The New Fuel Protest.

[Rooster-UK]

CAMPAIGN FOR CHEAPER FUEL.

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 8 days!!! 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

[kennythecelt]

It gets my vote Rooster!

It does not take any effort folks and if we all take the same action- who knows??

Remember consumer action works!!

[Conniff]

Don't like to be a damp squid, but this was tried in 2000 for just one day, and no one took part.

What we really really need, is a Frenchman to organise something.

Look at the problems on both sides of the channel created by the fishermen.

Todays protest by Welsh lorry drivers was as much use as a chocolate teapot. The police issued every driver with a breach of the piece leaflet and told them they must only use the inside lane and their speeds must not drop below 40mph.

So endeth another attempt and I can see Gordon Brown laughing over his cup of coffee (with whisky) at getting yet another one over the general public.

These rises are more government policy than fuel companies, remember that the government takes 70% so
when fuel was 50p per ltr Brown got 35p
at 75p - 52p
at £1 - 70p
and now at £125 - 87p

so there is greater scope for him to reduce the tax on it than the fuel companies. At present, he is still determined to add another 2p per ltr in October, plus the 70% of that 2p as well.

We need something and someone with power like the dustmans strike did. They had no choice than to back down over that.

[Rooster-UK]

Don't like to be a damp squid, but this was tried in 2000 for just one day, and no one took part.

Precisely!
Inconvenience for the motorist. A Hiccup for the oil companies.
What we are talking about, here, is a long term embargo on the two biggest suppliers.
No inconvenience for the motorist. (Plenty of other garages the motorist can use). But a long term embargo on the "big two" will severely damage their profits.
We're not talking a couple of days, here, we're talking weeks or months!

[DCG]

i used to work at a bp terminal as a contractor
there were bp tankers
mobil tankers
esso tankets

and a few more so most of the fule is from the same supplyers
so it wont affect them to much as pardon the french they all p1ss in the same pot

[Chesterexpress]

Couple of things wrong with this ill thought out plan, which by the way has been doing the rounds for many years.

1) Esso & BP aren’t the same company to start with. Esso is owned by Exxon Mobil Corp. listed on the NYSE while BP plc is listed on the LSE.

2) From your £1/litre, 50.35p goes to the government in excise duty and a further 14.89p is VAT. To sell at 69p/litre the oil companies would require the garage to have a cost price of less than 10p/litre. The open-market price of crude oil is currently around 46p/litre, add the cost of refining and distributing the fuel and a small amount of profit for the service station operators and there’s very little room for any price reductions.

3) Esso & BP service stations don't necessarily sell fuel from Esso & BP refineries – it’s as likely to have been bought on the open market or by long term contract and shifted around the world in ships and shifted around the country in tankers and by underground pipes. The diesel in the BP truck you see delivering to the local service station is as likely to have started out in a Shell refinery as in a BP refinery.

4) There’s an overall shortage of diesel production in Europe (that’s why diesel prices have been higher than unleaded for the last few years) – any surplus would be quickly bought up on the open market. In the unlikely event that a boycott had any effect on the retail chain the same fuel would just end up in the same vehicles but sold through different garages. Esso and BP would continue to make their profits, as they do now, from extraction and refining.

The only way that fuel’s ever going to become much cheaper is if the Government (whichever party) cut their take of excise duty and VAT. If they did that they’d still have to raise the revenue from somewhere, so some other tax would have to go up.

[Conniff]

Originally Posted by Chesterexpress

The only way that fuel’s ever going to become much cheaper is if the Government (whichever party) cut their take of excise duty and VAT. If they did that they’d still have to raise the revenue from somewhere, so some other tax would have to go up.

I don't see why they would have to raise anything. Since last year the petrol companies have increased the cost by 8p whereas the governments share has increased by 20p.

Using the governments own figures, they could cut the fuel tax (including both here) by 17.3p and still have had an increase above inflation.

[Wild Billy]

Originally Posted by Conniff

I don't see why they would have to raise anything. Since last year the petrol companies have increased the cost by 8p whereas the governments share has increased by 20p.

Could you share your source please?

[Rooster-UK]

Don't shoot the messenger.
I have merely passed on an Email that I received, as I received it.

I have not yet heard a realistic plan to achieve lower prices.

I say, chaps, lets not buy any petrol on Thursday. That'll show them!
So we all go out on Wednesday and fill up the tank.
Net result.....Garages are busy on Wednesday and quiet on Thursday.
They've still taken the same amount of money.
What overall effect has it had? None!

Of course, we could all cowtow to the powers that be and look forward with excited anticipation to the £2.00 litre. It probably won't be too long, now.
I do not die quietly! From this moment, I WILL NOT drive on to another Esso or BP forecourt until such time as the price is drastically reduced!

It might not work or have any effect whatsoever on the pump prices....But then neither has anything else that's been suggested, so far.

Rooster.

[Conniff]

I don't think it is an ill thought plan, it's just getting the people to agree, if it didn't work for the one day I can't see it working for months. If I remember correctly it was a one day boycott of BP that was asked for in 2000 and as I drove past the BP station there were about a dozen cars there and yet the Jet station is only about 100 yds further on.

A national strike is what we want or find the cleaning company that services Downing St and get them to withdraw their services.

[Weird Al Yankovic]

I gave up a courier delivery business because of expensive fuel to do something else.
Why don't these truckers do that if they don't like it?
Nobody is owed a living.

And I think it's only the government that can/should be targeted in this cause as they are really the only ones who have dictated high prices with their huge cut of duty.

Also, I think Council Tax rises of the last 10 years are more scandlous and affect everybody and nobody has a choice.

Mine has gone up 400% in 10 years yet fuel has risen some 100% in that time.

[Wild Billy]

Originally Posted by Weird Al Yankovic

And I think it's only the government that can/should be targeted in this cause as they are really the only ones who have dictated high prices with their huge cut of duty.

The Government are the ONLY ones who have dictated high prices? So nothing to do with expanding demand for oil in expanding economies like China and India? Nothing to do with lower production rates? Nothing to do with the dollar being weak so traders are buying up commodities (like oil) instead? Nothing to do with political unrest in some oil producing countries?

Take a look at the history of fuel duty over the past 15 years and tell me it is ONLY the Government which has dictated high prices. Look at how many times it has deferred increases in fuel duty over that time because of oil prices.

So, respectfully, based on the facts, I disagree with you.

[Conniff]

Originally Posted by Wild Billy

Could you share your source please?

The AA brings out annual reports on fuel prices, if you google last years price and compare it with this years price, you can do the sums.

Last year petrol was 97.38p, this year it is 125p, if you remove the governments 70% tax this makes the cost 29.21p and 37.50p respectively.
If you now take 29.21 from 37.50 that is an increase of 8.29p.
(These aren't exact figures and both tax and vat have been added together to come to the 70%, it's not far off).

There is also one other thing that I should have mentioned and that even though we are not part of opec, Brent oil is kept at the same price as that produced by opec.
The government slaps a 50% tax onto the oil companies for every drop they extract from the seabed before it has even come ashore for refining, and then, of course, it adds duty (again) and vat after refinement.

[skbuncks]

Originally Posted by Conniff

The AA brings out annual reports on fuel prices, if you google last years price and compare it with this years price, you can do the sums.

Last year petrol was 97.38p, this year it is 125p, if you remove the governments 70% tax this makes the cost 29.21p and 37.50p respectively.
If you now take 29.21 from 37.50 that is an increase of 8.29p.
(These aren't exact figures and both tax and vat have been added together to come to the 70%, it's not far off).

There is also one other thing that I should have mentioned and that even though we are not part of opec, Brent oil is kept at the same price as that produced by opec.
The government slaps a 50% tax onto the oil companies for every drop they extract from the seabed before it has even come ashore for refining, and then, of course, it adds duty (again) and vat after refinement.

Except we dont pay 70 % tax on fuel. What we do pay is 50.3p duty followed by 17.5 % VAT. The duty is a fixed amount so as the price of fuel goes up do to production costs etc the actual amount of tax we pay (as a percentage) goes down.

For example:

Fuel: 85p/l
VAT: 12.7p
Duty: 50.3p
Total tax: 63p or 74.1 % of the cost of fuel

Fuel: 97.4p/l
VAT: 14.5p
Duty: 50.3p
Total tax: 64.8p or 66.5 % of the cost of fuel

Fuel: 115p/l
VAT: 17.1p
Duty: 50.3p
Total tax: 67.4p or 58.6 % of the cost of fuel

So by the cost of fuel going up from 85p/l to 115p/l the government actually only gets an extra 4.3p/l (of course as Connif point out this is not taking into account any of the taxes they have levied prior to it getting to the pumps)

skb

[Conniff]

It doesn't matter what you call it, it is still a tax and has increased year upon year.
The combined 'tax' amounts to a staggering amount:

This fuel escalator forced prices up from one of the lowest in Europe to now one of the most expensive. When it was first added, fuel prices rose by 3 pence a litre and tax contributed to 72.8% of the total cost. By 1997 the escalator had added 11.1p to the cost of unleaded petrol and was at 75%. It didn't get any better when the conservatives left office and Gordon Brown took over, as the escalator increased and 3 pence was added per litre. This took tax up to an incredible 81.5% of the total price of fuel.

[dave]

Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet, etc.

Where do Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys and Morrisons get their fuel?

I doubt they mine the oil themselves.

[dave]

Originally Posted by Conniff

It doesn't matter what you call it, it is still a tax and has increased year upon year.
The combined 'tax' amounts to a staggering amount:

This fuel escalator forced prices up from one of the lowest in Europe to now one of the most expensive. When it was first added, fuel prices rose by 3 pence a litre and tax contributed to 72.8% of the total cost. By 1997 the escalator had added 11.1p to the cost of unleaded petrol and was at 75%. It didn't get any better when the conservatives left office and Gordon Brown took over, as the escalator increased and 3 pence was added per litre. This took tax up to an incredible 81.5% of the total price of fuel.

Actually Gordi abolished the fuel tax escalator - which was heralded as a good thing when he did it - little did we know that it left him able to do what the hell he wanted to do with fuel tax.

[Conniff]

Originally Posted by dave

Actually Gordi abolished the fuel tax escalator - which was heralded as a good thing when he did it - little did we know that it left him able to do what the hell he wanted to do with fuel tax.

Not really he didn't, he just called it something else, but your right, it goes up more each year now than before.

I see he met with the oil industry today, asking what they could do, cheaky sod, he still wont admit that it is his taxes that have put prices where they are now, just like he wouldn't admit that the abolition of the 10p tax rate was a 100% increase to the lowest earning tax payers.

Why wont he see (or is it 'care') that bleeding everyone, especially the trucking business and public transport, is going against everything he is spouting and pushing the cost of everything on the shelf upwards.

I don't think bus companies should pay any tax whatsoever on their fuel, (but he is just too gready), and then maybe they would become a viable alternative to the car and people would actually think about using them.

The cost of our bus fares is to increase to £2 each way on 1st June, £20 per 5 day week, one hell of a lot of money to someone on minimum wages.

[dave]

Yeah, probably right....and THEN did what the hell he liked!

I believe you are right, but I do remember the news articles at the time saying "Fuel tax escalator abolished" etc... Found it quite hard to believe even before they fleeced us beyond belief.

[dave]

No tax on bus fuel would be a good start - and even the 'environmental' spin machine can't argue that one.