No escaping the family!

If you head out onto the motorway in the coming weeks don’t be too surprised to see an over-sized family beaming at you. HGV driver, Lindsey Scott, is taking part in ‘Take Me With You’ – an art project that shines the light on long distance workers and their families.
“Many drivers cover over 100,000 miles a year on the road network with some being required to stay away from home for many days or weeks at a time.”
Lindsey, a mother of five, has a family portrait on either side of her lorry, measuring a whopping 13m x 2m (43ft x 6ft). Now the family follows her wherever she drives.

Paul Stearman, who is also taking part in the project, said, “i’m usually away from Sunday to Thursday and I really miss my family. I speak to them on the phone but it’s nice to be able to take them along with me,’ said 41-year-old Paul Stearman, who’s been a driver for 24 years.

Oil now over $100 a barrel

Motorists are likely to be further hit in the near future as oil prices have soared to over $100 a barrel – the first time since the 2008 recession. Brent North Sea crude for for one month delivery fell 56 cents to $100.46 a barrel, after spiking to $101.73 on Monday.
Jay Levine, a broker at Enerjay in Portland, Maine, said: “Escalating tensions in the Middle East are contributing to buy-first-ask-questions-later ‘panic-buying’.” Seven days of protests aimed at ending Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old rule culminated today in a “march of a million” in Alexandria. 100 people have been killed since protests began seven days ago.
The Suez Canal, the key passageway for Europe’s crude oil, has yet to be affected by the protests but has induced panic trading – bumping the price of oil to over $100.
David Cameron, however, has hinted that a fair fuel stabiliser might be put into effect in the future. He said, “we are trying to have a system where, when the oil price goes up, we share the difficulty of that with the motorist. That’s fair.”