The Price of Petrol... Should we pay so much.... or is it time to make a stand?!

pompeyrich

With the £ at its strongest vs the US$ for over 25 years, prices should drop but they wont because we are too apathetic to do anything about it. Why is diesel 20p a litre cheaper in France, the French Government keep tax low on diesel, because, in my opinion, they know the French lorry drivers would strike, blockade ports etc. if they tried to raise the duty to the ridiculously high levels they are over here. When our truckers tried to blockade refineries here, they were threatened with arrest, maybe it is time to act but as you have seen from the previous replies no-one really cares.....until it affects them and then it's too late.

Andy_L

ispartacus75 wrote: »

The 50p is only a percentage of the overall price.

If the price of petrol dropped to say 69p/litre the tax would drop to about 37p.

You are wrong, rtm
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageExcise_InfoGuides&propertyType=document&id=HMCE_PROD1_027232

"Effective duty rate per litre"

ispartacus75

I conceed that the duty on fuel is levied in pence rather than as a percentage, sorry about that.

However it begs a question.

Does an increase in the duty on fuel cause a price rise, or does a company imposed price rise cause the govt to increase the duty on fuel?

I notice from the link in the above post that the duty is due to increase by another 2p per litre in October. So we are highly lilkely to see £1.00/litre by years end.

The govt tell us that we can buy more economical cars, but these are much more expensive, look at the cost of the Prius compared to something like a Ford Focus.

Unless something is done in a sustained fashion to force the price of fuel lower we can look forward to the costs simply spiralling on and on.

And lets not forget, it doesnt just impact us at the pump, delivery trucks have to pay the higher fuel costs, so everything we buy goes up in price.

California is considered to be an expensive place to live yet they are currently paying approx £1.50 per gallon for fuel yet we are paying around £4.27 or more per gallon.

Unless we do stand up against the cost of fuel we are responsible for the costs rising. People switch supplier if their utilities get too expensive so why cant we do the same for our motor fuel. One major gas supplier has had to drop their prices after a rediculous rise because so many customers left. Lets simply do the same to a fuel supplier.

I already only get my fuel from 1 of 2 suppliers. Part of the reason is proximity, but I am also vary wary of another 2 suppliers whose prices are simply too much for me to entertain. If we all stopped using one supplier it would force them to drop prices, as soon as they have done we go back to them, if the raise them again we do the same till we get the prices we want.

If the tax is too high on fuel that is for the fuel companies to worry about, not us.

And as far as where the tax revenue goes, maybe we should stop spending as much as we do on stuff like hospital managers, home office wall paper and foreign trips for politicians.

ispartacus75

albertross wrote: »

If the tax wasn't on petrol, it would be on something else.

If you want to change the world, either get into politics, or use your vote. The world has gone green mad atm, so you are unlikely to find a party who would lower the tax anyway.

My point was that if the govt didnt spend the tax on absolute crap we wouldnt have to be taxed so much in the first place.

Less tax wastage=less taxation=more money in peoples pockets to buy more fuel efficient cars=greener society.

More taxation=more cheap cars on the road=more pollution.

Taxation is not the answer.

albertross_2

Same point applies, if you want to change the world, use your vote, the current government is a high spending, high taxing, high wasting government, who might replace the tax with a road charging system, with all the downsides that that entails.

The Conservatives are jumping on the green bandwagon, so whatever they do, they are unlikely to reduce the overall tax burden on car/fuel useage.

More money in peoples pockets doesn't necessarily equate to people all buying hybrid/electric cars. It's more likely to produce a less greener lifestyle if anything.

VickyM_2

I already don't buy my petrol from Esso or BP because the two nearest garages to me are Shell, and Morrisons, and I should imagine this is the case for loads of people. If the idea was to switch to BP, I'd then have a 20 mile round trip every time I wanted to fill up... yup, I can really see this appealing to lots of people.

If you're not happy with the price of petrol, drive less, walk more, but realistically, most of us can't do much about how far we have to drive, so this kind of campaign is a non-starter. Sorry.

Conor_3

Hell-razor wrote: »

Nice to see such a positive bunch of people!! and we wonder why people power fails...

WELL WHEN US TRUCK DRIVERS TRIED TO DO A SECOND FUEL PROTEST, YOU DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW SO YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN.

Conor_3

Hell-razor wrote: »

for all you who gripe about the tax on fuel...question is what are we going to do about it...

We, the hauliers, showed you in 2000 what to do yet when we wanted to do it again, you didn't want to know. So now you're stuck with 99p/litre.

Conor_3

VickyM wrote: »

I already don't buy my petrol from Esso or BP because the two nearest garages to me are Shell, and Morrisons, and I should imagine this is the case for loads of people. If the idea was to switch to BP, I'd then have a 20 mile round trip every time I wanted to fill up... yup, I can really see this appealing to lots of people.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

THEY ALL COME FROM THE SAME PLACE. Doesn't matter whether it's Shell, Morrisons, BP, Esso, Jet, they all come from the same refinery serving that area. There isn't a refinery for each company. For example, the North West/Greater Manchester is served by a Shell Refinery at Stanlow. That means every Shell, BP, Esso, Jet, Texaco, Asda, Morrisons, Tesco etc petrol station is selling fuel produced by Shell at Stanlow. The tankers for these firms all line up at the same points side by side. The only thing that differs is the additive added to the load and the logo on the side of the tanker. The base fuel is all the same.


Likewise Lincs/Humberside is all Conoco (Jet) from Immingham.

plane_boy2000

Well put Conor - exactly the point I was going to make. If you try to boycot one brand then what actualy happens is that the guy who owns the franchise to operate that outlet (most stations are owned by one man bands tied to one brand) goes bust. Oil compnay dont really notice as the same refinery is now supplying the other garage where you have now started buying your fuel, and as there is now one less garage in your area the other guys are now charging more because there is less competition.

The issue is not the oil companies, its the amount of duty we pay, and lets not forget that the duty is particularly unfair as they add VAT, so its a tax on a tax. The oil companies can only sell what is produced, and since China has started consuming so much oil the demand has gone up, and hence the price.

IMO the Americans consume far to much fuel and should be taxed more to encourage them to drive more economical cars - if they consumed less the price would fall.