BS: Petrol Prices UK

Subject: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: The Smiler
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 12:49 PM

Blimey. I went into my local Tesco Station and filled up. Around Christmas time it cost me about £50 to fill up.
What the hell are people on about. What cost of living rises. Everything is so rosy.
£62.90 it cost me. I could have fallen over.
I think that represents about 25% increase in about 4 months.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: gnu
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 01:35 PM

Well... it's comin on summer... hold onto yer hat on accounta it's gonna keep goin up. Especially with the troop and equipment increases in Afghanistan.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 02:01 PM

Prices round here vary between 116p and 120p a litre. My drive to work is around 50 mile round trip so getting to be an expensive business!

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 02:10 PM

The UK average price for a litre of unleaded has today hit a new record of 119.9p a litre (higher than it reached in 2008).

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 02:44 PM

Over £1.30 up here. Where of course, there is very liitle public transport, and a car is a necessity

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: pdq
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 02:46 PM

About 80% of the pump price of gasoline in the UK is taxes.

The government-media complex controls what you think and do.

You are told that you are destroying the planet by driving a car and producing CO₂, and this justifies punitive tax rates.

Same for cigarettes. Bad so they must be subject to a punitive tax.

A 39¢ pack of cigarettes now cost $7.50 and a 99¢ gallon of gas is now $3.10 in the US.

Still a bargain compared to Scotland and the Netherlands.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: gnu
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 04:49 PM

Bullets, helicopters, tanks and the like are expensive.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 05:34 PM

"You are told that you are destroying the planet by driving a car and producing CO2, and this justifies punitive tax rates.

Same for cigarettes. Bad so they must be subject to a punitive tax.


Makes sense to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 06:05 PM

I wonder if this will lead to less cars on the road? Probably not - silly me!

The other day I happened to be walking through a leafy, suburban area, that I hadn't visited for some years. It used to be quiet and peaceful but, on this most recent occasion (at about 2:30pm on a Wednesday afternoon), a car went past me every second or two - and at a junction with a main road there was a queue waiting to exit on to it.

Just a generation or so ago there was one car per family (or, in the case of my family, zero cars). Now even the family cat and dog have a car (and I'm sure that, just yesterday, I spotted a hamster taking its driving test!).

We've built our whole civilisation around the internal combustion engine (a very stupid and short-sighted thing to do) and now the foundations of the whole flimsy edifice are beginning to be undermined.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 06:07 PM

I agree with McG and I am an ex-smoker and a current driver. We need to drive as few miles as we can in the smallest and most efficient cars we can find.

There might be some justice and fairness when US gasoline reaches 10 bucks a gallon and people stop going to war to keep some of those stupid childish toys on the road.

It needn't be about CO2, it's about the deadly politics of oil. Or imagne a world where the Americans have burned all the oil in hummers so we've no plastics or hydrocarbon-derived pharmaceuticals or other oil products.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 03:07 AM

"a 99¢ gallon of gas is now $3.10 in the US"

Stop whining. It's £6 in the UK - that's over $9 a gallon. You lot over there don't know you're born! :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: The Barden of England
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 03:20 AM

The strange thing is the following from the AA statistics at the end of March show that "The UK has the twelfth highest unleaded price in Europe and the second highest diesel price.". Why should diesel be that way??
John Barden

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 05:15 AM

Aye, you're all to holier than thou down in the suburbs, and the home counties, where transport is plentiful.
What about the thousands of people who have no access to public transport, and for whom the nearest supermarkt is at least 50 miles away, or more? They can't get Tesco to deliver you know!
For a site which covers the world like Mudcat does, it's contributors can be intensely parochial at times.
The highlands of Scotland, in common with many other remote regions in the UK, is not just a pretty place for tourists to visit. It is also home to thousands of people who have to make a living, and who do all the things that other people in the UK do.
They just have to travel further, and pay more, in order to do so!

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Tangledwood
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 05:59 AM

Last time I visited UK, a couple of years ago, fuel prices were a hot topic too. Driving a hired car in an unfamiliar country I meticulously obeyed the speed limit on the motorways and got left in the wake of almost every other vehicle. Want to reduce your fuel costs? Slow down!

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: The Barden of England
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 06:55 AM

I understand your plight John - not good I do agree.
John Barden

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 08:40 AM

I believe the price of a barrel of oil has gone up quite a bit over the past year. If the relative value of the currency of a country has fallen (this possibly happened in the UK), it could also contribute to higher gas prices (oil has been tagged to US dollars). Since Canada is a major oil exporter (it's mostly from Alberta and Newfoundland), when the price oil goes up, it frequently stimulates a rise in the value of the dollar. This cushons some of impact of a oil rise...but not a total shield from an oil price rise. There are also seasonal factors (refining and supply and demand) often cited for rises.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 09:33 AM

"Want to reduce your fuel costs? Slow down!"

Want to reduce your fuel costs (US)? Stop driving around in ridiculous, gas-guzzling, hugely-over-powered and oversized vehicles! :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 10:09 AM

I don't have the option to use public transport to work as the buses and trains don't go there. To get to my workplace would entail at least two train changes and three buses and probably take around three hours allowing for connections and even then I would onl just make it before the students. So I drive the 25 miles there and back which used to cost me about £25 but now is almost £10 more.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Anne Lister
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 11:32 AM

Where we live in South Wales we need two cars as our journeys to work would be totally impossible on the public transport currently available. There's one bus up our way, which runs between 10 am and 4 pm. I could walk the mile down a steep hill to catch a bus from the town centre but those buses take me to other town centres and my work doesn't ever tend to be in town centres. And I'd have to walk the mile up the steep hill at the end of the day which isn't easy with asthma (and, possibly, shopping). My husband did the public transport thing in the snow ... two miles to walk to the nearest station, catch a train to Cardiff, catch another train to Ystrad Mynach and then walk two miles or more to work. Not really practical on a daily basis.
So I get rather tired when politicians and other well-meaning folk who live in cities with integrated public transport tell us to use our cars less. When I lived in London, I used buses and tubes most of the time - if only I could do that now!

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 02:43 PM

Well I don't believe I said don't drive, I believe I said drive the least number of miles in the most efficient vehicle available. The next few years will see a growing range of very credible zero emission vehicles. Hybrids, driven as their makers intended and not abused by Jeremy Clarkson to prove a fake point are helpful and well established. Fuel taxes msut be used to improve public transport availability and utility. It's easy to keep finding ten reasons for doing nothing, something constructive is needed.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: GUEST,Bob L
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 05:51 PM

>>>I drive the 25 miles there and back which used to cost me about £25 but now is almost £10 more.<<<

Mrs. Duck, whatever are you driving, a Hummer? At £1.20 per litre for fuel, and allowing the same again for overheads (which I believe is the AA recommended, and therefore normal, allowance), that works out at 7.8 miles to the gallon. Or do your costs have to cover ridiculous parking fees?

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Anne Lister
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 06:13 PM

Royston, it's not what's on this thread that has bugged me, it's listening to politicians and others going on about how the cost of fuel will encourage us all to think again about using our cars. As if we all had a choice about it. And I'd love to get a more fuel-efficient vehicle, if only I could afford one.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 03:58 AM

I sympathise, Anne. You've been to our part of the Backwoods - public transport is virtually non-existent and what there is seems designed simply to take everyone to/from Lincoln. Bad news if you want to go somewhere else. So a car is essential.

We used to have a rail network till some Tory tit-head decided it was a good idea to destroy it (a bit like the way another Tory tit-head decided it was a good idea to destroy our mining industry and manufacturing base, and we're now held to ransom by Eastern Europe and the Far East).

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 04:42 AM

It does look as tho government has lost the plot and every year Petrol and Alcohol taxes go up

A guy once confronted Gordon Brown on this issue, he simply laughed him in his face

I was and still am incensed by this sort of behaviour

However, t'would by no different under the Conservatives

Many initiatives have been suggested including direct action by "truckers" on motorways

It is no wonder ppl wont vote, no one can make their feelings felt, and the elected continue to do exactly as they please and take action under the "Rule of Law" ~ where it seems police fearful of physical assault from unarmed protestors can be repelled by hitting unarmed females as a deterent

I am sorry but society is infor some bad times again, particularly if Union bashing Conservatives are elected!! back to Thatcher era, god help us

Ray

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 06:58 AM

But EVERYONE should vote any way - If only to stop the Extremist Parties getting a toe hold !

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 09:17 AM

""We've built our whole civilisation around the internal combustion engine (a very stupid and short-sighted thing to do) and now the foundations of the whole flimsy edifice are beginning to be undermined.""

Some of us live in rural areas because we can't afford to live in the Cities, and for us the car is not a lifestyle choice.

With lousy public transport, a car is a dire necessity.

For those of working age there is simply no choice, and for pensioners without a car getting about is virtually impossible.

On bus services in Kent, fares are as much as £3.50 for a six mile trip, and that trip, on a bus which goes all round the villages, takes 56 minutes.

The same trip by car will get up to five people to journey's end in 15 minutes, at a cost of approximately £1.00. That's 15 pence each.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 03:38 PM

How did people manage before we had cars?

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: gnu
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 04:49 PM

Less well.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: pdq
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 05:16 PM

Prosperity is wasteful.

No waste, no prosperity.

Low gas prices mean people shop more, go to restaurants more, vacation more, spend more money on entertaimnement, etc.

At $10/gal.(US) people would stay home and gripe. What fun, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 06:05 PM

"Some of us live in rural areas because we can't afford to live in the Cities, and for us the car is not a lifestyle choice."

Is it really cheaper to live in a rural area, Don? In Manchester, where I live, houses are expensive (unless you want to live in the grottier parts) - but in rural Cheshire, and some parts of rural Lancashire, house prices are astronomical! As I see it, in the last two or three decades, wealthier people have moved out of the cities to live in the countryside and, incidentally, forced up house prices there. They have only been able to do that because of the motor car. Now, with fuel prices going through the roof, they could be in serious trouble. I take no pleasure in this situation (perhaps if I'd been fortunate to be rich I might have moved to the countryside as well). But I'm sort of glad that I live in a city where shops and other services (like public transport) are readily available and close to hand.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 07:08 PM

Around every big town or city there are areas where the city folk live, and from which they commute to the city to work. Those ares tend to be very pricey.

There are also areas which the City folk leave alone, and which are therefore quite inexpensive to live in. In case you are wondering why the City folk ignore them, it's because they have little public transport, and what there is will not serve anyone who has to go to work early, or at a considerable distance.

Also, of course there are fewer jobs available, so it is necessary to travel, and what transport there is does not cover any cross country journey, only up to the City and back again. My last job was in Sevenoaks, just fifteen miles from my home, across country. To get to work at nine, I had to leave home at 6.40am, take three buses, or two trains, then walk a mile and a half (and Sevenoaks is mostly at a thirty degree angle from the horizontal).

Fares for this £12.50 return by train, or £16.00 bus fare in, with my pensioners pass covering the return. Non pensioners would have to pay a total of £12.00 to get home.

Before you try to tell me I know nothing about the comparative costs, let me say that I lived in London for the first thirty years of my life, and at the time I moved down to Kent my mortgage for a three bedroom house cost virtually the same amount as I was paying in rates in London. The London rent was double that amount.

So I'm in that place, and I an't do much but merely exist, unless I use a car. My car is off the road now, having been damaged by some halfwit in a carpark, and my attendance at folk clubs is reduced to daytime sessions, or evenings when I can cadge a lift.

The only holiday I can afford, since Gordon Brown mugged me for two thirds of my pension, is in a caravan, which actually suits me fine, but you try dragging one of those down to Sidmouth without a car.

When you City folk talk about using public transport it makes me laugh. You are lucky Shimrod! You have the option!

And, BTW, I live just thirty five miles from London.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 04:27 AM

So it sounds like most of would agree with the idea (that floated agains last week) of shifting the tax on fuel to a GPS-based system of road pricing.

Rural roads taxed at, I don't know, 2p a mile; while urban roads & m/ways ta quid a mile in rush hour, less at other times. Your personal, per mile tax-rate adjusted up or down depending on the CO2 output of the car you choose to use.

Fair, n'est-ce pas?

Or do we get another ten reasons for saying no and doing nothing?

How do we stop burning so much fuel in transportation? And why does everyone seem to regard themselves as deserving of a special exemption from any and all responsibility?

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: banjoman
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 06:13 AM

Spare a thought for us disabled drivers who have no choice other than to use a car. Yes I get a mobility allowance but that goes to keep the car on the road. I would willingly use public transport if there was a bus available where I live and it would stop outside my door.
I feel that motorists are a soft touch so far as taxation is concerened as its unlikely that many will stop driving. If they did, then the government would simply find another soft touch to tax

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 08:25 AM

It is in no way insensitive to your predicament, Banjoman, to ask whether or not you have any suggestions about what might be done?

Very many, most, disabled drivers can access mobility grants that can provide a fully funded vehicle leaving the driver just to fuel it. Drivers can choose fuel efficient, hybrid or fully electric vehicles. A road pricing scheme could protect disabled drivers by limiting their tax exposure or exempting them completely.

Solutions. Not more problems and nay-saying.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 09:24 AM

Don, I sympathise with you, I really do!

I should tell you, though, that when I was working I lived in South Manchester and worked in Stockport. Home to work by car was a 20 minute drive. In 1998 I developed epilepsy and had to surrender my driving licence until my condition could be brought under control (I was off the road for 16 months all told - I won't bore you with the details). I then had to get to work by bus. This involved two buses and took an hour on a good day and two hours on a bad day (which were quite frequent). Getting home was even worse because sometimes buses were often very late. Greater Manchester buses were privatised under the Thatcher government so that only the most profitable routes are now reliable.

But our society's utter dependence on the car have led to both of us having to endure these frustrations and reductions in our qualities of life. There are lots of other disadvantages as well, of course, the concreting over of the countryside and the severe reductions in rural services being but two (commuters and countryside 'colonisers', of course, tend not to use rural services).

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 05:49 PM

The motorist has been government's favourite cash cow since as far back as I can remember, and it's past time that they found somebody else to foot the bills.

I would be broadly in favour of a graduated road pricing system, but it would have to replace the plethora of taxes already levied on car owners.

If it were not for private car owners there would be no road system for public transport to run on without a massive hike in income tax.

When you start to tot up all the individual taxes, it is quite astonishing.

1. You buy a car, and several thousand pounds of the price you pay go straight to the treasury.
2. You pay for a licence to keep the car and use it on the road, a couple of hundred extra pounds.
3. You fill the tank, and about eighty percent is tax.

A gallon of petrol is estimated to cost about 30p to produce. Add in say 15% profit for the refinery, 15% profit for the distributor, and another 15% for the retailer, gives a realistic 48p per gallon at the pump. The current UK price is approximately £5.40per gallon. The difference is made up of fuel tax, and then VAT on the total. They levy tax upon a tax, and how the hell is that right and fair, and where does that happen, other than to motorists.

Going back to the Road Fund Licence fee, which was brought in initially on the pretext of covering the cost of roads, it is true to say that the fees collected in one year cover the total capital cost of road building and maintenance for several years, and the rest disappears into the treasury black hole.

If all those taxes were discontinued, and a system of graduated road pricing adopted, it would be fairer among motorists, but the pricing would have to be set by a committee independent of government.

Experience tells us that government always overcharges (ask them where the rest of the Road Fund Licence money goes).

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Alan Day
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 06:05 AM

I wonder if long term it is going to effect events such as sport, festivals etc.
This knocks on to caterers, artists, pubs (already under threat).
Al

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 07:40 AM

The Telegraph today has David Cameron promising some action on petrol prices Telegraph

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 09:00 AM

"The Telegraph today has David Cameron promising some action on petrol prices"

What a sack of shit. Take 10p tax off a litre of petrol.

Where/how are they going to fund that and make an impact on our deficit?

Obvious - move the tax back onto wholesale oil prices. And that would have what effect on petrochemical product prices like, errm, petrol? Or heating oil? or the diesel that delivers groceries to the supermarket shelves?

Any resident rocket scientists want to have a go at answering that.

Surely nobody would actually vote for a party so utterly stupid as to have made that "pledge", would they? Really?

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 09:04 AM

Oh, the first two lines of that news non-story:

David Cameron will propose temporarily cutting fuel duty to protect motorists from the impact of rising oil prices.

The move will be funded from the increased taxes the Government raises from other levies on oil companies when wholesale prices rise.

I hadn't noticed at first that this stupid mumbling was only a "temporary" musing. Probably it will last no longer than 7 May if they get elected, which of course they won't.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 09:58 AM

What a sack of shit. Take 10p tax off a litre of petrol.

I love a well reasoned argument!
When the price of petrol was last rising, it was made clear that the government was gaining massive, unplanned for, income. The increase in price increases Corporation Tax & VAT take by the government. The fuel duty is the only 'fixed cost' in the price of petrol at the pumps.
If David Cameron states that this can be reduced (when the price of fuel is high) then I will accept that.

Probably it will last no longer than 7 May if they get elected, which of course they won't.
By 7th May they would not yet be in Government, so it could not be introduced in time to end then.
Do you think before posting?

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 10:54 AM

ANY tax which its the waged and the unwaged equally, is by it's very nature unfair.
The only fair taxes sre based on income.
Raise the tax threshold, and then raise income tax.
I have no idea how many people there are in the UK work force, but at a guess, 1p in the pound increase on income tax, would raise many millions of pounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 11:15 AM

Yes, Nigel, I think.

I could rip into that absurd idea all day long.

How does that idea work in a time - like, errm, now! - when wholesale oil prices are falling. So the tax yield from the petrochemical sector is also falling? Hmm?

How will it work as we approach peak-oil, and the tax yield from the petrochemical sector falls as the cost of exploration and extraction hits profits and governments are forced to ration supplies and control the price of crude?

Doing anything other than learning to pay the real price of hydrocarbon energy - and finding alternatives to it - is quite stupid and dangerous. But that's the tories all over - quite stupid and dangerous.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 11:40 AM

"Probably it will last no longer than 7 May if they [the Tories] get elected, which of course they won't."

I have a horrible feeling that they [the Tories] WILL get elected - but that's the British electorate all over -"quite stupid and dangerous".

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 08:13 PM

May I suggest that, if they do get in, you suspend your hostility until they actually give you reason.

That's what I did when New Labour won in 97, and I got sweet fuck all of what they promised. They got back again at the following election. Still fuck all, except a prime minister who nobody elected.

Of course this will inevitably fall on deaf ears.

Don T. (maybe not so stupid, or dangerous)

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 10:40 PM

Shimrod ~~ Be a bit realistic: do you really want another 5 years of the present pathetic mob? & if not, what genuine alternative can you see to letting Cameron et al have a try? It's no good being like the famous yokel asked the way somewhere who replied "You can't start from here." Here, I am afraid, is the only place you can start from.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 03:44 AM

I prefer the yokel, Michael, to the fool with a bladder on a stick prepared to vote for the newest, shiniest crock of shit on the basis "What's the worst that could happen: It could be a bit of a laugh"

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 04:02 AM


I could rip into that absurd idea all day long.

How does that idea work in a time - like, errm, now! - when wholesale oil prices are falling. So the tax yield from the petrochemical sector is also falling? Hmm?

Yes, I'm sure you could 'rip into the idea', but I suggested 'reasoned argument'.
Your comment about falling oil prices was fully covered in the write up, which you clearly responded to without reading/understanding.
David Cameron will propose temporarily cutting fuel duty to protect motorists from the impact of rising oil prices.
The move will be funded from the increased taxes the Government raises from other levies on oil companies when wholesale prices rise.

However, it is likely to prove controversial when oil prices fall as fuel duty will rise again.
The details of the scheme – including the price at which petrol will "stabilise" – will be the subject of a consultation launched soon after a Conservative election victory. It is expected to be launched within months if Mr Cameron is successful.

Last night, a senior Conservative source said: "We are very straight with people. This is not a tax giveaway – instead it is a sensible, balanced policy that protects families from big increases in the oil price.

"When the oil price rockets, the tax falls and the petrol price at the pump stays stable – and vice-versa when the oil price falls."

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Royston
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 04:17 AM

I don't need to waste my time reading in full a proposal that is destined to be absurd from its initial premise. I am glad that the Tories acknowledge how silly their own idea is.

In the long run the proposal cannot work because the revenue taxes are paid on oil-co profits, which will diminish.

It ignores the fact that people must not be "protected" from the rising price of energy. They must be totally exposed to it. The government should not be mitigating hydrocarbon taxes, they should be raking it in and investing hugely in giving us alternatives to burning hydrocarbons in private motor vehicles.

The proposal is, on any level, dangerous and stupid. The Tories are dangerous and stupid. Labour aren't very much better. At least they pretend to understand the issues around energy supply and consumption.

Subject: RE: BS: Petrol Prices UK
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 04:23 AM

I don't need to waste my time reading in full a proposal that is destined to be absurd from its initial premise
This takes ignorance to a new level, you are prepared to 'rip into' a proposal you admit you haven't read.
It ignores the fact that people must not be "protected" from the rising price of energy. They must be totally exposed to it
It makes it clear that the intention is not protection against rising prices, but against the rapid fluctuations seen in the fuel market.

That's it from me for now on this subject.