Petrol prices
As I was driving in this morning I heard on the news that Tesco and Asda are cutting 4p a litre from the their petrol prices. I suspect most people will think this is a good thing but as someone who used to be involved in running a small, independant garage with a petrol forecourt I’m not so sure.
We used to make 7p a *gallon*. Thats under 2p a litre profit. We never used to be able to break even at that and basically ran the forecourt more as a service to the village customers whose cars we used to look after. We were buying petrol at higher prices that the supermarkets in Ashford were selling at. Tesco and Asda admit that at these prices they are making only a very small profit but claim that they can do this due to falling wholesale prices.
This is partly true - wholesale prices have fallen slightly over the last few days but not by 4p a litre. This is going to kill off more independant petrol stations - there are already some 20% less petrol stations around than there were in 2000. Certainly in Folkestone pretty much all of the independants have been shutdown 
This isn’t really a problem in towns but it is begining to be a much bigger issue in more remote areas. And, I’m still not sure I like the complete control that the supermarkets are heading towards!
Still, on a more positive note, I finally got around to ringing DVLA to get a replacement driving license as I’ve lost mine. I rang them and the phone was answered in one ring. 1min10secs later and it is all ordered and I’m off of the phone. Wow. If only all government agencies could be that efficient. I now have to wrestle with the Child Tax Credit people *again* to tell them that Jake no longer goes to nursery. This I suspect will be more of a challenge
