A grizzled old man in the supermarket queue tonight was bitching about petrol prices. “It’s criminal!” he was saying. I didn’t feel like trying to explain the concept of Peak Oil to him. Nor did I think telling him it was only going to get worse would placate him.

A more informed response to the issue from Ron Bowden (no relation of mine!) of the Service Station Association on Friday:

“The world is using crude oil faster than we can get it out of the ground and faster than we can find it - it’s a finite resource,” Mr Bowden said.

“We could do a lot better as a nation if we educated people that high petrol prices are a result of their own indulgence.

“We shouldn’t be trying to make petrol cheaper . . . it’s just making the problem worse for the next generation.”

Nice to see the guys on that side of the fence acknowledging there’s no magic solution to pricing, or that we should be subsidising it even more. There’ll be more on this issue on the telly on Monday night as respected current affairs programme Four Corners looks at Peak Oil. I’ll certainly be tuning in.

Dunno about the grizzled old man. He might prefer Law and Order: SUV SVU or something.

By the way, on the subject of driving, you remember the stupidly placed 40 and 60 speed limit signs? Well the 40 has come a cropper, hit by a car: