The soaring price of petrol is getting all the attention these days, and rightly so. The local petrol station operator claims we'll soon be paying $1.50 to $1.80 a litre here in Australia. Investment banker Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, reckons that to reflect its scarcity, the price of oil should be $150 a barrel instead of the $60 or so at present. When that happens we'll be paying a whopping $3 a litre for petrol.

Since the present oil crisis began a couple of years ago (at the time almost costing Prime Mate John Howard his head), we have been conditioned like Pavlovian dogs to accept the unacceptable. Now that the crisis is permanent, we pull up to the bowser whimpering quietly, noting with blank stares that $25 goes into the tank as fast as $10 used to.

When, on occasion, the price inexplicably drops a few cents from the previous day's high, some of us with the vestiges of a sense of humour exclaim to the attendant, "Wow, the price has dropped to $1.18, time to fill 'er up!" And he laughs and give thanks that we haven't picked up one of those 25% larger Mars bars and tried to bludgeon him to death.

Oil alone will cause economies all over the world to eventually crash. When that happens, we, the wretched of earth, will have but one satisfaction: the sight of worthless, rusting SUVs lying dead on the fried lawns of suburbia.

But what of that other basic requirement of life beyond water, food and shelter? Yes, toilet paper, the unsung rip off.

You may have noticed some of your favourite supermarket items (chips and breakfast cereal, for example) suddenly appearing in new packaging with less content for increased prices, but toilet paper seems to slip under the radar.

A few years ago, one or two brands made six roll packets containing 300 2ply sheets per roll for around $3. Of course, you had the option to buy from a bewildering variety of high-priced spreads (no pun intended) featuring super soft paper fit for royal bottoms.

Not long ago, the 300 sheet rolls dropped to 280, and they were only manufactured by generic brands. The costly sucker brands dropped to a maximum of 260 sheet rolls.

Nowadays you can pay almost $5 for a six-pack of 200 sheet rolls. A roll that size is next to useless unless you are single and anorexic.

At present, I know of only one outlet selling one generic brand of 280 sheet rolls -- the minimum size for any family with any kind of budget -- and increasingly the product seems to be made from biodegradable sandpaper.

Well! you may be snorting, this anal retentive fool does go on. But TP is central to our Western way of life. We cannot leave the toilet without it. Whereas in the East, where I spent a couple of years, the use of paper is considered barbaric. The reason those folk eat with their right hand is because their left is used to wash their bottoms after defecation. As a result their bottoms are always clean, and so are their hands, because of course they wash them afterwards with soap and water.

While we in the civilised world are being forced to pay through the nose so that we can walk around all day with traces of faeces stuck to our anuses.

Indeed, remember this the next time someone like the Education Minister Brendan Nelson pontificates about the Good Aussie Values his government unconsciously despises. As he stands there so full of himself that he could detonate the entire universe, remember that his asshole is most likely still smeared with shit.