Any fuel protests on the go?

almillar

PeterZ - No I don't want road taxes to pay for other stuff! As I said, police, hospitals have a cost due to roads, and it's right that road tax reimburses them for that resource (not, for example, building hospitals from road taxes). My point was that the gov is not following its own policy - that the price of fuel should go up slightly ahead of inflation.
As has been said above, VAT is paid on fuel - THAT goes towards running the country. Also the VAT paid on new cars, tax on insurance (there's VAT in there I think?), VAT on any car care stuff you buy, any maintenace parts, any worked carried out on my car - I think I pay quite enough tax, through my car, to run the country, without artificially increasing the price of fuel under the guise of environmental reasons.
I agree with you 100% about companies taking money off the country - Topshop, Barclays etc...

taxiphil

Shimrod wrote: »

So who should we vote for then? I've never seen a party campaigning with a manifesto including a reduction of fuel tax.

At the 2001 general election, the Tories promised 6p off a litre of fuel in their manifesto.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/news/vote2001/hi/english/newsid_1322000/1322948.stm

It gives some tiny glimmer of hope that a major party might one day make the same pledge again, but only if they sense enough public support for it.

Rolandtheroadie

PeterZ wrote: »

Protest about the money that we give to India, if they can afford a space program why are we giving them money, especially as we are broke.

Thought I read something the other day there about us stopping giving money to other countries (think India Russia and China were mentioned amongst others).

I dont think anyone expects overall tax income to the country to be cut as such, just give motorists/hauliers a break for once.
Spread the burden so to speak.

smitchy73

So far no one has been able to give an honest answer to this question that me and some colleagues ask!
Why is it that when oil was at $140 a barrel, a litre of diesel was sitting around 90-odd pence, but now oil is sitting at about $110 a barrel last week, possibly less now, the cost to us is £1.30-odd per litre??
Duty and VAT have both gone up, but not that much, one garage close to me was sitting at 135.9p per litre of diesel when I passed it on the way to work last Friday at about 6.30am, when I was on the way home at 4pm, it had risen by 4p per litre, !!!!!!? Oil didn't go up in that time, they probably never even had a new delivery that they had to pay more for, so I have no idea why it rises so much in so little a time.
I'm waiting on a couple of the new electric cars coming out in the next year or so and I'll be selling my Golf Bluemotion which I can get over 750 miles on a tank of diesel commuting to work, so at moment I don't pay road tax but pay a lot more through my fuel duty and VAT.

rev_henry

No one's mentioned the supply and demand issue yet. As fuel gets more expensive fewer people can afford it, people cut back on journeys etc so less is bought and less tax is paid. I read that as a result of one of the recent fuel duty increases the income to the treasury actually went DOWN £0.2 billion as people cut back and drove less. Thus that duty increase at least was counter productive.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport-environment/scots-petrol-prices-to-hit-6-a-gallon-1.1047199

'The Pre-Budget Report by the last Labour government found that the increases in the cost of fuel resulted in £0.2 billion less revenue to the Treasury because people were buying less fuel.'

Rolandtheroadie

smitchy73 wrote: »

So far no one has been able to give an honest answer to this question that me and some colleagues ask!
Why is it that when oil was at $140 a barrel, a litre of diesel was sitting around 90-odd pence, but now oil is sitting at about $110 a barrel last week, possibly less now, the cost to us is £1.30-odd per litre??

$140 a barrel was probably £70 at that time, Now the $110 is £68 and as you say, tax on it is up.
Thats peak figures too. How long was it $140? a day? a week? How much was fuel at that time. I'm sure we've paid over £1.20 in the past 2-3 years before.
We become blinkered, just take the best and the worse, put the 2 together and assume thats the answer.

After some googling,

http://www.ioga.com/Special/crudeoil_Hist.htm The AVERAGE July 2008 crude price was $126.16.

http://www.whatgas.com/petrol-prices/diesel-prices.html Middle of 2008 diesel cost £1.30

Exchange rate July 2008 was $1.97 to the pound (currently $1.60 to the pound)

sequence

forgotmyname wrote: »

During the last protests i heard them say they need high tax on fuel to pay for the health service, Why are
motorists paying for the health service, I though NI was to pay for that.

If everyone uses it then everyone should contribute, Tax on motorists should pay to keep the roads on decent
condition. With a bit of profit to go towards other essentials.

What do they use the NI & Tax for?

All taxes go into one big pot that is split up for services. Non drivers subsidise the roads and motorways. If tax from motorists was solely for the associated costs of driving/roads/police/nhs ect, driving would be a lot more expensive.

petrolhead69

Very few people drive just for the sheer hell of it, we drive to get to work to earn a living, which we pay tax on, we drive to go to the shops which we pay tax on, we drive to care for elderly disabled relatives who still pay tax as they live in their own home, not in local authority care, increasing tax on fuel thus pricing us out our cars will only harm the economy overall.
The combination of fuel tax/ congestion/ terrible badly maintained roads/ vastly increased travel times due to everybody driving pathetically slowly recently just to save a bit of fuel is one of the main reasons I'm looking at changing careers for a better quality of life and I will probably go from being a high rate tax payer to standard rate and I'm sure I'm not the only one. What good does that do for the economy? I'll earn less, so I'll spend less and save less, as will others. Do they think we have an infinite budget? We cant just print or demand money like they can. The extra money they are taking in fuel tax is not reaching the real economy as we don't have it to spend.

daisyrose

Perhaps on one particular day we should protest by not visiting a garage to fill up.

Derivative

petrolhead69 wrote: »

Very few people drive just for the sheer hell of it.

I would like to see stats on this.
I do not believe that the majority of drivers require a car. Being in an air conditioned box with a radio and reaching work in 5 mins instead of 20 on a bicycle is fun.

I would be very surprised if more than 50% of motorists had a commute that couldn't be done cheaper by public transport. Driving is a convenience for most, not a necessity.