Where I live diesel is the obvious choice bearing in mind that petrol is 60% more expensive per liter. About 90% of population drives a diesel even though we don't have highways simply due to the fact that petrol is so damn expensive for unknown reasons.
Was gonna say exactly the same thing but you beat me to it!! In the countries where I drive a lot (France, Spain, Italy & Portugal) diesel is so much cheaper, sometimes 40cents cheaper per litre. If you have a diesel then 1 fill up could save you 20euros compared to a petrol & thats without taking in to account the extra MPG. The economics argument works very very well outside of the UK, but if you are based in the UK then it would be hard for me to justify getting a diesel car at the mo (car size depending).
2nd hand car prices in most countries in Europe iv lived in are through the roof, sometimes double prices of UK & it seems that diesel cars haven't gone down in price yet unlike from what iv read about the UK's 2nd hand market (although I don't know if thats just newspaper talk).
Also I think deals like PCP/Leasing etc make it easier to make a decision in the UK... From my knowledge, people in the EU see PCP/leasing deals as false economy, mostly because they keep their cars for a long time & see if as a5-10yr investment & also because the 2nd hand market is so strong. My 3yr old 1.6tdi is worth around 20k in Portugal. Prob half that in the UK. These good 2nd hand residuals, the fact that people keep their cars for so much longer & that diesel is sometimes 40cents per litre cheaper, still make diesel a great prospect.
Anyway, re: the DPF. Had plenty of diesels, never had a DPF warning light. I drive loads of short journeys, feel the fan coming on and hear it after I switch off the car sometimes too, maybe once every 2weeks max. I prob drive around 10miles per day and it has a small part of motorway, maybe 5 miles of it, whenever the car is warm, or iv driven a bit further , I just floor it and make sure revs are around 3k. Iv had her for 1.5yrs and only done 17k in her so defo not diesel territory but I think its about how you treat her. Incidentally I had a Mokka before the A3, 1.7cdi, bellowed smoke out the back every few days and had to keep driving. nightmare car & system, literally couldn't see cars behind me because the DPF region created so much smoke. The A3 has been amazingly reliable apart from the odd embarrassing looks of friends when they get out the car & it sounds like she's gonna blow up! My view would be that either you have a problem with the DPF or you aren't driving her correctly.