That My car is now £30 a week Disel instead of £15[angry]mad rant!!

[ppie]

I think I am going to explode, every 2nd day the garage at the bottom of my road has gone up 2p a litre. Its bloody profiteering. I need the car to get dd to nursery, shops ect as out in the boondocs!!!
How much longer can this go on. In the usa they were all up in arms coz it was $4 a GALLON or something ridiculous like that. Wouldnt mind so much if the goverment really insisit we use buses, train, hot air balloon!! watever that the bloody bus would be more that 1 an hour and not cost £3.80 for a 20 min journey each way AAAAHHHHHHH

agree agree and agree some more

We'd all better get used to it, the oil is going to run out sooner or later.
We've just moved from a lovely village to quarter dh's commuting bill.
What about a bike, and bike trailer for the littlies if you're on relatively rural roads?

Agree totally - but just want to put in a word for the humble garage. Garages, esp. independent ones, make hardly any money on fuel - they make their profits from the shop etc.

And mostly, the price is set by the fuel supplier, not the garage, so they're not profiteering.

but rant away about the world economy etc, that's completely reasonable!

Yes, agree completely.

Diesels were the big thing last year supposedly due to fuel economy, but mine costs over £60 to fill up now and is hideously noisy as well due to diesel engine.

I don't know why Gordon doesn't just chop the rate of tax on fuel and curb his spending. A sure vote winner (roughly 80p in every £1 on fuel is tax I think).

If you has seen the nut cases on the roads round here, youd know why no bike for me and tiddler!!!

Very very with you, i need my car(diesel) to commute to work, soon i wont be able to afford to drive to work! its outrageous and ridiculus, i cant discribe how i am about it too

You are angry at Me!!!! i hope not

yanbu
it is crazy. I have to drive a massive van(wa) and I can not believe how much I have to put in it. for once I can feel lucky that all I have to pay is the diesal.

The problem we have is that there isn't enough diesel refinery capacity in the uk - we are a nett exporter of petrol but a nett importer of diesel. The govenment should be imposing a windfall tax on the oil refiners, who has all made record profits, and use this to pressure them to increase diesel refining capacity.
Fuel boycotts don't work. Whatever it costs the oil companies to extract the oil, they have to sell it on the open market at the going rate and their retail divisions then have to buy their own fuel. That means there is sod all they can do about prices as they face the soaring cost of oil.
Which in case you didn't know is a 100% increase since 12 months ago. And an 1100% increase since late 2001. Because we pay more duty than other countries our rises have been slower (fuel being a smaller percentage the bit going up in price is smaller.
We also pay the same duty on both fuels whereas in Europe diesel is often lower. So there is margin for Brown to not increase the fuel duty on diesel. But he won't!

it is 65% of the cost per gallon which goes on tax ( according to Jeremy Vine who speaks the gospel well according to me anyway) my car now cost £107 to fill up, and yep i drive a big 4x4 BUT i do a school run with 3 other familes thus cutting the number of cars on the road and we live on a rural estate so could not get in/out when weather bad. It is truley ridiculous some weeks i spend £150 on fuel, my job necessitates a car , so what does gordon brown suggest ? perhaps i should buy another car which is smaller to use when 1) weather allows, 2) don't take kids to school. ahhhh.....

not with you, with/alongside you

Dp commutes 2 hrs each way daily from lincs to Luton in diesel car. It's now crippling us.
Dds school is 7 miles away as well so in bill is much higher also.
do is now looking at staying overnight in Luton 1-2 nights to save dosh. I am so anti moving butcwe may have to consider job change as its madness.

Notjustmom

Perhaps us lot on MN shoudl stand up to this and stage some sort of protest?
Can't think what though but someone needs to do something.

Loads of people i know are REALLY struggling with money and the whole country is pee'd off.

I'd love to rely on free/public transport, however:

To get to my work from my home, would take two hours by public transport (walk, train, bus, bus, walk), however takes 20 minutes by car, or 15 minutes by motorbike.

I'm priced out of homes in the area where I work, so the only place we can afford is 10 miles away.

Cycling could be an option, but as my work won't provide a shower, and one of the hundreds of huge pot-holes on my way to work could kill me, an unlikely one.

If Labour opened up some of the old stations that they promised, improved the reliability and frequency of rural and semi-rural bus services (i.e. opened the routes up to decent competition, rather than the big three companies), filled some of the bleeding pot-holes, and reduced the price of public transport, then maybe it would work.

As a comparison, if Labour re-opened one of the old Leeds stations that they promised to in 1997, then it would only take me half an hour to get to work by public transport.

One thing I would say though, is seriously consider getting a motorbike or scooter instead of a second car. It's much more economical for commuting, and quite a lot more fun! The drawbacks are the weather (well you've still got your car) and the fact that you're less well protected from other road users and the road, however, it does make you a much better driver!

... you know what... almost everyone i speak to is having trouble at the moment...hardworking people are having to make far too many comprimises just to exist/pay to get to work in their car/pay their mortgage.

The thing is if we just let it happen it will not get better .... perhaps us lot at MN should take over the running of the country for a month and sort the useless shower out oooohh I would LOVE to do that.

Given that Oil/diesel prices are going up (and we have to accept that), Govt should definitely be reviewing the tax we pay on it - because tax is a % of hte price its going up explonentially too. Its a bloody disgrace that its the Govt who are profiteering re this!

Totally agree with you.

Can't see why Brown can't lower the tax on the fuel for a while (afterall, they are making more money off the fuel companies because of VAT).

(Still, it gives me an excuse to use my moterbike a lot more).

Ok so I waited for 21 messages and still no one mentioned the environment!

Just to let people know, more C02 is emitted during the manufacture of a car, than the car emits during its entire lifetime.

So actually he should be lowering road tax on older cars to encourage people to continue using older cars, and stop spending money on stuff which doesn't benefit us (oooo like war and olympics and the eurovision song contest) and lower the duty and VAT on fuel.

So any ideas on what we can do? When he raises fuel tax again it will be a nightmare. If public transport was better it wouldn't be so bad, I really feel that this is fuel tax is more about revenue than the environment. I don't have a car, and it takes ages to get about, at least twice the time it would in a car. DH spends nearly £400 a month getting to work and back!

PBH the problem with older cars is that they are more polluting, really public transport is the only eco friendly option, but it doesn't seem to be a govt priority tbh

what confuses me is this....are the oil companies profiteering or is it the governments?

Are we realy paying too much or are all these price hikes really necessary?

If so and if we are really that low on oil then maybe the gov should conventrate on getting the buses/trains etc better so we can all use them?

One thing is for sure though we can't go on like this can we?