MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
"daily mail in outrage over public finances shock"
Fingers crossed that the Tories get in though - they've promised an 'emergency budget' within 100 days, I think...
how do the fuel sellers alliance or whatever they are called know? Can I borrow their crystal ball?
Good news. Petrol prices will go up sooner or later as it runs out so better make people think about the way they use petrol now than later I reckon.
Glad I've got a fuel card... 8)
100% Daily Fail bullpoo.
why fingers crossed the tories get in , they lying ****ing ****s as well , they gonna bleed us all dry , bleat on about how hard things are, but will never affect them as much as will us.so whats the answer , **** if i know .
There should be some people soon telling us prices are far too cheap at the moment.... I just hope my company decides that 25p/mile is a bit mean sometime soon.
Phew. Now Gordon can afford to pay the public sector annual pay increases 🙂
Yeah great news except for those that need vehicles to get around and have a rapidly decreasing/ non- exsistent public transport system to rely on.
they gonna bleed us all dry
Erm, I hate to be the one to bring this up, but have you had a moment to look over the state of the Nation's finances after the wondrous management of the fiscal genius that is New Labour and Gordon Brown? There's nothing left to bleed dry!
I cant wait for all councils to be privatised like the planned Essex council initiative. Lay off the excess and stop stupid annual payrise demands of idiots out of tune with the economy. Maybe we ordinary punters wont have to pay more taxes then.
Daily Mail is talking sh8t? You do realise there has been multiple duty rises throughout 2009 already no?
The Tories will protect the higher earners at the expense of the working people of Britain.
Which is exactly what New Labour did. The best thing that could possibly happen to this country is that both parties comprehensively get their ars*s kicked.
Unfortunately, this would leave the door open to the nationalist/green mentalists.
🙁
The Tories will protect the higher earners at the expense of the working people of Britain.
❓
"Stupid annual payrises or public sector workers" the ones that plod along regardless with gradual increases as opposed to the private sector where when times are good rewards are greater but when times are not so good they point at the ons they left behind for the previous x years!
Agreed, the public sector should share in the same burden as those of us working in the private sector.
In the last twelve years, the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow, while social mobility has stagnated to it's lowest point since Victoria was alive.
I simply do not believe that the Tories will do anything at all to make the lot of the working / lower middle classes any easier. There is a raft of new taxes waiting in the wings which will be levied on purchases instead of income (thus hitting the lower earners proportionately harder), while the inheritance tax threshold is set to be raised considerably - this is actual policy and not speculation.
Personally, I find the actions of the last twelve years of the Labour government abhorrent but see very little to cheer about should the Tories win.
Gordon Brown recently railed at a tory council for its £30m in spending cuts saying 'in this current climate we should be creating jobs not slashing them'.... when a Union official asked him about a certain Labour council also planning £30m in cuts he didnt reply.
Bet he was thinking 'how do I blame those pesky greedy bankers for this one'?
Precisely.
Relations between The Labour Party and the trade unions have become strained in recent years, here's hoping that the funding is cut.
The problem is that politics needs yin and yang so people can pick and choose policies. We live in an age where the Tories, Labour and the Liberals have all agreed what Cameron called "a common consensus as to the way forward".
When this happens, it's easy to see why there is a rise in support for extremists.
I want the decent and cheap public transport infrastructure that Prescott promised me in 1998 as an alternative to having to pay high motoring taxes. ID cards can frankly be shoved, as can the regular debacles surrounding public sector IT solutions that end up costing more than a Nimitz class aircraft carrier to implement (which are invariably pushed over budget due to political interference and poor project management).
I am also wholly in support of proportional representation as a means of allowing the silent majority a fighting chance of getting their views heard.
Interestingly, whenever we have a discussion on here about peak-oil and the fact that fuel prices are inevitably going to rise as supply can no longer meet demand, a whole bunch of people start telling us not to worry because as soon as petrol/diesel fuels becomes expensive, new technologies will be rolled out to solve all the problems. So, rest assured, all these fuel price rises now will soon be offset by free hydrogen powered cars for everyone - hurrah.
Fuel will go up over time anyway, however im not worrying to much about any large increases in the next six months, Gordon might not be a rocket scientist but he aint so stupid as tp put 15p on a litre just before the election (but dont hold your breath after)
Well, the government's preferred course of action is for the market to drive demand for low emission vehicles - however IMHO a better way for this to happen would be to ban the import of cars emitting more than a certain amount of g/km and reduce this threshold over time.
The current system merely squeezes low earners who are in no position to finance a newer car and who have to travel to places of work. But then just in case they all decide to opt for public transport instead, the government has ensured that fares rise beyond the rate of inflation until 2020 at least.
The best course of action would be for the government to be forced to wean itself off the green tax revenue by ringfencing the £50bn a year it provides the Treasury so that it can only be used to improve public transport and energy production. At present less than 5% of green tax revenue is actually put into sustainable transport / energy programmes.
When people on here comment on how petrol/diesel should be massively increased in price to encourage drivers out of their cars, I really wonder exactly how many live where they have easy access to good public transport. I'm damned certain few of them live in parts of the country like North Wiltshire, where transport via bus or train is fine if you live in a large town, but is utterly useless if you live in villages off of main roads. Perhaps they'd be quite happy for a relative in their 60's to walk for a mile along an unlit singletrack road with 1:4-6 hills to catch a bus that runs just once each day to the nearest city like Bath. I have friends who live in places like that, and it's no fun. It's not just Labour Ministers with big s****y second homes and a tax-funded car who live in country villages, there are very many working class families who do too, and are being wrung dry by the transport policies of the current goverment.
But keeping fuel prices down in the short term isn't the long term answer. A 15p rise now isnt' going to stop anyone driving their car altogether, but it might make them think a bit more about how they use it. We are going to run out of oil. Better to start thinking about alternatives now and weaning ourselves off it before it isn't there anymore.
Erm, I hate to be the one to bring this up, but have you had a moment to look over the state of the Nation's finances after the wondrous management of the fiscal genius that is New Labour and Gordon Brown? There's nothing left to bleed dry!
Erm, did you forget to mention your friends in the city also?
So what is the answer? Politicians seem to be addicted to the very same green tax levies that were designed to pry us from our cars and are as such strongly dissuaded from doing anything to ensure that there is an alternative.
There isn't going to be an alternative - that's the point really.
There's nothing left to bleed dry!
There's always the aristocracy.
Hmmm... If enough people and the media make it an issue it will be.
It was in 2000 with the fuel protests. Even Blair was taken totally by surprise by a then pro-new Labour Sun poll that showed 90% of the electorate would have voted against Blair in Sept 2000.
If enough politicians are shamed they'll do something about it. End of.
Wait... I just read that story and they don't even bother to attempt to substantiate their claims. They quote the return to 17.5% VAT as an increase, which it's blatantly not, that's why it's called the return to 17.5% VAT. They're implying, oddly, that the 1p duty incentive for biofuel will increase the price of petrol...
So, when they actually get down to it, rather than the 15p they claim, the increase is inflation + 1p. And then "But it might rise more" to make up the 15p. And I say "make up" in both senses of the term.
Obviously it's no surprise that the story's utter s**t, I just thought they might have at least put in the effort to make it less obviously utter s**t. And I thought that maybe, people would actualyl read the story before they posted.
Now. Who remembers who actually consistently increased petrol tax above inflation, as a matter of policy? And who remembers which party consistently delivered below-inflation tax increases on petrol for almost an entire decade? Clue, it's completely the other way round to what most people believe.
Why the lack of comment about the sneaky 2p increase in the price of a litre which came in yesterday (having been announced a year ago)?
They quote the return to 17.5% VAT as an increase, which it's blatantly not, that's why it's called the return to 17.5% VAT.
Well actually, since the duty on fuel was increased when they cut VAT so that fuel didn't get cheaper, it effectively is.
So, when they actually get down to it, rather than the 15p they claim, the increase is inflation + 1p.
Given current levels of inflation, and the fact they mention 3 above inflation increases of 5p, how do you work that out?
Yes, the Tories in 1992. They're also the party that introduced the £2m grant for "congested" towns which resulted in the pedestrianisation of most of our town centres as we know them today.
Labour just jumped on the bandwagon, quietly killed off the plans for "comprehensive, fairly priced and efficient" public transport as promised in their 1997 election manifesto and ratcheted up the fuel tax and waited until fuel taxes accounted for £50bn of the Treasury's tax receipts.
And this is why I have to pay £350 a month to travel from Kent to London.
PJM1974 wrote,
"Hmmm... If enough people and the media make it an issue it will be.
It was in 2000 with the fuel protests. Even Blair was taken totally by surprise by a then pro-new Labour Sun poll that showed 90% of the electorate would have voted against Blair in Sept 2000."
OK, fact fans- did the petrol tax protests of 2000 come before, or after, the most motorist friendly budget there had been for a decade?
Seriously, go look it up. Cause comes before effect.
The VAT descrease to 17.5% wasn't applied to fuel... Go and check the Treasury statements from Dec 2008.
PJM, do the maths, show me labour "ratcheting up" fuel tax. In 2000 (before the protests) they abolished the fuel tax elevator. Between 2000 and 2008, there was never once an above-inflation fuel tax increase, IIRC. 2005 was the year where tax per litre fell below 1998 in real terms.
"The VAT descrease to 17.5% wasn't applied to fuel... Go and check the Treasury statements from Dec 2008."
Not being funny but can you substantiate that? Everything I can see states that it did, including statements from pro-driver organisations who obviously wouldn't want to miss this out if it's correct. I could be wrong of course but I'm not convinced
In any case- even if this is correct, it's not 15p, nor is it close to 15p. Instead of dickering over pennies why not accept that the numbers in the story are just made up?
Well thanks for wasting my time, PJM - went and checked and no mention at all of an exemption for motor fuel. It didn't apply to domestic fuel as that was already taxed at 5% - maybe that's what's confusing you. Simply found confirmation of what I've already mentioned, that fuel duty was raised by 2p to offset the decrease in VAT.
We have the highest cost per passenger km for rail transport in Western Europe.
aracer - yes I'm in error, a duty increase was enacted to offset the reduction in VAT.
@Northwind - please clarify 'in real terms'.
IIRC the Fuel Tax Elevator (sic) was abolished in the 2001 budget... Was it not? It was reinstated in 2002/3 of that I'm sure.
The Labour government upon coming to power in 1997 imposed an increase in fuel duty that was not covered by the scope of the escalator imposed by Major's government in 1992.
I don't doubt that the Daily Fail is resorting to type, I'm merely arguing that we've all been massively let down when it comes to transport policy.
PJM, the elevator was abolished in 2000 (it saw a 2p increase, below the rate of inflation rather than 3% above as it had been since 1993), and there was no above inflation increase in 02/03. It is true that the first 2 Brown budgets had even higher increases than Lamont and Clarke though. That annoys me as it makes one of my favourite internet rants much less clear cut 🙂 Thoughtless of him.
"in real terms"- in this case, below inflation and also below most common price indices. There's a very good report on this available from the institute of fiscal studies, which IIRC is linked off the Petrolprices site.
Yes, but don't forget that PJM1974 finished one of his posts witht eh words "End of." about 6 posts ago, so obviously he wins the argument.
Maybe that should be a resolution for Singletrack forum members for the new year.
No more use of the words/phrases: "End of" "Fail" or "MYFU" as if they have the same impact as the words "Mornington Crescent"