Your Comments

It is more than just fuel costs it is about being over taxed.

Some £5,000 million each year is being taken off the motorist for what? Choked motorways, cut backs on street maintenance budgets coupled with higher public transport fares that discourage any altenative. Contact your Member of Parliament about more of a say on where the money being taken from your pockets goes - Northern Rock would not be my choice!

I'm not convinced about a fuel protest - its not tax which has drastically gone up in recent weeks.
I do however agree that the tax on fuel is too high and that the government could find the money elsewhere. Rather than more tax on alcohol and cigarettes, how about a plastic bag tax? No one likes them and they pollute the environment!

I do do not believe that there is any case for a government benefiting from a windfall tax and therefore vat or duty should now be reduced to the extend that the government published in its revenue budget last year.
While I sympathize with the green view that high prices will change consumption habits, with average vehicle ownership being around three years. it will take time for drivers to move to more efficient vehicles and industry longer, to have the effect of reducing emissions (in fact EU rulings for manufacturers to reduce emissions will have a far greater impact).

In the short term the Government's greed has the effect of increasing regressive taxation (is this a socialist government?!) and unfortunately will doubtless lead them to spend it so when it all bottoms out they will have to raise other taxes because their windfall cannot last for ever. But while it does. it will continue to hurt those the most, that cannot afford it - not to mention increased transport inflation which is simply passed on to the uk consumer in higher prices for food and other products

Good luck to any protest

High fuel prices cost countless jobs due to people on low income unable to afford to travel any distance to work. the manpower shortage is then filled by immigration with a transit workforce,were by the Government are then able to call the indigenous workforce lazy scroungers .The price of fuel and travel shouldn't put anyone in this predicament and all politicians should be aware that they may be the next to be looking for work on foot.

ALL businesses have to have annual accounts. The Government is the biggest business in the country. If they were made to publicise how much money they get in and how it's spent, I'm sure there would be a lot less wastage (eg MP's "expenses", etc) and less excuse for high taxes on ANYthing, not just fuel. After all, it's OUR money they're spending - shouldn't we be entitled to know where it's going?

1810: Sorry, what? You mean you've never thought to go to the HM Treasury website and see where the money goes? Funnily enough, it's not illegal to ask what our money is spent on, and it's more than easily obtainable.

I think you have an axe to grind and evidently didn't look too hard.

I hope this government does pay attention to the "warning shot" of December 15th. Alas, I believe they are so arrogant they will not! So bring on the blockades! It may cause all of us motorists a bit of incovenience but we need this action to make them see how fed up, with these almost daily rises in fuel cost, we are. A reduction in fuel prices would of course be a welcome relief to us all but just as important, the knowledge that our fuel tax was being put back into the transport sytem would be a welcome, though I fear unlikely statement for this government to make!

as a law abiding citizen who regularly refuses the offer of red deisel; what i do is soon going to be beyond even me. I dont drink,smoke,gamble, and care for the reprobate and unwashed:
I support the blog and protest and hope that someone somewhere will take note and acknowledge the great British spirit which is this great country in which we keep on going the extra mile in:

Nothing is a quick fix, but I can remember when the Oil and Gas deposits were found, we were promised fee oil and gas-- never happened. Also decades ago fuel duty revinue was used for its intended purpose improving the infrastructure. What we need to do is Scrap Tax completely then do away with the road fund licence, then apply a new basic tax to fuel, then highe end users would proportionatly pay more which is not the case today I drive less than 2000 miles a year i am disabled and need my car I have to pay the full road fund licence even though my car may stand idle for days sometimes weeks and i cannot afford to do highe ilages on the cost of fuel as it is, if something isnt done very soon we will find not only will we be paying proportionally higher taxes but the roads we already fay for under the road licence fund will become pay as you go another cash monkey for national and local goverment. the motorist and esspecialy uk ones ate a soft target as generally we spout and splutter and do nothing. just lool at the french hauliers or ferry workers to see how a unified and totally peacfull( mainly) protest can influence the goverment unless we change our ways the uk partys know this and will continue to exploit it

It has been difficult to keep my car running and I am sorry that I would not agree if someone somking like hell and accusing me not being enviromentally friendly. I believe that I am GREEN enough in my life so far.

This government robs us of everything else and get away with it. Why not fuel? Unfortunately we are a nation of polite patience but it is time to make our voices heard. Things are not getting better no matter what our government tries to make us believe (while burying the truth or spinning it out of proportion that even they aren't sure what they are talking about). This government has a thing for taxes and at each turn they will think of new ways of squeezing us all the while they are getting richer and richer. Just take Blair for instance. He started this whole thing and then walked away knowing full well that he and his are untouchable while we are always nearing the breadline. I'm all for protesting but I don't think it will make any difference somehow.

"As others have said: this lying, scheming government, that has had the most devious and under-handed chancellor imagineable - now prime minister of course - has reneged on every single one of its 1997 election manifesto promises. My small business is drowning under red-tape (IR35, S660, MSC, MSP etc... all new from them) and I am personally taxed to the hilt, not openly of course, but by stealth.

Remember when Brown, as chancellor, promised not to increase income tax... but then immediately put national insurance up instead? That 1% comes from your pay-packet in *exactly* the same way. And they have racked up employer's national insurance too, by several percent, which as an employee you don't see but it's why your employer can't afford to give you a pay rise... the government stole it from you! And then we're stealth taxed to the hilt through fuel duty etc, ever rising, and then VAT on top of that!

And for what? So that they can put it into their coffers now, ready for spending on generous schemes in one or two years time... just before the next election in the hope of buying themselves more votes, using our money!

This government - and the current prime minister in particular - is an utter disgrace; they deserve to be brought down. Sadly I can't see these protests achieving that, no matter how well managed they are, but they may at least give the government a bruise or two and show them that we've had enough of being bullied and robbed blind, just to bolster their coffers to introduce schemes to try and buy themselves yet another term in office, to push this country still further into the dark ages."

I agree wholeheartedly with the above posted by Andrew. The government are highway robbers and our prime minister Turpin.

It is about time this greedy government put themselves in the real world instead of living with their heads buried in the sand, we would not be paying rip off prices for fuel and other items if this lot who are supposed to be educated spent the taxes they collect on the people who deserve it. Instead of giving illegal immigrants £4000.00 to return home it should be used to cut our taxes, give cancer patients and other deserving people the treatment they are entitled to, also look after our pensioners like other european countries. I have just returned from Lanzarote where petrol is around 80 cents per litre. When you get e1.35 to £1 it proves who is the poor relation in the E U. Keep up the protest it is the only language Mr. Bean (our prime minister) understands.

This protest is not just about petrol, it's the fact that everyone is sick and tired of being treated like fools and being taxed to death, taxes on taxes, eg the tax and duty paid on the petrol is payed for with the taxed and national insuranced pay. What tax rate does that equal?

To actually go ahead with the planned increases in the tax on petrol with the price rising as it is, just proves that this government haven't an ounce of regard for the population's way of life. Just vote them out in May 2008 at the local elections and see how they like that!

I first purchased a vehicle when petrol cost 4/6d a gallon. Since government has caused me to be less and less economical with the use of my transport. My camper used through the summer while the Morris Minor had major spare time servicing. Summer use camper doubled for holidays, home improvement goods transporter, work transport, road alterations made cycling inpracticle. M.O.T. Insurance costs cause me to keep only the one work horse on the road, being a workhorse it has to be suitable for the larger jobs.
I am retired but government does its utmost to stop me working even to keep myself self-sufficient. All contrary to their green policy statements. We all know stopping and starting wastes energy. So what about Traffic calming, junction traffic lights, lack of parking, use of motorways as local bypass etc. I only just started. Bet you can add many more anti economy acts by government of all levels.

I'm not aginest paying current prices for fuel, but I should be able to go and see my brother with out thinking that it's going to cost me a couple of ours wages.

I don't care how I get there eather by train, car, or bus. But I should be able to do my every day business, with out wasting hours for trains, buses or, sat in traffic in my car. All I want it to get from a to b at a resnable amount, in a resonable time. Which currently is not the case how every you travel.

taxation shouldn't be used to penalise or encourage people to move to greener options that they probably can't afford. These measures should be aimed at the manufacturers and the governments departments.
John Tilley/

If we scrap the tax on fuel completely, we'll put so many more cars and trucks on the road that nothing will ever move and we can all just stay in bed! Less tax? Utter rubbish. Its about time you dinosaurs woke up and start thinking about somebody other than just yourself the whole time.

Iain McLeod

Post 1837 is misinformed. Whilst the roads on the continent ie Spain and France are excellent and are far superior to British roads, they have been paid for by the funds from the European Community of which a gigantic proportion has come from our own tax system. You yourself have contributed to these roads.

The British roads are in an appaling state of repair being mainly a patchwork quilt to ruin your suspension and tyres (and I know because the journey I take back in the evening makes me feel physically sick because of the lumps and bumps for miles)

Is it not fair to pay for the product that you are using with an extra amount as profit built in for the producers so they can run their company. The governement should not be adding an amount that is totally excessive so much so that some people are using the money to buy petrol instead of food, due to various work commitments.

Perhaps if post 1836 is happy with the tax, which will no doubt will be vastly incrreased in the future, perhaps he should put forward an option where those who are happy can pay the full amount whilst those who think it is excessive can pay a lower amount and thus cancel each other out!!!

Please get real as, if they keep increasing prices of everything and everyone agrees to it, you will have no money at all to spend soon as wages are not rising in line with the increases you are getting poorer all the time.

And by the way I would check out the amount of industrial and corporation taxation and capital gains tax as it is crippling the growth of industry and reducing the opportunities of creating more jobs. If capital gains tax is not sorted out soon many small companies will be closing down before April 2008 as they will have to sell-up to avoid being totally ruined. And tonight's news where beer will soon be £4.00 per pint!!? Talk about high tax.

Okay, petition route does not work, nor does blocades, nor does the daft boycott the BP pumps.

So how about boycotting the price fixers ? Promotions have finished now, but IF two leading Supermarkets could offer a 5p off per litre if you spent £50 instore, surely they had at the least, 5p they could have passed onto us ? So how about using petrolprices to get your cheapest alternative petrol station (mine is actually closer than any supermarket) boycott the supermarkets and start a price war ??

If tax on petrol in Britain is only 1% more than in France and Germany etc., then why is it that petrol in France is currently between 40 and 50 pence a gallon cheaper than in Britain ?

I urge everyone to click on the transaction2007 link at the top of this page and sign up on there as well, show these guys they have our support as well, these are the same guys who did the blockades in 2000, they have learnt from there mistakes then, and now due to goverment law changes are unable to blockade refinerys, so they are looking at other ways to get the message across to gorden brown and his chums. they need and want the support from normal drivers like us, so go give them that support.

Unfortunatley the vote doesn't reflect national average feeling, as nobody has the nerve come out on mass to give the goverment a bloody nose. Until this happens nothing will ever change. I should know as I'm a trucker and we're find it increasingly more difficult to get by. So we have increase our prices which inturn has a majour effect on inflation, so come on everybody stick together and come and support the protests. After all if nobody felt that fuel was to expensive no one would view this site.

If you want this to chang do it by voting at an election. It is our only way of truly having a say that matters. If you don't then idiotic lefties give this lot the mandate to do what they want with tax and now look at us. The most taxed generation ever! We have a pathetic Prime Minister who hides behind a reputation that is misplaced behind economic stability. Believe me if you look at his record it is actually just luck and it is now his policies are working out.

The cost of living including and most of all petrol is going to continue to rise. Fact! Vote at an election and get this pathetic and ridiculous excuse for a government out before they tell you its bad for your health and ban it!
Gordon Brown has had a huge say in all policy over the last ten years and worst of all it is he that is responsible for tax over the last ten.

Vote and get this clown out! For god sake we must realize its actually our only way of changing things. This government is so power drunk it doesn't care what we think but wishes to think for us.

I totally agree with what you are doing, the price for fuel is disgusting and its about time the British people stood up for some thing and let the government know how it feels, lets hope they listen although they didn't listen with the war in Iraq!!! Lets show them we are not happy

Yes, I detest paying tax. Tax is payable so much on everything.
People dont realise that when fuel tax/price on fuel goes up, everything else goes up because EVERYTHING goes by road.

My argument is that, why the hell should we be forced to pay this excessive amount of UK tax on fuel, when all these foreign scumbag truck drivers pay absolutley nothing. They fill up at cheaper countries, as previously described, such as Spain etc, drive to Scotland and back and because their fuel tanks are so large, they can get back to spain without having to put any fuel in!!

Then theres the road tax. Yet again foreign scumbag truckers pay no road tax, yet a very high proportion of motorway accidents is caused by these scumbags. The governments answer is to GIVE them convex mirrors so they can see down the BLIND side. Who is paying for these mirrors?? Us UK tax payers.

BAN FOREIGN TRUCKERS FROM THE ROADS.

If not, make them pay a masive amount of pay as you drive tax.

This government is the worst goverment ever. Why can the British public not see this???????????????????????????????????????????????????

People blame the conservatives about nationalising all of the major industries. I'll tell you all that it was a Labour Govenment under Ted Heath who started this. There we go LABOUR yet again!!!!!!!!!!

Best way to make the government see how unhappy us motorists are is to bring London to a standstill with protests. Do you really think Gordon Brown cares when the M6/M5/M4 is at standstill or when the refineries are blockaded? NO.

Will he care when he cant use his JAG anywhere in London or be forced to walk?? I think he'll be bothered then.

Bring it on.

Final argument: Just think about this. When prices of fuel rise, haulage companies have to pass this cost on to us, the consumers. When prices in shops rise, the government is making even more TAX because of VAT.

There have been many reports of late, signposting that we as a civilisation are heading for ecological catastrophe. These include the 2006 United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Report, the Stern Report and latterly, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). All of these paint a disquieting, plausible portrait of an Earth inching toward the brink of abrupt catastrophic planetary collapse, and challenges us to transform our current parasitic relationship with the Earth that sustains us.

We must realise now that attaining a "reasonable lifestyle" cannot be accomplished with sledgehammer tactics of the past. In our blind struggle for the survival of the fittest, richest and most acquisitive, we seem to have forgotten many of the fundamentals necessary to support all life. It has long been assumed by neo-classical economic models that the sum of individual demands somehow equalled a broader social good, and commercial interests, designer politicians and errant economists continue to tout this view with renewed vigour.

All scientific evidence so far, supports that fact that our current "reasonable lifestyle" based on this neo-classical "consumption assumption", could turn our big blue marble into just another cold dead rock - as described by physicist John E. Brandenburg and science writer Monica Rix Paxson in the book Dead Mars, Dying Earth.

On a more practical and immediate note, now that oil has broken the 100 Dollar a barrel mark, some oil strategists predict that the whole industrial culture will at some point start breaking down and that a world without oil, is not a world that can support 6 billion human beings. It is not a world that can support 3 billion. It may not even be a world that can support one billion, as transportation, power and other oil-dependent products and services will become much more expensive.

They envision a catastrophic end to the era of fossil-fuel exploitation, a radical collapse of the entire world industrial system within the 21st century, a collapse that, they say, actually began about the year 2000, will quicken in pace till about 2012, and then drop off a cliff in the run-up to about 2030, when the lights will have begun to go out permanently, and there will be, so to speak, a need to train "candle makers", if wax can be found.

The maths is done. No amount of alternatives will replace the demands of the many rapacious, energy hungry economies that exist at present. Not coal, not gas, not nuclear, not solar, not fuel cells, not wind, not anything. The prospects for all of these options are well reviewed and found wanting. We are building our way in to the "Big Empty" and the undoing of this "Earth Rape", inadvertently called "progress" will inevitably happen.

Then we will no longer consume more than nature can provide and waste more than nature can clear away. So Stefan, you can join the dinosaurs and ask them why they never drove cars?

It is irony that we call ourselves advanced with third class train service, second class road conditions and one of the world's most expensive train and road fare/tax system including fuel tax on price.

It seems our Government has to learn from others how to subsidise or be efficient not to charge through roofs to its public................

Don't forget that Fuel Duty is part of the calculation that is subject to VAT, so that in effect we are paying 60.5p per litre, not the 51.5p that is the official level of Fuel Duty.

Has all this gone the way it usually does.just moan and accept it, seems so to me anyway. As there has been no protest, and no reduction in the price, in fact, it just keeps going up and up,when will it stop, also I always thought that we were an Oil producing Country were has all ours gone,probably sold off to foreignors like everything else,that belongs to the British Public

is anyone else having trouble getting onto the transaction web site

The country is on its knees thanks to the Labour Government! They do it every time. I remember the winter of discontent 78/79 when we couldn't bury our dead, no bins were emptied and we replied on green godesses! That was all thanks to Labour Gov of the day. Get them out or we wont have a country left at all!!!!!!!!!

Having just been to Tescos to fill my car up with £60 worth of unleaded, I asked why the cost of fuel hasnt dropped due to the cost of brent crude oil falling to$86 yesterday, they couldn tell me, but did give me the telephone number of someonr who should no, its 0800505555 oppton 5 I suggest everyone rings this number and ask why. the answer i got was its down to the buyers, so i asked them to ask the buyers why theu havent demanded a lowering in the costm they will be putting that question to themand getting back to me, I WONT HOLD MY BREATH.

Once again here is the number to call 0800505555

Posted by Kev, 24th January 2008 4:25pm

diesel prices used to be between 5-10p a litre cheaper than petrol,but the price is higher now but people still think there are getting a bargain because road tax is a lot cheaper than petrol cars,does the goverment think the car drivers in this country are dumb ??? on another point while im on a roll IF this wasteful goverment is genuinely interested in reducing co2 there should be grants available for bio cars,lpg cars,duel fuel cars etc,that would appease the green brigade,but they wont do that because they are getting to much tax and vat from a litre of diesel fuel.

None of these protests have amounted to anything more than a slight inconvenience, because the numbers of protestors has never come near to the "critical mass " that will make them felt. Maybe what we want is some solidarity, as in France. I'd bet that if their fuel prices had risen, like ours, over the years, they would have got a favourable response from their government. Our lot don't listen, because when they shut their ears, the problems go away. And, please explain to me why we pay (I think) more for our fuel than most people elsewhere in the world - haven't their crude prices risen by the same amount as ours?

BOYCOTT BP from the 17-03-2008 maybe the government will listen when big oil companies start going bust how much will that cost the government FAT CATS

Have we at last reached saturation point where the battered & bruised British motorist can take no more. Extremely pleased to see the haulage contractors taking action but very disappointed that they are looking for a 25p REBATE on the diesel duty they are paying. If they are ditching Jo Public by only looking out for themselves the rot in British society spirals in an ever deeper dive. If the lorry drivers succeed in getting their rebate it is pretty obvious the ordinary motorist will take the brunt of subsidising the haulage industry with higher prices at the pumps. As Julius Ceaser said, divide & conquer. Everyone must unite if Gordon's fuel policies are to be re-evaluated & the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude will save some but put others to the wall. Whoever is co-ordinating the current fuel protests must mobilize the general public if they want to keep the support.