Petrol and diesel prices soar

Record-high diesel prices, confident home sellers and a headline-grabbing Jisa rate - Tim Bennett rounds up the best of the week's personal finance news.

It's been a bad week for motorists. The price of diesel is at an all-time high, notes Ben Laurance on Thisismoney.co.uk. A litre now costs more than 143p, whereas two years ago it was nearer 114p, according to the AA motoring organisation.

Unrest in the Middle East is largely being blamed: "hedge funds and speculators have been stoking the crude oil price frenzy", betting that an escalation of the Iranian crisis will disrupt supplies. Average petrol prices are also pretty toppy at around 135p a litre compared to a peak last May of 137p. To find the cheapest diesel near you, try Petrolprices.com.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.