Call me old fashioned, but if I go to a filling station it's to put petrol in the car. I may, occassionally, also buy a newspaper or milk. I wouldn't go there to do the weeks shopping.

I find it bizarre that I have to join a que for a petrol pump while the car owners are dithering inside what has now become a supermarket, and I have to wait yet again while a succession of shopping baskets are swiped through the checkout. All I want to do is pay for petrol.

This also happens in my local Texaco station which is in the middle of the village where I live. You go to get petrol and there is a queue out on to the street due to the fact that people get their petrol and then go into pay leaving the car in place, they then decide that they need bread and milk, 20 fags, 6 bars of choclate, 2 tubs of pringles and €20 top up for the mobile phone.

My local filling station has a hot deli, and an off-licence apparenty the petrol is the hook to get you into the shop where margins are higher. It so bad in my filling station that the till operator asks you if you bought any petrol.

Another thing that happens in Ireland is that all filling stations and indeed shops scan the newspapers into the epos system again adding to the queues.

How come in the states you can pay for your petrol at he pump thereby eliminating the need to go in the shop in the first place.