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This is doing the rounds and makes sense to me... consumers should rule on prices...

The price of oil is as low as it has been for a while, the oil companies have simply jacked their prices up and the government will not do anything as they rake in extra VAT for every increase.

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

We are hitting 115.0 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying 1.50 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 wimps 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 90p a LITRE RANGE

It's easy to make this happen. Just join this group and get all your FB friends to join or forward as an email to everyone in your address book, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. Boycott BP and Esso

Regards
John Gwilliam

Hi,

I can only second this idea. In fact over here in Germany this idea has been brought to people's notice by car clubs,TV and news papers.
However, may I suggest one change: Don't buy at Shell either! You should avoid to buy petrol at ALL internationally acting oil companies.

Best wishes,

Ulrich

I hate to rain on your parade guys but, unfortunately, this will not work. Why, you may ask? Well, I'm afraid the reason for the failure is that brits don't care enough to do anything about it. We moan until the cows come home but when it comes down to doing something that will make a difference we run a mile.

France decided it didn't like the clamps so, to a man, they sabotaged the damn things. What did the brits do? The moaned about them then accepted the situation. What a bunch of wimps.

We moan about the number of speed cameras but just accept that they are there and cough up the fines imposed. A few people will demand evidence that the cameras are accurate, and strangely, they are the ones who get the fines cancelled. However, the vast majority just pay up. Mugs! No wonder successive governments walk all over the British people; we never argue with the buggers. We should have demanded an election over the expenses fiasco but, oh no, we just let them take care of it themselves. We have got the government that we deserve; a bunch of crooks who screw us rotten because they know that we won't do anything about it.

Pay your increased tax on fuel without complaint as per usual or get someone to organise a proper refusal to pay. I know what the outcome will be, sadly.

Speak for yourself Tom !

Sadly I have to agree with Tom. We just dont have the pre-war spirit anymore. Now would be a fine time for Adolf to give us a visit Or long term stay in the country. There is no fighting spirit left anymore. We would just roll over now unlike in Churchills day.
That my soapbox bit done for the day. It is a great idea though, and I really wish it could be initiated and get these greed ridden oil companies sorted out.
I'm sure something similar to this came out many years ago when the oil prices rose to what we thought an unreasonable cost then. And guess what?........nobody bothered their asses to travel a few blocks more to another petrol station
We are one of the most brow-beaten countries in the world now, we just dont seem to realise it
Anyway. I'm off to break out my guitar and forget the problems around me in a session of music or as close as I get to music

OLDEREK wrote:Down South we have the Esso Fawley Refinery. across the water at Hamble we have the BP depot, guess where the petrol comes from !................In a pipe under the sea From Esso Fawley!!..........

Sainsburys ~~~~Asda~~~~Tesco~~~~~~~~~~~Selling petrol in our area , where does it come from, guess what.......FAWLEY..................So no matter where we decide to buy our petrol ESSO will be having the profit from it................So you see we can't win...............

Hi Derek,

I think you are missing one aspect: the independent petrol stations buy their petrol on the spot market for the at this time lowest price. This will in most cases be from one or more of the branded companies, but - and that is the important point - for less money than these companies get through their own petrol stations. Thus their profit is smaller and should (hopefully) increase competition resulting in lower prices (again hopefully).
I admit that there are a few 'hopefully's but for my opinion doing something and saving a few pennies/eurocents is better than just giving in.

Best wishes,

Ulrich

PS. Please excuse my humble attempts to express my thoughts in English.

I certainly agree about oil company greed, but if the UK government is like our Australian governments, much of the retail pump price is taxes....like tobacco products...

Taxes...yep!

Assuming a litre of fuel costs 120p, the actual fuel cost is 39.9 pence. The balance is tax 73 pence. Source HMRC.

What sticks in my throat is that VAT is levelled on the cost of the fuel plus the duty, so you pay VAT on the true cost of the fuel plus VAT on the fuel duty levy.
So.. you are paying tax on a tax!!

Talk about daylight robbery. The UK gov. could give lessons on that one.

As far as changing suppliers, that wont make much difference because the actual cost of the petrol itself is actually quite low. Remember its really only a by product of oil distillation. At $80 dollars a barrel... a barrel being 40 gallons..thats 50 cents a gallon for crude.

The Irish had the right idea a few years ago...they bought in from the south and flogged it again in the north at ridiculousy low prices...that was when the pound was worth something against the Euro.

Try here for more info:-

http://www.abd.org.uk/fuel_tax_calculator.htm

When I get my water powered car on the market, just wait and see how much tax the government loses then.....