'How much should petrol cost?' Poll discussion

cactusdust

I can just imagine the response from George and Dave. Some spin about how they understand the cost of motoring and how its all deeply affecting the people. Yeah right.

ElkyElky

A lot of people keep forgetting that the higher petrol prices go.. the more it'll cost to buy your groceries, use public transport, ordering online and getting things delivered etc etc. Who ever voted £1.50 - £2 are total fools because they'll be paying that price too - even if they don't drive.

Petrol prices affect every single person in the country. Petrol is no longer a luxury but an essential everyday thing that without, the country will come to a complete halt with a real threat to life.

Alcohol and cigs on the other hand should be even more heavily taxed.

All of these hippie "save the earth" type people who protest about cars are only shooting themselves in the foot.

MrsE_2

lucylucky wrote: »

Really?

Where is this "outside of London" place?

I was looking at buses to work (I live in this place "outside of London").

I can get a bus to get me to work for about 8.35 (thats great, walk from bus stop to office, be there before 9am). However I wouldn't make the 4.30pm home bus, so I would have to get the 6.25pm one & get home after 7pm.

Thats pretty late when you finish at 5pm & live 7 miles away.

ETA, its £4.50 (I think that might be return) for a 7 mile trip.

Andreg

Well no surprise in the result of this poll. Of course a load of self-interested people are going to say we want cheaper fuel. We also want income tax allowances raised to £20k, top rate tax cut to 20%, VAT reduced to 10% and the pension age kept at 65. But seriously which of those should the government do first?

The one thing for sure is that oil is going to gradually run low, and as that happens its going to price a lot of people off the road. Better that we start to prepare sooner and encourage people to live near work or find other ways to reduce our oil consumption.

Producing food requires lots of fuel. In years to come when poor people are starving in this country how will people look back on today's whingers?

wilsongaz

I have just had a quick read through most of the posts, and whether in opposition or in favour to fuel cuts, everyone is covering their own back.

However everyone on here has their own story, so the option of working closer to home, taking a bike, public transport etc is not always an option.

If fuel was means tested, i.e. like income take, then I'm sure this poll would be a lot different. I earn £20k and spend 7.5% of that on fuel, which is an even higher percentage of my take home. I wonder how many politicians spend 10% of their income on fuel?

My point is a car is for many people a necessity (I live N. West scotland and I would be a crofter without a car,, home schooling my kids!) and a tax should represent a fair proportion of what you earn, so I am in favour of setting fuel duty/tax/vat bla bla bla to 50%, and fuel would cost £1 per litre.

This would still be a deterent to drive like an idot spinnign wheels etc., or buying a gas guzzling monster truck, but allowing people the right to use their own transport.

The short fall should quite simply be an increase in income tax which is a better representation of a democracy.

Also don't say people should move to the cities if they cannot affort it, my family has lived in this area for over 300 years and we are loosing young people every year because the city dwellers have bought up all our homes for their 2 week holiday (probably a bit harsh, but none the less true)

dots_thots

I've seen comments to raise taxes and I've seen comments against raising taxes deemed selfish!

Why is the automatic reaction today to look to the state to solve our problems? By any historical standard the government we have today is a leviathan of monstrous size - it now accounts for some 40-45% of spending! And what an incredibly inefficient spender it really is, not to mention the fact that the money often ends up in the coffers of certain companies who probably wouldn't get it if we had a truly free market.

A huge percentage of workers now work directly for government or get paid via government contracts. Government spending does not and has not ever created wealth or prosperity. Government borrowing crowds out private-sector borrowing and government spending diverts resources away from the private sector. The tax base of this country is shrinking as people leave - 300K-500K per year. According to the HMRC there are roughly 26M tax payers (which seems a bit high to me out of a population of 60M when you remove kids, retirees, ill and unemployed). 6-7M are public sector workers - 10% of the population work for government directly!

So, out of the that tax base of 26M, possibly 45% of their tax receipts are essentially recycled government spending, overseas spending notwithstanding. So, 14M people pay tax proper. 14M people paying all the bills - and this number is shrinking - and the people leaving tend to be the higher rate payers. At this rate, there will be 9-10M people paying all the bills in 10 years time!

We shouldn't be increasing taxes. We should be defaulting on the bankers' debts, letting the banks fail, rolling back the state by a few decades at least and allowing the private sector to flourish - because it really is the only way to generate wealth. We don't need and shouldn't want every facet of our lives managed and interfered with by government. We don't need them, it's certainly not a healthy situation to be in.

This situation will come to an end, because we are not above the laws of economics no matter how many people who benefit from government largesse hope we are. We either roll it back ourselves voluntarily or we suffer the consequences and the alternative is not pretty... If we roll it back however, we can abolish various taxes and lower others for everybody. And if we stopped paying interest on fictitious debt to private central banks - hey the party could really begin!!

Sure... these are "back of a cig packet" numbers but I think they're instructive.

g24

The problem is not how expensive fuel is now, rather how cheap it has been so far.

The proliferation and relative affordability of cars has led to the assumption that everyone has a God-given right to drive wherever they want or need to on a daily basis, and cheaply - this is unrealistic and unsustainable. Our lives have been shaped by this false freedom.

If you think the current high level of fuel duty is a problem, just wait until the increasing cost of oil extraction starts to have a really big effect on prices. This problem is NOT going to disappear and in the unlikely event that a Government does find a way of cutting fuel duty, realistically, it will not make a jot of difference to most people.

Personal transport should be more of a luxury and a privilege than an assumed right; people who don't need to travel should pay a fair (read:high) price for the privilege. I don't need to use my car every day, but when I do, I will accept the cost of a £1.50+ litre of fuel particularly if some of that money can help others who really need to travel and struggle to do so. People who *really* have no choice but to travel - i.e. to a place of work where they have to physically be there - need a vastly improved transport system or financial help with the cost of fuel.

We need to stop obsessing about the cost of fuel and start working on more realistic and sustainable solutions: a better transport system, more local amenities and community support, more home working for the large numbers of people who should be able to do this easily.

On the subject of flexible working practices, I am utterly dismayed at the archaic and short sighted working practices which are so common in this country; commuting to a place of work is a hangover from the industrial era when everyone needed to take their place on a production line, to which they lived nearby. This outdated mentality is still applied, and to people who don't live close to their place of work. With modern technology - cheap and widely available - a very significant number of people could work from home (or local satellite offices) for most if not all of the week. Why doesn't this happen? 1) Short-sighted employers can't see the benefits, don't want to change and amazingly, don't trust their employees to work at home. 2) the employees understandably enjoy and benefit from social interaction in the workplace. Yes, we like to mess about and chat at work; employers accept this when they can keep an eye on it.

Cars are expensive and environmentally damaging, traffic is time-consuming and stressful. We should only do this when we really need to. For the people who have to, transport should be affordable and effective. The people who don't need to travel should either modernise their lives or pay for the privilege of using a car.

So, £1.50/litre - start getting used to it, or change.

littlerat

It's all very well saying people have to accept it - but it's ridiculously high currently.

And it's not like it just effects putting petrol in your own car.

The supermarkets are going to be putting delivery costs up again at this rate, our local shops have already put up prices a bit as getting the stock in is starting to cost them more and 1 especially gets the stuff as locally as possible anyway, the whole "shop locally" thing doesn't change it all. Everything will be going up. If you're already on a tight income, petrol price increases sure as hell won't make it easier.

What about people who can't get to jobs due to the cost? Yes I know public transport, but there's plenty of jobs that public transport doesn't get to. And not everyone can move to within walking distance of where they work! It just isn't possible. I wonder if it keeps going up how many people will have to leave jobs?


The main thing for the whole running out of oil thing, to me, is good solutions should be being thought of, maybe force the fuel companies to use some of their gigantic profits to find a better fuel solution.

Taxing people to hell and back isn't exactly a solution.

jackieb

Our town only has 2 petrol stations, both run by the same person. The petrol in our nearest town, which is only 17 miles away is 5p a litre cheaper. I don't buy here if I can help it, but sometimes I don't have a choice. If i'm going out of town I don't fill up, I put in enough to get to where i'm going to, then buy it cheaper elsewhere.

dori2o

I would happily travel on public transport if it were adequate for the modern day society.

The buses around us start running at 6am on weekdays and Saturdays, but not until 8.30 on Sundays and bank holidays.

After 6pm Buses from the city to where I live are every half hour, and after 7.30pm are every hour.

Travelling on the bus takes at least 1 hour.

Now, I an scheduled to work on the royal wedding day, and on May day. I need to be in work at 8am on both days but buses wont start running until 8.30 so they ar out of the question.

I work until 6.30pm on a Monday to Wednesday, the bust stop is 25 minutes away and the buses are at 6.20, 6.50 and then 7.20. So I'm not getting home until at leat 8.20 as the earliest bus i can get is 7.20 and it's at least an hours travel. This adds on another hour to my day. I set off fopr work at 6.50am each day, so in total my hours on Monday to Wednesday are 13.5 a day, yet I only get paid for 8.5 hours. so 5 hours a day is wasted.

If I go in the car, I can set off at 7.45, get to work for 8.40ish, get a brew, take my meds, log into the computer and start work at 9 on the dot, work till 6.30, drive home and be home before 7.30. This makes my day 11.75 hours. It might not seem a lot of difference, but over a month, it's a lot of time that I can spend at home with my kids who go to bed at 8-8.30.

Add into the equation that I'm disabled and walking/standing /sitting in a confined area caused extreme pain and this is another reason why public transport is unsuitable.

In other countries in Europe the transport system is 24/7 and puts ours to shame. Until this is resolved public transport is not a solution for the majority.

IMO it doesn't matter what we think. Fuel duty is an easy money grabber for the government. They won't let it go that easy.