Gas Prices Drop

You may recall that my last column in the Calgary Herald set out to slay the myth that gas prices never go down and that they always rise in time for long-weekends.

Here's an article from the CBC of all places noting that gas prices are at a five month low.

Here's the old column.

Pump paranoia hardly justified
Calgary Herald
Friday, June 30, 2006
Page: A26
Section: The Editorial Page
Byline: Dave Ryan
Source: For The Calgary Herald

In spite of the increase at the pumps this long weekend, Canadians should stop whining and complaining about the price of gas.

It has become a Canadian pastime to protest the price of gas, particularly on long weekends when we feed our recreational gas-guzzlers.

But the complaints we hear about the high cost of gas, that it never comes down once it goes up and predatory pricing just aren't true.

I recently went to my local gas station and filled the 50-litre tank in my SUV. Gas was $0.994 per litre that day.

Had I filled the tank from empty, it would have cost $49.70.

In Alberta, we pay a nine-cent provincial tax and a 10-cent federal excise tax -- so about one-third of the price of a litre of gas is tax, leaving the actual cost of a litre around 70 cents (not including GST). Excluding these taxes, it costs me about $35 to fill my 50-litre tank.

I checked the price of some other consumer products at the gas station. Milk was $2.18 per litre, orange juice $2.78 per litre, and Coke was $1.89 per litre.

I also bought a large coffee from Tim Hortons which works out to $3.75 per litre. Coffee from the Starbucks across from my office costs 4.95 per litre.

Gas seems expensive because we buy it many litres at a time, but it's still comparatively cheap. If I'd filled my tank with Tim Hortons coffee, it would cost $187.50.

A gassuccino is much cheaper than a cappuccino.

What about the oft-heard complaint that gas prices are always on the rise?

The price of everything is on the rise. After adjusting for inflation, that $1.89 litre of Coke was 11 cents in 1914.

So even without gas companies increasing prices, there would be an increase in price from year to year. Just accounting for inflation and not price increases, government taxes or geopolitical forces, gas that cost 50 cents in 1996 would cost 62 cents today.

And the price of gas does come back down after it rises.

Calgary based MJ Ervin & Associates Inc. provides a weekly analysis of gas price trends. Their research shows that in 2005, gas prices in Calgary varied anywhere from 70 cents to 110.9 per litre.

After gas reached the yearly high of 110.9, it lowered to 103.4 the following week, then went to 103.9 for the following two weeks. Like every other commodity, price slowly increases over time, but it is a myth that once gas prices go up they never come down.

If what people are complaining about is that prices never go down to their original price, this is true, but neither do other commodities.

Pretty hard to find an 11-cent pop nowadays. At least with the fluctuation of gas prices, the cost will dip lower from time to time. The milk, coffee and orange juice prices listed above are never going to fluctuate downward.

There are websites that post the cheapest gas prices in town. People are so programmed to fear gas prices, they will drive across town to save two cents per litre.

Think about this. If I saved two cents per litre filling my 50-litre tank, I'd save a dollar. In case you haven't guessed, you burn off the buck you save driving across town for that two-cent discount -- probably stopping for a $3.75 per litre double-double on the way.

If all this doesn't assuage your fears, last March Canada's Competition Bureau released its findings on an examination of predatory pricing and margin squeezing in the gasoline industry.

Richard J. Taylor, deputy chief commissioner of competition for the branch, reported, "We have found no evidence of a national conspiracy to fix gasoline prices."

Hopefully, this will put some of the hysteria over gas prices to rest and people can find something else to complain about over the campfire this long weekend.

But if you think everything I have said above is a bunch of hogwash, save yourself some money on gas by scrunching up this column and using it as kindling for your campfire -- my hot air is a cheap alternate fuel source!

Dave Ryan is an investigative humourist.

Good for Ezra

I saw this story the other day and actually wrote the Lib lawyer as a lawyer myself and suggested he should be ashamed of himself for using his position to scaremonger (we actually take an oath swearing that we won't do this kind of thing), and pointing out, as Ezra does in his blurb, that truth is a defence to defemation.

Anyway, the point here is that the Western Standard has the Hez"ballas" to stand up to the Liberal bullying. It's not about partisanship, it's about free speech.

Good for my old friends at the Standard. Now where is the main stream maedia?

Things you shouldn't need a court to tell you

Some things in life seem obvious. Are we really at the point that we require a court to say that this is not appropriate?

And by the way, how bad are you at the old horizontal hussle when the other person doesn't even wake up?

The media is a joke

Okay, this isn't exactly a headline, but the sports media is even worse. For those of you who don't follow sports, there is a professional golfer named Tiger Woods who is by far the best golfer on the professional tour. He wins every fourth time he plays. On the PGA Tour, if you win once a year, you an elite player.

Anyway, recently Tiger's dad, mentor, best-friend, and all around good buddy died. After that, Tiger had a less than Tiger like performance in the next Majot tournament of the season. When this happened, the media began to say that he was finished, he'd lost focus, and he'd never be the same. They also blamed his new wife.

Tiger has now won the last two consecutive Majors and is alone on the top of the list of Major victories with 12. This places him above every golfer ever except Jack Nicklaus.

Last night, post-PGA victory, the same media were calling him the greatest and talking about how he and Jack were in a league of their own, which of course if true, but come on, the guy has a couple bad months of golf after his dad dies and they say he's finished, now he's the greatest. I realize that journalism in general is a joke, and that sports journalists are the most gullible and sycophantic of the bunch, but try to have a little perspective.

Why couldn't my mesodermal bands have fused improperly?

In the words of Rod Stewart: some guys get all the luck.

Heil Mike Wallace

I didn't think Wallace did as bad an interview of Iranian President Ahmadirejad, or "Mahmoud the Magnificient" as I like to call him, as many seem to think, but here is a pretty good take on what it may have looked like if Wallace got the chance to go back and interview Hitler, post Versaille and pre-Munich by Philip Klein at the American Spectator.

Dumb Americans

Some Americans were angry at CBS and Mike Wallace for interviewing Iran's president. This article contains some of the intellectual arguments like: "What is it with CBS? First Saddam Hussein, now this creep! Don't you guys have any allegiance to America anymore? Goodness, it is where you got your start and where your world headquarters are. I'm switching to Fox."

How does exposing these nut jobs for what they are equal a lack of allegiance for America?

Talk about offensive

Little girl's passport photo's rejected because her bare skin was showing.

Penis too small?

funny article about the magic pills out there that will help this problem.

Note to squishies

I hope all of you anti-war-on-terror types are enjoying your freedom today (Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan I'm looking in your direction). As you have probably read, some more of Osama's (we presume) koolaid drinking henchmen were planning to get on some planes and cause some more havoc for innocent air travelers.

It would be interesting to see what the likes of Moore and Sheehan would say to the families of those who had tickets for these flights.

There is some irony that Connecticut Democrats ousted longtime rep Joe Lieberman because of his support for the war just a few days ago. One has to wonder how many of those living in Connecticut would have had family or friends on those flights.

Here's what Cheney had to say after Lieberman's defeat, but before the new al Qaeda plot:

Cheney said that to “purge a man like Joe Lieberman” was “of concern, especially over the issue of Joe’s support with respect to national efforts in the global war on terror.” He explained:

"The thing that’s partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

Maybe this will help some Democrats realize that even if the war isn't going the way they think it ought to, and even if they think that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are complete boobs, the real bad guys are still out there trying to blow you up whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or non-voting ignoramus. Keep your eye on the prize.

The good news is that I don't think Democrats will do this, they will nominate some idiot like Hillary Clinton (they won't let a little thing like the fact that she too, like Lieberman, supported the war get in the way of their thinking) and she will get her ass kicked in the general election by someone like McCain, Guliani, etc.

Wrong

I admire the B'nai Brith, but its VP Frank Dimant has called for a crackdown on Hezbollah demonstrations in Canada.

I certainly don't support Hezbollah, and as you can see from previous comments on this blog, I support Israel, but Dimant is missing the point. The very thing that distinguishes democracies like Canada's is that we let the wingnuts speak out, then we denounce them publicly, and they don't grow. When you stop these groups from showing how rediculous their ideas are in the light of day, they spawn and fester and grow in the background.

Let Hezbollah march down Queen Street shouting their terrorist bullshit. My guess is that it will only further alienate them, not help them.

This when you know the price of gas is too expensive

Police in Royal Oak say David Booth was arrested early yesterday while sitting in his getaway truck after it ran out of gas.

God bless this other fat fuck

This is just great news for us round guys. First Travolta, now Kilmer. If Clooney bulks up I'll never have to eat celery again.

Too Much Iron in His Diet

I thought I was a compulsive eater. The nail section at Home Depot is a buffet to this guy.

American Idle (Billy Idol is a whore)

Billy Idol is such a two-bit whore he makes pimpin' look easy.

You may remember him from his radio friendly badd ass pop-punk pablum Mony Mony.

But you may not know that before Billy sold out to MTV, created his menacing sneer, and took it all to the bank for every cent he could, he was in a punk band called Generation X. They had moderate success, but Billy was pretty sure that he was the man. Check out this from Stephen Davis' Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods:

In November [1978] the whole band moved to London to rehearse an album that would be recorded the following month in a Stockholm Studio owned by the group Abba....The rehearsals were sensational, and the musicians realized they still could do it. Led Zeppelin had been scornfully ridiculed as musical Goliaths and anal-retentive tax exiles by the punks and new wavers. Now they could fight back with what they realized was their best, most sophisticated music. In the next rehearsal hall, the punk band Generation X was preparing for a tour. As Led Zeppelin were leaving one night, Generation X's spike-haired young singer hurled taunts of obsolescence at them. Bonzo asked who the kid was, and was told his name was Billy Idol.

Now, here's what really has me pissed, as if Mony Mony wasn't bad enough (Billy probably read Money Money when he agreed to record it), he has now teamed up with Derek Sherinian to record a version of Mungo Jerry's In the Summer Time. Way to keep it real Billy. Nothing says punk like:

We're no threat, people
We're not dirty, we're not mean
We love everybody but we do as we please
When the weather's fine
We go fishin' or go swimmin' in the sea
We're always happy
Life's for livin' yeah, that's our philosophy

You're the man Billy, Led Zeppelin has nothing on you. I'm really looking forward to your Christmas duo with Clay Atkins.

Famous Mug Shots

Mel's latest photo is here, but scroll through the rest. Glen Campbell and Nick Nolte are the best. Nolte looks like he just came out of make-up to film a part of one of the dead guys in Pirates of the Caribbean.