Heres a question for gordon brown on fuel?

Question

the price of petrol etc has gone up,,,,the press are clamouring about the obscene profits made by oil companies and they want them to reduce pump prices,,,

as nee gordon brown and alistair the darling(who still wants to stick another 2p on tax in october)ARE RAKING IN PER LITRE 67 PER CENT OF THE COST OF A LITRE OF PETROL,,,,,brown and co could drop the the price overnight by taking less in tax,,,,

i havent seen any such suggestion from the press they just want to get at the oil companies,,,,,

i agree the companies make gross profits but the goverment is laughing at us all the way to the bank

Answer 1

the problem with taking the tax off fuel is the price will not come down. don't believe me? well I can only tell you of an experience I had when I was buying a record as I was about to pay for the record the shop keeper said I was in luck as purchase tax had been removed from the item I was about to buy. I was over the moon and was about to pay minus the purchase tax. which was about 10 old pence at the time, I was then informed that the record was only 2 pence cheaper than when it had the tax on it? the record company had put up the price of the record by 8 pence. a valuable lesson learned on the workings of companies. You see the price you are paying is the price you are willing to pay not the true cost. industry knows this and will do all it can to get you to pay the price. don't be fooled into thinking taking the tax off fuel will bring the price down.

Answer 2

I personally do not think that petrol is expensive.  ÃƒÂ‚£5 for a gallon of fuel which is enough energy to get me from work and back about 3 times at a fast speed with very little hassle seems very reasonable.  Just imagine the extra work if you had a horse to do your work?

The way we live now, yes, petrol is expensive for some it will continue to get more expensive over time and I think the government should prevent fuel from getting over priced until we adopt a more localised way of life again.  We've taken cheap oil for granted and simply moved further from our places of work, increased the distance we'll travel for holidays, family, friends and so on.  It's not sustainable like this, it never was.  Fair enough it's easy for me to say this now but we haven't learnt from our mistakes.  When North Sea oil began production the tax and income from that could have paid for every house in the UK to be retrofitted with some form of renewable energy but no, the government just said we'll lower taxes to be popular, 30 years later, petrol prices have increased and we're all complaining.  Instead, we could have had very lower running energy costs in our houses and it wouldn't matter to us, or something similar.

Answer 3

Have you ever known the government to want LESS money particularly if it is not highly apparent - 10p tax band elimination - that they are doing so?

RoyS

Answer 4

We need to explore every possibility of fuel . Take all the pets off the table as eventually the Arabs will use oil as a weapon against us. Yes the oil Co. are making too much but it was propagated by the GW scam.

Answer 5

Government take much less tax from electric vehicles (just 7.5%VAT), or its free if you have your own generator; and £0 road tax and £0 congestion charge and free parking in some cities. So go to your dealer and demand Lotus sell us the Tesla in the UK http://www.tesla.co.uk, or GM their EV1 or Toyota the RAV4ev. (do not try this in the US as it is considered an un-american activity and could get you arested http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2005/11/...

But no, people just want to keep driving their complicaated expensive noisy smelly fossil dinosaurs. And while moaning about fuel price do nothing to improve consumption like keeping to speed limits, maintaing tyre pressures, anticipating road conditions to avoid harsh braking or acceleration etc.

And 'cos no-one thinks for themselves but do what the £bns on car ads and media jollies like top gear tell us - so relax its everyones fault but ours.

Answer 6

Let the fuel prices go up. Anyone looking for cheap fuel is on the wrong track anyway. We need to use less fossil fuels NOW. So if prices go up and up and up, people will start to use less. And it will make alternatives come along much sooner. Yes I pay the higher fuel prices as well and probably earn less than half of what you do. (a mere US$8.5 per hour before tax!, and yes this amount attracts a hefty 35% tax). And public transport is next to non existent here.

But the sooner we all stop using fossil fuels the better.

Electric cars are a way better option even with current technology than most people want to admit. You suggest that they don't have the range you need. Perhaps that is simply because the economy /government has not adopted the electric alternative. Here are some bog standard and simple solutions to increasing the range to limitless using existing technology. I am sure these can be improved upon very simply be people more knowledgeable than me.

1     swappable battery packs. Simply design the battery packs to be interchangeable between vehicles, service stations keep a supply of charged ones on hand and you lease the battery pack rather than own it. Pull in to service station and in less than a minute or 2 the battery pack is exchanged with a fully charged one. (Different models could be incorporated into this system without too much of a problem as long as there were not too many)

2    electrified sections of main highways. Using induction coils and AC current carriers embedded into the road surface, just driving over a few miles of such a recharge zone would recharge your batteries as you drive. Transponders on your car would measure how much electricity you took on board and you would be billed accordingly. (similar transponders are in use on various tollways around the world)  No need to stop at all. Once enough such zones are in place there are no limits to distance and batteries on board can be much smaller, thus lighter and cheaper. Would take either a government or clever entrepenure to set it up, but it would be very effective.

All up a h**l of a lot more efficient and cost effective and safer than using hydrogen as a fuel.

Answer 7

Give Brown and his Darling a chance, they are only raking in 2.2 billion pounds a year from us in fuel duty.

The clever bit is that every time fuel prices go up so does VAT so he can`t lose !

Can I just remind people that VAT stands for VALUE ADDED TAX !!!!

Vote labour again ?

No chance

Answer 8

like his going to answer it, he need our input lol