Oi!….. Mr Chancellor!!! Fuel Duty

When VAT was temporarily reduced to 15%, the Chancellor added 2% duty to fuel to offset the reduction in tax collected from motorists. Now that VAT has been increased to 17.5% again this hidden tax has not been removed – hence recent rises in your fuel costs.

Sign Here[/url]

The 2% was always planned.

Its not a hidden tax. Its overt and obvious

Fuel is far too cheap anyway

And it's not the fuel duty that's setting the prices currently, it's profits.

Fuel is far too cheap anyway

I'm not sure how you can judge the correct value for fuel.

We are being weened off the destructive stuff.

Not quickly enough thats why I say its too cheap.

car driving generates less taxation revenue than it costs the country. I'd like car drivers to pay their way please

car driving generates less taxation revenue than it costs the country. I'd like car drivers to pay their way please

Can you quote your sources? Im genuinely intrigued by that statement.

As Drac says, "the 2% was always planned"……..long before the announcement of the cut in VAT.

TJ would love to see your facts on this one. 2008 figures show that £222 million is made in fuel duty and VAT every day. Without road tax & other green taxes imposed on motorists.

TJ, thats sounds unbelievable. Source please?

If you start to factor in all sort of intangible costs – like the cost of lost work days due to asthma, the notional cost of someones death – you can exceed the £222m

road tax

no such thing

I'd like to complain about the price of fuel, but I drive a 535i – so not really helping 'my corner'…

I'm with TJ on this one: Put 5 people in a car and all their luggage and it costs you a grand total of 1 squid a head to travel 50 miles.
In fifty years time (when travelling anywhere, by any mechanized means costs a kings ransom) people are going to look back and laugh at how we complained about how much it cost to go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted for the cost of a cup of tea!

I'd like to complain about the price of fuel, but I drive a 535i – so not really helping 'my corner'.

Similar boat here, someone else buys most of it for me
😀

We have done the debate before.

It all depends on how you add up the figures.

There are a lot of costs that most people forget – childhood asthma in cities from car pollution, vibration and pollution damage to buildings, cost of treating car accident victims, cost of the land that roads and parking spaces, enforecement of motoring laws enforcemtnt of parking regulations etc etc.

add all this up and there is a massive disparity in amount of taxation from motoring and its direct and indirect costs to society

Then there is the unquantifiable social costs as well – destruction of rural communities as the towns and villages turn into dormitory towns.

Its all out there if you want to find it. However I know from previous debates on this nothing will convinced the car drivers that actually they suck up huge amounts of the nations resources unfairly and are effectively subsidised by the taxpayer

the highways agency costs the gov 12.7 billion a year

An outline of the arguments from a very unbiased source 🙄
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/08/03/drivers-are-undertaxed/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britain-driven-on-to-roads-by-falling-cost-of-motoring-1681052.html

I've got absolutely no problem with higher taxes for cars once this lovely country of ours manages to provide reliable, frequent, useful public transport.

vrapan, ~I agree with you. I crave for a society with minimal sole occupancy cars. Where the cars are communal and computer driven and are like a taxi hive. The cars will automatically stick to speed limits and will have sensors to detect pedestrians and cyclists.
People will naturally want to share them (imagine a car share facebook group) and will only share with those that they want to.
The future of transport is exciting.
We need to get through the current mess of massive amounts of cars with only one occupant.

We need to stop travelling miles from where we live to where we work

what about factoring in the benefit to the national economy of the auto trade, having a mobile and flexible workforce and the dependence on the road infrastructure of the haulage industry. Once that's factored in i doubt the numbers stack up. I'm asthmatic. I'd much rather use public transport, but it's genuinely more expensive and not at all convenient c/w using a car. Until there is a viable alternative, and a public transport infrastructure that is reliable, i'll be staying in the car. . Wouldn't object to fuel duty if it was invested in public transport but it's not it's used to fund wars and bail out corrupt banks. Right, i'll get off my soap any now :-).

Nick – Member
We need to stop travelling miles from where we live to where we work

+1

I travel less than a mile to work.

Public transport is too expensive, runs at shite times and even worse in rural areas so people use cars.

I won't be stopping or reducing my driving any time soon
When there's reasonable public transport – I may think about it

I live on the East coast main line, yet to get to our head office in Guildford [on another main line]
I need to take 2 buses, 2 trains & 2 tubes

Nick – Member
We need to stop travelling miles from where we live to where we work

Love to, but my wife and I have normal places of work 40 miles apart and regularly have to go to other sites in our respective companies up to 100 miles in the other direction (if that makes sense – it would if I named the towns trust me).

We just don't have that option.

Or more accurately, it's not an option up for consideration. Whereas if you didn't have driving licenses, your current situation wouldn't be an option at all.

But please don't take this for a moment as some sort of chastisement or disaproval that you should do anything other than what you are currently doing though. That's not my intention.

igm – Member
> Nick – Member
> We need to stop travelling miles from where we live to where we work
Love to, but my wife and I have normal places of work 40 miles apart and regularly have to go to other sites in our respective companies up to 100 miles in the other direction (if that makes sense – it would if I named the towns trust me).

We just don't have that option.

Agree – it's just that as a society we've come to accept this as normal. Of course, lots of it has been done to centralisation and specialisation. Difficult to see how we crack that in the short-medium term, although lots more employers should be looking at home (or remote) working where practical.

With fuel being 'too cheap' would everyone saying that be happy for a substantial rise in the cost of living.

druidh – yep

Ian Munro – Of course. But having done bachelors degrees, masters degrees and done the necessary to join our respective professional bodies, we'd both like to work (given the nation paid for a lot of that education presumably they'd like us to work too). But that said, we don't both have to work, we could try to move somewhere where there is some public transport. But I reckon druidh is closer to the truth.

Yep,I agree wholeheartdly with what druidh said. It's fantastically hard to buck the system, and whilst energy remains cheap, probably not a smart move anyway.

Indeed, fuel is too cheap – so we raise the cost of fuel.

It means that it costs more to transport goods for sale, and the cost of goods goes up – Of course, also it costs more for people to travel to work, so the staff want a pay rise, and the price of goods has to go up even further to cover the pay rise as well…

yep, you guessed it, the fact that retail prices of food and general shopping have gone up means that staff want a pay rise to match the cost of living increase – so wages go up again…

suddenly, fuel is now comparatively cheap again – so we raise the cost of fuel and start the inflatory cycle all over again 🙄

On the cost of public transport – its usually not as expensive in relation to a car as people think. Its just people only consider the additional cost of the miles of driving – not the total costs – and also forget the time spent looking for parking in the time considerations. virtually every journey I do around Scotland is cheaper by public transport than by car.

One example is to visit my folks. I have 3 options – drive ( if I had a car) bike / train mix and public transport all the way.

Drive – its 110 mile round trip. That what £10 – £15 in petrol but another £5 – 10 in hidden costs ( servicing / tyre wear etc)

Bike to Waverley, a few pennies in wear. return train to Glasgow £13. Cycle to their house another few pennies. say £15 total

Or – £1.20 on the bus (x2), 2 trains at £16 return. £18.40 total Depending on the time of day its around 1 1/4 hr by car and 1 1/2 hr either of the other options.

so actually public transport stacks up well in both time and money and is far less stressful as I get to read the paper on the train.

Most folk who say public transport is expensive and unreliable haven't used it for years.

Most folk who say public transport is expensive and unreliable haven't used it for years

TJ – get your calculator & timetables out & do the sums & logistics for me to get from Darlington to Guildford – both on main train lines

I reckon to drive there & back costs £55 in fuel – so call it £75

Lets say get me there for noon & back home by 9pm the next day

While I agree with TJ that the total cost of motoring to society is bigger than the fuel tax whingers believe, I think that living in Edibugh HAS skewed his views on public transport. Outside of Embra or the Weege, especially if you're not going from city to city, its supers***e. And more expensive than a car, and takes too long.

Uplink – Interesting challenge

Depart darlington 07.06 arrive Guilford 11.24
Next day depart Guildford 16.05 arrive Darlington 20.36

Price – be organised and book ahead £110
Turn up on the day £205

Can you drive it in 4 1/2 hrs? Have you remembered the cost of your parking in the price? Is £75 quid realistic? If you have a new car dealer serviced then its nearer double your fuel cost to get your total cost including everything.

AA routeplanner says 267 miles in 4 hrs 34 mins

RAC car cost comparison for a 1800cc repmobile says 52 p per mile total cost ( new car costing £14000 , dealer serviced. kept for 3 yrs, depreciation, servicing and and comprehensive insurance included annual mileage 12000)

that makes it £227 to drive total cost- gulp!

How close do you live to the station? Add a £20 taxi each end changes it somewhat.

Can you drive it in 4 1/2 hrs

Yeah, 4.5 – 5 hrs is normal [if there is such a day]

How close do you live to the station?

1/2 mile

No parking needed

West kipper – I know that I live where public transport is good. My folks used to live where it was bad – only another £5 to get there but another hour

TandemJeremy, I share your utopian view of a society less dependant on us all having metal boxes dedicated to our own transportation.
However where we are in 2010 is a little different.
Like many on here, I could not do my job, or do what my family needs without a car. Once you own a car (lets ignore the 3 year lease with prohivitive extra milage charges cos most folk don't have them) the cost per mile is really only petrol/diesel and 1/20,000'th of the cost of 4 tyres/brakes. Parking is rarely an expense at most destinations.

So lets not bicker on this. We both share a view of utopia, just that some of us campaign while needing to make the best of the current system (with a family to transport) and others live close to work and don't have dependants.

Uplink – and I think its east coast mainline most of the way – free wifi on the train so thats 9 hrs work ( stwing??) you could do while travelling. Whats 9 hrs of your working time worth?

Od chillout with a book and your ipod – drinking coffe on the way down and beer on the way back

I'd rather train that journey than drive

I am suprised that the train came out so well. £55 in petrol? 50 ish MPG??? ( can't be bothered with the sums)