Crude oil prices reached fresh highs on the international petroleum exchanges today with some oil trading at over $107 a barrel. And for motorists the pain is going to get worse in the coming weeks for it takes up to two weeks and sometimes longer for wholesale prices to feed through to the cost of a litre of fuel on the petrol forecourts. As our chart shows, there has been a pretty inexorable rise in the retail price of petrol. All eyes will be on the Chancellor this week in his Budget statement to see if he makes any fresh announcements on petrol duty.

A new survery from USwitch has found that household bills have risen by £1,783 a year, with petrol prices up 18 per cent (£192), energy bills up 13 per cent (£114), food prices up 11 per cent (£324) and mortgage prices up nine per cent (£1,020). Little wonder that the amount of money people have for discretionary spending - money left over once all of the main bills have been paid - is shrinking at a rapid rate of knots.