XX: The high prices here in England are all  TAX.  For every £10 of gas I put in my car, something like £9:30 goes to the government!! Same with cigarettes, a pack of Marlboro Lights is around £5 here, (well over $7) and the majority of that is tax also. Then we get V.A.T. on most things too, at 17.5%, kind of like your state tax. It stands for Value Added Tax, though there is little value in it to us! Our government has lots of other "stealth" taxes that they get us with too >

Angie: I drive 3 miles to work, and I spend as much as you do on gas per month.

A few years ago a freind of mine who worked for a gas wholesaler told me to fill up all my cars cause prices were gonna go up in about a week.  He said they were warned that there would be a huge price jump but don't tell anyone... 

A week later prices jumped about 20 cents a gallon right after an "accident" caused a gas refinery in Los Angeles to blow up. He said yep, that was it, and that plant wasn't even part of the supply chain, it was old and they needed to replace it.