The Ballooning Cost Of Motoring

Today's image was taken  on the Fremlin Walk shopping centre in Maidstone after our usual Sunday food shop and pint at The Market House.
It's a rear and side view (I didn't actually like the front!) of a McLaren MP4-12C Spider (or McLaren 12C for short). It's the first production car wholly designed and built by McLaren - their first production road car produced since the McLaren F1, which ended production in 1998.
It has a carbon fibre composite chassis and a twin-turbocharged V8 engine which generates 600 ps (592 hp) at 7500 rpm at around 600 n-m (400 lbf-ft) of torque at 5600 rpm (for all you car nuts out there) - much like my 11 year-old Focus! :-)
I must admit I hadn't really taken into account why it was sitting in the middle of a shopping centre with balloons attached to it as there didn't appear to by any signs indicating why it was there or anyone giving out information. Therefore, I was a bit mortified to find out later that you were supposed to make a charitable donation to take a picture of it or with it. Thankfully I managed to rectify that online.

Talking of the cost of motoring, Rishi Sunak's Spring statement does absolutely nothing to help with the cost of living including motoring. The 5p cut in fuel duty only put the price of a litre of petrol or diesel back to where it had been 2 weeks ago - and in fact most of our local forecourts haven't passed on the piffling saving anyway. I know that a tank of fuel for my car must be over £20 more than it was just a couple of months ago. I'm lucky enough to be able to bear the cost, in the short term at least, but our 'esteemed' Chancellor has shamefully done nothing at all to help the poorest in our society who are being worst hit by the cost of living crisis.