Reduce pterol prices-Act now!

Rockman

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it.
We are hitting 95p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1 a ltr.
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy petrol on a certain day"
campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies
just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves
by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it
was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can
really work. Please read it and join in! Now that the oil companies and the
OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP,
we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the
market place not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we
consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the
price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing
their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the
idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two
biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP. If they are not selling
any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they
reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have
an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol
buyers.
It's really simple to do!! Now, don't whimp out on me at this point...
keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of
people!! I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send it to at
least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)...and those 300 send it to at least ten
more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the
sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers!
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each,
then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level
further, you guessed it.....THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (and
not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this
email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION
people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! I'll bet
you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting
together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please
pass this message on. PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE
69p a LITRE RANGE. It's easy to make this happen.
Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco,
Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!

ooo000ooo

What a load of crap. Our petrol is so expensive because of the amount of tax the government sticks on it.

IvanOpinion

Not another one of these ... we seem to be getting one posted up every couple of days on this site. The letter is an overly simplistic view designed to appeal to the unthinking masses and there are much more complex issues underpinning it. These have been discussed on other threads on this board and other boards. As an example
- why buy from Shell ... are they maybe promoting this farce
- where do you think Asda, Sainsbury, Tesco et al get their petrol from
- since most of the cost of petrol is tax the email does not suggest were lost tax revenue will be recovered from (maybe a couple of points rise in income tax, a reduction in benefit payments, knock a couple of quid of state pension?)
- most oil companies claim that petrol/diesel is a loss leader
- if it becomes cheaper then it may be used more thereby increasing consumption and driving the cost of the raw material up (our refineries are apparently at full production at the minute - hence $70 barrel of crude)
- the email obviously has absolutely no concern for the environment

And I could go on .....

Ivan

declanmcc

We've been doing it in Derry for years - funding the Irish government instead!! A lot of petol stations are now redundant - all people use them for is to fill up by 2 litres in case they run out of petrol before the border! Many closed down years ago.
I heard that 60c out of every €1 you spend on petrol goes back to the Irish government for them to spend on investigating their own members of parliament ........... any idea how many pence tax comes out of £1?

Dave=m55

declanmcc wrote:

We've been doing it in Derry for years - funding the Irish government instead!! A lot of petol stations are now redundant - all people use them for is to fill up by 2 litres in case they run out of petrol before the border! Many closed down years ago.
I heard that 60c out of every €1 you spend on petrol goes back to the Irish government for them to spend on investigating their own members of parliament ........... any idea how many pence tax comes out of £1?

Its around 300 percent. We also pay VAT on the petrol duty. So they tax the tax.
In march 2002 a barrel cost $23.60 and petrol was priced at about 71 pence a litre.
Today a barrel costs about $70 and petrol is priced at 91 pence.
Why blame the oil companies when the governments to blame.

Government earns a double whammy when prices rise, from taxation of the oil companies that produce it, all the way through to the consummer that buys it.

Rockman wrote:

If each of you send it to at
least ten more .......

Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam.

mbamick

declanmcc wrote:

........... any idea how many pence tax comes out of £1?

Hi Declan.
I used this site [
http://www.politics.co.uk/issues/road-fuel-duties-$3320486.htm] to come up with the following illustrative figures:

Unleaded Petrol %
Price per litre £0.9000 100%
VAT £0.1340 15%
Excise Duty £0.5049 55%

This leaves 26.41 pence per litre for the petroleum industry, who need to purchase the raw material, refine it, then distribute it to wholesalers & retailers. We should also remember to add the fact, that Central Government also charge Corporation Tax on any profits made by the petroleum companies.

I have absolutely nothing to do with this industry, but I have some sympathy with the view that the bad press and misguided cries for retaliatory action is being focussed in the wrong place. Given that at least 70% of the price of a litre goes into the Government coffers, it strikes me that it has greater scope for a reduction in VAT & Excise duties.

That said, we must accept that any reduction in a Govt income stream leads to an increase somewhere else or reduced benefits & services elsewhere. I suspect that most rational motorists accept the need for Govt to raise revenues; but it is the unbalanced and iniquitous focus on motoring that gets my goat at times.

paul_h

You beat me to it mbamick...

though VAT is actually 17.5% and the duty is 50.19p per litre for petrol (47.1p for LS diesel), but it doesn't make a lot of difference.

Ironically, as the fuel duty is fixed by the treasury and has been frozen at 50.19p per litre since October 2003, the percentage of total duty taken has reduced as the pump prices go up...

The oil companies are responsible for the price rises since October 2003. Have you noticed that the pump prices go up just before the treasury is set to decide whether apply this years inflation increase... it's happened again this year - pump prices go up, no duty increase in September...

Dave=m55

So surely if the price of a litre before tax is about 25pence, the level of tax on petrol is about 280%, or has my maths really let me down.

Rockman

ooo000ooo wrote:

What a load of crap. Our petrol is so expensive because of the amount of tax the government sticks on it.

And buy not buying petrol from a number of companies they will then put pressure on Governmrnt to reduce taxes.

Rockman

IvanOpinion wrote:

Not another one of these ... we seem to be getting one posted up every couple of days on this site. The letter is an overly simplistic view designed to appeal to the unthinking masses and there are much more complex issues underpinning it. These have been discussed on other threads on this board and other boards. As an example
- why buy from Shell ... are they maybe promoting this farce
- where do you think Asda, Sainsbury, Tesco et al get their petrol from
- since most of the cost of petrol is tax the email does not suggest were lost tax revenue will be recovered from (maybe a couple of points rise in income tax, a reduction in benefit payments, knock a couple of quid of state pension?)
- most oil companies claim that petrol/diesel is a loss leader
- if it becomes cheaper then it may be used more thereby increasing consumption and driving the cost of the raw material up (our refineries are apparently at full production at the minute - hence $70 barrel of crude)
- the email obviously has absolutely no concern for the environment

And I could go on .....

Ivan

Have looked in thi site and cannot see this post before.

maninwhitecoat

I find this thread funny. The prices of petrol is mainly government driven. And not buying from the biggest companies? Well, if Esso and BP run out, then it makes Shell, Tesco, Asda the biggest? Do we stop buying from them too?