- This topic has 164 replies, 76 voices, and was last updated 10 years ago by jfletch.
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Should petrol cost 6.30 a gallon?
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brFree Member
Fuel should be £12 a gallon, then maybe people would think more seriously about finding better ways of getting around (by bike perhaps!!).
Says the single man that no doubt lives in the city.
Haven’t we been through this bollocks many times before?
retro83Free MemberCertainly a bit of a shock to know it was under £1/l as recently as mid 2009
pete68Free Member£12 a gallon would kill off village life and rural business. It would tip struggling businesses over the edge and shove food prices through the roof. At a time when lots of people are struggling I can’t see how this could be considered a good idea.
stumpyjonFull MemberI’d love to live local to where I work, in fact last time we moved it was to within 20 mins by bike from work, I got made redundant a month later, next job was 100 mile round commute, lasted 2 years, redundant again, 7.5 years in next job, 34 mile round trip, even managed to cycle that sometimes (lots of big hills), redundant again, next job lasted 6 months, 60 mile round trip and now to my current job, also 60 mile round trip, managed 14 months there so far and looking good. So I would have had to move 5 times, disrupting the kids etc. They walk to school locally and my wife works 2 miles from home so if we moved they’d need to drive.
The only reason people lived local to work in the past is people couldn’t afford cars. Increasing the cost of driving will drive more people off the roads, people on low incomes, if you want economic apartheid then tax away. Most people given a choice would work locally, we can’t, we go where the work is and since the days of a job for life have long gone it’s not an option to move to where you work.
EdukatorFree MemberYour choices, Somafunk. If you are keen not to make the best economic choices for yourself I fully understand that making the best choices for society is an even lower priority.
Looking at you whole post I suggest going back on disability, possibly retraining and looking for a job in an area with better economic conditions in which you may prosper.
DibbsFree MemberMy first Saturday job was serving in a petrol filling station, 5 star (remember that?) was 37.5p per gallon.
fasthaggisFull MemberEee 37p a gallon. Me sat on the back of a trailbike balancing a couple of x MOD jerry cans,and heading up a farm track tospend all day on our home made track…. Goes all misty eyed. 😆
somafunkFull MemberNah….I like where i live, i like my job(s) collegues and working conditions as if i need a day off for medical reasons or even if i feel i need one i take it, no hassle at all. I’m not fussed bout money in the slightest as i’d rather have my quality of life and see trees and barren galloway hillsides from my window, whether that be at work or home. As for retraining i do have a BSC in Mech Eng, also HND in Electronic Engineering and i originally qualified as a motor vehicle mechanic so i guess i could prob do something else but finding an employer who will employ someone with lifelong/ongoing spinal medical issues is impossible despite what the government legislate regarding equal opportunities blah.
And i’m glad you took what i said with nae offence, i type as i would speak to mates etc and nae ill-will or suchlike is inferred in the slightest.
PS: I took my time in the car to get to work, i managed over 33mpg t’day 😉
ahwilesFree Memberi’ll believe that people find fuel expensive when they stop driving like it isn’t. The ***ts hooning past my house all day (residential street that leads nowhere really) are clearly in a hurry to burn as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
i think it is expensive, so i drive like a nun. The abuse i get for sticking to speed limits suggests that i’m wrong though.
esselgruntfuttockFree MemberSays the single man that no doubt lives in the city.
Haven’t we been through this bollocks many times before?
Yes with TJ.
If fuel went up to £12 a ltr we wouldn’t be able to afford to travel on public transport either!
That photo of me was taken in about 1973-4 IIRC, my Ma & Pa took it over in 1969 & fuel was 78 old pence a gallon according to the AA
http://www.theaa.com/public_affairs/reports/Petrol_Prices_1896_todate_gallons.pdfi’ll believe that people find fuel expensive when they stop driving like it isn’t.
This. I tootle to work each day watching my miles per gallon ometer go up & up, but sticking to the speed limit & I always get some silly git up my arse who’s either late for work, loves their job & can’t wait to get there or doesn’t give a toss about the price of fuel.
& as for people moving closer to work, WTF planet are you on Edukator?
timcFree Memberedukator for ignoramus of the day! no acknowledgement for the knock on effects it would have on society & the millions already struggling to get by.
molgripsFree MemberEveryone would have a much nicer life is they just lived near where they worked
Where are all these empty houses near workplaces that we can just move into?
Oh and if people are on the breadline how the F are they expected to be able to move house? It isn’t free.
EdukatorFree MemberFeel the love.
I live on the same planet as you, however the countries I spend most time in are talking about the “energy change”. A move to a society in which the pattern of energy use and production changes to a more sustainable model which also reduces dependency on fossil fuels.
The cost of public transport in neither country has anything to do with fuel cost. It is priced to get a maximum number of people to use it. It only takes six people on a bus to get better energy efficiency than those people in six average cars. My local busses cost 1e a trip (less if you buy a book of tickets), regional busses 2e a trip, commuters can get passes for trains that make journeys cost less than the petrol alone. Tax petrol and use the money to subsidise more energy efficient public ptransport. Make using individual cars the expensive and inconvenient option.
ahwilesFree Memberi think we need to accept that people change jobs more often than perhaps they would like.
I’m only 35, i’ve been made redundant … 6 times.
i moved closer to my jobs, each time it was an expensive mistake – i won’t be doing it again.
wobbliscottFree MemberA bus with 6 people in it is not more efficient than a car with 6 people in it. That’s just wrong. Buses are much bigger, heavier and are built to carry many more people so when they are not carrying more people they are not more efficient. Public transport, whether privately funded and run or publicly, has to run at a profit and there lies the problem and the paradox. For public transport to be attractive to people it needs to be convenient – which means alot of busses running, on many routes visiting every town and village. This means alot of empty busses not making much money. You can make public transport work in large and highly populated towns and cities, like London, Birmingham, Manchester etc, but beyond that it is very difficult to run an extensive network efficiently (both economically and environmentally). So public transport is only the solution in some areas.
EdukatorFree MemberCare to post up the fuel consumption figures for a bus and the average car Wobbliscott. If you accuse someone of posting incorrect information it’s only polite to post figures.
How about comparing a 17-seater Renault Master Bus with your own car, Wobbliscott. The kind of bus that is ideal for serving rural areas. That wasn’t the basis for my six times figure, I checked the figures for a normal city bus and derived my six people figure for that compared with the urban figures for a medium car.
mrblobbyFree Member& as for people moving closer to work, WTF planet are you on Edukator?
Think I’m with Edukator on this one. Society has been transformed by decades of cheap fuel. Big suburbs, out of town shopping, etc. clear divisions between industrial space and living space with the car transporting people between the two. This doesn’t seem compatible with the rising cost of a limited resource so at some point something will need to change.
iamconfusedagainFree Member£20 billion they reckon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18617815
Im curious, how bad will the air need to get before people stop using their cars for every journey less than 5 miles. Funny everyone seems quite upset about possible water contamination from fracking but the idea of driving less to make the air less poisonous is quite outlandish.
Cars are great and we need them. We do not need to stop driving, but we should start using cars more responsibly. Most of the people where I work live locally yet few cycle. Kids are all taken to school in the car etc. A large proportion of journeys are less than 4 miles, but people just jump in the car.
IanWFree MemberEd,
The subject matter is irrelevant, it’s the back and forth of repeated arguments for one opinion or another that defines these threads.
Your view and the alternatives are clear but these go on and on and on …
(Fwiw i dont even know how much fuel is, I barely use a car, live and work in close proximity and enjoy the lifestyle that allows very much).
joemarshallFree MemberThe only reason people lived local to work in the past is people couldn’t afford cars
Surely the fact that in many households nowadays two people work, and not usually at the same place makes a big difference too?
Although vast numbers of people do live short distances like 5 miles or less from work and don’t cycle, I don’t know how common it is to actually be not practically able to get to work by anything other than car (I suspect it is a bit biased on here with lots of people in high paid but often high staff turnover IT jobs, where people tend to move jobs quite often and look for jobs within quite a wide radius.
molgripsFree MemberThe thing to remember is that whilst it is inefficient to drive short distances and the cost per mile is high, the actual cost is pretty low. A tank lasts ages.
AlexSimonFull MemberSurely fuel is only a temporary solution for transport.
If fuel was sustainable, the discussion would change to congestion/parking/peak car/etc which it more important imo.Putting fuel prices up to subsidise development of alternatives would make sense I think, but only to drive development. Using it to deter people from making bad decisions is pointless – it always just means that the wealthy can do what they like and the already struggling suffer further. Education is far more important.
The problem is that currently, electric cars aren’t the answer in isolation.
mudsharkFree MemberI’d love to live close to work but as I work at client sites no place is good for me. We have two cars as both work but as I’m working in London these days it hardly gets used so a bit of a waste really.
Car ownership has generally increased over time and maybe that means society has been getting a little more equal? I remember when the M25 was built going passed the bottom of my school, imagine what driving around the SE would be without that now – so many more car trips made. People wouldn’t like not being able to afford to drive – human rights right? Like having Sky TV and fags. So a decrease in car ownership would be considered a bad thing – like falling house prices, the government have propped them both up in recent years.
earl_brutusFull MemberCurrently working in Oman at the moment where its equivalent of 20p litre, so of course everyone drives everwhere in 4litre v8 land cruisers doing 9 mpg, so i guess affordability does play into people decision making. Also in the omani press yesterday i read an article about car accidents here being one of the leading causes of death and disability, not to mention the effects of air pollution. So I guess in the uk whilst 6.30 a gallon is what we pay, it certainly falls short of the true cost to society. Not that im anti car, but i think the bigger picture is often forgotten when we chose to drive our cars.
CountZeroFull MemberFuel should be £12 a gallon, then maybe people would think more seriously about finding better ways of getting around (by bike perhaps!!).
Yeah, right! When you live maybe seven, eight, or ten miles from the nearest town with any kind of shopping facilities, when the nearest place you can find work is fifteen or twenty miles away, and when the only form of public transport is one bus each way a day, at a time totally incompatible with any kind of working pattern?
Genius suggestion. Move closer to where the work is? Who’s going to pay the extra cost of a mortgage somewhere where the cost of housing is going up because its a commuter belt town?
Where I work there are people who start at 6am, who travel to Chippenham from Cirencester, Bristol and Swindon;
what public transport could possibly be used? And there are no jobs in their home areas, because the industry (print), has contracted so much in recent years, that’s why they travel.
Maybe all the rich townies could move to the country and generously donate their swanky town houses to the impoverished country dwellers who can’t find local jobs, and who have no facilities, or public transport, and who can barely afford to drive cars because of the higher cost of fuel in the countryside, if they even have a local filling station any more, as most have closed, like the schools, the pubs, the post offices, the shops…
Or maybe we can all go and live in Edukator’s paradise, it sounds wonderful there. 🙄tinybitsFree MemberThis. I tootle to work each day watching my miles per gallon ometer go up & up, but sticking to the speed limit & I always get some silly git up my arse who’s either late for work, loves their job & can’t wait to get there or doesn’t give a toss about the price of fuel.
That’d be me. Sometimes late (damn kids), loving my job and in hurry to be there, with a general disregard for the cost of fuel or the mpg of the car. Doesn’t matter what I don’t to it, I can’t get it below 40mpg and I have fun on the way.
Could I ask that if you come across a slower moving vehicle, you hang back though so I can jump up the line. Thanks.TuckerUKFree MemberWith the amount of unnecessary car journeys (i.e. local school run) even those on low incomes make, and the number of cars owned by those out of work, I’d say the price obviously isn’t high enough.
njee20Free MemberEveryone would have a much nicer life is they just lived near where they worked…
Speak for yourself, I work in the City, no bloody way I’d want to live there, and with my parents having just sold a small studio (ie single room) flat in the Barbican for £445k I’d never be able to afford to either!
skidsareforkidsFree MemberI see a couple of people have commented on countries with cheaper fuel (such as here in the USA), and how we all drive big V8s. True, most people do have big engines, however, even “fuel efficient” cars here have crap fuel consumption!
Over here a 1.6l Fiesta with a manual is rated at 31mpg (37UK). A Prius only gets 48 (57UK). The deck is seriously stacked here to keep the populous hooked on spending on fuel. Plus, the average motorist here in the midwest drives over 20,000 miles a year vs half that in the UK. We have zero public transport as an alternative too!thekingisdeadFree Member“Over here a 1.6l Fiesta with a manual is rated at 31mpg (37UK). A Prius only gets 48 (57UK)”
Do these figures account for a US gallon being ~3.8 litres and a UK gallon being 4.54 litres?
MidlandTrailquestsGrahamFree MemberVarious people have mentioned that if you live in the country, you need a car because there are no shops and no public transport.
There was a time when motoring was too expensive for most people and there were local shops and good rural public transport.
What a lucky coincidence.skidsareforkidsFree Memberthekingisdead – Member
“Over here a 1.6l Fiesta with a manual is rated at 31mpg (37UK). A Prius only gets 48 (57UK)”Do these figures account for a US gallon being ~3.8 litres and a UK gallon being 4.54 litres?
Yip.. The numbers in brackets are converted to UK mpg…
timcFree MemberMidlandTrailquestsGraham – Member
As long as there are more car drivers than pedestrians, cyclists and bus passengers combined on the roads, motoring is far too cheap.Or public transport to expensive?
bigrichFull Memberthe UK is tiny. how far are you ever from work? and with the population density, public transport should be easy.
people are going to have to get used to the lack of convenience mindset pretty soon, as oil is not coming down in price again.
piemonsterFull MemberThere was a time when motoring was too expensive for most people and there were local shops and good rural public transport.
What a lucky coincidence.I think the public transport element of this was a very brief phase, as is the current car as personal transport phase. In the grand scheme of things.. In general people just rarely left the villages they inhabited.
piemonsterFull Memberthe UK is tiny. how far are you ever from work? and with the population density, public transport should be easy.
Tell that to those commuting into London from Bristol. And that has good transport links.
Don’t get me wrong, their choice. But they pay a lot, and it’s no 30 minutes bicycle ride. And the cost of public trains taken at short notice, to get you into an office for office hours can be eye wateringly expensive.
JollyGreenGiantFree MemberYes cars fuel has become expensive, but to a degree the cost has been offset by development of cars and their efficiency in recent years.
I mused on this whilst driving a borrowed Insignia Ecoflex diesel the other week. Nearly 60mpg without trying, whilst still capable of similar speeds to the 2.0litre petrol cars of 20 years ago.thisisnotaspoonFree Memberif fuel cost £12 a gallon that would … make a biking trip to Wales, Peak District, Scotland etc look very very pricey – never mind driving to the Alps.
[quote]There’s a reasonable argument to be made that that’s a good thing. [/quote]
Yup stop the biggest industry in rural areas, tourism, by driving up the cost then whilst there’s no more coming into area and transport cost have increased watch the prices of goods in rural areas soar, jobs lost and people move out of the area. Great do it straight away.
You miss the point that if [u]fuel[/i][/u] was £12/gallon, flying abroad would be prohibitively expensive.
Imagine if all those £££ spent on flights to Malaga were actually spent on the drive to Margate? It’d be a huge boost to the tourism industry (although it would bankrupt the airports, but they’re not British owned so less of a blow).
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