R1200RS + R1250RS Forum
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Wed Sep 09, 2026 11:08 pm
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While oil prices have minimal impact on me as a motorcycle rider, they have a major impact on commuters. Brent crude oil is now over $101 per barrel after being around $70 in July. The situation in the Mideast is not calming down, and in fact looks to be spreading/escalating. Just something to keep an eye on, as higher fuel prices act as a "de facto" tax on consumers. |
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much the same
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there is one amusing thing happening
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Well, in the US the average person's mindset appears to be pretending nothing is happening. Same thing happened in the 2008 "Great Financial Crisis"...people were spending like there's no tomorrow, until the mortgage crisis hit. My wife actually heard a Gen X woman say to a friend, "I guess we should have been budgeting". I suspect the same will happen this time. |
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Zitat von BEARR im Beitrag #4 those families stop having kids which then causes all sorts of problems in the short and long term. It is happening across the globe. Japan and S.Korea show what happens as they have had this for decades: older people have cash in the bank but do not spend it and not enough working age people paying income tax to maintain the economy. Monaco is the only country in Europe with a fertility rate of 2 that maintains the population. I guess the residents there aren't too worried about whether they can afford to pay their electricity bill or buy clothes for their kids. UK is 1.5 and a lot lower in some areas, USA 1.6. We are both on the same trajectory as Japan. The short term effect here in rural Wales is that we are closing schools with unviable rolls. Small village schools are consolidating so that kids living in rural areas are travelling further for education. Tough luck if you live near one of those surviving schools that has traffic congestion on rural roads twice a day. This means fewer families want to live in a village with no school so you get an ageing population in that locality and a skewing of property prices. Demand for housing falls in a village that no longer has a school and the inverse where there is a school. Prices fall and rise accordingly. The village shop might struggle as it no longer gets passing trade from the kids and their parents once the school goes. The local bus service is reduced or cut as there are no kids using it, so it is no longer considered essential to receive a subsidy from the local authority that made it commercially viable for pensioners and commuters to benefit. I know some people who have had their family property on the market for over 2 years but cannot sell it due to a lack of local services such as schools, buses and shops. The home forms part of their retirement plans as they always intended to down size once the kids had moved on as they no longer need the space and wanted a smaller garden to maintain. On my travels in France and Spain, I see evidence of the same thing. Once thriving rural economies are desolate in France unless they can attract tourists. Cafés that I used to stop at are no longer operating, fuel forecourts closed and few people are visible in the small hamlets and villages on what were the famous Routes Nationales. These RNs are now downgraded after the autoroutes were built. I can't remember the last time I saw a rural Relais Routier restaurant still operating. Any that are open are on the edge of big settlements close to a Zone Industriale where hungry truck and business drivers are still found. Similar in N.Spain such as Asturias away from the coast. Deindustrialised after the closure of coal mines so you come across abandoned villages with crumbling former factories being taken over by nature.
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Camel's back really hurting right now...oil soaring, Saudi pipeline shut/refinery on fire, Fed meeting this week (Fed to raise rates?), AI under pressure as CEO's say "we need to slow this down due to the risks to humanity" (check out the wild stories about the "Hugging Face" hack by rogue AI agents - they formed their own message forum!), midterm election coming up...the list goes on. |
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Zitat von wessie im Beitrag #9 That actually sounds rather nice. I won't mention that the wife and I played golf last week and missed beating the course record by an unmentionably horrid number of strokes. Whenever those "worries at home" intrude, we look outside at the birds and scampering squirrels and observe that they have no idea of (nor care for) the machinations of humans. Sometimes I wonder if sentience is an evolutionary mutation and is actually a form of mental illness...lol. |
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Zitat von BEARR im Beitrag #10Zitat von wessie im Beitrag #9 not so sure many people in Ireland were thinking that way last week Zitat
Zitat
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I just heard on the ABC radio news that Costco is rationing motor oil to 10 liters per person and is also doubling the price. I wonder what is going on? Is that the result of Trump's war with Iran? If that is happening around the country, oil changes are really going to get expensive - especially at BMW dealers!
Current motorcycle collection: 2018 Zero S 16.6 kWh
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Zitat von Richard230 im Beitrag #12 Apparently there is a diesel shortage and subsequent price rise. All Ukraine's fault it seems. Nothing to do with the Middle East situation according to an announcement by the chap on a jolly to Ireland at your expense.
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on UKGSer, I have seen a report that a UK Motorrad dealer is not selling 1 litre top up packs of their oil. On short supply. Presumably they are directing everything to the workshop 40 litre drums.
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That item about Costco limiting oil sales and raising the price of their oil sold in their stores was explained in an article published by the AP in my newspaper today.
Current motorcycle collection: 2018 Zero S 16.6 kWh
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