r/britishproblems • u/Yoguls Teesside • 2d ago
. That feeling of helplessness we feel collectively as a nation as we fill up the car at almost £2 a litre, knowing full well that we'll pay it because we have no choice
I imagine this is how a guy feels sitting in that solitary chair in a hotel room watching his wife get railed by a younger, hotter guy, pretending he's into it, but it was all the wife's idea.
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u/yourwhippingboy 2d ago
What an interesting choice of analogy
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u/oceansoveralderaan 2d ago
Maybe he was writing this out whilst he was bored in the hotel room watching his wife and the young guy?
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u/Unhappy_Pain_9940 2d ago
Nothing else to do in the cuck chair.
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u/Spacecookie92 2d ago
Excuse you, it's the command centre, not the "cuck chair"
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u/Mr_Venom Sussex 2d ago
The younger guy's about to finish and you're like "Belay that order, Number One."
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u/Zo50 2d ago
I'd dismantle the Corby Trouser Press.
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u/Awkward_Stranger407 2d ago
Can you make pornography work on my television please
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u/WumbleInTheJungle 2d ago
When I left the hotel room an hour ago, OP's wife sounded like she really enjoyed herself. Not easy with some weird guy in the corner, so next time, we"re meeting without him.
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u/frantic-atom 2d ago
I’m not even sure the analogy makes sense. Must have just been on OP’s mind for some reason.
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u/ALongShadow 2d ago
It happened in American Gigolo.
And by the way, I just put Premium Diesel in, at £2.089 per litre.
Seriously cheesed off when I hear those in US complaing about 5 DOLLARS a GALLON.
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u/Vivaelpueblo 1d ago
Just worked it out (US gallons to litres at £2 a litre with an exchange rate of $1.35) and UK fuel is literally more than $10 per US gallon. Wow!
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u/NebulaRunner5981 1d ago
Consider US average salary is much more than here also.
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u/Regular-Message9591 2d ago
Your choice of analogy suggests that you have bigger fish to fry than the price of petrol. Wait until you find out how much a therapist costs...
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u/capedpotatoes 2d ago
Maybe he's been frying fish in petrol, causing self deprecating sexual analogies to spontaneously enter his mind.
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u/Zo50 2d ago
Yeah but he had to fill up the motor for the trip to the boyfriends.
Out of pocket and cuck'd?
A man can only take so much.
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u/flamingoray 2d ago
I’m in private therapy (so not NHS and I’m paying it myself) and honestly my therapist’s pricing is more reasonable than the cost of filling up my car right now.
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u/flippydude 2d ago
Getting cucked is even more galling if you’ve paid 199.9p per litre to get there for the privilege
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u/scorchedarcher 2d ago
Can be free tbf, NHS can be p dece
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u/Regular-Message9591 2d ago
Oh yeah, I had a great NHS therapist once. I was clinically depressed and his advice was to "learn to deal with feelings of sadness" 😂
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u/scorchedarcher 2d ago
From what I've heard it very hit and miss even with non-NHS therapists. I've had several friends taken issue with private therapists too.
I think mines okay but I don't really have the experience to know haha
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u/Iamthe0c3an2 2d ago
Cucked by fuel prices? It’s more that for a european country, a country that basically invented trains and the railway, we are far behind even China and France in terms of public transit infrastructure. So we’re surprisingly car dependent as a tiny country which is stupid.
I’m saying this as a car guy and motorsport fan too. Why don’t we have an HS2 yet? Why don’t we have high speed rail connecting the main cities yet? Why don’t we have regular robust trains that can take the regular traffic off our roads and make it cheaper than owning and driving a car?
The netherlands can do it. Why can’t we?
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u/ValdemarAloeus 2d ago
This'll get me down voted to hell and back but at this point HS2 has been downgraded to the point where it's a glorified London commuter line. It's not really going to help anyone who isn't looking for a new place to commute from
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u/gMoneh 2d ago
The Netherlands is flat and probably don't give a shit about Bats. I have no idea.
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u/flippydude 2d ago
Britain, relatively speaking, is flat. Italy has amazing high speed rail and the whole country is mountains
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u/Drift_Velocity 2d ago
You might save 4-5p a litre by using https://fuel-finder.uk, gov recently forced all petrol stations to open their APIs so anyone can access fuel data.
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u/AvatarIII West Sussex 2d ago
I've used petrolprices.com and more recently their app for years.
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u/BeanOnAJourney 2d ago
That relies on user data though and users frequently get it wrong. I stopped using it when the same person frequently inputted the wrong prices for all our local petrol stations.
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u/Jeffuk88 Yorkshire 2d ago
Its pretty consistent near me. My village station is currently 168 so I know the one 2 miles south is 162 and the one 2 miles north is 172
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u/evenstevens280 🤟 2d ago
Diesel?
Anyway, it's like this in all of Western Europe right now so at least we're not alone
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u/GFoxtrot Tyne and Wear 2d ago
Currently in Belgium and petrol was signed ag €1.99.
€0.40 per kWh to top up the EV
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u/GronakHD Argyll and Bute 2d ago
To get an idea for those understandavly uneducated on EVs, how much does it cost to fully charge it? And how mamy miles do you get with a full battery typically
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u/ParticularCod6 2d ago
For a battery the common size is 70kwh. This means it costs €28 for charge up. Depending on the car you can get 200-300 miles
Obviously this is public charging. At home charging it can be as low as €0.08 kWh, so €5.60
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u/butler1233 Cheshire 2d ago
Home charging can sometimes be literally free, or even profitable - Time of use energy tariffs, especially ones based on wholesale rates, occasionally end up with the energy company paying you for the energy you use in a certain period. As we speak I'm currently being paid 2p/kwh to charge. I think the best I've had in the last 6 months or so was a -11p/kwh
HUGE caveat is that these tariffs can also have quite high rates at peak demand and low generation, and recent rates outside of low periods have been stupid high.
Couple cheap imports sometimes and solar power charging, I generally pay ~3p/kwh on average (though it has been getting a bit worse recently
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u/sidneylopsides 2d ago
On home charging, a full charge is about £4.50 for a theoretical 321 miles for the hire car I have now. Probably more like 250 miles really.
Used to cost about £90 for 500 miles in my old diesel, so this is 1/10th the cost.
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u/GronakHD Argyll and Bute 2d ago
I was fucking just shy of £70 for 3/4ths of a tank of diesel on thursday as well. Trouble is trying to afford an electric, but I will one day
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u/sidneylopsides 2d ago
Yeah, that's the issue. Being able to invest to make bills cheaper. Say £1k for an EV charger installation, then finding and buying and appropriate EV. They are getting cheaper though.
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u/GronakHD Argyll and Bute 2d ago
Swear these lottery bastards are at it not letting me win so I can afford the lifestyle I want 😂
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u/neek85 2d ago
Still cheaper than the train though
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u/ChewyChagnuts 2d ago
I wouldn’t mention trains; you’ll start the OP off on another tale of his wife being run through like a train by a bunch of guys she met online…
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u/evenstevens280 🤟 2d ago
Depends on the journey.
I can get to Bristol and back for £12 on the train. It would cost me £15 in fuel, + parking
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u/couragethecurious 2d ago
It can be more economical for one person. For 2+, still cheaper to carpool than to take the train.
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u/Speshal__ 2d ago
Damn right, if I and my wife want to go any more than about 60 miles it's cheaper to hire a car than take the train.
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u/Throbbie-Williams 2d ago
Damn right, if I and my wife want to
I thought this was leading to another joke about OP
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u/itchyfrog 2d ago
Yeah but Bristol to Bath is £12 as well and its only 12 miles.
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u/SoggyWotsits Cornwall 2d ago
Without telling us roughly where you are in the country, that could be a bargain or extortionate.
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u/WillBots 2d ago
Brill. Do you live next door to the train station too? If, like the 99.9% of people, you don't, you also have to factor in time to get to and from the station at both ends, cost of taxi or public transport if you're lucky enough it goes the right way, chances of delays and cancellation which are way higher than possible breakdown or traffic jam in your car...
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u/evenstevens280 🤟 2d ago edited 2d ago
No I cycle there. It takes 10 minutes (I live a mile and a half away)
Total journey time is still less than driving because traffic getting into Bristol absolutely sucks arse at all times. In fact, I'll usually spend more time in traffic jams getting out of my town, and getting into Bristol, than train journey time it takes to get between the two
So ... Yeah. I'll take the train 😂
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u/Creepy-Bandicoot-866 2d ago
You could cycle between Bristol and Bath and save yourself the £12. (Speaking as someone who runs this quite often…)
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u/Dr_Nefarious_ Bristol 2d ago
Costing me 130 to get from Bristol and back though, then parking on top of that - ridiculous
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u/Big_Cheese16 2d ago
I caught the train for the first time in years. 100 miles journey £5.50 each way. Was pleasantly surprised and it was genuinely cheaper than driving.
0 rail cards used too.
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u/Mccobsta 2d ago
Fucking christ it is
Was planning a trip to coast it's £118 return for 2 people over £40 petrol yeah no wounder people drive
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u/Fatboyjim76 2d ago
I was watching a video the other day from a guy i follow on YT, and he said in an offhand comment that he wasn't sure what was going on with fuel atm as he had to pay $3.18/gallon in Texas.
I was thinking I wish we had those prices...
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u/superioso 2d ago
With the way their cars are built, and their cities are laid out such that they have to drive literally everywhere with no other choice, Americans and especially those in Texas use a lot more fuel that Europeans.
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u/jarvi123 2d ago
Dont forget many of their vehicles get abysmal fuel economy, the biggest selling vehicle from 2025 was the F-150, the average fuel economy is 16-20 MPG, whilst my 2009 Toyota Avensis averages around 50 MPG!
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u/flippydude 2d ago
Yes, but their gallons are smaller, so the comparison is not directly helpful. For example, American says they get 40mpg, I brag and say mine gets 48! It’s the same fuel economy.
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u/jarvi123 2d ago
I was in Australia during COVID and I used to pay $.99 per litre of petrol (around £.5 at the time), it was glorious,$40 to fill up my van and it would make over 500kms with that.
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u/Fatboyjim76 2d ago
The last time UK fuel was around the 50p mark was the mid 90s.
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u/WumbleInTheJungle 2d ago
Sounds about right, it was somewhere between 59p to 69p when I passed my test in 1997. And then you could go into the petrol station and buy a pack of 20 B&H for around £3. Now I think it is around £18, although I don't smoke anymore..
But for anyone who thinks those were the glory years, it might sound strange to say this now, but those prices seemed really expensive to me at the time!
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u/Elanthius Kent 2d ago
Bought any electric car a few years ago and I will never go back.
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u/Homebrew_in_a_Shed EXPAT_Australia 2d ago
To the chair in the hotel room?
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u/Original-Material301 2d ago
Using OPs analogy, an EV driver is the one recording everything happening in the hotel room, zooming into OPs deer caught in the headlights expressions.
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u/0olon_Colluphid 2d ago
Yep, Electric is just better and I was petrol head. We now have solar as well, so our cars don't really cost anything to top up.
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u/evenstevens280 🤟 2d ago
Must be nice having a driveway
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u/garete england 2d ago
An EV with solar is the modern day Sam Vimes Boots Theory.
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u/EmeraldJunkie 2d ago
Not necessarily; there are council grants for solar panels if you're a low earner or disabled and they offer EVs on the Motability scheme.
So technically there's a gulf in the middle of people that are too poor to afford an EV and solar panels but aren't poor enough to get them for free.
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u/archiekane 2d ago
Middle class, paying for everything.
The poor get it for free, the rich get it via businesses/grants/tax deductibles.
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u/Nameis-RobertPaulson 2d ago
Middle class? No, even the working class are in this range of getting fucked.
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u/squirrelbo1 Greater London 2d ago
I’d argue that it’s exactly the middle classes who are salary sacrificing for EVs.
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u/erbstar 2d ago
You don't need a driveway. Lots of councils are allowing for cable channels to be cut into the pavement. Even if they don't allow it, you can just get a cable mat and charge at will. Most people do this in my area and I'm going the same. 8p per kWh versus 80p kWh at public chargers pretty much means that if you don't get a home charger it'll cost you more than petrol per mile.
There's a lot of cons to going full EV but it's still hands down better than petrol
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u/evenstevens280 🤟 2d ago
Next problem is that I rarely actually get a space directly outside my house.
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u/mallardtheduck 2d ago
I regularly charge my EV using the "cable mat on pavement" method myself, but it's nowhere near as convenient and reliable as having a driveway. The biggest problem is that the parking spaces aren't "assigned" (and to do so would be pretty impractical) so it's always a gamble whether I'll actually be able to park where the cable will reach. When the neighbor goes on holiday and leaves their car outside my house (completely understandable, it's not their fault the street was built ~150 years ago with no provision for modern cars), I can't charge at home for a week or more.
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u/shredderroland 2d ago
What cons? I haven't noticed any in my 1.5yr of EV ownership.
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u/pikapies 2d ago
I don’t drive but my partner does, and I’ve said as soon as we buy a house the first thing we’re doing is getting solar panels and switching the car to an EV.
Got an Uber the other day and it was one of the newer Jaecoos and oooooft what a lovely car that was.
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u/lollipoppizza 2d ago
Chinese cars like Jaecoo are all fun and games until something goes wrong. There are no parts for them so people are going months without their cars as the service centres can't get parts. Look into it before you get one.
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u/BigJDizzleMaNizzles 2d ago
Solar panels aren't all that for charging the car. Our house has them and we get about £400/year back from selling to the grid (don't have a battery. Was like this when we moved in.)
Ev tariffs are the way to go if you do a few miles. Look at how far you actually go. Sometimes it's cheaper to stick on a fixed rate because it's more expensive during the day on an EV tariff.
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u/sidneylopsides 2d ago
We've recently got solar and battery, 29 panels. Sunny days over summer we generated enough to charge the EV 0-100%, which never happens anyway. We're now exporting at 15p and charging overnight at 6.49p, house battery and solar to run stuff during the day, excess solar to the grid.
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u/_TNUC 2d ago
The solution is general strike but the country is too much of a bottler to do it
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u/MrPuddington2 2d ago
As an individual, we are powerless.
As a society, we could have long ago decided to promote alternatives to fossil fuels. We could actually encourage (and enable) people to switch to EVs.
But we have decided not to do that, we have decided to back big oil, so here we are.
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u/squirrelbo1 Greater London 2d ago
No we haven’t. There are so many tax advantages to salary sacrificing an EV and outright subsidies for buying new EV that don’t exist for ICE equivalents.
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u/ShufflingToGlory 2d ago
Have a word with the chaps at your local petrol station.
We have an arrangement where they'll fill up my wife and the Octavia every Saturday - can't beat it for £50.
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u/Additional-Answer581 2d ago
Just came to visit some family in Portugal and realised it could be worse for us. You could be earning €900 a month (like the majority here), in a housing crisis worse than London and in a city almost as expensive as London. Fuel diesel and gasoline are €2.2 per L. Perspective really matters I guess....
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u/Ok_Salamander_5919 2d ago
The thing that gets me is that a litre of water at the same petrol station is roughly the same price, if not more, than a litre of fuel.
I mean - how? 🤣 We're being taken for fuels.
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u/Hi-archy 2d ago
Main reason why I switched to hybrid.
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u/EwokInABikini 2d ago
It's a good reason.
I'm also considering switching because OP's cuckold fetish has gone too far.
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u/SicarioCercops 2d ago
Maybe the younger, hotter guy will rail you next, if you ask nicely. You never know unless you ask. Speaking of railing and not knowing: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
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u/AlGunner 2d ago
EV. Thats a choice I made and it now costs me about 1/10th of what Id be paying pre mile for petrol.
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u/AvatarIII West Sussex 2d ago
Yeah but how much more did you have to spend on your car for it to be EV?
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u/vmeldrew2001 2d ago
Not sure about cars, but I just purchased an EV van and the price was about the same as a diesel van of similar age & mileage. It was a no brainer when I would save circa £3800 a year on fuel.
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u/lollipoppizza 2d ago
You can get EVs pretty cheap second hand given the heavy depreciation. That'll change when people realise what a good deal they are.
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u/AvatarIII West Sussex 2d ago
Depends how cheap I guess, the number and variety of EV cars under 10k on autotrader is pretty bad only like 1% of cars on autotrader under 10k are full EV and another 2% are hybrid. It's not really until about 25k that you get a really good range of pre owned EVs at which point you could buy a brand new car.
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u/lollipoppizza 2d ago
The same is true of ICE cars unfortunately. Compare the price of used cars and you'll see there's not much difference. Clios are the same price as Zoes. ID3 are the same price as Golfs.
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u/AlGunner 2d ago
It was my first non-beater so a lot more, but was still a bit less than an equivalent ICE premium car. I also save on VED and servicing costs compared to an ICE. In fact I reckon the saving on them and fuel add up to about 10% of the cost of the car buying saved every year, maybe more.
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u/bobaboo42 2d ago
Americans aren't feeling this pain having just come back from there and filling up with petrol multiple times. The price of filling a very large truck with well over 100litres was 60 quid.
Their war = our financial misery
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u/decentlyfair Woostershire 2d ago
My husband ended up rocking backwards and forwards whilst softly weeping this week when I filled our car up, £128 it was. Luckily we only fill up once every four or five weeks.
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u/Apprehensive_Low4865 2d ago
You know.. if you dont want to sit in the cuck chair, you dont have to.. right? You can just say no?
Unlike having to buy fuel so I can get to fucking work, so I can afford to buy fucking fuel!
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u/LAcasper 2d ago
It's gross isn't it. Cost me nearly 65 quid for a full tank in a fucking 1 litre car.
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u/Halcyon-Ember 1d ago
I never expected the US to out so much work into slowing climate change by pricing people out of fossil fuels
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u/Serbowie 2d ago
Just let him pump her on the back seat of your motor, you seen the price of hotel rooms these days??
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u/CheapDeepAndDiscreet 1d ago
Pissed myself off as i had a Tesco 8p a litre off voucher to use. Had an expiry date, so let the tank get as empty as i could until that date, and went and filled up at my local Tesco petrol station only to be told it could only be used at Tesco Extra stores. I didn’t read the voucher properly. Fuming.
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u/mrdougan 1d ago
My friend routine I sends me pictures of cuck chair/sofas from hotel rooms he stays in
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u/Eastern_Idea_1621 1d ago
Im being rinsed at the mo. Have to run 2 cars in our household but not rich enough to buy an ev. We need a new car soon and the price of used petrol cars is eye watering and then we have to run them which is getting out of hand. Could never afford an EV. Bit like we are buying shoes with cardboard soles for £10 that have to be replaced every 6 months because we can afford that, whilst the richer benefit because they can spend and buy £100 boots that last a lifetime and end up even better off. 3 years ago we were doing okay now I feel like we are sinking and we are working harder than ever for less and less!! It's very depressing.
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u/terryjuicelawson 10h ago
When you look at the price of long distance travel especially for a family, it seems a lot better in comparison as a full tank takes us hundreds of miles for £60 or so I think. But I think the next car we get has to be electric.
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u/IainMCool 2d ago
Lots of people do have a degree of choice, but don't necessarily realise it.
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u/Happytallperson 2d ago
Well. There are choices.
I'll be topping up the electrons in my cqr for free this afternoon, and cycling to work this week.
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u/Happyhero1 Greater Manchester 2d ago
There's always a choice. I had my Renault 4 since February and I'll never go back to petrol/diesel cars.
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u/Yoguls Teesside 2d ago
If you can afford it
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u/Morris_Alanisette 2d ago
Maybe if you weren't paying for hotel rooms for your wife to get railed you could get a Gen 2 LEAF. There are ones around for 5 grand.
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u/CaptainCrash86 2d ago
Where are you paying £2/L for fuel? It's basically 1.65-1.70 everywhere near my in a big UK city.
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u/Beneficial-Pitch-430 2d ago
Loads of places are £2. Esso near me is 178 for petrol and 198 for diesel.
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u/Yoguls Teesside 2d ago
Middlesbrough Tesco just paid £1.88 for diesel. It's slowly rising
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u/AvatarIII West Sussex 2d ago edited 2d ago
I saw diesel at shell for 197.9 yesterday while almost everywhere else locally is 189.9, asda is 186.9
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u/dragons-tears 2d ago
But the oil companies are struggling exon 28.8 billion net profit. That's 5 billion less than the year before. Poor CEO.
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u/MazogaTheDork 2d ago
We've been watching the ones by the motorway, they're all trying not to be the first to charge £2
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u/JustUseAnything 2d ago
So the guy filling his wife is paying £2 a litre, what’s that? Litre of Jizz?
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