This story is for all of you who spent time in the queues for petrol this week (after the Government said they had plans to introduce rationing, but that nobody should panic! After Iraq and the WMD dossier, what did they expect to happen?) Anyway, when you finally got to the pump, stuffed the nozzle in the tank and were idly watching the £££’s clock up on the display, (and your bank balance clock down!), did you notice the haze gushing out of the tank as the petrol gushed in?  This is petrol vapour: a highly flammable and explosive atmospheric pollutant with a TLV of 300ppm. It belongs to you, since you pay for it as it passes through the pump nozzle. In the good (?!?) old US of A, they have been taking measures to prevent this waste of resource by introducing hoods over the nozzle and tank filler at petrol stations to recover the vapour, condense it, and return it to the petrol station storage tank. The process is proceeding slowly, since fuel is so cheap in the US, that there is little financial incentive to buy the necessary equipment. You would think that it would make a lot of sense in the UK. In fact, it has been looked at, but has been “on hold” for the past 5 years, due to an ongoing dispute between the Retailers and the Revenue. It seems that Gordon (you know who I mean – big guy, Scots accent, insists that the pound a litre cost of petrol is all down to OPEC not pumping enough crude, and nothing to do with the 67 pence a litre which goes to him – are politicians all stupid, or do they just think that we are?) is insisting that he gets ANOTHER 67 pence a litre tax on this recovered petrol when it is resold. This is the petrol that belongs to you, that you have already paid £1 a litre for, including 67 pence tax to Gordon! You couldn’t make this up if you tried! No surprise then that the garages see no benefit to buying the necessary equipment. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of tons of polluting petrol vapour pours into the atmosphere each year, whilst Greedy Gordon huffs and puffs in an attempt to refill his fast depleting coffers. (where does all the money go? Surely the Dome and the CSA computer system can’t have pissed away that much?)

Does anyone, apart from me, detect the merest whiff of Governmental hypocrisy here?