Petrol Prices - Are they to high - What can we do about it.

[kinboshi]

We would die without petrol, then? Or would life be just a bit more awkward than it is now?

Think of the money you'd save, if there were no petrol to buy.

Of course we can live without petrol - but an alternative fuel source would have to be found/used.  We could live without electricity, and without the internet.  Well, actually, I don't think I could...

[slider]

i'm a taxi driver, its killing me but i don't know what to do. when people protest outside refinery's and i can't get any fuel, i'm goosed anyway. i need the fuel and to get it cheaper would be nice

[Laxie]

Just paid €1.26 per litre at a local petrol station that's known for being a bit more expensive than the big supermarket chains in Killarney.  Thing is, unless I have reason to travel to town for shopping or whatever, .05 - .07 per litre saved, is shot out the window by making the trip. 

Ye may as well start packing and move over here.  Everyone else has.    

[TightEnd]

Quoted from a group on Facebook

Take the time to at least read this, then, see what you think and pass it on if you agree with it.
We are hitting 106.9 p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.10 a litre.
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! 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 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, until we reach around THREE MILLION consumers!
Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's
all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP)

Invite ten more people to this group within one day of joining, all 3 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 invite your friends, and buy
your petrol at Asda,Tesco, Morrisons Jet etc.
i.e. boycott BP, Shell and Esso (and Sainsburys)would this work

And who exactly supplies Asda, Morrisions, & Tesco with Fuel? Correct. BP, Esso, Shell. As protests go, it's as blunt as a blunt thing.

I think we should worry less about the price of petrol - it's just money, & a luxury - & more about some of the dreadful World-disasters of the last month.

During the aftermath of the Burma Cyclone, the Daily Express & Daily Mail Headlines were about the £10 Tax affair & Gordon Brown. As sick as sick gets.

I don't agree actually. Not wishing to downplay at all the terrible natural disasters recently, but how is Petrol a luxury for the vast majority of Britons? Much of public transport is either too expensive or too unreliable for petrol for one's personal use to be anything other than a necessity.

It's a luxury, like Tellys, mobile 'phones, Computers, & washing machines. We can live without them, but we prefer not to. IMO, of course.

all the others you quote are luxuries, clearly. Petrol? different I would contend, for most of us. IMO only!

We would die without petrol, then? Or would life be just a bit more awkward than it is now?

Think of the money you'd save, if there were no petrol to buy.

Life would be a lot more awkward, immeasurably more so than if I was minus computer, TV, mobile etc

I actually travel far less than I used to (no more dtd for me at the moment) because I won't spend £65-70 to get there and back.

For the economy overall, we'd be put back a century without petrol/diesel to run industry with, with huge consequences for everyone's living standards..far more so than if none of us had TV's, mobiles etc

[bolt pp]

why Luxembourg?

Cheapest in Europe apparently, and it obviously doesn't produce any of its own.

nah, luxemburg at least 50% higher than ukraine (approx 50p/l) and I think greece, slovenia, estonia, lithuania, spain and switzerland are all cheaper than lux too

Is Slovenia in London?

[tikay]

Think of the money you'd save, if there were no petrol to buy.

Take a while to get to places though

not if the places were really close

!

Perish the thought that we would have to modify our lifestyle. Shocking, absolutely shocking.

[tikay]

Quoted from a group on Facebook

Take the time to at least read this, then, see what you think and pass it on if you agree with it.
We are hitting 106.9 p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.10 a litre.
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! 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 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, until we reach around THREE MILLION consumers!
Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's
all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP)

Invite ten more people to this group within one day of joining, all 3 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 invite your friends, and buy
your petrol at Asda,Tesco, Morrisons Jet etc.
i.e. boycott BP, Shell and Esso (and Sainsburys)would this work

And who exactly supplies Asda, Morrisions, & Tesco with Fuel? Correct. BP, Esso, Shell. As protests go, it's as blunt as a blunt thing.

I think we should worry less about the price of petrol - it's just money, & a luxury - & more about some of the dreadful World-disasters of the last month.

During the aftermath of the Burma Cyclone, the Daily Express & Daily Mail Headlines were about the £10 Tax affair & Gordon Brown. As sick as sick gets.

I don't agree actually. Not wishing to downplay at all the terrible natural disasters recently, but how is Petrol a luxury for the vast majority of Britons? Much of public transport is either too expensive or too unreliable for petrol for one's personal use to be anything other than a necessity.

It's a luxury, like Tellys, mobile 'phones, Computers, & washing machines. We can live without them, but we prefer not to. IMO, of course.

all the others you quote are luxuries, clearly. Petrol? different I would contend, for most of us. IMO only!

We would die without petrol, then? Or would life be just a bit more awkward than it is now?

Think of the money you'd save, if there were no petrol to buy.

Life would be a lot more awkward, immeasurably more so than if I was minus computer, TV, mobile etc

I actually travel far less than I used to (no more DTD for me at the moment) because I won't spend £65-70 to get there and back.

For the economy overall, we'd be put back a century without petrol/diesel to run industry with, with huge consequences for everyone's living standards..far more so than if none of us had TV's, mobiles etc

"more awkward".......

Well we can't have awkward, now can we?

[Acidmouse]

The thing is it's more expensive to use public transport and less convenient even with the current hike in petrol.

You want to go to the coast for the day, fuk you its 5hrs on bus or 3hrs on the train at double the cost and journey time.

[kinboshi]

The scarcity of oil is only one problem facing the human population going forward.  The biocapacity of the world is apparently 5 billion people, and we're currently at 6,666,666,666 (or thereabouts).  By 2050 it'll be over 9 billion.

Economic breakdown is going to be one factor, amongst many others, that will make the world a very different place in the next century.

[TightEnd]

Think of the money you'd save, if there were no petrol to buy.

Take a while to get to places though

not if the places were really close

!

Perish the thought that we would have to modify our lifestyle. Shocking, absolutely shocking.

I bet a load of people are modifying as we speak. However the idea that some form of agrarian non-industrial utopia would be acceptable in a first world economy under any government, which is the logical conclusion of living without petrol, is so off-beam.

[slider]

No just the slovenians lol

[AndrewT]

The thing is it's more expensive to use public transport and less convenient even with the current hike in petrol.

?

I don't drive, never have, so, right off the bat, financially I'm ahead by however much a car costs, plus insurance, MOT, other garage stuff, parking, furry dice and christmas tree air fresheners. That's before we even get to the cost of fuel.

Out of interest, how much would it cost in petrol to drive from, say, London to Nottingham and back?

[boldie]

We would die without petrol, then? Or would life be just a bit more awkward than it is now?

Think of the money you'd save, if there were no petrol to buy.

Life would be a lot more awkward, immeasurably more so than if I was minus computer, TV, mobile etc

I actually travel far less than I used to (no more DTD for me at the moment) because I won't spend £65-70 to get there and back.

For the economy overall, we'd be put back a century without petrol/diesel to run industry with, with huge consequences for everyone's living standards..far more so than if none of us had TV's, mobiles etc

Indeed..Petrol is definitely not a luxury..and it drives me mad that people say stuff like that. In the same way that  people (mainly of a different generation) claim that the telly is a luxury. Yes, so was a gun for hunting when it first came out..you after all used to use a club and a spear when you went hunting and a house is a luxury as we are, technically, all able to sleep outside or in caves. It's a silly thing to say really and not very well thought out. We COULD also all grow our own vegetables in our own back garden on all natural soil and all that and life off the land (it's what we used to do a milion or so years ago)...but that doesn't mean meat and a supermarket is a luxury all of a sudden.

The "petrol is a luxury" comes from the vegan eco-nuts and I'm amazed they managed to actually convince anyone with half a brain with that bollox.

/end rant.

(no offense intended TK but this one really drives me nuts

[tikay]

The thing is it's more expensive to use public transport and less convenient even with the current hike in petrol.

You want to go to the coast for the day, fuk you its 5hrs on bus or 3hrs on the train at double the cost and journey time.

Well yes. But "more awkward", "less convenient", don't really cut much ice with me. Less awkward, more convenient are both all very well & good. But life does not hinge on awkward & convenient. Well, not in the UK, anyway. In parts of the world they have no potable water. That's awkward. That's inconvenient. Water is not a luxury, we die without it.

Harold Macmillan got it spot on.

Trivia piece - Harold Macmillan is boltpp's uncle.

[kinboshi]

We COULD also all grow our own vegetables in our own back garden on all natural soil and all that and life off the land

Ermmm, no we can't.  Not ALL of us.