Saturday 26 May 2007

Today's Rant

So, last weekend just happened to be a long weekend in Canada and surprise, surprise the gas prices just happened to go up. Now can someone explain to me again why this happens and no one "investigates". Even when they do pretend to check into it how come they say that there is nothing untoward going on?

I wonder if the groceries stores started to up their prices on those same long weekends you can be darn sure there would be some squawking and cries of outrage. How about if the the beer prices, and the price of bread and milk and all those other necessities we need over the weekend went up.

And then there is all the services we need.... police, fire emergency, doctors etc., etc., etc. Only the gas companies get away with this supply and demand bull. You don't see the farmer with his milk making any extra money for hoarding his milk. What he produces goes out at one set price and funny enough it is in the stores in time for the long weekend but the price doesn't go up "suddenly".

How can that gas that came in on Wednesday and sat in the tanks till Friday suddenly be worth more? Did someone take it out and then put it back in again? I think not.

I personally have been buying only ten litres at a time for. Not ten dollars, ten litres. I will do that every time I need gas and not always at the same station. I refuse to pay the ridiculous prices they are charging and so I am using a dollar cost averaging process. I have been doing this since March 9th of this year. My piddly little bit isn't going to make anyone notice but it is the only way I can see to protest. Trying to have everyone boycott a certain station isn't going to work, obviously, but maybe if we all were to just buy ten litres at a time then maybe someone would notice. I bet the prices couldn't go up so fast becasue they'd still have all that gas sitting in their underground tanks. Now, obviously if you're driving to Toronto or Brantford every day you don't want to be doing the ten litre thing, but there are HUNDREDS of us that just tootle around town and my own experience has been that I only stop at a station three times a week and that gets me more than 200 kilometres.

There is something I find very satisfying about going into a totally empty gas station, pulling up to the pump and filling it with a whole ten litres of gas.

Also, new is that I have now had my replacement hip for six months. They told me I was too young to have one, but I am so glad that they decided to finally go ahead with the surgery. I will write more on this in a couple of days.