Petrol Boycott

[EricL]

Recieved this email this morning.

Some places in Glasgow are selling it at £1.14.

It is getting ridiculous. Especially when you factor in the enormous profits the oil companies are making at our expense.

"See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it

We are hitting £106.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with
paying £1.10 a litre. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This new idea 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 on me 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 8 days!!! 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"

That email has been cirulating for years - google it and you willo find the details.

circulating

This country's love affair with cars is more like Stockholm syndrome.

Expat says "using public transport in many areas is more expensive than using car, especially a car that you own outright."

I don't doubt that for one minute, which is how you can tell that both cars and fuel are too cheap.

Eric, the fact that you occasionally get unpleasant people on public transport is meaningless. You get some pretty unpleasant ones on the road as well behind the wheel of a fast-moving object which can (and does) kill people.

Nearest farmers market - 4.5 miles - once a month - not practical without a car
Nearest supermarket 9 miles - without a car not practical - our neighbours get a lift from us because there isn't any public transport - well there is - 2 buses a day into a village where we can get a bus once an hour to either of the 3 nearest towns
Nearest school for DD 4.4 miles and she isn't eligible for the school bus

God forbid I should need to work or take DD to guides/church/dance class

I am genuinely puzzled why people who live in remote rural communities then buy a car and drive to towns where for their working/shopping/education/entertainment/religion/socialising. If you want all of those things (and of course quite a lot of us do), why don't you live in a town?

OTOH, if you want a bucolic remote rural idyll and want to socialise with your neighbours and be part of a community there, why not do that instead of all getting in cars and deserting your village?

Daddster, are you employed by the Labour government?

Because all they seem interested in doing is beating us all with a stick to use more expensive, inefficient or even non-existent modes of transport instead of listening to what people need - CHEAPER, more efficient, well-maintained public transport.

In place.

BEFORE they start punishing people for just trying to eek a living and have a few bob left over to pay the heat bill. Not as an after effect. But there and up and running.

And, also, whilst you are at work, could you please ask Gordon how he justifies his 'green' taxes on the British people whilst his ECGD used our money to back the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline?

Or the Bonny Island plant in Nigeria that will eimt 660m tons of CO2?

Or the Dabhol-Enron power plant in India?

How about the Lesotho Highlands Water Project?

I'd really like to know.

'If you want all of those things (and of course quite a lot of us do), why don't you live in a town?'

CAN YOU NOT READ?!

We don't live in a town cannot afford to live in a town!

The rents and council tax, when you throw in the soaring utility bills, were putting us in the red every month.

People move out because they cannot afford to live there, and they're NOT ALL HOMEOWNERS.

Where is this mythical 'community' you keep going on about? We're letting from an absentee landlord. Most of the homes around here are second/holiday homes.

We had a shop & a bus service when I moved here - however other people closing them down didn't help

The village school is junior - DD is at Senior

I 'socialise' here on a regular basis at a village hall I can walk to.

Would live in a town have previously done so (London - used public transport, Liverpool used public transport, Plymouth didn't walked everywhere)

I work from home & provide 6 part-time jobs for other local (predominantly) women

I like living in a village, I am on committees and board. But DH & I provide a valuble service to our neighbours running them about as much as they can. If the council can house people here, why shouldn't we live here?

You can, Katy, you just can't use a car if you live in Daddster's world. You should be cycling or pestering your neighbours to cadge lifts.

expat - petrol taxes have gone up very little in the last 10 years you know. There aren't any green taxes to speak of (there is airport tax, but compared to the duty the airlines don't pay on fuel, that's effectively a subsidy). the high pirces are due to market forces mostly.

But I do agree better public transport would be a good idea.

Look, I'm not having a dig at anyone in particular and I am sure there are extenuating circumstances in some cases (there always are, although some are prone to exaggerate to make a point). The truth is for the overwhelming majority of us (whether we want to admit it or not) owning a car is a lifestyle choice and not a necessity.

That lifestyle choice impacts on all of us, whether in terms of congestion, loss of air quality, obesity, road accidents, loss of village shops and amenities, loss of public transport. I just think that those costs should be reflected in the price you pay for your car and its fuel (and I make no apologies for it).

What do you call higher road taxes, increased air passenger duty - even for people who very rarely fly, fortnightly rubbish collections to 'encourage' people to flytip recyle with no corresponding reduction, however slight, in council taxes and the like?

Personally, I find your petrol voucher scheme a much more feasible approach, because a lot of people make uneccessary journeys by car. Not going to work, to get food, or the like, but when they can't be arsed to walk, basically, especially in cities where in general public transport is good. Or they don't organise themselves to multi-task and do two or three errands whilst they're out instead of two or three separate ones.

But to just blanket punish everyone, especially when in many cases there is NO viable alternative, is the straight up lazy thinking and policy-making people have come to expect out of this Government.

Village shops and amenities and public transport started to slide when people started selling off their homes to second homeowners for more profit than locals could pay, leaving the locals to abandon rural areas for cities.

And by councils who gave approval to Tesco and ASDA to build huge shops in their areas, putting a strain on local businesses who couldn't afford to compete with their profits, and sold off playing fields and plots of land for exclusive housing developments

You can't really blame the car for everything.

road taxes haven't increased faster than inflation though, unless you drive a 4x4.

also as I say, air passeneger duty is a fraction of what the airlines should be paying in fuel duty imo (they don't even pay vat). plus it was introducted by the last govt anyway.

that's so comforting, SP.

still wouldn't vote Labour if my life depended on it - not just for this reason, but keep trying!

yes, now something they should tax a lot more are second homes. all homes that are empty for more than 8 months of the year should pay triple council tax, with proceeds going to subsidise the services that aren't viable with so many empty homes.

I'm not trying to make you vote labour. just pointing out who the truly hypocritcal party are.

I know you know that though. It's illegal to vote tory in sctland isn't it?

but triple the council tax probably isn't much to someone who can afford a second home is the problem.

two sold down our street.

one for £350,000.

it was sold six months ago and we've yet to see the folks who own it more than once.

you'd be surprised. 350k is an investment, but force people (who probably have most of their money offshore) to pay money they won't see again and they take notice.

maybe quintuple council tax would be better though.

I wouldn't be surprised if many Scots cast their vote Tory for their MPs in the South, tbh, as a strategy to further the aims of the SNP.

Even the next door neighbourhood, the village busybody, has only seen them once. 'They came in for the weekend. Didn't talk to anyone. Brought loads of bags from M&S.'

It's a lovely house - we got to see inside it .

I agree, Expat - carrot is def. more effective than stick (cf. Denmark where public transport is so good, you'd be mad to drive everywhere), but you still need both to change a mindset when something is so entrenched in the minds of British folk as cars.

EricL - I didn't mean to hijack your thread, mate, honestly, but it just became so interesting. In real life, you only get such candid (and heated) opinions at the pub (and I don't get down there much these days). Viva Mumsnet!

they didn't have a private chef? what sort of riff raff do you have in that village?

God, I loved the public transport even in France!

I lived on a farm outside Strasbourg in the mid-80s and even then, the bus was fab - GREAT service, ran often and late, not very expensive.

We didn't have a car for years in Edinburgh. Only got one when DH had to get a swing-shift job - 7PM to midnight or 6PM to 11PM and the one he got was in a bit not serviced by public transport, but even then it was his folks' old car or we couldn't have afforded to buy it.

Public transport in Germany - again, excellent and not nearly as expensive as in the UK.

Why is it so expensive here compared to Europe?

I know, SP, they had bags from M&S and not even Waitrose! What cheapskates! BEt those bags were full of sausage rolls and Fay Bentos.

Oooh expat I think I love you you fought rural scotlands corner well there.
hhmmmm would I really be sad to go to Edinburgh on the holiday weekend just to go to Waitrose for the first time?????