unleaded petrol could reach £1-50 per litre by september!!!

[kerryk]

just heard this on the news in the car. the aa are demanding an explanation.

i know we could (nearly) all cut down on how much we use our cars and use public transport more often but surely a rise like this is going to bump up bus fares.

not to mention how much more food prices will rises because transport costs will have risen. between this and the latest gas/elec price rises we will be living on beans on toast by christmas.

I can't believe this is happening, rising household bills and food prices are making it hard enough for people to cope financially.
It's all very well if you're lucky enough to live somewhere with reliable public transport but a lot of people need their cars.
Fuel tax hits people on low incomes and small businesses. Public transport is over-priced, unreliable and often not even an option. It's madness.

I don't see how we could cut down on using the car. We now cannot afford to use it for anything other than DH going to work. If the price goes up that much - there is no way we can afford it and DH will lose his job. It takes him between 30 and 40 mins to get to work by car, but would take between 2 and 3 hours by bus because of the route they take. In the summer he couldn't even get home as he doesn't finish til 10.30 by which time, there are no buses anyway.

We are really struggling and dp earning quite good money. Are other countries alot cheaper to live though? My sister lives in the states and is staggered by our petrol prices

LPG is much cheaper - lots and lots of places sell it, morrisons and country wide it is 50 p per liter and you get roughly the same consumption as petrol.

www.lpg-cars.co.uk/default.asp

www.fuelture.com/

www.multimap.com/clients/places.cgi?client=fresca_cwf

I have never run out of gas and it is soooo much cheaper to run the car on I dont rally understand why you would use petrol - have had a conversion back in 2003 and now it is really worth the saving. Glad to not be lining the coffers

We are seriously struggling now, Im planning a trip with DD to see a friend in Llandudno tomorrow (a measly 51.6 miles) there is no bus unless I'm willing to sit on it for 4 hours with DD, train take 1.5 hours and costs £14.90 return so looks like i'm gonna have to take the car which will mean not going anywhere next week AT ALL in order to make the money balance again.

Why is there not a big uproar about this? Everyone is just accepting it, I remember last time they tried to raise the price of petrol over £1 per litre - there was slow-drives by the wagons and alsorts, this time we're just accepting it.

Good point about LPG especially for big gas guzzlers but not all cars are suitable to convert are they? Where would the gas tank go in a citroen C3? There would not be room for the buggy at all. I wish I bought an older model now and then I could use chipfat and not declare it to the evil GB!

Also it does punish the less well off unfairly and you are certainly not alone in monitoring your miles LuckySalem, my friend has been going to hospital every other day for the last 3 weeks for her pre eclampsia and it is costing her £8 in fuel plus the £2 parking charge every time.

People in our region have to travel quite a long distance for consultant-led maternity care.

The cost of the ferry journey has gone up along with fuel prices, as well as the bus fare to get to hospital after you get off the train.

Yet there's no choice in the matter, if you need to see a consultant or go for a scan you have to go there.

My mum paid 126.9 for diesel the other day when she went to fuel up. Bloody ridiculous.

I don't drive and don't want to learn anymore, not with how expensive it's become. I just walk everywhere with dd in the pram, if it's too far I hop on the bus or train, I have a rail card to get 1/3rd off my train tickets so it does lessen it slightly.

What makes me a bit is the fact my parents got flights to Dublin a month or two ago for 1p and just paid the taxes on top. They both had return flights to Ireland that came to £20.00 for them both. What part of that makes sense compared to the cost of driving? Bonkers!

Exactly, where are the protests? I am sick and tired of being lectured on how we all have to "save the planet" when it is only we mortals who are doing it. Does the cost of fuel matter to MPs with their expenses? Of course not and lets face it how many office buildings are lit up like Christmas trees all night long when we are all on energy saving bulbs?

Sorry but I need a car, there is public transport here but with two buses a day it is not exactly convenient. I am lucky that I purposefully picked an eco-friendly car, for car tax and diesel costs. But I can't afford to change and if everyone changes to LPG they'll slap a tax on that, just you watch.

So £1.50 in a few months time and everyone is just going to accept it. How apathetic everyone is now - ridiculous. It is like sheeple, after all these years of Labour feeding us lies and people forgetting how to protest and stand up for what is right. So now everyone is kowtowed into thinking that to protest over the cost of fuel would be a bad image if we want to be seen to be environmentally sound. What a load of crap.

There is a viral email going round suggesting we all boycott the biggest petrol companies (BP + Esso or Shell, I forget which) and only buy fuel from the others; then, supposedly, the biggies will cut their prices to lure us back in and the others will too.

It makes more sense than buying no fuel on one given day...they are def profiteering at the moment and it might work.

(We're in the same boat as you, TwoIf - I have a 15-mile commute one way, DH a 35-mile one the other way, if we had to rely on public transport we'd both be unemployed)

I saw that wendyWeber - makes sense to me.........

Ah - just googled it (because I don't have the actual email) - it's at least 4 years old and was going round when people were whingeing about 80p a litre

And another point. Diesel used to be 1 or 2p more expensive than unleaded. Who decided that all of a sudden the margin should increase to a 10p difference?

Or is that because diesel cars use less?

They're going to milk us dry.

Heard on the radio this morning that this has been caused due to speculators (the ones who caused this whole credit crunch through speculating on mortgages.)

They've now decided to speculate in oil and are causing the prices to rocket.

Great.

Fingers crossed Brown takes his head out his ar$e long enough to take on the SNP idea of having a "fuel price regulator."

Just to add again, if everyone wrote to their MPs and had a good old whinge about it then something might get done.

Yes, nice people

FWIW if you have a Tesco with fuel near you it's worth going there even if it's a bit further than others; their diesel was 7-8p a litre cheaper, plus Clubcard points are equiv to 1p at face value or 4p as Deals, plus if you pay with a Clubcard credit card you get another 5 points for every £4 (or 2 points for every £ if you have an older one, they stopped doing that a while ago)

It makes your litre effectively about 16p cheaper than elsewhere