Anyone else concerned about the price of fuel?

[cormissus]

Yesterday it was £1.66 near us a litre and today it’s £1.71. It seems to be climbing by the day and although I hear tuts and sighs most people just seem to be accepting it. The government hasn’t said a word - but mind you they’ve made approximately £130million in excess VAT since Feb when this conflict started. I recently switched to a hybrid so it’s not costing me quite as much but I wonder how high the government is prepared to let it go before they will slash the VAT?

Do your solar panels power your house in a power outage?
My neighbour's solar panels don't. She was told they would have to spend thousands more for extra equipment, and that would only give them one plug socket to use in a power cut.

Heating oil is my immediate concern - tank needs filling and was quoted £1.26 per litre yesterday which when you add the 5% VAT is £661 for 500 litres.

I cannot understand why gas and electric is capped, but heating oil users are totally forgotten about.

The problem is that we're currently in a honeymoon period for EVs - maybe not too far off approaching the end - where it's suited the minority of early adopters of EVs. The government has already scrapped free VED for EVs, because they've made it clear that the threat to their income is unsustainable when too many people do 'the right thing' and see benefits from it.

Those of us over a certain age will remember how, 20, 30, 40 years ago, we were told about the amazing new advances that were on the horizon in the efficiency of appliances, which would use a tiny fraction of the electricity that their predecessors needed. Electricity bills would tumble dramatically for us all, to virtually nothing... but in reality, now our monthly bill for electricity and gas is considerably more than our (still expensive) council tax charge; and not all that far short of our mortgage payment.

Whether it's governments with tax or companies with essential commodities, they ultimately decide how much they want to make from the average person/household and then manipulate the prices accordingly. You may get away with paying less for a while, but before long, you will pay them whatever they want you to pay them, regardless of how little you use.

Diesel went from 196 to 199 in the space of an hour at our local garage. It had been 193 the previous day.
like a previous poster I try to not watch ( same with the news cycle/social media) as I only worry, yet really cannot do anything about it.

There comes a point where you just can’t cut things anymore.

I don’t think the EV boom will last. The government makes too much revenue from the sale of petrol and so they’ll have to find a way to recoup their losses from EV drivers. It’s ok right now but I can’t see it staying that way. I purposefully got a hybrid this time round so that (at the moment) I have the best of both worlds - save a bit on fuel but won’t have to pay the mileage charge that will be coming in for EVs.

I just wonder how high petrol costs have to go before people will really start
protesting? Small businesses who do deliveries must be feeling the pain as well as taxi drivers. The gov could do something about it but are currently choosing not to.

As a driving instructor I’m very worried and have no choice now but to raise my prices which I have held off doing for as long as possible.

I remember the protests in 2000 over the fuel prices and resulting shortages. Annoyingly I had a classic mini at the time and it ran on lead replacement fuel which remained available and I was expected to pick colleagues up to get to work!

Looking back, fuel was under £1 a litre at that time and now it’s almost double. I have a tiny and fairly economical car, plus I work from home, so am not really impacted as much as a lot of people.

I do worry about DS who starts a new job on Monday with a fairly long commute and my sister who also drives a lot for her job. Goodness knows how my ex-MIL will manage on her state pension when she needs to fill her oil tank which she relies on for heating.

Yep - I hear ya. I am in the same boat. Luckily I still have half a tank, but the minute I pop the heating on, it will go down fast.

I live rurally in a rental house. There isn't an EV charger and there aren't solar panels. I drive to work daily, and luckily it's only a 35 mins journey, but there is one petrol garage on my commute and the price goes up daily. I am also unable to change my electricity provider or go on a fixed rate deal if I plan on moving house before the fixed rate ends ... which I do.

Yes, I can't believe the government are actually just standing back and allowing this. Haulage/construction is being hit very hard, companies in our industry are dropping like flys. It's adding £10's of thousands to our costs every week, it's unsustainable and we're just a small family business.

I can't control the cost of fuel. I just spend less on hospitality. I usually go out every Friday with friends for a meal and a few drinks. We now go out every other week. It will soon be once a month!

Switching to a Tesla earlier in the year has saved us around £750+ in fuel costs and that will increase significantly as fuel prices keep rising.

Cannot recommend them enough.

EV pay per mile. Surely you have heard of it.

Yes, I am extremely concerned, and I think we should be fucking furious about it: much more than some of the other things people seem to froth about. If the price of fuel goes up and up, so does the price of everything else. And the squeezed middle are still being hammered on all sides by the cost of living, while the billionaires say "just hang in there", like Rishi Sunak did, while they get richer and richer and richer. People will decide they can't afford to spend money on other things, which will hurt small businesses all round.

It's like with lockdown lasting months and months and months (crowned by Partygate, proving that the need for months of lockdown was bullshit, and the government knew it). People just tutted and sighed at the blatant destruction of business and mental health, cowered in their homes glued to their TV briefings, or spent their time grassing on their neighbours, when I think we should have been rioting. I was on the anti-lockdown protests which the BBC hushed up with "a couple of hundred conspiracy theorists on Speaker's Corner": it was hundreds of thousands of people, I saw it with my own eyes.

And yes, the electric cars con. Those with EVs now are feeling smug, but I'm sure the government will come after them next. They've already got rid of tax exemptions which were in place before. How much do EVs cost to repair again, and is their massive weight the reason the roads are in a terrible state? Why is my town still full of potholes?

Why is nobody holding the government to account about the cost of living? I haven't forgotten what happened about the price of fuel in 2000. It could happen again, and I'm almost tempted to say that it should.

Those of us over a certain age will remember how, 20, 30, 40 years ago, we were told about the amazing new advances that were on the horizon in the efficiency of appliances, which would use a tiny fraction of the electricity that their predecessors needed. Electricity bills would tumble dramatically for us all, to virtually nothing...
This. We're always being told (by liars like Boris Johnson) that technological miracles are around the corner: smart meters, smart motorways, electric cars, parking apps, apps to prevent future lockdowns, cashless society. These futuristic new appliances never last well, they have built-in obsolescence, they need wi-fi, and they are all designed with one thing in mind: to squeeze more and more money out of people.

We need to GET ANGRY.

Yes, we have battery storage. Most people who get solar get the battery too.

You obviously don't know where 85% of UK pension funds have an investment.

I don't think it's the battery you need for this to work is it? You need an isolator switch to isolate you from the grid in order to use your solar panels in the event of a power cut, this to to stop you dangerously feeding power back into the grid while it's meant o be off and people are working on it. Most people don't get one as it costs a lot extra and will usually only mean they get power to one socket.

Very worried as this will impact food prices along with everything else.

I think we need to start taking the government advice to start stockpiling food and water more seriously tbh.

I'm worried and I don't know what the answer is
I do know that I don't fancy being reliant in elec for everything...

Calling it a conflict is heavily minimising what is actually happening. It's a war - one that our countries' so-called "allies" started, arrogantly thinking they have the "best armies" in the world to quickly take out a so-called "threat", and control their ressources. Ha!

Frankly, we deserve to feel the pain in our wallets when we "ally" ourselves with nations that bomb schools, hospitals and weddings. You may pay £1.71/litre for petrol, but at least your children came home from school yesterday, safe and sound. Many Iranian parents can't say the same about their children that never came home from school the day the Epstein demons decided to target their school.

Maybe when we're on our knees struggling to feed our kids and heating our homes during the harsh winters we'll finally open our eyes and have the balls to hold our useless pedophile governments accountable for our tax funds that they waste away on senseless wars and lining their own pockets.

Yes, I was discussing this the other day with someone in the know as my Dad has just got solar panels. He didn't get a battery as he has an EV which he was told would work like a battery but it seems that doesn't protect you from power cuts as there needs to be an isolator to prevent your electricity from electrocuting an engineer working on the grid

Doesn’t suit us to have an EV. Would never ever touch one.

Being on the side of Iran is quite an interesting view, given that Iran is definitely our enemy.

True, and of course the one conflict that has really been driving a lot of the sentiment about the price of crude in recent days has been the one involving the KSA and the Houthis.....

That one has hardly raised a blip with most of the MSM....I guess not fashionable enough ATM, but it might just be one worth keeping an eye on.

Who is "our"? Iran is not my enemy. My enemy is the US and Israel, so, per default, anyone who's against them isn't my enemy. Iran, Russia, North Korea, China...I'd take them any day over the two pedophile nations we're being told to support. No, thanks.

Well, we haven't seen anything yet. Saudi Aramco have cancelled all EU deliveries until at least November. Things are going to get very difficult, very soon. Now that the Bab al-mandab strait is about to be closed as well, I think we will easily see £2 a litre for petrol and £2.30 a litre for diesel. And that's just the start of a brutal winter.