Fighting escalating petrol prices
 

The missus got this e mail at work today and wanted to share it with all you peeps on here...

It is worth a try anyhow !:)

PETROL PRICES......

We are going to hit close to 89p a litre by the summer.

Want petrol prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action.


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 at 77p -80p, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace 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 whimp out on me 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!!!

Please pass this message on. PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE


Action:

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons (75p)Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso.

For those of you that manged to bear with me ( sorry it was so long winded... it had got to be worth a try... I am keeping the original e mail if anyone wants to participate in this ( what is really a chain mail ) and give it a go, I can mail it on to you !

Cheers


:D

i'm in !!!!:)

Well it's a good theory, but I fear the oil companies wouldn't loose anything...
Where do you think the supermarkets get their fuel?? I don't think they refine it themselves, more likely I think they buy it from them oil giants listed above.

Sorry to be a wet kipper, but I think the best action would be just to drive less.

ah, good point there... bet that bloke who did this mail hadn't thought of that ! ( I certinately hadn't )

I work for myself as a contractor but the company contracting my services is BP. NBs996 is absolutely right - where do you think all those smaller service stations get their fuel's from? You guessed it!!

Sorry to burst a bubble but anyone who has been on the internet for a few years will have had ENDLESS amounts of e-mails of the same nature and I guess I'm a little cynical about these things now. Send just 5p and xxxx will not have her head cut off by oppressive regime x (sorry to use an extreme example but you get the idea).

Umm, wasn't the weather nice today :D ... went for a ride yesterday too :D:D:D:D:D

don't pour petrol on this subject and fan the flames.

the government will only get more revenue in the extortinate rate of duty:lol:

nothing personal guys!!!!!!!
 

but typical answers from a british population these days !
The i'm alright jack attitude.
Instead of getting together on this and adopting the TRUE Brit attitude it's to easy to do nothing!!!!!!!! but i remember my mate saying last time i'm gonna support this fuel blockade ! Then went and stashed 100 gallon of petrol in his work shop!!!!!!!!!!!:(

mind you them that do nothing are the ones that usualy complain most about it!!!!!!!!!

c'mon block the ports like the french do! stick to gether and win !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:cool:

ps i'm gonna be Madmax on the day of the uprising !

The fuel tanker is already on the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:cool:

Just watch your fingers on that boomerang!!!

tp ! pmsl :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

excuse my ignorance - pmsl?

****ing my self laughing (PMSL):lol:

ahhh ... I guess I ruined that a bit - slow bugger that I am!!!!

HOW ABOUT, AS dUCATI RIDERS JUST USE SHELL, SPONSOR OF DUCATI?

opps caps lock! :P

Don't use BP or Esso as norm or supermarket fuel, as Shell happens to be the closer fuel station, though on road when the light comes on, next station.

I thought best was not to buy fuel on a certain day?

Who rakes in the most cash from Petrol & Diesel.

The government.

They rake in more from the rise in the price of crude through fuel tax and the tax on the tax, VAT, well over 70% of the price of fuel is tax. They will rake in far more from the current rises in fuel prices than they would by sticking a few pence more tax on.


Roll on the next fuel protest.

Ray.

Fuel duty amounts to 73% of unleaded petrol. That's 73%!!!

73p out of every £1 you spend on petrol goes to the government!

It's nice to see that they're pouring all that cash back into keeping the roads in good order!

Tell you what, it would be tough trying to influence 3 Hundred Million people to lower fuel prices, but if you're plan is to change the behaviour of a large mass of people you only need to reach about 100 million of them.

That's over half of the US electorate. Get that monkey Bush out of the White House, get back to some sensible US domestic and foreign policy that conserves fuel at home and creates more stability in the middle east and voila! The world oil price becomes more stable.

Then use you vote (not many people do nowadays it seems) to threaten any party out of office if they intend to continue squeezing the last drop of tax out of every litre.

Ooooops, a little bit of politics creeping in there!

Unfortunately, the fact remains that oil is a diminishing resource and oil fields that were not even viable 10 years ago are now being exploited. I was listening to a program on the radio just yesterday about a company who have found some oil in Rajistan, they estimate something like 10 million barrels. Since OPEC upped their production to 2 million barrels a day, the new find is less than a weeks worth, but that is what oil companies are having to do now, chase down the last oil deposits in the world, and the oil pockets they do find are in increasingly hostile terrain or deeper water and therefore the base price has to go up. Add a gas guzzling, tax greedy chancellor to that and as far as fuel prices go (to coin a phrase from a pathetic 80's pop song)... the only way is up, baby.

The price of fuel in the UK has nothing to do with who is in power in the US, nor the output from OPEC.

The US only pay 27% fuel duty which means that their 30p per litre price is only 8p tax!
If you changed this to our 73% taxing system instead ... you get the same base price for a litre of petrol before tax!

Don't forget that this excludes the proposed 2p per litre tax hike on petrol in September ... which means an equivalent 58% rise in fuel duty AND 15% rise in VAT on the price.
(source: AA)

It is in the interest of the Chancellor to keep prices high as this means even more money for the government to spend on red tape, taxis to work and subsidising the drinks in the Westminister bar.

Ooops! Little bit of alternative politics there!

[Edited on 4-6-2004 by antonye]

Which is precisely what you are not advocating.

Let's see, now.... you're asking everyone to spawn spam, and your grasp of the economics of the oil industry and fuel retailing are shakier than a 916 with a misfire.

Nice one.

That's a bit bloody patronising. Can you explain where the flaw lies and how it really works then?? Ta/

No need to patronise, I'm not stupid. I fully recognise that UK taxation is the biggest factor in the price of fuel in the UK.

I'm simply pointing out that the basic laws of supply and demand, the political stability of the major oil producing nations and the fact that oil is a finite resource have an influence here as well.

The recent OPEC talks to increase production were an important factor in stopping the shaky world economic recovery slide back into another recession - as it has done with so many earlier disruptions and threats to the world oil supply. Nobody would need to worry about the price of fuel in the UK then, we'd all be too busy moving to Bangalore trying to hang onto our jobs, that's if we could afford to sell up and go because we'd probably be deep in negative equity - again.

Whoever is in power in the US has a great deal to do with the world oil supply - especially if you are sponsored by the oil lobby. But we see no slow down in the US greed for scarce resources and their expectation is that low gas prices will allow them to drive huge gas guzzling 4x4's forever

:rodent:"Well Leroy, Ah'll jes vote for any lil ol president as long as ah kin drive mah trurk"

Seems to be the prevailing attitude and the Hummers hum at 8 mpg, causing an insatiable US thirst for fuel. Not much political influence quenching that particular thirst. Maybe they should all pay our gas prices and see if that drives them out of their antique technology into more fuel efficient vehicles, but it's not gonna happen in an election year and probably never will.

One of the reasons that prices are high is due to commercial oil stocks being low, China is using so much oil the oil companies are falling over themselves to meet demand.

Any boycott in the western world will only divert oil to China who are happy to pay and build up startegic stocks just as the US are doing.

The US and China are two countries who frankly don't give a dam about others so its hard to see hwta effect our efforst would have

Rob

Getting back to the point though Jools, the people are complaining and want to protest about high fuel prices. The cost of a barrel of oil has little impact on the pump price of petrol - as can be seen in the varying costs of a litre of petrol across both Europe and the rest of the world.

The main cause of the high price of petrol in the UK is the 73% of tax levied on the base price by the Government.

Therefore this has nothing to do with Bush being the President of the US! The consumers in the UK would be paying these prices whether he was the president or not - his appointment haven't made the reserves of oil any smaller!

While I agree that not much is being done limit the fuel economy of cars in the US by the US Government, not every American voted for Bush and I suspect a good deal of those who didn't still drive their big ol' trucks. Again, this is the culture of the Americans and nothing to do with Bush.

So why isn't the UK Government putting the resources into alternative methods of economical transport - buses, trains, motorbikes? Instead they end up making the M25 into 12 lanes to fit more cars on it! And where does that money come from? Fuel tax!

:rodent: "I reckon they should increase speeding fines so they can lower the fuel tax - that way we get more people into cars to nick for speeding!"

its very basic economics im afraid, supply and demand.

if supply is short and demand is high prices go up
if supply is high and demand is low prices go down.

unless you are a member of opec or are sitting on a massive oilfield elsewhere there is jack all you can do about it. the tax is an issue but they will get it somewhere else if not on fuel.

personally i dont mind paying a few pence more for a while, if you are worrying about it when you are out on your ducati, you really should get out more.

spot on - boycott who you like but it wont reduce prices. Now, if we all refused to use our own motor powered transport and use public transport.....the country would stop and the economic impact would be huge, which may wake the suits up...

it is not just supply and demand either, as supply in the states is equal/higher than ours, yet their price remains low

tax is the burden

Its not just about a few pence more to fill the Duke.

How does the food you eat get transported?

How did that salesman who visited you today get to see you?

Yep, big fuel prices can have an impact on every facet of what you consume.

Yep the government have to get the money from somewhere but what hacks me off is the amount they waste, regional assembly anyone??

Interesting bit on the beeb News this morning claimed that while the cost of running a car had not gone up in the last 30 or so years in real terms (allowing for inflation), the cost of public transport had doubled comparatively!!

Another classic example of how the buffoons who run this country of all persuasions can't get it right!!

Enough of this heavy topic for a Friday, I'm off home in me LPG powered car to tear around on my bike while I can still just about afford the petrol!!:cool:

Ray

Ouch !!!

My economics knowledge is pretty much non existent BUT....

I was only forwarding an e mail the missus received at work....I knew there would be people here in opposition but I DIDN'T expect to have somebody come along and have a personal stab at me !!

All I said was that it had to be worth a try !

Cheers for that !

( are you mates with Vman per chance ??? )

[Edited on 4-6-2004 by dave w]

Yeah, I thought that was a harsh too dave!

Ignore Neil, he's a grumpy old bast at the best of times :D

Thanks Mr E.... First impressions and all that !!!

I am getting a really strange de-ja-vu feeling now !!!!

Don't worry, just point out that he looks like Terry Wogan in his picture in Bike magazine and I'm sure he will keep quiet :D

Supermarkets purchase fuel from nearest/cheapest supplier. In my case, I presume that will either be Charringtons fuels(?) or Shell at stanlow.

BP or ESSO?
As I understand it (from having worked on petrol stations at Meadowhall), the tankers which deliver the fuel to the stations may not necessarily have been supplied with their load by the respective companies, so BP tanker may contain fuel as supplied from Shell. :o

It's all very confusing.

300Million y'say?
seeing as there's only 60 million peeps in UK give or take a few million, and according to recent figures about half are internet savvy or connected (or was it less?), then what's the chances of getting this to work? Nice if it does.
Send two and fourpence we're going to a dance, pass it on.

Don't buy your pet's oil from the beeping eskimos state on.

Wasn't it a few years ago that Shell was in the process of being boycotted for a couple of reasons like, oh erm, south African investments? or maybe, engines running on shell burnt valves out quicker???

It all comes down to a tax issue and as Gordon Brown seems to be facing an income defecit as his plans for the economy haven't gone to plan, so to speak, then he needs to raise more cash from somewhere and whats an easy target apart from fags and booze.:mad:

Transport businesses will grind to a halt and suffer more than most but i'd support a boycott even though it will cripple the business and cause me an awfull lot more pain than the average man in the street. It's gotta stop somewhere. You can argue we can pass it on to the customer and everyone is in the same boat but i think the politicians are taking the ****.

I'm not commenting on the politics of this issue, or its merits or importance, but this email is typical of the "chain letter" type you see a lot of on the Internet. All sorts of issues get this treatment: charities, political lobbying, hug a tree, fight pollution, all sorts of stuff. Similar types of email warn of "doomsday" computer viruses that will "do terrible things to your hard-drive". It's just hoax.
So, I won't be getting excited about masses of people taking action against the oil companies.
Sorry to be a party-pooper.