09.12.07 Petrol price protests planned for this Wednesday
Do you think the government should have acted before these protests?
UPDATE: Transaction 2007 have announced a firm date for the protest - Saturday 15th December 2007 at 10:00am. They say the date was decided by members as "the best possible to enable those who would normally be working during the week to attend." According to a press release on the site, they plan to protest outside refineries or storage depots across the country.
For more information, have a look at our latest blog
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A group called Transaction 2007 is planning a "nationwide legal protest" this Wednesday.
You might remember the fuel protest of 2000 which initially gathered strong support from motorists. However, that support quickly turned when many motorists were prevented from filling up because of lorry blockades.
PetrolPrices.com expressed to the organisers that they may find public support for another fuel protest providing it was properly planned to be legal and orderly. So far, the Transaction 2007 organisers have been unwilling to confirm to us specifically what action they have planned for this week. When we pressed the group's spokesman, Chris Hunter, he said "This will be a numbers game levied against legislation. I can comment no further."
With fuel breaking well beyond the £1 barrier, PetrolPrices.com has had a huge rise in the number of emails from concerned motorists. People were especially angry following the last fuel duty hike imposed by the Government in October. Despite being made aware of the huge resistance from motorists, the Government pushed ahead with the 2p duty increase, leaving the public frustrated and angry. Over 80,000 people had voted against the tax hike on our blog post.
The protests of 2000 achieved some success in that the fuel duty escalator was frozen. However, it has now resumed and with the rising price of oil motorists are paying ever increasing taxation due to VAT on fuel. Unlike fuel duty which is fixed, VAT is charged at 17.5%, so for every 1p increase in the price of fuel, we are actually paying an extra 1.175p.
We'd love to hear what you think. How have the tax and oil price rises affected you? Will you be forced to tighten your belt this Christmas as a result?
Your Comments
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About time too!! I was wondering when the oppressed general public would start to "bark". Around my area, I have seen petrol at around £1.09 and diesel as high as £1.11. Even my commute to work via motorcycle has gone up and that is on a vehicle that does 50 mpg. Like countless others who have commented, I live in the country and as usual we bear the brunt of fuel cost rises, because we have no alternative, to the car. Our roads are some of the worst maintained in the UK, our public transport system is hopeless. Especially if you live outside of a town or in a rural village and our living costs are higher. If fuel duty carries on rising as it has, this will bring nothing but severe hardship, to those who can least afford it. IE The ordinary working man and woman, who are about to see the mortgage rate rise due to the sub prime collapse in the US, food bills rise due to increased transport costs and home fuel bills rise, due to shortages in the supply chain (engineered or otherwise)
What we are seeing is the cost of this governments profligate spending and severe waste,in all aspects of the public sector. Allied to the costs of the alleged "war on terror" and the extra expenses incurred by our social and health services in dealing with the influx of economic migrants, which is far and above the estimates originally given. The massive drop in revenues from smokers and the allied falls in profits from pubs, thus leading to less taxable wet sales is also straining the chancellors already overstretched purse and has to be recouped from somewhere, thus the continuing rise in fuel duty.
As much as I fully support any protest against the rises, i fear that unless the causes are dealt with, the government will continue as before to use the motorist as a cash cow, to be milked at every opportunity...
TO ALL OF THE SHEEPLE OUT THERE
THIS SHOULD HELP TO EXPLAIN THINGS
Peak oil is the point at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.
M. King Hubbert first used the theory in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. His model, now called Hubbert peak theory, has since been used to predict the peak petroleum production of many other countries, and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains.
According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.
Some observers, such as petroleum industry experts Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons, believe the high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agricultural and industrial systems on the relative low cost and high availability of oil will cause the post-peak production decline and possible severe increases in the price of oil to have negative implications for the global economy. Although predictions as to what exactly these negative effects will be vary greatly, "a growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day."
If political and economic change only occur in reaction to high prices and shortages rather than in reaction to the threat of a peak, then the degree of economic damage to importing countries will largely depend on how rapidly oil imports decline post-peak.
The Export Land Model shows that the amount of oil available internationally drops much more quickly than production in exporting countries because the exporting countries maintain an internal growth in demand. Shortfalls in production (and therefore supply) would cause extreme price inflation, unless demand is mitigated with planned conservation measures and use of alternatives, which would need to be implemented 20 years before the peak.
Liberal estimations of peak production forecast a peak will happen in 2020 - 2030 and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.
Conservative predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that the peak has already occurred or will occur shortly and, as proactive mitigation may no longer be an option, predict a global depression, perhaps even initiating a chain reaction of the various feedback mechanisms in the global market which would stimulate a collapse of global industrial civilization.
PEAK OIL IS HERE TO STAY. GET USED TO IT. USE LESS FUEL.
TO LEARN MORE SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR 'PEAK OIL'.
Tax hmm
As the UK is one of the most highest taxed countries in the word, would you like to know just how much tax is collected and what happens to it???