Australia

There's not a lot of advantage to calling out Trump's BS. Firstly because Australia has no real influence over American foreign policy (hell America has no real influence over American foreign policy), and secondly because the average voter generally doesn't like Iran even if they don't approve of the war.

the current US government is literally built around a bunch of fucking morons entertaining a lunatic. Trump blarts out some bullshit on behalf of his puppeteers, the flying monkeys scurry about to make it Reality. This expands out further to allies and other nations.

Thing is, Iran doesn't want to play flying monkey. So Trump just keeps blarting his bullshit and wondering why Reality is not occurring any more. And the flying monkeys literally can no longer conceive of another way to function short of going yes sir no sir three bags full sir gargle gargle.

We've spent eighty years kissing american arse and now we don't know what to do when it's time for daddy to go into the hospice

Oh, there is definitely price collusion happening - just take one look at the way the Oil futures contracts are traded, and the massive bets being placed on sites like Kalshi and Polimarket.

But that’s impacting every nation, not just us - the leash is getting yanked much higher up the food chain than people like to point the finger here domestically at Shell/BP etc. & all thanks to the US and Israeli attacks on Iran damaging or destroying something like ~40% of all Middle East oil refining capacity.

Bit of a tangent, but I honestly think we need to step out from behind the US’s skirt at some point, they have proven to no longer be a reliable and trustworthy partner.

But what do we do beyond that, to ensure our national sovereignty - and prevent us getting Ukraine’d or Iran’d - short of developing and stockpiling our own nuclear arsenal?

Do you mean they usually buy different oil?

What happened before mid March?

Wait, the rest of the country doesn't have a fuel cycle?? Huh.

Pro: you can reliably get "cheap" fuel on a Tuesday.

Con: Everyone gets fuel on Tuesdays, and you will sit in traffic to fuel up. And if you run out of fuel on a Wednesday or Thursday, you're gonna be (even more) broke.

ABC News Daily hosted David Byrne, professor of economics, who talked about this.

He didn't go into a lot of detail but basically, it's because fuel watch allows retailers to monitor each other's prices.

Basically, fuel retailers can always increase their margins by fluctuating their prices. Cheap today more expensive tomorrow.

When Fuel Watch was introduced (only exists in WA), you couldn't just fluctuate your prices irrespective of what everyone else was doing because if your price was significantly higher than everyone elses you wouldn't have any customers. So retailers had to fluctuate their prices in concert with other retailers.

Finally, if every retailer is going to have a high point and a low point each week, it feels sensible that right before the weekend would be the highpoint, because that's when everyone is gearing up for their weekend plans. Then high over the weekend when people are doing things, high on Monday when everyone is back from a weekend away, then cheap fuel Tuesday to gather up some customers, and so on.

I swear that began when fuel watch was implemented.

None the less I like the fuel watch system. Before that it was a clown show.