Watching the red tail lights in front of her Jinx wondered again when will she be able to buy her Jetson style inspired car. The one with the nice big bubble window, three landing struts and blue colouring. The major selling point would be the ability to fly over the metro congestion of traffic. Oh the impossible dream or was it?
Tapping her brakes again Jinx edged another two metres through the peak hour traffic. The news, the radio, the papers all proclaimed the same thing. The Government had to do something about the cost of petrol, only the Government could help the consumers. Really pondered Jinx, she thought the petrol companies, the countries producing oil and those Saudi Cartels could help the most and immediately if they wanted. Of course who was going to pay the bill for their gold plated Bentley or diamond encrusted bra for their girlfriend? Of course the mass of faceless futures buyers on the World Stock Exchanges were the bastards everyone should be going after. The advice from Jinx was simple. Fucking stop buying petrol on the Exchange please buy pork or banana futures, thus the price goes down and the consumer can go back to paying a dollar a litre for petrol. But lazy journalism and a pathetic opposite Government were eager to howl down the Government than look for the true reasons why. It’s always fascinating to watch rich white guys defend rich white guys defend olive coloured guys who make rich white guys lots of money.
Watching another motorcycle sped past in the bus lane made Jinx wish she had ridden her bike to work, she wondered what the traffic would be like in as little as five years? Would the roads slowly return to the state of the 1950’s? Only those with a healthy income could afford a car and all the costs. Would public transport be the way of the future. Were the local shopping strips about to under go a major rebirth as people started to shop locally and didn’t tramp all over the city for the right piece of clothing or food.
Maybe the skyrocketing cost of petrol was the exact kick in the guts the car companies needed, Germany were well down the road on hybrids and Japan was leading the way. It would be ironic to think the cost of petrol would be the ultimate downfall for oil rich countries. Would places like Saudi Arabia be second world nations in as little as thirty years?
Petrol, global warming over population, rising food costs. As two children walked across the road hand in hand Jinx wondered how hard all this doom and gloom impacted on kids. Did they understand? jinx hoped not, at least not for a few more years. It was then the red light can on, the tank was down to it’s final five litres. Off in the distance Jinx could see a petrol station, crap, it looked like she could only afford half a tank this week.
