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The Essence of Guilt

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Well I’m back to general life after a few weeks break enjoying the sites of Cape Town on our honeymoon. Fabulous place and well worth a visit if you can hack the long flight.

Anyway I say the essence of guilt, essence being the French word for petrol and no other reason. It has come to my attention in recent times that my local petrol prices are in no way related to oil prices. I remember back in the days after the last budget petrol held steady at around 93.5c-94.5c per litre then oil approached $50 a barrell so petrol rose to 99.9c per litre then oil continued to rise and petrol fell back to 95.9c per litre then oil hit $60 a barrell and petrol went back to the same price was when oil was $50 a barrell. I’d love to see the math behind that series of calculations and price changes. Anyway when I left for Cape Town petrol was 99.9c per litre in each of the petrol stations around my area then a large supermarket opened a new filling station offering petrol at 95.9c per litre and suddenly all the other stations have dropped their prices too. I ask a simple question of how this is possible if they are forced to increase their prices because of the cost of oil yet drop the prices as oil costs rise or rival stations offer lower prices? Sounds like the whole damn thing is fixed to me… Anyone doing an investigation into this?