En masse we are a nation of dummed down, under educated, worn down debt slaves

Fuel prices at the pumps have reached a record high, with diesel breaking the £5 a gallon mark.

Average petrol prices have now reached 104.85p a litre compared with just 87.27p a litre a year ago, according to latest figures from the AA.

And diesel has soared to a record average price of 110.31p a litre, compared with 91.09p a year ago.

In gallon terms, this means diesel has now passed the £5 mark, the association said.

It now costs £8.79 more to fill a typical 50-litre fuel tank than a year ago.

An average car owner is now spending £18.84 more per month on petrol.

AA president Edmund King said: "The £5 gallon must surely concentrate minds at the Treasury and should be a warning to the Chancellor that his proposed increase of 2p per litre should not go ahead in the Budget next month.

"The Chancellor must accept that global oil prices are soaring out of control so he should not add fuel to the fire by hiking up the tax. Rural motorists, the disabled and car-dependent communities are suffering enough."

"In one week, the UK price of petrol has shot up a penny and diesel even more. At the same time, market commentators have reported a gasoline glut in the US, enabling them to sell cut-price fuel to Nigeria.

"Drivers in the UK are asking why their car fuel prices are soaring while petrol is being offered at a discount elsewhere."

BUY FSENX

Fidelity Select Energy Fund! Don't try to fight the force, go with it. Energy is going to be more and more expensive. Forget gold go for the stuff people must have, e.g. :

UK COAL (LSE:UKC.L)

Last Trade: 459.25 p
Trade Time: Feb 25
Change: 11.75 (2.63%)
Prev Close: 459.25
Open: 458.00
Bid: 459.00
Ask: 459.50
1y Target Est: 645.50p


I bought UKC a couple of years ago and sold at 4.99 making 300% profit. It may be ready to go again.

It's funny but £1.10 a litre sounds less than £5 a gallon. £5 a gallon sounds bloody scary.


To be honest expect more of the same. You are getting it with food. You had it with gas & electric. If the inflation figure gets reported correctly (it can't stay at 2% much longer) then you mortgage should shoot up too.

The country is stoney broke & Brown has to balance the books in the same way has he has always done................... through the wage slave.

The way the uk is going I can see it being a third world country.


Glad I'm out of it - 75p litre here in Cyprus

I put petrol in the car the other night, whilst it was pi55ing down, messages stuck on the pumps that you had to pay cash after 10. pm, bloke in the q in front couldn't get his pin 'to work' I put 25 quid in and the needle didn't even get half way...just one of 'those' moments when you question so much...car dependence, oil dependence, prices, cash being king, tapped out credit...as RFD stated yesterday we're three meals from anarchy, but folk will fight with each other, not the 'systems', or increasingly heavy handed govts that led us down this path

72p here in NZ. And everyone is shocked it is so much

where the UK was 3 years ago...strange that. In relation to the average wage in NZ you're probably paying the same, if not more than in the UK, only diff being your govt. doesn't tax as much. As for Cyprus please living there would not outweigh the benefits of cheaper petrol...

I filled up my car with diesel and a jerry can (stocking up while its "cheap") cost £95. Went to pay and had a 5p off per litre voucher so came down to £90 and I said to the tesco assistant that I still feel like I have been robbed. He took it personally and said "well they need the money to find new oil reserves and that oil was running out so needs to be rationed". What a jobsworth twit I thought. No chance of people like him objecting to being ripped off.

We need a union of the people to object to things like this on mass!

See? Everyone who was "celebrating" the recent rate cut has had the saving wiped out in extra petrol costs alone.

the wife spends more than that per week (approx 25 quid) in a 1.8 laguna, and we walk the littlest to school - a mile. I reckon that average quoted by Sky is bolloc5s

Although the Tesco guy might have been a bit 'jobsworth' - and I get as pi55ed off at the next guy at paying a higher price than pretty much anywhere else on earth - we do need to realise that petrol/diesel is a finite resource, exploration costs are going up as the black stuff gets harder to extract and the stuff takes some serious messing with (refining) before it gets to the forecourt. Not forgetting the transporting of the stuff over vast distances. Compare it to the cost of milk and mineral water (less said the better) and it don't seem quite so daft...

Then again maybe we are being REALLY shafted buying milk And to think that the price of a pint (sorry - Carlsberg, not milk) is £2.50 minimum (N Wales) - not that really is enough to start a riot over!!!

It's £18.84 a month extra

doh

just about everything is cheaper here, no crime where i am, 21 degrees & sunny.......................It'll do for a retired 41 year old

Maybe people should all go to the North Sea coast and call out "Let there be more oil reserves!"

There's a genuine global supply problem. It will only get worse before it gets worser.

Yeah, tell me about it! It's not funny when the nearest supermarket is 15 miles away and the only bus service is 3 miles distant and runs once a week on a Thursday!

It's good petrol is more expensive. Good for the environment and good for reducing congestion. America should definitely increase their taxes on petrol.

They need to do some hedonic adjusting and make the gallon 3litres instead.

Will you be saying that when the cost of every thing else goes up to cover the cost of increased petrol prices? Oil is hardly running out. Iraq oil is only just starting to be exploited. I do accept the environmental arguments but the problem is that the system of things need to change. You cant have infinite growth on a planet that is is not infinite.

Wait until the US recession begins to bite hard, and prices will come tumbling down again.

So the average car owner is burining up in excess of 100 litres of hydrocarbons every month just in the name of transport! It's disgusting when you think about it.

I'd be happy to see much higher prices, I can still do a 250 mile journey for around £20 which is cheap in my opinion but then I've chosen a sensible car for it's economy.

Petrol prices need to be twic as high before it will even start to change people excessive driving habits. In the cities, whilst you don't get the best mpg you are generally only driving a few miles at a time so current petrol prices mean nothing.

Are you offering that up as a reason why petrol is £5 a gallon? All that exploration, refining and transporting .... means the oil companies need to charge us about £1.50 a gallon to make their profit. We pay £5 because the government earns more than twice what the petrol companies earn from every gallon. In fact (I don't know the figures so am guessing ... but if the oil companies make even 20% profit (which seems unlikely) then they make about 30p a gallon. The government makes 10 times that for doing nothing.

'The Government' - your silent partner in your business.

I work hard to run my business. Long hours and I came up with the idea, the working capital, took the risk and worked my nuts off. 'The Government' are a wonderful silent partner. They pretty much take 40% of everything I earn and, as far as I can see, have contributed nothing.

They're like a monkey on my back. One day, one day - I'm going into a cash business.

I agree that so far any impact on driver behaviour has been minimal, the ideal outcome for the Treasury - maximise revenues.

Most car drivers will simply not use public transport.

1) A car is a status symbol
2) Car offer flexibility that public transport does not offer (especially outside London)
3) Cars are a reflection of the individualistic society

Around 80% of the price is tax, so 20p represents $100 per barrel. Double that to $200 per barrel and the price is "only" around £1.25 per litre. When oil prices were down to $50 per barrel, petrol was still around 90p per litre.

The problem, as usual with Neo Lab, is tax.

That is Government spin. If the product is 20p and the tax is 80p, tax is being levied at 400%.

p-o-p

Cost me 60 quid to fill up the other day!!!

Won't be long before you see petrol theft as an everyday crime. Instead of nicking your car, they'll siphon off the petrol.

I know what you're saying...at what point are British people going to stand up and say no. I'm not sure where our backbone has gone....I have to be honest I haven't protested in years.

The tax rate is 400% but 80% of the price is tax. The two statements are not incompatible.

No, but as far as I know it is the only on these types of products that the Govt quotes taxes as a proportion of cost rather than the tax rate.

The Govt doesn't say that VAT is 14.89%

p-o-p

EDIT: To illustrate point

That's only a problem if you are driving too much.

People have come to see driving to and from work 30mins, an hour each way as the norm. Clocking up 100's of miles per week releasing gallons of hydrocarbons that were locked up under the earths surface over millenia. In years to come our young will want to know what right you had to burn up 1000's of gallons of hydrocarbons to get yourself around and in the process destroying the environment.

Let's just remember the positives from higher fuel prices - it means that alternative energy becomes more viable.

Good job the prisons aren't full - oh, bugger!

The Government need to collect their taxes in some way or another.

Far better that they tax those who are polluting the planet and clogging the streets than raising other taxes. The congested state of the roads would seem to indicate that thre is plenty of scope to raise the price even higher.

Outside of the major cities, buses are completely unfit for purpose. They are simply the transport of last resort for those who do not own a car. No sane person would ever use them, if they needed to get anywhere fast, cheaply, or without contracting the norovirus.

Uttoxeter to Burton in a bus - 1 hour @ £4.20
Uttoxeter to Burton in a car - 20 mins @ much less than £4.20

Going to and fron bruton on the bus every week, means you effectively do an extra days work every week.

When i lived in London and Birmingham i used the buses and trains. Outside of the city they are both completely unfit for purpose. However, i doubt any politician would know this as they seem to be too Londoncentric.

I will never never, never get on a bus round here. Id rather walk or not go at all. Filthy, stinky piles of shit.

With any luck increasing fuel costs will improve the fortunes of local businesses as we see less competition from global business due to increase transportation costs and we will see less food being flown half way round the world or driven all round the country. The prospects for rural communities might also improve as the costs of living in the country and commuting increase potentially driving down house prices in rural areas.

I know. The one time I tried taking a bus those same passengers were on it too. I'd rather walk.

I agree and people think I'm mad. I can't think of any reason why we need buses, I would prefer to cycle 10 miles rather than sit on an old smelly bus. Why don't people buy mopeds or motorbikes....

The prospects for rural communites (Cornish ones, anyway) could also improve if all those 2nd house owners were forced to sell to keep their expensive London pads afloat. Then the children of the villagers may be able to afford to stay instead of having to move out causing loss of schools, village shops/POs and other amenities. And the villages wouldn't die in winter, either. Or is that too much to hope for?

Au contraire mon ami. Every day you are a day closer to the hydrocarbon bonanza we have enjoyed in the last 200 years running out. We will never drain the planet of all it's resources because that is simply impossible. However we are rapidly reaching a point where cheap energy will no longer exist. When this time comes it won't matter where you live on the planet, you will suffer to a greater or lesser degree.

Expect houses to become very cheap when this happens. Oil, gas, and coal, are our wealth, as it declines, so will our economy.

Enjoy the happy motoring whilst you can, the world is about to get a great deal larger.

What happened to the governments integrated transport policy - it bit the dust before it even took off. Has this government actaully acheived anything in its last ten years in power. Can anyone think of a single good thing this government has acheived!!!!



Thats no way to talk about the people in power.

Well, I believe it's now totally legal to bugger a 16 year boy senseless if you are that way inclined (I'm not by the way). That's got to be good news for some.

That sadly is Nulabours greatest achievement in the last ten years. The annoying thing was that most of the shirt lifter MPs never declared an interest before voting it in. They are only interested in themselves. Lets drag them out and hang them as an example to other sickos.

I'd have a bit more sympathy for people complaining about high fuel prices if they didn't insist on driving ridiculous gas guzzling status symbol cars.

Anyone travelling less than five miles could go by bike (and if they were fat lardy b*stards like most people nowadays it would do them a power of good). Anyone old/disabled/with young children or going on longer journeys could use one of these:

http://www.tukshop.biz/tuk-tuk-products/retro-tuk-tuk.asp

It's part of the reason. As you know price is determined by supply and demand in a free market.

Some reasons:
Monetary inflation has been high for years - eventually this feeds into high prices.
Supply-demand: demand is increasing but global supply can't keep up with it.

I know taxes are a big, big part of the price in Europe. I doubt whether governments will reduce them though, mostly because they need the money. Western Europe is much more fuel-efficient than North America precisely because of the high fuel taxes.

I'm sorry that the high prices are hurting your business. But ask yourself this: can your business handle two pounds a litre? And if so, can it handle three pounds a litre? When global oil production begins to drop these sorts of prices will be in the forecourts. This might be just a very few years away.

The oil companies will be in the interesting situation where they have massive profits from high prices, while their business is steadily getting smaller.

So you have your own health insurance... (private systems tend to cost twice as much for the same service..), you paid your own education, built your own roads, hire your own security, run your own post, dispose of your own rubbish, etc, etc..

You may wonder why places with no effective central government are not the paradises you seem to think they should be. Having to provide all your own essential services whilst also paying off the local gunmen would make 40% seem like a bargin.

Where's my f**king electric car?

It is annoying, bacause with the combination of relatively short average commutes, poor public transport, good high-voltage/high power domestic electric connections, a small temperature range, and very high petrol prices, the UK is probably the best country around to try and introduce electric cars. With a small amount of government support and vision, we could have easily become world leaders in the technology..

(But of course, goverment support of major future technologies is not allowed, much better to spend vast amounts on propping up banks and unpopular wars..)

That's a very lovely fluffy idea, but where are we going to get all the electrical generation from ?

uranium

France, obviously.

That'll work. Putting our future transportation system into the hands of another country.

Well putting our future transportation system into the hands of this country's government hasn't worked.

I'm open to alternatives.

Does anyone actually drive for pleasure any more?

I mean those days of jumping in the car for a drive somewhere are surely over - people can't afford to... with knock on effects for the day-tripper leisure economy.

We drive because we have to work or to get to those out of town shopping centres... public transport is generally poor. Especially outside London. Expensive, slow, infrequent, scarce, scary.