing out of filling up before a price rise.
Many of them won't have an empty tank. The amount saved is trivial - typically they may save no more than 5p a litre (for now) and if they put 30 litres in that's £1.50.
My weekly shopping in Sainsbury's yesterday for the two of us came to £148.02. A pack of arrowroot biscuits was £1.55.
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Just bought a pallet load of toilet rolls. Anyone interested?
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Recent (non-panic) buying.
13 tins of KTC chili beans reduced to 20p down from 65p.
Some tins of plum tomatoes, ditto. slight dents in cans.
Asda do reuctions on anything slightly damaged.
4 x 1 kilo Wagyu topside roasts @ 30% off the other week in Aldi. in freezer//
As is said in another large supermarket.. Every little helps..
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Just bought 4 circular saw blades, am I horder? :)
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I forgot to add. 4 extra special aberdeen angus steaks 30% off. Ate 1 last night and 1 tonight. others in freezer.
Tonight with Pommes dauphinoise, brocoli and a vine tomato. ( Dijon mustard bought in France)
2021 Horizon Shiraz cabernet.
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You are when you haven't got a circular saw :)
I was once wooed by a set of 1m long masonry bits. Then sensibility kicked in.
"When a I actually going to drill that far through any masonry"
Temptation overcome.
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>> Just bought a pallet load of toilet rolls. Anyone interested?
>>
I might be if they start launching longer-range missiles ;-)
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>> Many of them won't have an empty tank. The amount saved is trivial - typically
>> they may save no more than 5p a litre (for now) and if they put
>> 30 litres in that's £1.50.
Yeahbut, it's not about saving money. It's about having fuel in your tank when the filling stations have run out.
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Yeahbut, it's not about saving money. It's about having fuel in your tank when the filling stations have run out.
As it was with Covid a few years back.
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It was tanker driver strikes that caused me a problem - I had my TDI then so just got by, might not be as easy with the GTI but it's not that bad, price won't be the issue just supply.
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I think the human nature is that people want to have a link to events. So someone goes out and fills their tank even though they didn't need it as this then gives them the ammunition to post on their social media or in conversations to say that they are now affected and this is how. It then gives them a link to it.
Similar to the ones on FB pages that feel the need to add a comment to a post like "I saw that and wondered what happened" or the ones (and my wife is bad for this who say things like " did you see that guy from Glasgow who got murdered, well he's my colleagues brother's friend's dog's cousin - it then gives a link for my wife to mention then if it ever comes up in conversation.
Meanwhile for me, last filled up with diesel at beginning of Feb at £1.369 a litre but going away next week so know I need to fill - I should have filled 2 weeks ago and that would still have sufficed for me for next week but instead Petrol Prices app is telling me my local Tesco at 156.9 is the cheapest!
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Diesel where we are in Cumbria has jumped from £1.389/litre at the weekend to £1.529/litre today. Glad I filled up at the weekend!
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lots of profiteering with fuel price increases. Petrol suddenly shot up 6p litre in two local filling stations. I know people who work there and it was already in the tanks…even if it was a new fuel delivery it would still have been bought at the ‘old’ price.
Unless you drive many miles, then it’s no big deal. I see people in my local pub paying £1,50 for a bag of crisps, same for nuts, the extra cost of a full tank of gogo juice.
Glad my Vitara does around 50mpg and I have a free bus pass, although each single journey is only £3, and £5.50 for train to Leeds before free airport Flyer bus to LBA.
Last edited by: legacylad on Fri 6 Mar 26 at 07:40
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I filled up the Korando last saturday on our return from London, so that i could do my occasional Brim to Brim. Filled up the Venga, which doesn't do many miles as the fuel low light was on.
Que sera...
The weather is dry so SWMBO walking to work. Got the bus free into town to get veggies from the "ethnic shop". They have boxes in the shop full of oddments near the sell by date. paid £2 for it and when got home it was all good stuff worth about £12.. every little.
Leek potato and onion soup today
Only current blip is Sister in law is here and no flights back to Amman and onwards to. Baghdad.
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As we were off to Gatwick very early on Sunday in SWMBOs car for our 7 week trip I plugged mine in on Sat late evening, having set an automation to turn the charger on only at times when my elec was cheap or negative, to fill it from about half full. However I forgot to make sure the charger was off, so it filled up to 100% right away, costing me something over £8 which is annoying!!
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Don’t you have a smart tariff and meter then?
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How could I do it without? I'm on Agile which changes cost every 30 mins.
The OHME charger was slowly packing up so I reverted to my original unsmart wall charger, made semi smart by insertion of a Sonoff min switch controllable from phone and Home Assistant.
Home Assistant knows which are the cheapest half hours at any given time, so I just need to tell it how many of them I want, or what my max price per unit is, and it turns it on and off in the cheapest slots.
I do have automations turning stuff off (and on) on a regular basis (e.g. most lights and the TV go off at 1am) in case they've been left on but I can't include the charger as I don't know whether it's scheduled to run or not*.
So the charger was on as I hadn't "manually" turned it off in Home Assistant. However, in typing this I've realised that when a charge sequence starts I know when it is going to end, so I can set a helper to trigger an automation to turn the charger off.
Might sound complex but it isn't really, and it enables (usually) me to use only the cheapest slots for car charging. The MG is a bit lacking in it's comms back to the EVSE and one thing it doesn't report is it's fullness.
* And I've now thought how I know whether it is scheduled so maybe can set up something to turn it off if it isn't scheduled. Never been much of a problem before.
BTW I pay Octopus £100 a month for gas and elec incl car charging but have eaten into my reserves with them by £200 this year so my monthly cost is roughly £120. Which includes my fuel (though I only do about 5k miles pa these days) . My average elec unit cost excl standing charge is still around 16p. No batteries, small amount of solar. My tariffs have been hit fairly hard by WW3 but I've pretty much finished using gas till Nov.
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 6 Mar 26 at 10:11
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“Might sound complex but it isn't really,”
I like like to keep things simple. I just tell Octopus when I want the car charged by ( the default is 9.00 am.
Energy prices are what they are. I just go along with paying whatever Octopus says is necessary.
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>> MG is a bit lacking in it's comms back
Have you tried the MG to MQTT image. That's what I use. It is very sluggish, although you can shorten the interval it uses to poll the car with the caveat it might drain your 12V.
it does report charge level and limit though and it also allows you to remotely change charging rate which you can't do on the MG app.
github.com/SAIC-iSmart-API/saic-python-mqtt-gateway
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I did have a SAIC integration and it may well have been that one. Removed it a while back because a) you could only have one device bound at a time and I preferred it on the phone and b) when the OHME was playing up it seemed happier without it.
I'll have another look now I've given up on the OHME.
CGN - you are right, energy is what it is, and my charging usually costs me a small portion of what you usually pay :-)
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 6 Mar 26 at 15:06
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Just checked this is the integration I had, so a different one community.home-assistant.io/t/mg-saic-custom-integration/754590 -difference being the ne i used is a Home Assistant integration the other isn't
EDIT: Looks like maybe I can install it as an add-on...
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 6 Mar 26 at 15:22
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"Charging usually costs me a small portion of what you usually pay"
So how much less than 7p per KwH are you paying to charge your car then? If you drive 500 miles a year and get around 4p per KwH per mile then charging your car at the tarrif rate of 7p per Kwh would ony cost you less than £100 a year anyway. Doesnt seem much scope for saving a significant amount.
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>>Doesnt seem much scope for saving a
>> significant amount.
Incremental gains?
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I can pretty much tell you every half hour my cars were charged in during since 2018, as I have a program which captures daily usage and cost (and is mostly ignored these days except for answering questions like these :-) ).
Based on an assumption that when I'm charging is about the only time I use over 3KwH in 30 minutes.
So over the past 12 months I've used 1499 units at a cost (incl VAT) of 2.834p per unit.
Over 24 months that becomes 3369 units 2.5p
Over 36 months 5152 units 3.38p
48 mths 7420 3.15p
Interestingly (!!) the last 12 months included 75 negative half hour slots where I was paid to charge, totalling £6.13 revenue rather than cost! :-)
Maybe not hugely significant over your 7p in ££s but consistently less than half... !!!
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 6 Mar 26 at 17:45
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I think i'd struggle to tell you much about how much or often we use electricity, either £ or units. It's lumped in with the gas. I read the meters once a month. I think it's a 100 and something a month.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Fri 6 Mar 26 at 20:17
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I'm sure you're not alone Sooty, but as a retired IT techie just making stuff like this happen has been something of a hobby (not quite an obsession, as it may appear LOL!!). Others play bowls, make things from matchsticks, do gardening etc etc. Some even train dogs and spot trains :-)
And energy in particular has become of interest as I have been able to significantly influence my outgoings and greenness without any real effort - that doesn't really need any technical know-how, just an awareness of where it's going and what you can do to manage it a bit. Never had much interest in that till I retired, and then went onto Octopus, and found they had program interfaces to my usage which I could leverage.
Then realised how it fitted into my interest in home automation and so on. And now I know much more than I used to about energy related stuff like under floor heating, the national grid, wind farms, heat pumps, solar panels etc etc. All useless info but just an area I found to be of interest.
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I do find the bigger infrastructure projects interesting, i learnt quite a bit on yt about things happening on the grid, interconnectors to other countries etc. But we can't have a smart meter here, so i don't tend to worry as it costs what it costs.
I think I'd be lost with the IT side of it. I've only really used a computer full time at work in the last couple of years, rest of the time it was just bits and bobs. So it's still a learning curve, I had a go at power bi this week but even with co pilot it was still a bit of mystery and so I gave it up as a bad job.
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Not doing too bad here: 3 bed detached, all electric = 85 knicker for February AND ... we have a heat pump.
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Diesel at £1.49 and £1.43 at the Texaco and Shell garages respectively (which are located within 150 metres of my house). Last week they were both £1.41.
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UNLEADED
134.9p
DIESEL
146.9p
Colchester cheapest
Shell nearby 5p litre more
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I noticed diesel is up about 6p a litre so far, seem some places its up about 20p a litre.
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I last filled up the 2litre RAV4 at the end of November. It's still showing quarter full so I haven't noticed prices. I might fill my jerrycan tomorrow if I go out and top up both the classics as I'm going to need to move the Jowett to get my ladders in place to do a bit more cleaning on the caravan roof. My local is Morrisons, so we'll see how much it costs.
Ted
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In all this.. with apologies where due..
I fill up the cars when needed but if going up the A!2 toward ipswich there is an Esso station there that is a LOT cheaper, so fill up on the way past.
Otherwise, we eat and drink what we want (at home 99% of the time..)
Petrol prices are not really a concern. But we are careful in what we spend.
Sufficent income for all our needs and pay our bills.
I'm not going to be able to spend what we have in the few? years I have left.
If it's WW3.. so what,,
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ORB has it right.
If I was 30, mortgage, kids, average income etc I would be concerned about the economic impacts of middle east war. I do sympathise.
Reality - I am somewhat more than twice as old, no mortgage, kids grown with decent jobs, comfortable pension after working 40 years, some savings, no outlandish expensive habits etc.
If petrol doubles to £2.70 a litre it will cost me £100 per month - annoying but it won't change anything much. If household energy doubles - another £100 per month. Rather more annoying but not a game changer.
Agonising about 5-10p a litre - complete trivia.
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To a degree I think you are missing the point. An increase in energy price for a few weeks is not a problem. What could well turn into a disaster for an already fragile economy is a large increase in energy prices in the long term. The war has every sign of escalating and with an idiot like Trump in charge God knows where it will end.
Those feeling secure now may well be feeling different in a few years time
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>> The war has every sign of escalating and with an idiot like Trump in
>> charge God knows where it will end.
>>
>> Those feeling secure now may well be feeling different in a few years time
>>
Well ORB's sister in law should be more secure in Colchester than Baghdad. Hopefully the war won't spread to Colchester.
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No but the economic effects of the war certainly will will. More taxes, more inflation, lower living standards
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Every cloud has a silver lining.
Resistance to EVs. wind turbines, solar farms and nuclear will melt away when folk start to realise they don't stop working or double in price when a war breaks our somewhere.
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>> Every cloud has a silver lining.
>>
>> Resistance to EVs. wind turbines, solar farms and nuclear will melt away when folk start
>> to realise they don't stop working or double in price when a war breaks our
>> somewhere.
Hmm? Overcast and no wind here today.
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>> Hmm? Overcast and no wind here today.
Gridwatch says wind and solar covering a tad short of 20% of demand right now.
Wind more than nuclear.
French interconnector more than either wind or nuclear.
Mostly gas though - 40%+.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 8 Mar 26 at 13:34
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>> Resistance to EVs. wind turbines, solar farms and nuclear will melt away when folk start
>> to realise they don't stop working or double in price when a war breaks our
>> somewhere.
Seems to me a well co-ordinated swarm of precisely directed small cheap suicide drones could easily destroy a wind farm.
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>> Seems to me a well co-ordinated swarm of precisely directed small cheap suicide drones could
>> easily destroy a wind farm.
Maybe, or as the Germans discovered bombing radar stations in WW2 taking out towers needs a direct hit. I'd also suspect that if the foundations etc remain in place and new towers and turbines can be brought up a station could be back on line pdq,
A lot easier taking out a refinery or gas fired power station with a bomb.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 18 Mar 26 at 11:53
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>>
>> Seems to me a well co-ordinated swarm of precisely directed small cheap suicide drones could
>> easily destroy a wind farm.
>>
Fundamental difference.
Attack by drone is directly offensive action targeted at the UK against which we could defend ourselves.
Market price of oil and gas can be affected by events 10000 miles away for reasons having nothing to do with the UK and about which we have no defensive response.
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Pinched from another place:
It's been pointed out that since wind and solar power do not pass through the Strait of Hermuz that prices for them should not shift very much.
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Fuel prices tonight at my nearest petrol station, northern C Blanca.
Diesel €182.9
Premium diesel €193.9
Petrol (gasolina)
95 octane €169.9
97 octane €180.9
A long time since diesel was more expensive than petrol, hence why my spanish friends drive diesel cars.
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Word on the street is that fuel prices here in Portugal go up tomorrow (Mon). I've no idea what they were though. I now I picked my rental (brand new Fabia, 11km on clock) a week ago with a near-empty tank so will need to rejuice next time I go out. Will report back on prices.
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Now seeing diesel well into the 160s, i wonder where it'll stop.
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Unleaded in my nearest town:
BP = 136.9
ASDA = 144.9
GULF = 149.9!!
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ASDA colchester 134.9 this morning.
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A barrel of oil holds 42 US gallons - 190 itres.
At £1.35 litre, petrol includes 22p VAT + 53p duty leaving 60p for the fuel. The fuel cost includes refining, distribution, retailing and profit. A guess - the value of the oil in each litre of petrol is 30-40p.
The price of a barrel of oil has doubled since the war started from ~$65 to ~$130. With 190 litres in every barrel, the increase in price per litre is ~25p (~35 cents).
The refining produces many outputs - diesel, kerosine, heavy oils etc. But the simplistic conclusion is that if the oil price doubles it should put ~30p including VAT on the price per litre.
Any more and the oil and petrol companies are making hay at our expense!
Last edited by: Terry on Mon 9 Mar 26 at 15:16
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Portugal - bought some at €1.79 then saw it a bit cheaper in Auchan. That's about £1.55. The web tells me that is about €0.08 up on yesterday.
A chart I found shows diesel was about €1.58.9 yesterday and is 1.79.9 today, now more than petrol. Looks about right, 8c on petrol, 20c on diesel
www.fuelflash.eu/en/e_s_-faro-liceu-a-faro-portugal-av_-dr_-almeida-carrapato-63343/
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 9 Mar 26 at 15:20
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Friends driving back to the UK through France tell me today that diesel is over €2 a litre off motorway.
Inflation here we come…
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What is this....."diesel" stuff you speak of?
A "gallon" appears to cost more than it costs to fill my automobile.
Seriously though, considering fuel duty has been fixed at 58p per litre for FIFTEEN YEARS (plus an extra 5p/litre "temporary" reduction since 2022) y'all are getting off pretty lightly.
If duty had risen by inflation it would now be 86p per litre (+VAT)
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The fuel duty freeze has been politically expedient to pretend that the political class give a T about the problem.
If the 86p fuel duty is correct.. How much in billions is that worth and would it be spent sensibly.
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>>If the 86p fuel duty is correct.. How much in billions is that worth
www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator - 2011 -> Jan 2026 = 49% inflationary rise.
£24bn/yr at present with the 53p/litre rate (58p discounted temporarily....), so an extra £12bn/yr roughly.
>>would it be spent sensibly
ahahahahahaha..................
Last edited by: Lygonos on Tue 10 Mar 26 at 02:04
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Surely the fuel price increases are just a product of the fuel company's profiteering? The fuel we're currently using was already in stock at the refinery.
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>> Surely the fuel price increases are just a product of the fuel company's profiteering? The
>> fuel we're currently using was already in stock at the refinery.
Correct, but the fuel companies are now having to buy at the increased rate and will have to charge the end user proportionately. Imagine the public outcry if the motorist were charged the current rate (if) when the price drops.
I'm no supporter of the fuel companies,
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AIUI the typical forecourt has just 2 or 3 days of normal fuel demand in their tanks. The average car will do (say) 400 miles on a tank of fuel - equal to 2-3 weeks average motoring.
Panic buying initial impact is to drain the forecourts which then close until resupplied. The tanker fleet is sized to meet normal demand for deliveries and cannot resupply much faster.
Retailers buying fuel from distribution centres and refineries will therefore be faced with their increases in just a couple of days wen they replenish forecourt tanks.
This amplifies the problem as motorists believe fuel shortages are real. They then top up their tanks when still 3/4 full rather than waiting until a 1/4 full.
The UK does have significant strategic fuel reserves + that held in refineries and distribution centres so there is no immediate concern over fuel availability. But if these stacks are used they need to be replaced with fuel at the higher price.
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The real issue is whether prices charged should be set by reference to original or replacement cost.
Most businesses aspire and expect to be around for the long term. They need to carry stock appropriate to the volume they sell.
If replacement cost (say) doubles, but sold based upon the original cost, income raised will be insufficient to replace it. Two options - borrow money to fund replacement stock, or contract the business by replacing with half the quantity - both unattractive.
Were there confidence the increase in the cost was just a blip, to swiftly return to historic levels, some companies may choose to absorb the "blip" to avoid destabilising market etc. But this carries real risk - will disruption last 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years.
I fully understand why prices at the pumps are increased with immediate effect. The risk of exploitation arises if prices paid for fuel are not reduced equally quickly if or when market prices of replacement stock falls.
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Your assuming they pay for it before they sell it which is probably true.
Also, it's a fungible commodity. Yesterday when you closed you had say £10,000 worth of petrol. Today when you open you find you have £10,500 worth of petrol. Win!
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The only thing I am assuming is that suppliers will use uncertainty to maximise profits. The rule in fuel buying is that prices rise quickly (read instantly) and drop slowly. It has always been thus in my experience, and my experience goes all the way back to the fuel crisis in the early 70's. (I still have my rationing book from that period)
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>> Your assuming they pay for it before they sell it which is probably true.
>>
>> Also, it's a fungible commodity. Yesterday when you closed you had say £10,000 worth of
>> petrol. Today when you open you find you have £10,500 worth of petrol. Win!
But you still have the same number of litres.
Bit like the value of your house increase - completely irrelevant until you downsize, die or want to borrow against its value.
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>>Bit like the value of your house increase
I'd contrast the two. The fuel is stock in trade. It would be analogous if you were selling your house tomorrow - you'd want the current value for it.
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>> >> Your assuming they pay for it before they sell it which is probably true.
I think its bought and paid for in two main ways, spot prices and futures, or a combo of the two.
The pump price always seems to follow spot prices
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>>Your...
You're, sorry. Disgraceful.
Diesel £1.63 in Aylesbury, that's a shock. Petrol's only up 12p or so.
This could go on a while. Just watched a couple of experts discussing the Strait of Hormuz. It might not be so easy for the US to keep it open. Perhaps that's what Iran meant when they said they'll decide when the war ends.
I really hope it does, not for Trump's sake but because Russia benefits and while the US is burning through munitions, there's less for Ukraine even if Europe wants to buy it. Ukraine is of more importance to us than the Gulf.
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En route home from Kitzbuhel on Saturday,.....diesel in Salzburg Euro199.5 (my ancient keyboard doesn't do the euro sign). Now Mrs F and I are in our dotage the total annual mileage of our three cars is no more than 8k p.a., with annual petrol cost around £1500 for the past few years, fortunately a tiny percentage of our combined income, so even if it doubles we shall not change our driving habits. Anyway, 'petrolprices' shows my cheapest local is (hats off to) Kettering Tesco, E10 136.9p today.
BUT, the latest quote for our heating oil, bought for 48p plus vat per litre last July, is 132p plus vat! Have easyJet and Ryanair bagged all the kerosene? Prob got enough till July, but underfloor heat now off; and off to the woods with my chainsaw........
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"my ancient keyboard doesn't do the euro sign"
Have you tried pressing Ctrl+Alt+4? (On Windows)
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... or just the right hand Alt (AltGr on my Lenovo laptop) and 4 (top row, I don't think it'd work on they numeric keypad on the rh side of some keyboards)
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Alt Gr/4 (4 key that is also $ without shift) is what I always use on Windows.
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>> "my ancient keyboard doesn't do the euro sign"
>>
>> Have you tried pressing Ctrl+Alt+4? (On Windows)
>>
..or search for 'character map' on windows. Open it up and there are a zillion characters to choose from (including the € sign). Scroll 3/4 down towards to bottom (left hand side) to see it.
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Your fixed tariff from April 1st:
Electricity tariff (Intelligent Octopus Go 12M Fixed):
Peak unit rate: 23.23 p / kWh
Off-peak unit rate: 3.49 p / kWh
Standing charge: 47.72 p / day
Think I'll get myself a diesel.
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>> Think I'll get myself a diesel.
>>
Or PV panels.
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Problems with € sign takes me back over 40 years!
The first IBM PCs imported from the US had US keyboards and no £ sig - Alt 156 was the way around the issue.
The first spreadsheets were Lotus 123/Multiplan were like wise problematic.
The original Epson Dot Matrix had only 128 characters and no £ sign even when you had one of the screen.
The original IBM printer, made by Epson, had a £ sign but cost a scary £430+VAT (£1800+VAT in today's money)
Easiest PC keyboard, IHMO, for the € on the number pad is Alt 0128 - used for a long time
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... unless you have no numeric keypad of course! :-)
Yes, re printing I remember the advent of wysiwyg for printers...
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>> ... unless you have no numeric keypad of course! :-)
very much a thing of the past
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Panic buying? - James Loveless
