Your Comments

Reduce fuel duty, bring prices back to an acceptable level.

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it

We are hitting 123.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying 2.00 a ltr. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

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 wimp out 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!!! 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

The diesel price difference is even more important to the overall economy as that feeds into supply costs and ultimately either back to the consumer (us) as inflation or by reducing business profits thus increasing unemployment. I suggest that we are only seeing the start of a major economic effect on most of us. This petition is worth supporting as the Govt is increasing its tax take anyway and i believe it makes no senese to increase the effects.

But lets not get into the wackier ideas of roadblocks, refinery protests etc as most of this is outside of U.K Govts control, no matter which colour they are. Indeed we would be better off voicing our protests towards some of the verbal diarrhea coming out of the U.S right now. Part of the problem is dollar weakness and that is no-ones fault other than the U.S Govt. Fed Reserve missed a trick i feel by sitting on the fence on further U.S interest rate cuts where they could have tried to put off spme of the speculators by indicating stronger that they may not cut further.

But the world has a problem in that demand globally will remain strong. We will have to modify our use of oil to adapt. Hopefully some interventions of the right sort will help the world price & therefore ease the pressure on us all, me included.

On one hand the government wants to support families... on the other they are destroying them by all these tax rises... beit the rise in fuel duty and then on top the road tax (which should be re-named as cars with very low emissions dont pay road tax - kinda defeats the need for a "ROAD" tax I mean dont these low emission cars USE the road?) we have a large car because we NEED it we need the boot space and space in the back therefore the emissions on our car aint great but is going up by 90 quidd next month!!!! Absolutely disgusted!

if gas keeps going up we should all get a gas cheque just like some people get gst pretty soon it will be cheaper to stay home and not go to work how would the government like a world full of welfare cases.

It has been said that the one thing that brings down high prices is ..... high prices. However, with all those up and coming motorists and consumers in China and India increasing demand, where there was none before, I think we've had it! I have 6 vans on the road with diesel bills of £2,500 a month - and rising - fast! Veg oil is not an option.

The spiraling cost of fuel is going to bankrupt this economy and if the government does not intervine to counteract this extra tax burden there well be no country to govern

Please make it stop! I'm starting to feel dizzy - it's risen every single week now for longer than I can remember. When will it stop!?!
Where are the blockades? Where is the chaos we had a few years ago? Somebody do something!

This economy is going to blow up any minute now. Remember the Northern Rock fiasco? America had 2 similar banks go recently. It's still hard to borrow money- all the banks are scared. Why? Because the thing that caused all the problems with northen rock is tiny compared to what the banks are sitting on at the moment- something which is much bigger and has been going on much longer. What's more, everyone's fixed rate mortgages are coming to end. When this all blows up the fuel price is only going to make it worse. A recession doesn't even begin to describe the storm that's coming...

boycott all other products sold by the petrol retailers, stop buying food cigarettes, lottery tickets etc. They always say they make very little profit from fuel sales so they may be forced out of business, good riddance!

next week there is a major protest going on in London, Transaction 2007 the organizers said all people are welcome. Check there website. May people have asked for it so now it's time to show your support

@ 20

but in the current climate the gov need all the money they can get, im all for paying less tax on fuel as i need my car to travel to work i just feel it's not going to happen. Surley the UK should be inline with other european countries as we are part of the EU

Never fear gentle readers, our wonderful PM Gordon Clown has signalled a new determination to defend Britain's hard-pressed consumers and motorists when he denounced the oil cartel Opec as a scandal and called for the EU and the G8 to break down its control, saying it was holding back the development of the world economy.

So there you have it, it's not speculation nor Gordon's fault, oh no especially not his fault, never mind he sold our gold at the lowest price, is spending 100 billion on quangos etc etc, it's the fault of OPEC.

"It is, as people will recognise, a scandal that 40% of the oil is controlled by Opec, that their decisions can restrict the supply of oil to the rest of the world, and that at a time when oil is desperately needed, and supply needs to expand, that Opec can withhold supply from the market." Truly a scandal indeed.


original article was in the grauniad:



Clown would claim to be Swampy's uncle if he thought it would win him the next election. Just don't expect him to tell you the truth, that the exporting countries exports will go down by 50% over the next 10-12 years.


On a serious note, we are pretty close to Peak Oil being acknowledged in the Mainstream Media (MSM) in the States, so they are starting to talk about it.

But please feel free to moan at the ever increasing price and boycott whichever garage you want if it makes you feel better. which stage are you at?


1. Denial: "There's plenty of oil out there, and we can drill our way out of this."
2. Anger: "Why aren't those bar stewards drilling our way out of this?"
3. Bargaining: "Well maybe ANWR, the continental offshore, the tar sands, and slightly more efficient cars will fix it."
4. Depression: "Oh man, we're done for, it's too big a problem for me, I might as well give up."
5. Acceptance: "I'm ready for the second half of the Age of Oil and I'm going to find a way forward."


My grandfather rode a horse, my father rode a bus, I drive a car, my son rides a jet, his son will ride a horse. Adaptation of a Saudi proverb.

Sir,

The government set a budget, which took into account the tax raised from feul duty at that time.

If this is the case then why do they nead to take extra revenue from fuel, when the books ballanced at the tax level set at the time of the budget.

Would it not be fairer to say that the tax would be taken at a sliding scale, which would reduce as the price increased, in order to take the bugeted tax requirment set out in the buget for that year.

If this is not done the country have the right to think that this is a government which is only concerned with generating as much tax as they can from the population as a whole, and has little to no concern for them at all at any time.

It would be nice if they proved me wrong............??????

Post #24 BTPO,

I am not in favour of "just take it from the back side" just trying to point out some facts rather than just go on wishful thinking so that the people here realise fuel prices will not go down and can make some changes to their lives if possible. Maybe you can force our beloved PM to reduce the tax a little but it will soon be swamped by the rising price of oil.


Oil prices for future deliveries have now gone into contango for all dates, i.e. the price is higher than today's price. The situation is HIGHLY UNUSUAL, since futures prices are almost always lower than today's oil prices - there are good reasons for this. Since the start of May the price of oil a month in advance has risen by $15, while the price of a barrel for delivery in 2016 has jumped by $25.

So the message is now becoming clearer, oil will continue to increase in price.

Chakib Khelil, the current president of Opec, has already ruled out increases in production any time soon. Even Opec ministers have predicted that it could reach $200 a barrel within two years. Saudi Arabia has promised to raise production by 300,000 barrels a day in June, but the move had little impact on the oil price.


Dropping taxes is the last thing we should do it will simply stimulate demand resulting in more demand! better to increase the taxes on petrol etc reduce it on income tax, subsidise public transport fund cross rail etc and therefore move the UK economy off an oil based economy. Even this will take 20 years + (look at Swedens target of 2030).

This country and the US can't afford to have more money flowing out of the country, i.e. WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY IT'S AS SIMPLE AS THAT. The US imports around 13 million barrels every day, at a cost of $130/barrel this equates to about $1.7 billion EVERY day going out of the US and to the oil producers.

Re: 24

If I were taking it up the rear BTPO, I am sure I would feel sore. I don't.
At some point you are going to have to face reality, along with the rest of us. It is not business as usual. You are now living predictions which came true.

As TonyW commented, any decreases in taxation will be swallowed whole in short order, for gawds sake even the Reactionary Times (The Telegraph) ran a story this morning about fuel increasing in price for the next 8 years!

Where they got 8 years from is anybodies guess, I suspect a softening up strategy is being put in motion.

All the evidence that Peak Oil is with us is being blasted at you day after day after day in all the media, you just have to join the dots from the disparate sources, frankly a half intelligient kid with a calculator could tell you what is going on. It would be rude to say get your head out of your a rse, but appropriate.

I think that you should lower prices of fuel, as i think that the goverment is just been greedy, it is not nessesary to have fuel prices this high.
i see people who dont earn alot of money, are going to struggle to get to work, so then they will go on the social, so that will mean more taxes for us, when its not there fault.

PUT PRICES DOWN!!!!

This opec whores are robbing us left right and center!! they need sorting fast or we are going to be in a world of poo pooo!!!!!!

It's pointless trying to inform people who simply do NOT want to understand ... but here goes anyway.

Forget greedy oil companies, forget greedy filling stations, forget the last 25 years of warm & cosy living we have all had.

The game is now coming to an end. OK, it will take 20 or so years for it all to play out and for oil usage to drop to almost zero ... BUT from now on oil will be VERY expensive and will be getting MORE EXPENSIVE by the week.

The investors etc have suddenly realised that oil will be (is!) in short supply, so the price MUST go up.

There are no magic huge oil fields waiting to be found, despite all the fuss about a new small oil find here or there.

Hydrogen, fuel cells, nuclear fusion are not going to save us.

I suspect that the UK economy will go down the tubes over the next 5 to 10 years .. and will stay there.

The energy-rich good times are over.

So what are YOU going to do about it?

Spend your time bleating about greedy oil compnies, or over-taxing governments?

If you do, you will be wasting valuable time.

It's NOW time to find that fuel efficient car, pay off your debts, insulate your house, maybe move, maybe retrain.

Nobody except YOU cares about you & your family.

If you don't make plans to avoid the train wreck that is coming, well, so be it.

(And, yes, if you are retired, disabled or on a fixed income you WILL be having major problems ... and I'm not sure how you can avoid them. The government certainly won't help much - or indeed be in a position to help. Time to call on family and friends I think.)

Lets just all go and live homeless then thats the way eh peak oil

Re 37

Yes, keep that thought in your mind. There are 9m too many mouths to feed in the UK anyway.
As this so called 'credit crunch' progresses, food shortages start to bite, and fuel keeps going up in price it's going to be a real issue.
Best make plans now, as Vortex said in 35, no one cares about you but you, you can't count on back up from the state.
Wasting my time I know to say the best thing you could do is get involved in setting up a Transition town, it's outside politics as you know it, there is sod all else you can do beyond making personal preps - NOW.

Please listen to the peak oil people - they are telling the truth.

Stop worrying about the price of petrol.

Get ready to live without travelling, without having food delivered to your supermarket. Grow your own food, find ways of being able to feed and clothe yourself without relying on oil.

The effects of peak oil are happening much faster than expected, do something quickly to look after yourself and your family.

Please.

The pleas regarding peak oil are correct. It's looking more likely now that we passed it at some point in 2006.

I guess some of the gap between supply and demand since that point has been met by biofuels (on the whole, grossly immoral and responsible for record food prices currently crippling the poor of the world) and the gearing up of the tar sands.

But the gap is getting wider and the cracks are beginnng to appear. Future tax increases on fuel are irrelevant. What's a 2p rise in fuel when it's going up that much evey few weeks anyway!

The peak oilers on this blog are correct. We do need to start looking closely at how we live our lives and getting ready for a world with dramatically less oil. This is a serious and real problem, and the sooner people accept it and arm themselves with information to prepare, the better.

It's incredible that governments are doing so little. Maybe they can't. I guess it's down to individual communities to prepare. Without wishing to sound overly alarmist, there's no harm in growing a bit more food at home, building up your fitness so you can walk/cycle further, and future-proofing your home.

The tide is turning and within a year 'peak oil' will be accepted by the mainstream. The sooner it is, the sooner we can all prepare.

Even if all the tax is removed from petrol/diesel the current issues with supply and demand (peak oil) will mean the price will return to todays levels within a couple of years anyway.

If you think about it , diesel for example has gone up 50p in 2 years (excluding tax rises), and 30p in the last 6 months!

At that rate - it would only take between 2 and 4 years for prices to return to todays levels even if all the tax wa removed!!

The PO people are right - get used to it now!

all the people saying peak oil is here to stay...what are you on about ? The main issue we have now is the cost of filling up at the station...why should our gov get away with ripping us off everytime we fill up ?? We are getting robbed simple as that. How would you like it if the gov took money stright from your bank every month becuase they can....would you say oh well thats life ?? FFS grow up and look at the bigger picture on this topic only

Appologies if the phrase "taking it from the back" was taken to heart. I was just trying to make a point.

Its very interesting reading posts on this blogs. Some say we should put up taxes and other say we should put them down.

I read an interesting article which stated that in India the fuel prices has recently increased, but the interesting thing is that it is the first time the prices have increased in 6 months. Meaning the government has been shielding them from the hard times.

A professor was interviewed today by the BBC (1 o'clock radio news) and he stated something Peak Oil and others would not want to hear so I am going to say his statements are assumed to be his opinion until proved otherwise. (I don't want to start that one again). He said that in the 1970ies there was a mass scare because the concept of peak oil was introduced and people thought Peak Oil was reached and wanted to preserve the oil by forcing OPEC to cut down production. Oil was scarce, crime was high and people were angry. What happened next is that a large amount of money was poured into oil extraction and like magic Peak Oil disappeared. He was suggesting as a solution that countries should do the same as they did in the seventies in order to up the supply.
Well I thought that was an interesting discussion.

I wanted to say something briefly on demand. Tonyw said something about 9 million too many people in GB (sorry if it was actually you Greg B). The government for a long time now has encouraged people to have children. You get money, tax brakes etc by breeding. Surely if we want to cut down on demand in the future we shouldn't encourage to have lots of children (more than 2).

If higher fuel duty was really going to cut down the demand of oil then why is it not working? Its not like fuel duty was introduced yesterday.

We all acknowledge the sad fact that fuel prices are not going to go down by too much, but the rate of increase can be controlled (to a certain extent).

As a person on a fuel site, talking under the topic of fairer deal for motorists I think we should keep our arguments to the subject. I think its good that some people are still willing to fight until the very end to try and bring down fuel tax duty.

In conclusion, since we know all of the money raised from fuel duty is not used to try and curb the use of non-renewable resources, fuel tax duty should be scraped or reduced and the entire way the government and its people spend money and raise it should be re-visited quite seriously. Fuel prices in the EU should be similar (including Britain). This thing of making Britain pay while everyone else carries on with reasonable fuel costs must stop. Lets stop making fuel a political issue that can be affected by how "the people" feel and control the price increases within reason.

Re: 47
"FFS grow up and look at the bigger picture on this topic only"

The bigger picture? Are you actually sentient?

Good Lord what chance do we have.

Re: 49
"He was suggesting as a solution that countries should do the same as they did in the seventies in order to up the supply."

That old chestnut, and I suppose the Club of Rome got it wrong too? This is 2008 BTPO, discovery peaked in the mid sixties, oil companies are rolling in it because they have given up on prospecting and going for disasters like Canadian tar sands.
Get up to speed.

No point in handing in petitions anymore. its time to follow the French way and block the roads or refineries. im a law abiding citizen thats being laughed at and robbed every year by the goverment of the day and im sick to death of it.

Re 52 BTPO

Short on time at the moment, will reply later. If you are in a hurry I would suggest you quit this blog and lurk, or even contribute to, the powerswitch forum. Google powerswitch forum to find it.
Your questions will be answered whether you ask them or not.

With approxiamtely 80% of cost of Fuel at the Pump going to the Governement, they can do something about it and it is about time they did, they just don't want to do anything because of the 'out-of-control' debts with this Governemtn has run up over the past 11 years and they need to pay for it some how!!!

This Country is being run into the ground and the price of fuel is just one factor of this greedy government who wants to help every other country but its own. It is about time the government concentrated on its own problems and not WARS oversees.

Gordon Brown, you said last week you were the only person who could rescue the economy, well start by addressing the FUEL issue and TODAY!!!!!!!!

I am a secondary school teacher; with the hours that I do and the books that I have to back at forth (3 huge bags are waiting as I type), whether to mark at home or for preparing lesson etc, how could I be expected to do that without my car? I also have health issues, being a chronic asthmatic; I always carry a nebuliser and transformer in my car boot - without that, an attack could be fateful. Public transport is not an option, for me, just as it is not an option for so many other workers. My fuel costs rise each week, yet I don't get any tax allowance even with this being necessary for my work. I often have to go off-site to meetings and could not do so in the time allocated if I didn't use my own vehicle. I plan to retire abroad and that day cannot come soon enough; to leave this land of doom and gloom, with spiralling prices in energy and everyday expenses. I feel no loyalty, no ownership in being 'British'; too often consequentive British Governments have betrayed the very same people who work hard and do not expect handouts, only justice. I will board that aeroplane to live my retirement abroad with my husband, gladly paying the fuel tax as it is a 'means to an end', and not look even once back, across my shoulder, at what I am leaving behind.

post #56 Kate,
"My husband & I run a small taxi firm", sorry but IMHO in the future this may not be a viable business - just like airlines or any other business that relies on cheap abundant supplies of oil.


post #53 Small
"block the roads or refineries" you thicko, don't you realise this country is pretty much bankrupt and blocking roads etc could be the final nail tha turns us into a third world country??? do something constructive with your life not destructive.


post #52 BTPO
"If oil runs out without an alternative energy resource I will give you my pension." What on earth makes you think there will be any money to provide you with a pension? Pensions are a relatively new invention just like the whole of the changes in our life standards has been made possible by abubdant cheap energy.

Loads of money is being poured into research worldwide, I monitor many sites and every week there are developments. The basic problem is that it takes a long long time, we should have started back in the oil shocks of the 70s when US president Carter told people to cut back - I clearly remember seeing him in the White House in his white cardigan! He installed PV panels on the roof and introduced the CAFE fuel standards. Unfortunately the sheeple decided they did not want to hear about cutting back and he was voted out after his first term:-(

"Oil will finish one day but when it does should it finish with £200/litre?" Oil is fungible, it is traded worldwide and the price is simply what people will pay for that oil. So as supplies reduce and more and more people aspire to run cars (think what the Tata Nano £2,000 car in India will do to demand - remember the population of India is equal to Europe + US +Japan then there is China so three times as many cars?) the price will continue to increase well beyond $200/barrel. My gut feel is we could hit this price as early as this year. This is going to cause huge disruptions as countries run out of money to pay for oil.


"Would you agree with me that petrolprices.com are doing the right thing by fighting for us to get lower fuel duties" Well actually no, since that will just waste effort and delay the inevitable until it is even later, it's like having an upgrade on the Titanic rather than changing course or slowing down. Unfortunately we need higher prices to get people to be screaming at the government to force us to use less oil and natural gas rather than buying more gas guzzlers. Sales of Porsche and Mercedes are steady not falling.

petrolprices.com provides an excellent service to show you where to get the cheapest petrol day to day.

I have been puzzled for some time why garages can put up the price of petrol just about on a daily basis, when the petrol in their own tanks at the garage has probably been bought at a lower price probably a month ago, to me this is down right greed

thanks kenny bell

Go into any fuel station today and you'll see driver after driver filling up as if they don't care how much fuel increases by over the next month. I blame them for this sky high pricing of fuel. Everyone is blaming the goverment for this, when its the three main oil producers that are at fault. They aren't stupid, they know us brits will buy it at whatever it costs. The only drivers who took action, were the road haulage companies, and did the ordinary british driver support them? Nope!
Yes, thanks to this website we can now price around and buy it cheaper, and not just drive into the first fuel station we see, and pay what they want us to pay. Brits need to take back control, we are very good at not buying something if the price is too high, why can't we do the same with fuel.

What's the point in complaining ?
We haven't got long in this world anyway
We will either be burnt to a frazzle in global warming or drown in floods
Perhaps a global pandemic will wipe us all out first or a Bin Laden inspired mass chemical attack
I seriously doubt whether the human species will exist in 10 years time
Sorry to be gloomy - but it may happen

47, Netch wrote:
"FFS grow up and look at the bigger picture on this topic only"

How ironic, focusing on the petrol pump is taxation isn't the bigger picture, that's the kind of myopic thinking we need to move away from. The bigger picture is the global supply and demand balance of energy. A big part of that is learning how a country like the UK can run itself on less than 1.8mbpd. That's where we need to be looking.

When will this increase end. I believe it's now time for some form of action to show this money syphoning government that we will not stand for this forever. Let's hope tonights by-election will be a wake up call to this stale government. I have supported Labour all my life, but no more.

i drive taxi in in the city of linclon and the deisel coast is killing the job and i think this goverment should be put down a put in MR BOBBY OR MISS PIGGY CAN DO THE JOB BETTER.

We all pay a price. The higher the price the more the government makes in tax they don't need to inrease the rate they already are getting more than they planned. As for people lining up at the pumps.They may but how many are now looking at more economic models. I run a Honda Jazz 1.4 Auto and on a good run can average around 50 mpg.

The real trouble is in the U.S. of A they are using oil like there is no tomorrow.Yet they sit on a massive oil field under Texas,but go on using everyone elses oil first.