Something thathad escaped my notice, but due to go up 2p /ltr, but the haulage industry calling for it to be scraped. I think this is going to hurt a lot of people, certainly going to be unpleasant for myself.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7199131.stm
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ANOTHER one?! As far as I'm concerned, bring back the fuel protests...cause this is getting ridiculous. We all go round using more fuel because of ridiculous levels of congestion as it is, this doesn't solve it, because the public transport system is awful. I tried not using my car for a whole week last week, and I was late for appointments 6 times, because buses and trains were delayed or randomly non-existent. Sorry, rant over. Back to the point...I'm annoyed by this, and strongly suggest one way to rally the masses behind any political party is to at least attempt to ease the burden (financially and in practice with 20mph zones and cameras everywhere - I'm in Staffs here) upon the motorist, cause much more and there will be serious economic problems...
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This can't be allowed to happen.
Fuel has already increased by 10% in three months. In October we were worried about diesel breaching the £1 a litre mark. Now it's at £1.10 in a lot of places. My local filling station has increased by a penny a litre twice in the last week.
The government has scope to actually reduce fuel duty and offset it by the increased VAT receipts on the back of high oil prices. There is certainly no excuse for a further increase. To call the existing fuel price increases inflation busting would be a massive understatement.
Cheers
DP
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This is something we'll just have to get used to. The oil price is circa $100 p.b & tax has to reclaim about 50% of all income, in one way or another, in Western Europe - some have more direct (income) tax , others have higher indirect (spending) taxes.
It's called living in a 21st century of global competition where our living standards have more downside than upside.
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Funny how this gov. can bail out Northern Rock to the tune of £50bn yet doesnt seem so concerned for the rest of the public.
I understand fuel is finite, but I recently tried the "no car for 1 week". Not only did it cost me more overall (including insurance costs), but I couldnt get anywhere in time even leaving early.
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It's ridiculous. We get hammered in the UK with some of the highest fuel prices in Europe plus the related problems of congestion. No pleasure left in motoring. Only need to go over to France or Spain to find more space, less restriction and cheaper fuel. If they can do it why can't we? I don't buy the excuse that fuel duty increases are 'green' to discourage car use, it's an essential for many and public transport not an option practically. Serious reductions in car use will only happen towards the bitter end when the oil really starts to dry up and it becomes a rich person's plaything to regularly drive.
You watch TV and see the millions of average US citizen driving massive SUV or pick up trucks frittering away the global oil and joe public in Wolverhampton is squeezed even more at the pumps. Not to mention gas, electric prices...
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You'll find that the overall tax burden is higher in France than here.
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Fuel is simply a massive revenue raiser - when we all start to drive electric/hydrogen/marsh gas (!) powered cars in the future then we'll pay through the nose in road tolls instead.
This government has become the absolute master of taxing the individual until it stings, but not quite enough for them to leave the country....
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kinpin wrote "I don't buy the excuse that fuel duty increases are 'green' to discourage car use"
You make a good point, where else would they get that much tax from if people stopped using there cars????
I agree with you.
In the new year my train ticket from Bristol to Reading went up to £630 per month+ car parking, you can find the train operator responsible, its the one who has one of the worst performance records in the country and the one where there is a planned ticket fare strike being planned.
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BMDUBYA- I go Reading-Bath and it's significantly cheaper if I split the journey at Didcot (you don't actually get off the train, just buy 2 tickets). Have you tried that?
Edited by Focus {P} on 21/01/2008 at 13:17
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I'm guessing you get some sort of season ticket, but FYI standard returns:
Bristol-Reading = 97
Birstol-Didcot (40.20) + Didcot-Reading (7.40) = 47.60
Of course it's non-obvious fare structures like that which don't help public transport's cause.
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Focus, that's brilliant!! Only we could come up with that one!! Have you tried breaking you journey a few more times or would it be a hassle to have 20 different tckets for the one journey?
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Have you tried breaking your journey a few more times
I have, but to no avail- Didcot has a special significance, something to do with where it is in relation to London :-(
BTW BMDUBYA- train has to actually stop at Didcot, which limits you to 1 train per hour instead of 2.
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I think that the inflationary pressures on the rest of the economy and a general slow down in the economy might well mean that the increase in tax will not happen. HMG is more frightened of inflation than anything else (poss due to the problems before it was last voted out). All prices are rising and fuel seems to be the driving factor along with the price of food.
If you did not keep the fuel escualtor in place, then the revenue raised by fuel taxation would in real terms fall (because of inflation). The fuel esculator tackles that one nicely or am I being a bit cynical/naive?
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This Corrupt bunch of ******* (I'll censor myself) choose to use CPI (giving inflation rate of 2.1%. I believe this does not include fuel or mortgage increases)
The RPI is 4.0%. This includes many retail items. In reality we all now that inflation is way above even that.
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Ah but don't forget that Gordon has to pay for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there is 20 billion for the Olympic games to find.
Also, I just heard on the radio that he is going to give 800 and odd million in aid to India even though it is expected that India in a few years is going to be a global leader along with China.
All this spending while our roads and infrastructure crumble away beneath us.
These are but a few items of expenditure or wasted money that this little Island can ill afford to spend.I am sure others can think of many more !
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Funnily enough student loans are based on RPI, rather than CPI ... what a suprise.
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This tax rise will just be the start of it. Despite 12 years of robust economic growth, the coffers are empty. There will be more of this to come.
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Dear Gordon,
Please account for the money you have stolen over the last 10 years....
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There is the old adage that we get the government that we deserve.
British people have demonstrated time and again that they do not like direct taxation. The result is therefore that we get relatively low direct taxation and higher indirect taxation. Fortunately that benefits middle-to-higher earners such as myself.
Yes, fuel is more expensive than in France and elsewhere in Europe - but look at French direct taxation. I have been tempted to move abroad, but (quite apart from the opposition of my wife) I've done the sums and I would be vastly worse off under the French, German or Spanish tax systems. I would have less disposable income in those countries and fuel would take a relatively larger proportion of my income than in the UK.
Obviously the situation is not so rosy for the less affluent....
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But in all the countries you mention, you would find a cheap, reliable public transport network of trains and buses as an alternative to using your car.
Labours idea of an integrated transport system has been simply to attempt to discourage car use through over taxation in the hope that people would be forced to use public transport.
How many of us would use it more if it was like the Paris Metro for example ?
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But in all the countries you mention you would find a cheap reliable public transport network of trains and buses as an alternative to using your car.
Aprilia is correct though isn't he. The cheap and reliable public transport in the rest of Europe was paid for by decades of investment from higher taxes. In Britain during the 80's and 90's taxes were cut and there was nothing left to improve the infrastructure, everything was allowed to deteriorate. British politicians have spend the last 20 or more years telling us that our more free-market system is better then the European model. Unfornately we have been left with inferior infrastructure and higher fuel and energy cost. Somehow those misguided Europeans have also ended up owning all our power and water utilities. I just heard that German Railways is going to buy one of our rail companies. Maybe they are not so stupid after all.
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I agree with 2cents. People do not realise just how shambolic PT actually is until they have used it for a daily commute and not just for a couple of weeks or months. Certainly in my experience the longer the journey the worse it gets. See my previous post higher up about railways. I for one would love to see tax double IF every penny would go into improving PT, making it clean, reliable and above all safe to use. Again in my experience I have had to get off the train and move down a number of carriages because I have felt threatened by the abusive nature and colourful language of some 'people' in the same carriage as me.
In my situation, I feel I cannot continue with my 4 hour daily commute and am having to leave a job and company I like to work for to find a job more locally because the rail system cannot get me to work on time. I used to catch the 7am train, but that got so bad I now have to catch the 6.30am train, that is now as bad as the 7am train, think I am exaggerating? I have emails to back up my claims from fellow commuters who have complained to the train company, and by its own admission the train company in question yesterday, in the face of a passenger fare strike, that they are providing a shambolic service and will offer double the compensation. Also do a search for IhateXXXXX or www.moretrainlessstrain.co.uk/ and read for youselves how disgruntled people are with PT.
I myself have recieved over £100 in compensation in six weeks last year, I don't want compensation I want a decent PT system. How many people would have a job after a week of getting inot work 10 - 30 mins late EVERY day? So the governments answer is, over the next few years the public will have to pay an increasing percentage of the train fares as the government reduces subsidies, so that the public are paying approx 75% of the current subsidies, and, the government will also put more and more tax on fuel, Brilliant!
I don't care about other countries, what I want is,
(a) Cheap petrol or diesel so that I can work for a living.
or
(b) Expensive fuel and a fast improving local and national integrated PT system that will allow me to get to work on time.
Lets face it, in the very near future I'm likely to get neither.
Gets off soap box.
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Arrive at CDG airport, Paris. Purchase 2 day rover ticket at £17 . Allows me to travel from airport to Paris centre and back as well as make as many journies as I like on the Metro and the inner city bus routes as I want.
Arrive London, go one stop on the underground...£4 !!!
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Definatley need to bring back a fuel protest but see it through to the end this time. I think last time we were down to the last few day's where the goverment would of had to bow down.
Public transport a joke as any who uses it knows !. My journey to work is 9 miles. By bus I would have to leave home at 7.10 to arrive at work for 8.50 & to return home I leave work at 5 & would arrive at 18.50 ! just to travel 9 miles that takes 20 mins in the car!
May be if a big enough protest headed by the national papers boycotting one brand of fuel at a time could have a significant effect. ie Stop purchasing BP for at least two weeks then Shell etc etc. Fuel companies would have to put pressure on then.
Could be interesting.
Doc
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The "boycotting" fuel idea doesnt necessarily work unless every single station's supply is identified and exposed.
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I read somewhere there was a problem of wet seats and picking up bedbugs from peoples clothes on buses. Certainly puts me off.
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>> May be if a big enough protest headed by the national papers boycotting one brand of fuel at a time could have a significant effect. ie Stop purchasing BP for at least two weeks then Shell etc etc. Fuel companies would have to put pressure on then.
>>>>
Not that old chestnut again!
If we boycott BP, Esso, Shell and everyone else sell more fuel. Who do they buy the extra from?
Correct; BP.
Go stand outside a Texaco refinery, for example, and check out whose tankers go in to fill up. The answer is all of them.
The fuel cartel is far more widespread and deep-seated than many of you realise.
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BMDUBYA- sorry to hear your experience of the Bristol-Reading route has been so bad. Perhaps it's because of the direction ie. towards London- I've been commuting the other way, Reading-Bath, 3 days a week for well over a year now, and although there's been the odd cancellation and one 6 hour journey home at the height of the flooding, it's been pretty uneventful. It certainly hasn't put me off the job.
BTW did you investigate whether buying Bristol-Didcot + Didcot-Reading tickets could save you any money? Standard returns work out at a total of less than half the cost.
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Hi Focus
Yeah I did know about that, but the 6.30am Bristol Pkwy to Reading doesnt stop at Didcot anymore. The problems for the Bristol Parkway to Reading is the Chipping Sodbury (Box) tunnel, you might think I'm making this up, but there is a natural spring in the tunnel so when it rains it floods. You wouldnt believe we could build a tunnel under the channel but cant under chipping sodbury, he he he makes me laugh everytime.
Like I say all the billions raised via cars in one or ther other could solve this problem, but as I say, seems like there are better causes than actually providing the people of this country with a decent PT system, thats why I dont believe a word when we are fleeced with the old Green Tax thing!
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We need fuel to get on with our lives, without it I certainly could not do my job. Guess most of us are the same, ergo they can charge what they like and there is nothing we can do about it. The effects of the last fuel protest didn't last long and if they didn't get our tax from fuel it would be raised elsewhere
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barney100 I agree, the effects of the last protests didnt last long, what the government dont seem to get is that people wouldnt complain if the tax was spent on improvements, it isnt. Unfortunate, if you live outside of London then most people need their car if only to go to work, excluding shopping etc, so it will plunge more people into, is it called fuel povety?
I don't think anyone would argue about tax increases if there were viable alternatives, the government are attempting to force us onto sub-standard PT, why dont they provide us with alternatives and believe me, no-one would complain, the problem is, No viable alternative for many people. I believe many see road tax and fuel tax simply another tax, and it doesnt go where it should be going. It really isnt rocket science, or maybe it is?
Edited by BMDUBYA on 23/01/2008 at 22:25
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At the end of the last fuel strike, Bliar admitted what we had all known since time began...that the fuel taxes were not for looking after roads and the transport infra structure but were primary for throwing in the pot and wasting on Britans biggest white elephant, the NHS.
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