Uh Oh the Asylums being taken over..again.

And your point is?
The nutter from Friends of the Earth?
This incompetant Government only deferring the duty rise?

Everyone seems to be blind to the reason why we have high fuel duty in this country.

Fuel duty exists primarily as an anti-congestion measure. In other European countries the public transport alternatives exist to displace a very large proportion of car journeys from the roads, thus there is less need to curb the useage of private cars through tax. In the UK there is a stalwart refusal to put in place a similar infrastructure because public transport investment is seen as subsidy ("subsidy" being a dirty word in a post-Thatcherism UK), and this is especially the case in our regional cities. Instead the government seems to have seized on the idea that pricing motorists off the road is a solution, which it most certainly is not because people still need to get to work.

Yes there's opportunism by Mr "if it moves, tax it" Brown and the government is now quite dependant on these taxes, but as long as we as a nation refuse to invest in trams, metros, high speed rail, rail re-openings, etc, and regulate our city bus routes as has been done in London there is no way our road infrastructure can take a reduction of fuel duty.

Parkey wrote:

Everyone seems to be blind to the reason why we have high fuel duty in this country.

Fuel duty exists primarily as a method for our money-grabbing wasteful government to line its already overflowing pockets

EFA

Nuggs wrote:

Fuel duty exists primarily as a method for our money-grabbing wasteful government to line its already overflowing pockets

Just so we're clear, the politicians don't actually get to pocket the money they raise as tax you know.

Perhaps what you actually mean is that you want is a government that taxes less (and thus by definition spends less)? I'd certainly like a government that wastes less.

My point is that in the absence of any real appreciation of the importance of a decent integrated public transport system the only alternative course of action is to try to suppress private vehicle usage, and believe it or not I hate that policy as much as you do.

Assuming you are neither a Farmer or smallholder and don't live off the contents of a vegetable patch.

The cost of Diesel, which hauliers do not get a rebate on, unlike Bus companies (dunnoh about trains) is reflected in the price of food. Companies probably don't change their markup on what they sell unless they have to put it up. So profits rise as prices rise, but those profits then end up being used to keep staff as the cost of running their properties goes up as rent goes up, as cost of living goes up staff pay demands increase.

It affects you almost as much as it affects him.

Oh and as the price of food goes up, the cost of keeping a horse or mule goes up so even if your food comes in by wind powered electric railroad and travels from the goods station to your house entirley without combustion engine, it is still going to affect you.

Who is it who's churning out these soundbytes like "gold plated pension schemes", and "they're lining their pockets"?

I wouldn't ask but they always seem to be trollied out and repeated over and over and over by many unconnected individuals of similar mindsets in place of coherent or reasoned arguments. It's like someone has been programming people's brains.

Yes high fuel duty is an easy way for government to raise the taxes it would otherwise levy on other things, such as income. Yes they can spin a "tax cut" if they increase indirect taxation and cut income taxes. It's now cheaper to own a car than ever before. Don't believe me? Look around you. Fact of the matter is if they took fuel duty away major parts of our road network would completely gridlock.

Government refuse to address the issue of transport capacity in the way every other western European country has - with better public transport. That is their failing. Against this backdrop they have to do something to restrict car usage. Seems that tax is all that they know how to do.

Nevertheless, it's an anti-congestion measure.

Thatcher taught us that "a man riding a bus (to work) at age 26 may count himself a failure". We Brits would rather spend our days sitting in traffic jams wasting expensive fuel in our idling engines than be considered a failure on public transport. Elsewhere in Europe citizens would be demanding better public transport. We Brits, on the other hand, demand lower fuel prices so we can get even more vehicles on to our already inadequate, creaking road network and spend even more time being a roaring success in the vast car parks that pass for roads in the UK .

richardast wrote:

20 years ago you needed to have a reasonable income to afford to buy a car and keep it on the road.
Not so much nowadays - virtually everyone over the age of 17 owns one.
Is there any fairer or more easily manageable way to tax road users than fuel duty? I can't think of one.
....

I can

I think we should impose a duty of £1000 per month on female drivers, those under 40, those who drive skodas, souped up fietas and corsasmothers who use cars to transport kids to school.

duty of £5000 per month for lorry drivers, WVM, coach drivers, scooter riders etc

These duties are such that you can end up paying several thousand pounds per month

Much fairer

The discussion about fuel prices shouldn't be about tax but about the price of oil. In the US the tax on fuel is low, but people are still up in arms about the price of fuel.

Fuel prices are high because the oil price is high. This is simply driven by supply and demand. Supply is not really driven by the big oil companies but by OPEC. Demand is largely driven by economic growth in China and India at the moment. In other words, its the cost of all those cheap TVs, trainers, and other consumable goods that have driven the western standard of living up and up and up at a low cost over the past decades.

Put it simply, high petrol and diesel costs are the consequence of cheap far eastern manufactured goods. You gotta take the rough with the smooth.

2007 fuel duty (as of 1 October 2007) in the United Kingdom is:
50.35 pence per litre for ultra-low sulphur unleaded petrol/diesel
53.65 pence per litre for conventional unleaded petrol
56.94 pence per litre for conventional diesel
30.35 pence per litre for bio-diesel and bio ethanol - low tax to encourage consumer conversion
16.49 pence per kg for gas other than natural gas (LPG)
13.70 pence per kg for natural gas used as road fuel.
9.69 pence per litre for rebated gas oil (red diesel)
9.29 pence per litre for rebated fuel oil
Interesting to see that diesel is now taxed more than petrol, we're the only country in Europe doing that, funny how it used to be lower than petrol inthis country too, and how many motorists thus switched to (enviromentally cleaner?) diesel, only to have the tax on it hiked.

Plus VAT at 17.5%, on top of the Fuel Duty, taxing a tax!
For every 10p increase in the basic price of fuel, the Goverment slaps another 1.75p on it.



Once again, we have a tax that hammers the least well off

Now, since the French Fishermen are protesting, look at what they're paying.
The cost of a litre of diesel fuel for fishing boats in France has risen from 0.45 euros (70 US cents; 35p) to 0.70 euros ($1.10; 55p) in the past six months. :shock:

Looking at the cost of petrol vs tax across Europe and North America.

Put your first chart another way and the tax as a % of the total has reduced from 42% ten years ago to 40% now. In other words, it is the underlying cost of oil driving the increase.

The US tax rate is the lowest in your second chart. People in the US are screaming blue murder at the government about high fuel prices.

nick hanson wrote:

Now't to do with anti-conjestion,& all to do with easy revenue raising.
It will only get worse 'till we get a Government thats prepared to tackle the inefficiency of the public sector & their gold plated pension schemes

Oi I pay 6.5% of my salary for the gold plating.
Will probably get bugger all out of it as well

"a man riding a bus (to work) at age 26 may count himself a failure"

Who me? nah I like watching traffic from bus seat or saddle, particularly amusing when bus drivers use their sneaky tactics to get round queues. Hate commuting in the car and long boring journeys, give me a nice pointless drive or cycle any day.

If they are passing the increased costs on, then why would they go out of business? And if they're not passing the cost on, why not?

Simple really, a Polish Truck driver working for Polska Shipping Ltd, driving a polish registered truck drives to Zeebruge, fills his truck up with diesel and gets the ferry to Hull. He collects his goods from the container sea terminal, and transports them to their destination in Manchester, he then drives back to Hull, gets on the ferry, drives off at Zeebruge, fills up with diesel and drives back to Poland.
Not only does he pay less VED, he pays less for fuel. This means lower costs for the customers, despite the fact that he did nothing that a British company couldn't do with out ever getting on a ferry.

Annoyingly the same model can be applied to intermodal rail transport. (ie container trains)
Now EWS (Deutsches Bahn) are unlikely to be taking their locos through the Chunnel for refueling but at the other end of the line where the goods need distributed from the terminals, if it gets to a point where companies are getting foreign truckers in foreign trucks in to do the transport from Terminal to Wherever its completely destroys the advantage of Intermodal rail and whole selling point of it (trucks off long distance roads, less pollution). The trucks are still on the roads, still churning out shed loads of carbon dust, pouring countless diesel spills onto the road surface and doing stupid things like following sat navs into low bridges.

This is simply driven by supply and demand. Supply is not really driven by the big oil companies but by OPEC. Demand is largely driven by economic growth in China and India at the moment.

It's not just supply and demand when investors are gambling on the price going up, I note the price has dropped today.

nasahapley wrote:

I see what you're saying NW, and thanks for the reply, but if the Polish trucker in your example can drive from the continent, get the ferry to the UK and still do a 'domestic' delivery cheaper than a British haulier because the fuel's cheaper in Zeebrugge or wherever, can't the British haulier get the ferry to Zeebrugge, fill up with fuel there (or buy a tanker full!), come back and do the same job? I agree it's crackers that the fuel price differential should make it worthwhile for either the Polish or British trucker to go to all this bother, but those being the rules of the game, can't the British haulier take advantage of the cheaper continental fuel too?

Probably could, and some do but they Stable, Register, Tax, insure and MOT their vehicles in Holland as well, where the cost of all of them are cheaper. This of course means the company are no longer British as they are now based in Holland. I know that the Dutch and east European trucks make it up here, though probably use the Rosyth ferry which Superfast have pulled out of.

Keeping the truck to British standards and fully compliant with EU rules and paying drivers British rates, that's going to add to the cost for the empty runs to Zeebruge. (Foreign drivers are reckoned to be more likely to cheat on their tachograph assuming they have one.)

Importing fuel? Unlikely, very few ferries can carry a fuel tanker without significantly reducing the capacity. So your looking at running a diesel import tanker, and they can only dock in certain places.

Due to the sky high cost of petrol{Which mind you is still cheaper than a gallon of beer}
the boss and i have managed to cut our fuel useage by 50% in the last 3 weeks.
1.Planning in advance.
2.walking to work[The boss}.takes 1/2 hour
3.Four odd years ago i moved jobs.Although it was less money it ment we could sell a car.My wage has now caught up.I always use a bike for work.I see a lot of people making a similar jorney in their car. Passing lines of cars with only 1 person in each i really wonder at the maddness of it.
No goverment of which ever party will reduce fuel tax.We signed up for Kyoto and it is going to HURT

nwallace wrote:

Probably could, and some do but they Stable, Register, Tax, insure and MOT their vehicles in Holland as well, where the cost of all of them are cheaper. This of course means the company are no longer British as they are now based in Holland. I know that the Dutch and east European trucks make it up here, though probably use the Rosyth ferry which Superfast have pulled out of.

Keeping the truck to British standards and fully compliant with EU rules and paying drivers British rates, that's going to add to the cost for the empty runs to Zeebruge. (Foreign drivers are reckoned to be more likely to cheat on their tachograph assuming they have one.)

Importing fuel? Unlikely, very few ferries can carry a fuel tanker without significantly reducing the capacity. So your looking at running a diesel import tanker, and they can only dock in certain places.

Cheers NW that's helped my understanding of the situation a lot - sounds like you know the score! I'm still undecided where I stand on the whole rebate for hauliers question though, seems to me it would be difficult for the government to grant a rebate to hauliers without also granting it to many other businesses who are hurt by fuel prices. I've got an inkling that such a hauliers-only rebate might be contrary to EU state aid rules too, which would present another difficulty (I'm not going to trawl through the legislation to find out though - dull as dishwater!)

Personally, the rising cost of fuel doesn't bother me as I only put £10 worth in at a time anyway.