The general public can no longer cope with the increase of taxes in the country and price increases, in hte 70's there wasnt as many taxes as there is today, a loaf of bread today is over £1.50, banks have now reported that hardly anyone has any savings and that the average family are living there lifes in debt, anyone that oversends and gets themselves into debt i have no sympathy but if people are just seeing the price of living increasing but there annual income is not increasing then there must be a fundemental flaw, and that must rest with the chancellor and goverment
The fundemental flaw is that we have a huge state and a wealth creation sector that is withering on the vine. like you say the blame must rest with our government for allowing this to happen. There's is only one way to correct this situation but with so many people dependent on the state for their very livelihood the explosion this will cause will be enormous. Very tough times ahead.
The solutions are more complex than bringing down prices/reducing the tax take or windfall taxes, though those things are handy.
We need to understand that supply of oil is remaining static while demand is rising and that these things are temporary trends but are likely to be around for sometime, unless the Indian and Chinese economies suddenly go into recession. Demand will increase exponentially over the next decade or more. Therefore we need to address the supply side of the equation, while working out ways to reduce demand. A stronger dollar wouldn't hurt either.
One of the bottlenecks hitting supply is the lack of oil refineries - apparently no new refineries have been built since the early 70s. It's logical to assume that if more oil can be processed then supply can meet demand. So the solution here is that we need more oil refineries, but that creates a problem elsewhere as increasing oil consumption causes global warming and pollution.
The only way to fix it is to use alternatives like ethanol, biodiesel etc and others as oil substitutes, while reducing oil use and encouraging renewables. Anything else is only going to be a short-term stop-gap, that and we are going to have to learn to live with higher energy prices from here on.
I always remortgage and shop around for the best deals every two years, my brooker told me yesterday that the company i have just remortgaged with have now shut there books to all new business, and is not the first comapany to do so,the current mortgage climate is the worst in his twenty years working within the industry, even when mortgages were at 14 and 15% he has never know it to be so bad, no wants to take on new busuiness, this will then lead to an increase in increased renting rates as the first time buyer will now look to rent instead of buting a property
Well the obvious one is to cut the levy charged, but that levy helps pay for this country. Whether you think what it pays for is correct or not, is purely a matter of personal opinion. But by cutting the levy, then the money would have to be found by rising taxes elsewhere, or the country goes into even greater debt. And neither of those are preferable situations.
But why does this money need to found from elsewhere? We are taxed now more than at any time during most people lifetimes, council tax has risen above inflation, fuel duty has risen above inflation, plus the government has invented new income streams (various fines, congestion charges, etc.). All the time services are being cuts, public spending is being cut, so where is all this money going? The problem is not about raising funds it is about the massive missuse and waste of funds at every level of local and central government that is making this country more and more expensive to run. The problem is you can't keep extracting money from the public, money spent on taxes isn't spent in the highstreet on good and services and this kills the economy. We're already seeing public spending slowing, house prices dropping, etc. and there is only more of this to come. The government need to cut taxes to give the ecomony a boost. They'll get it back in income and business taxes if the economy does revive and people start earning and spending more. They need to think long-term, but that is the major problem with politicians and democacy in general, only think as far as the next election, long term is somebody elses problem and we all go down the shitter as one short term policy replaces another.
Exactly! I don't mind paying taxes but when its so idiotically wasted then it drives me nuts.
For example: We've just had our bins collections changed to recycled every week (plastics, metals, paper & cardboard and food waste) with non-recyclable / landfill every fortnight.
Around 6 weeks ago the Council wrote to us to ask if we needed a new main bin, which we sent a reply back to saying we didn't. 2 weeks later the Mrs gets a knock on the door and is asked by someone representing the council whether we need a new main bin, which again we told them we did not.
So what turns up on my door 1 week later? Yep a new main bin....
So we have the cost of printing and distributing this questionnaire, the cost of the free post reply envelope, the cost of employing people to collate the information, then the cost of sending someone to knock on all residents doors to ask the same question, the cost of collating the info for a 2nd time, the cost of buying too many bins, then the cost of distributing the bins that they'd already been told that some people didn't need, and finally the cost of collecting all these unwanted bins....F**king idiots!!
A couple of points:
- The VAT received on fuel (rather than the DUTY) has risen as the price has increased - therefore the Gov't is raking in more cash than they had budgeted to receive. They can afford a small cut in Duty without it affecting budgets - there is no need to raise taxes elsewhere to compensate for a cut.
- Whilst in the grand scheme of things we're a relatively small player, the UK is an oil producer and a member of OPEC. It's not just Johnny Foreigner in the middle east & africa that constitute it.
I guess someone has to pay for those on benifits, who picks up their tab, and why is it everytime i watch a programme about some chavs claiming benifits with eight kids from five different blokes that they always can afford to smoke 40 fags a day and have Sky Plus, good old Labour,
The people who are calling for oil to go to $150/$200 are the same speculators that are long of it. It costs $10 to produce and there is enough supply so it must be pure speculation and greed.
Anyone else get this e-mail? Copy it and circulate it.
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.
Well if you're going to target a oil company don't make it BP. Something like 90% of the pension funds in this country have shares in BP so if you hit them hard you'll only be lowering the value of your own pension.
All the supermarkets buy their petrol from BP, ESSO etc, all you're doing is saving BP and ESSO the expense of running service station.
Incidently, service stations don't make any money, they make 0.5-1.5p per litre sold, if you put in less than a tenner just the transaction costs of them accepting card payment make the transaction a net loss to them.
[cite]Posted By: Razil[/cite]Privatisation: sell off the crown jewels at a discount, many of which were monopolies now owned by mainly foreign firms now all profiteering...
More short term thinking, sell it of now to get some money in before the next election, screw the long term ramifications
Fuel duties account for about 5 per cent of government revenues (taxes), so although it is a lot of money it is not true that making minor adjustments to the rate makes a big hole in the budget, especially when the pump price is being inflated by the price of oil.
Whether it is a good idea to have government by truck drivers is another matter entirely.
i put a tenner in today and the gauge didnt even move!
im paying £110 a week to get to work now! i wish i could take public transport but being a chippy i have too many tools! if this carries on im not going to be able to afford to go to work and will have to claim benefits!!
Chirpy mate they would not give a sh*t. In the Oil Business its split into two UpStream and Downstream. Upstream= Exploration,Production and Gas, Down Stream = Retail ,Chemicals,Marine +Transport etc. The Upstream makes billions thats BILLIONS and the Down Stream only makes millions !!
Esso are part of ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil makes a 2,800 MILLION dollars profit and thats a 1/4. They keep breaking their own World record profit a 1/4 by a Private Company.They wouldnt care less one day or one week if sales in UK were boycoted.
The scale of this companies projects are truely staggering.It is true that these people run the World.
The pressure has to be on HM Gov to lower the tax (whatever label its called), becuase this labour Gov is feeling the pain and they will bend.
Surely the way through this is to levy a windfall tax on the oil producers who are gaining a huge benefit from this speculative driven oil price? Use the money gained to discount the retail price of fuel. Simple.
[cite]Posted By: bingaddick[/cite]Surely the way through this is to levy a windfall tax on the oil producers who are gaining a huge benefit from this speculative driven oil price? Use the money gained to discount the retail price of fuel. Simple.
Firstly, how much is enough discount? Secondly, what's to stop the oil producers jacking the price further to cover the tax?
Bing last time that was done i know ExxonMobil told Blair they would pull out of the UK.Whilst they are just one of the 3 main players the others would also not be inclined to let ExxonMobil go as nearly EVERY venture in the Norh Sea has ExxonMobil money involved sometimes at 40% some lower. It was the big oil companies who developed "horizontal drilling" which has allowed the companies to reach more oil and the Government to take more tax ! If they go the Gov loses. We were sold a huge pup when all these public companies were sold off. At the time the lie was"the Free market will bring in more competion and makes things cheaper as the companies will be more efficiant" i would laugh if it wasnt so f**kin sick. Now the huge mega companies have brought up the smaller companies , you have lost any chance of prices being competative and these companies only give a shit about what "The City" thinks or their shareholders. We should NEVER have sold BP and NEVER sold any of the Utility companies off.
[cite]Posted By: bingaddick[/cite]Surely the way through this is to levy a windfall tax on the oil producers who are gaining a huge benefit from this speculative driven oil price? Use the money gained to discount the retail price of fuel. Simple.
Firstly, how much is enough discount? Secondly, what's to stop the oil producers jacking the price further to cover the tax?
I don't pretend to have the answers, by the way!
Bang on Airman, whatever the government reduces the fuel tax by the oil companies will simply increase the prices to nullify the difference anyway.
Someone on here said Iraq was a "tiny oil producer" - well, that's kind of true because AT THE MOMENT they are the 15th largest producer in the world market. The key word there is "producer".
In actual fact, Iraq has the THIRD LARGEST oil supply in the world and its the little "local difficulty" that is going on there at the moment means they are (according to OPEC figures) producing only 28% of their mid-90's production levels which means that there is LESS oil available which means the price is substantially higher. If Iraq returned to 100% production they would be in the top 5 producers easily.
The Iraq war is a huge reason why oil prices are so high because it is creating huge uncertainty in the wider middle east which drives up prices massively in the market.
When was Iraq the "third largest producer" ? was it before this war ? NO. was it before Iraq invaded Kuwate (why was that again ? oh yes it was for THEIR oil).or was it before the Iran-Iraq war ?
Iraq is not "the huge reason" why prices are high. Opec or Russia or even the USA (if they un-taped their oil wells) could produce more.
Specualtion is forcing up the price and the oil companies dont mind that.
Iraq has the world's second biggest reserves of oil (enough to last several decades) and relatively speaking it is close to the surface making it easy and cheap to extract.
Comments
more boring chaff[/url
We need to understand that supply of oil is remaining static while demand is rising and that these things are temporary trends but are likely to be around for sometime, unless the Indian and Chinese economies suddenly go into recession. Demand will increase exponentially over the next decade or more. Therefore we need to address the supply side of the equation, while working out ways to reduce demand. A stronger dollar wouldn't hurt either.
One of the bottlenecks hitting supply is the lack of oil refineries - apparently no new refineries have been built since the early 70s. It's logical to assume that if more oil can be processed then supply can meet demand. So the solution here is that we need more oil refineries, but that creates a problem elsewhere as increasing oil consumption causes global warming and pollution.
The only way to fix it is to use alternatives like ethanol, biodiesel etc and others as oil substitutes, while reducing oil use and encouraging renewables. Anything else is only going to be a short-term stop-gap, that and we are going to have to learn to live with higher energy prices from here on.
Exactly! I don't mind paying taxes but when its so idiotically wasted then it drives me nuts.
For example: We've just had our bins collections changed to recycled every week (plastics, metals, paper & cardboard and food waste) with non-recyclable / landfill every fortnight.
Around 6 weeks ago the Council wrote to us to ask if we needed a new main bin, which we sent a reply back to saying we didn't. 2 weeks later the Mrs gets a knock on the door and is asked by someone representing the council whether we need a new main bin, which again we told them we did not.
So what turns up on my door 1 week later? Yep a new main bin....
So we have the cost of printing and distributing this questionnaire, the cost of the free post reply envelope, the cost of employing people to collate the information, then the cost of sending someone to knock on all residents doors to ask the same question, the cost of collating the info for a 2nd time, the cost of buying too many bins, then the cost of distributing the bins that they'd already been told that some people didn't need, and finally the cost of collecting all these unwanted bins....F**king idiots!!
- The VAT received on fuel (rather than the DUTY) has risen as the price has increased - therefore the Gov't is raking in more cash than they had budgeted to receive. They can afford a small cut in Duty without it affecting budgets - there is no need to raise taxes elsewhere to compensate for a cut.
- Whilst in the grand scheme of things we're a relatively small player, the UK is an oil producer and a member of OPEC. It's not just Johnny Foreigner in the middle east & africa that constitute it.
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.
All the supermarkets buy their petrol from BP, ESSO etc, all you're doing is saving BP and ESSO the expense of running service station.
Incidently, service stations don't make any money, they make 0.5-1.5p per litre sold, if you put in less than a tenner just the transaction costs of them accepting card payment make the transaction a net loss to them.
More short term thinking, sell it of now to get some money in before the next election, screw the long term ramifications
Whether it is a good idea to have government by truck drivers is another matter entirely.
im paying £110 a week to get to work now! i wish i could take public transport but being a chippy i have too many tools! if this carries on im not going to be able to afford to go to work and will have to claim benefits!!
Esso are part of ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil makes a 2,800 MILLION dollars profit and thats a 1/4. They keep breaking their own World record profit a 1/4 by a Private Company.They wouldnt care less one day or one week if sales in UK were boycoted.
The scale of this companies projects are truely staggering.It is true that these people run the World.
The pressure has to be on HM Gov to lower the tax (whatever label its called), becuase this labour Gov is feeling the pain and they will bend.
Firstly, how much is enough discount? Secondly, what's to stop the oil producers jacking the price further to cover the tax?
I don't pretend to have the answers, by the way!
We were sold a huge pup when all these public companies were sold off. At the time the lie was"the Free market will bring in more competion and makes things cheaper as the companies will be more efficiant" i would laugh if it wasnt so f**kin sick. Now the huge mega companies have brought up the smaller companies , you have lost any chance of prices being competative and these companies only give a shit about what "The City" thinks or their shareholders. We should NEVER have sold BP and NEVER sold any of the Utility companies off.
Bang on Airman, whatever the government reduces the fuel tax by the oil companies will simply increase the prices to nullify the difference anyway.
Someone on here said Iraq was a "tiny oil producer" - well, that's kind of true because AT THE MOMENT they are the 15th largest producer in the world market. The key word there is "producer".
In actual fact, Iraq has the THIRD LARGEST oil supply in the world and its the little "local difficulty" that is going on there at the moment means they are (according to OPEC figures) producing only 28% of their mid-90's production levels which means that there is LESS oil available which means the price is substantially higher. If Iraq returned to 100% production they would be in the top 5 producers easily.
The Iraq war is a huge reason why oil prices are so high because it is creating huge uncertainty in the wider middle east which drives up prices massively in the market.
Iraq is not "the huge reason" why prices are high. Opec or Russia or even the USA (if they un-taped their oil wells) could produce more.
Specualtion is forcing up the price and the oil companies dont mind that.