Lancia Motor Club

Please sign the following protest against tax on fuel prices.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Lowerduty30/ (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Lowerduty30/)

  I recieved this email via FreecycleForum-Cornwall a few days ago. what do you think?

  See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it We are hitting 123.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying 2.00 a litre. 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 aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place not sellers. 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 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 it 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 8days!!! 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

And how is this going to stop the stuff running out?  Peak oil, guys - scary but its here.  Stuart - I think the government already understand the duty argument - the market is making their environmental point for them.  As for your argument Ian - what makes you think oil companies are going to sell you their product half price, losing money hand over fist on every gallon over the international wholesale price?  Economics anyone... ::)

To begin with I was (and still am to a certain degree) outraged that this government is using green issues to increase the tax burden on the motorist. However, on reflection and if we are serious about reducing emissions then only when the cost of fuel becomes prohibitive or supplies restricted will change occur. Last weekend I travelled into London using the M1 south of Luton where the motorway expansion programme is playing havoc. It was around five oclock on the Monday, peak time for returning traffic. No hold ups, in fact, no real slowing down. Okay, the weather was lousy but even so. It is obvious to me fuel prices are having an effect and all those things we and our children agree should happen were happening. For one reason or another there was less pollution over Bedfordshire. Sure there are a million issues that need to be adressed including public transport but as somebody once said, 'necessity is the mother of invention'. Even so, yes I signed the petiton. All we need is for Lancia to introduce a genuine fuel cell family car and reassert itself as a leader in technology.

This boycott issue was mooted when we last had a "fuel crisis" and what happened, absolutely nothing.

Now I'm not saying it won't happen now, and it does seem like a good (and easy) thing to try, but what's to stop the garages we swap over to putting up their prices so we defcet back to BP/Esso.  Also how do I explain to Donna in my usual BP garage that I helped to lose her her job?

Anyway, count me in.

I always use JET mainly because they give me a 2p off per ltr on my next visit and they are usually cheaper
than BP anyway

'the colonel' (it's still cheaper than Gin)

Oil price inflation = overall price inflation, too. Just about everything gets delivered by truck.  :-\

I've set myself a challenge for my current tank of fuel to see how high I can get my average mpg (as reported by the trip computer, anyway). Normal average = 46mpg. Current average = 52mpg, halfway through the tankful. It doesn't take that much longer to get places when you drive at 60mph on the motorway (and sitting behind the trucks doesn't hurt the fuel consumption either!

Added bonus: you help everyone else practice their overtaking, too!  ;D

methinks harvey is jesting with us. how many lancia owners could stand being overtaken by Micras and dare i say prius.   

Yes, I confess; I get a heavy right foot when I see a Micra approaching from behind. :)

Just spent 3/4 hr doing a reply and just lost it! Bugger ::)
So here it is in brief.

Peak oil, heard that more times than I care to remember over the last 30 years to prove some political point or other scare.

Scare stories and Fairy Tales about sums up a lot of the so called scientific evidence anyway, there is no overwhelming scientific concensus on Global warming, assuming that you believe it's anything other than the planet getting on with another cycle in it's life, irrespective what some official bodies would like us to believe.

I agree the oil companies won't take any notice, why should they? their not the villians of the piece, that role is shared by an out of his depth chancellor & an unelected Prime Minister who pinch 70% of the cost of a litre in fuel in tax & then have the Gall to accuse the oil companies of profiteering, at least they do something for their share.
Beside a greedy self interested Government & MP's who don't really give a damn about anyone other than themselves(anyone for a 60% payrise, "Yes Please" that's alright then, carried) City wiz kids creaming of millions in bonuses, & speculators should be first in the queue for a financial bashing before giving the motorist another clout.

A car in Rural areas is not a luxury it's essential to daily life, we get 4 buses a day none of which run at times to get working people where they want to go, that is if Stagecoach can be bothered to run any sort of service anyway, in Bedfordshire a lot of villages have lost their only public transport as Stagecoach said they don't make money and unless they get bigger subsidies they would cut them, guess what happened, fancy a 5 mile walk to the next village for the post office or shopping? ( that is if they still have either)
Everyone who talks about improving public transport think in terms of cities, from my experience of London, if you complain about your transport, come and try ours and see how really bad it can be.

last but not least, Peter, the air in Bedfordshire seems cleaner because the last of the stinking sulpher pumping brickworks closed recently, as for the traffic on the M1, it must have been your lucky day.

PS.
Can we have either the French or Italian Public Transport system instead of the crap system we have to live with.

Brian
8227 8)

Peak oil is simply this - oil production fails to grow sufficiently to meet rising global demand, probably because its getting harder and harder to find new reserves, and harder and harder to extract oil from the current ones.  That's where we are, and the only possible outcome is that prices rise fast across the globe.  Oil is a finite resource and the only question about this scenario is when. I'm afraid for me, it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, therefore...

I'd be pretty sure that recent price rises mean that the proportion of fuel cost which is tax is less than 70% now - and I think that argument is anyway accepted by the government - that there is little value or justification in further ramping up the tax burden on fuel.  But wholesale cuts aren't likely either, since someone else will have to find the taxes foregone, or bear the brunt of services taken away and the jobs providing those services cut.  I'm not in the game of arguing that someone else I don't care for should bear the pain to save me, however much I loathe rich city bankers and speculators.  It won't be them who gets clobbered, they never are.  I have MPs and Ministers salaries on my wall at work and they are neither hugely overpaid given the responsibilities and hours of the job, nor have they had anything like a 60% pay hike - more like 3-4%.  And at last their expenses system is getting the scrutiny it deserves - though it has to be pointed out that by far the most corrupt so far was an opposition backbencher...

Agreed with you on public transport - living in the West Midlands we have no tube equivalent (light rail), and relatively poorly developed heavy rail, and I'd love a real choice.  I was speaking to a senior guy from Network Rail as part of my work a week or two back, and they are in the business of re-opening commuter rail lines in my neck of the woods, but what we really need is the Midlands Metro network developing.

Whilst I have some sympathy with the rural car argument - there are after many people in rural areas who have very limited incomes - it has to be said that a lot of people living in rural areas chose to live there, and hence made a choice to be car dependent.  On this, I can feel virtuous, since I live in an urban area with all the pros and cons that that brings, but I still don't have a huge amount of real choice on transport, its just that everything is closer (distance wise, not necessarily in terms of travel time, it has to be said).

Just one final point - there is an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, if one looks at refereed academic articles or the standpoint of scientists and academics who know the field.  There are some flat earthers and conspiracy theorists still denying it, using many of the same arguments deployed by tobacco firms trying to discredit the link between their products and disease, and no surprise that some of the same US lobbying firms are involved.  It took years to find the actual causal link between smoking and lung cancer, long after the epidemiological link was clear, and climate is such a complex and chaotic system that I doubt we will ever see a conclusive mechanism proven - nevertheless the statistical evidence is clear enough, and agreed by most scientists and most others in the field.  Yes, it could be something else, but the odds of it being so are far, far lower than the obvious causal link, which is human activity.

Chris,
You may well be right or wrong but:
as long as the oil companies run things alternative fuels will be a long way off
years ago when I was in shipping the duty & excise on alternatives was always
higher than on oil/petrol as the government did not want alternatives.
On climate change there is a lot of scare mongering I personally believe that it
is natural evolution of the planet, I am certainly not conceited enough to believe
I have any effect on this planet at all. I'm sure the planet looks after itself and if
we were a serious threat we would be removed. Scientific evidence is only evidence
when it is proved or disproved, at the moment a lot of scientific research companies
are making a lot of money out of conjecture. It's very easy to frighten people into
doing what you want. It has been proven that if you tell enough people "there is a
shortage of a commodity" very soon there will be a shortage due to panic buying etc.
As free thinking people (aside from the sheep) we must decide our own course of
action, mine is not to brake for anyone.

Geoff (head in the sand looking up to the stars)

The main problem with fuel prices is that before tax, the price of oil in the UK is the cheapest in Europe.  Once the treasury has added on its profits, it makes oil the most expensive in Europe.  What I want to see is the government take on the European system.  As the cost of oil increases, the fuel tax is reduced.  As oil prices decrease, the fuel tax increases.  Net result, steady fuel prices and the cost of living doesn't increase to the point where people cannot afford to live.

Hi Chris,
Sorry but I believe if you tell the tale enough times it becomes the perceived truth, & if you can frighten the daylights out of people in the process, all the better;
I wouldn't class the former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson as a flat earther, but in his book "An appeal to Reason" while pointing out he's no scientist, he challenges the way the IPCC has manipulated, extrapolated & projected questionable Science.
Patrick Moore has also criticised "Green Peace" and it's now left wing political agenda, there are many scientists who would disagree with your view of an overwhelming Scientific concensus by the the very people who are winding up the scaremongering, many who have research grants & are funded by the Pro Global warming lobby so their hardly impartial either.
We are now told that there would be a cooling off period of ten years then things would revert to Global warming, how come none of the many models on climate change haven't previously shown this coming? Do we get another change of story in 10 years time if the now anticipated warm up doesn't occur?.

Sorry about my mistake regarding MPs pay, I really meant to highlight the latest con that the speaker is trying to push through
of rewarding dishonesty & evasion by upping there salary (A proposed £23,000 PA, what sort of % is that, certainly more than 2-3%) doing away with their expense & stitching things up so we won't be able to get the figures on who's spending what, the speaker has already spent £200,000 of taxpayers money to try to stop the figures being published, anyone would think they had something to hide!
Yes it was a Conservative who was found out and named by his own party, pity the CPS chose not to prosecute for whatever reason, just have a look at some of the more recent ones, Tony Blair, John Prescott Margaret Beckett, to name just a few.
Oh for the days when people served their country as an MP for the honour and no doubt Kudos rather than this current crop who seem to be only interested in the money. in those days MP's sat through the night or however long it took to do the business, unlike the reduced hours & no nights now.
As MP's can no longer make many decisions but only rubber stamp bills from Brussels, how about we get rid of 50% of them, then perhaps they might deserve a pay increase.
With the USA, India and China having no intentions of playing the green game whatever we do will have no significant effect whatsoever, all we are doing is destroying our own industry & economy.

Oil has always been a finite source but it doesn't stop people revising the estimates whenever new sources are found, technology moves on and previous deposits that one time were considered to be inaccessible are no longer, so it's a moving target & with the best will in the world Peak oil estimate is at best, a guess.
How long will it be before it is economical to start using our vast deposits of coal to ease the situation.

I don't want anyone to take my share of the pain if that is what it comes down to, but I think there would be a certain justice in those who have profited exceedingly well from the price hike to find themselves on the paying end of the equation.

As for there being many people in Rural areas with limited incomes I can personally vouch that that is the case, retired & on a fixed income is not my idea of fun and due, once again to our friends in the money markets a few years ago, it's a damned sight less that it was supposed to be. And whether or not some people chose to live in Rural areas, for many it wasn't a choice, but they still have the same problems as those who did.

To End.
If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck & walks like a duck you'll probably find out as in Hans Christain Andersens story, it's not a duck at all!



Brian
8227 8)

I feel like a rant coming on...

In this situation all the talk about climate change is simply irrelevant.

I watched Loenardo di Caprio's film on the telly a week ago and it mentioned population expansion, ie, that it had doubled in the last 8 years.  That's really horrifying.  And where is all that expansion happening; in the developing parts of the world.  So where is the demand for all the fuel; in the developing world too!  The people of the developing nations haven't caught up with the fact that, with modern medicine, there isn't the same child mortality that they used to have.  So they're still having dozens of kids (who now live) and then we make it worse by bailing them out when they get into trouble.  That also goes for the fastest growing part of our population.  Until ten years ago Britain had a fairly stable population but now it's expanding due to all the immigrants having kids.

Now we've set all that in motion there's no going back.  That includes the British government, back in the sixties, encouraging everyone to own cars by scrapping the railways and building lots of fabulous new roads.  So it's no good blaming the current government, this problem goes back decades.  We've just got to live with it.

It's also our fault because we all want to buy cheap stuff.  I bought some plumbing stop valves the other day.  They were beautifully made from about eight components, some cast and some pressed, and all machined in some way then hand finished to assemble the bits into the finished valve.  And the whole lot cost £4.50 and was "fabrique en chine" as the label said.  The only way they can do that is by having a large population which they pay a pittance.

Rant over, but I'm going to go on using fuel (at 23MPG in my integrale).  If I don't use the fuel someone else will :-[

Neil - Be careful what you pick up from Leonardo di Caprio  :o - the population of the world has not doubled in the last ten years (which is what I think you were saying - please forgive me if I have misinterpreted :-[), though it is still growing fast.

I'd not disagree that much of this problem stems from the fact that there are more and more of us (homo sapiens) and we want more and more stuff, cheaper and cheaper, and the only way we have so far found to do all that is burn more and more oil.  Where I split from your argument is splitting the world into them over there causing the problem, and us here not causing the problem - we're all causing a problem, just in different ways.

Per capita, its us in the richer countries using up most of the resources (the US uses, I think, about 25% of the global oil production), and all the multitudes elsewhere are using far less per capita (about a ratio of 10:1).  Many of them are poor, and have cultures of large families as a social insurance policy against high infant mortality and poverty in old age.  Cultures move the slowest in response to change, so in many cases fertility rates lag improvements in healthcare and wealth by generations - and some cultures appear pretty resistant to adaptation ::). Perversely, the best way to reduce fertility is to increase wealth and social support - but the only way we know how to do that right now is burn more oil...  And of course, as wealth increases in the developing world, the people there quite understandably want all the stuff we've got, including cars.  Its not a very good model we've built really...and yes, we made a lot of damn silly transport decisions thirty and forty years ago (and more recently - Mme Thatcher's 'great car economy' anyone?) which have made our own position far less flexible.

So yes, population growth is a problem, and wealth distribution is a problem, since our global economy needs to keep a lot of people poor in order to provide cheap labour to provide cheap goods and commodities - thus preventing them being able to adapt to lower fertility because they are sure of their own future security in old age.

Brian -  this debate could clearly run and run between us!  Nigel Lawson is one of the city types who have been the cause of your problems - who is paying him now?  And Patrick Moore has always been a little on the 'eccentric' side...  That said, because global climate is such a complex system to understand, there is always some doubt about causality.  I'm not one to accept the fashionable view of the world - indeed on most things I tend to think rather against the flow - and I would rather find reasons to believe that global warming was not happening, or not caused by human activity, and that oil was not running out - but everything I see and read suggests otherwise.  I don't think we'll agree on this one though :-\.

Stuart - fair point, that seems an idea I would give consideration.  However, in the long run, even under that model, fuel needs to get more expensive in real terms over time to wean us all off the stuff and find viable alternatives (not least because even if it doesn't run out as quick as we think, most of the oil is in places where people don't like us, and our energy security is heavily compromised - you know, because you've been personally caught up in a war about oil).  We've plenty of renewable options to 'grow our own' energy if we were but to put our minds to it, and in the interim, we also have your own industry to help out.

Anyway enough from me for now, I've got to go and burn some oil and recce the route for the Giro di Salopia...

Hi Chris,
Have a good day on your recce, let's all agree to disagree otherwise we'll be back where we were a year or so again, anyway life's too short for friends to fall out, & if the latest statistics are anything to go by I've only got another 5 years before reaching the average popping off point for down here, just pinning my hope on the fact that my Mum is still with us at 93 & that I'll beat the average ;D

Brian
8227 8)

For those we think that it is just a case of either pumping more, finding more, getting the harder to get, turning coal or shale to oil and so forth have a look at; www.theoildrum.com some of the articles will make you reconsider.

Its a universal constant that however good relationships are , even amongst lifelong friends, Politics can cause dispute and arguement more than any other single topic.Our political beliefs are often so fundamental to our view of the world that challenging them is percieved as attack often on our upbringing and even sense of right and wrong. People can call me a scoundral or anything else they wish, but challenging my politics is an invitation to a good row.

I think we better keep politics of the agenda here. Anyway, if we have descended to quoting that well known intellectual, "Leonardo di Caprio" then i fear we are getting pretty desperate.(didn't he go down with the Titanic?)

I'll put it on the record that I have no intention of falling out with anyone... :)

Scarpia  --- You're a scoundrel

Chris     --- I'll try harder


'the colonel'

I'll take it as a compliment  as the sort of clubs I wish to be associated with regard this as a prerequisite for membership (you Bounder).

Agreed, and proud of it.

Oh and...... 600