tributehub

I'm sure we are all somewhat cheesed off by paying £1.00 per litre of petrol and more for diesel (that's approximately $2+ for a 1/4 of a US Gallon).  I got this email this morning and am passing it around - it's not a petition or a round robin, just a way of possibly making a point.  Anyway, I suppose its up to Nick if he want's to keep it on here or delete the thread:



Petrol is hitting 99p a litre in some areas now; soon we will be faced with paying £1+ a ltr. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

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 an aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS, not sellers, control the market place.
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 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 I t 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!!! 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 forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet etc. I.e. Boycott BP and Esso.

So how come at our local Sainsburys the petrol comes in BP tankers???  ??? ??? The supermarkets are supplied by the major oil companies anyway.

The price around our way varies wildly from 96.9p/lrt (Asda) to 104.9p/ltr (Local garage), and remember that most of the price you pay for fuel goes directly in the government coffers as tax.

I don't know how much the Americans pay for their fuel, but I do know it is MUCH cheaper than ours, it's even cheaper in Greece but they have had some serious price increases in the past year.

I suppose that by buying from other than Esso and BP direct, profits are being more widely distributed - the oild companies will sell at discounted prices to any bulk buyers.

Yes - duty is rediculously high - I suppose someone has to foot the bill for keeping the pertol tankers on roads good enough for them to drive on  ;D

I doubt we'd ever be able to get back down to 69p a litre given that the majority of the cost goes to HM Treasury in either Duty or VAT. Out of your £1 somewhere in the region of 62p is tax. The figures below are from April 2006 but aren't that far out today, they show the proportions of the total cost of a litre.

Per Litre 96.13p 100%
VAT      14.32p 14.9%
Duty        47.1p  49%
Product  34.71p  36.1%

VAT of course is charge at 17.5% of the Product cost + Duty. So every time the oil companies put their prices up the HMT make more money on VAT, also every time the government put the Duty up, HMT also takes more money in VAT !

So the only way we'll get back down to 69p is if the Chancellor cuts duty, but we know of course he's not gonna do that in a million years.

The price of oil is going up to $100 a barrel anytime now. The main reason for this is the vast profit being made by speculators on the open market. Petrol is still relatively cheap so is diesel, the reason it costs us as consumers so much is the huge amount of tax and VAT levied by the government.
    Boycoting fuel companies will make absolutely no difference.
        I think todays exchange rate is £1 =$2-10c (perhaps a good time to jump on a plane and go shopping in America)

These "don't buy from this company or that company" things just simply don't work.  The ONLY thing that will effectively lower gas prices is to SIGNIFICANTLY lower consumption.  The biggest and easiest way to truly lower consumption is to NOT DRIVE YOUR CAR AS MUCH.  The problem is that people are selfish and think that they should be allowed to come and go as they please, and wonder why other people won't stop driving so they can pay less for gas.  When gas prices get prohibitively high, people will stop drving as much, demand will ease, and the price will level off at a sustainable rate.

Things like hybrids, carpooling, etc are making a small difference, but the problem is that the number of people who are actively working to reduce consumption are FAR outnumbered by the SUV-driving "me-first" crowd.  It'll never change until people decide to change.

Love,

Amuzed3437
Driver of a 34MPG 4-cylinder Accord who works 4 miles from home.  ;D