I don't have a problem myself with what MP get paid. What I do have a problem with though, is their imminent pay rise. We hear Gordon Brown telling companies not to pay employees above inflation rate, yet MP's are expected to push through something like 15% pay rises.

Maybe this is the true inflation figure? :Suspiciou

That's another thing that gets my goat. They are feeding themselves in a trough of public money. They have the most generous pension scheme in the whole of the public sector along with inflation busting wage rises. Yet when it comes to the rest of the public sector they give below inflation rises, WTF?

They are now on about golden parachute payments to MPs that get voted out of office. Is there any wonder people are getting a bit cheesed off with elected people supposedly representing the general public are gorging themselves at a time when public/personal finances are going up the swanny.

Did you ever think about getting rid of the useless bureaucracy with all the "non jobs", all the Quango's, all 1100 of them, and all the rest of the government waste which is costing billions every year and is doing no good whatsoever as far as the country is concerned? Not forgetting of course all the unearned benefit handouts to people who just do not deserve them.

Les

Humm, f1_fan seems to have gone very quiet.

I suppose that you can add to that...

• Supporting illegal invasions of sovereign countries, destabilising the Middle East (affecting all oil, whether Brent, Texan or Arctic).
• Allowing the UK gas and electricity supply companies to be sold off to foreign countries, so that we lose control of all energy prices
• Closing Post Offices meaning that people are forced to travel further, use more fuel, increase demand and thus prices
• Stealing FIVE BILLION pounds per year, for the last eleven years, out of company pension funds - increasing overheads and thus prices

mb

I was listening to Jeremy Vine on the way to work, and they had a guy on talking about the oil crisis, and likely causes and solutions.

He made an interesting point about fuel duty. Since the early 2000s to 2007, fuel rose by about 58p a litre, but only 5p was duty, the rest was oil. In the last 19p worth of rise, the ration towards oil prices was even greater. He was not a govt man, he was an independant oil 'expert' economist I believe.

Also, surprisingly and somewhat worryingly, he said the smart move to drive down oil prices was for governements to put fuel duty up, which would drive demand down, lowering the price.

One of the main reasons for high oil prices was countries like China subsidising the price of fuel with their huge cash reserves, so demand wasn't abating. Also, problems with supply from non-opec countries.

The US also have not managed to curtail demand, and oil production in Iraq was not up to pre invasion levels, which didn't help.

The only OPEC country with spare capacity is Saudi Arabia, but they dont produce the kind of oil that gets used for fuel.

So, in essence, although we pay alot of duty, the prices of late are not the fault of our govt., but if they were to bow to pressure and cut the duty, they would exacerbate the problem. Quite ironic really.

Of course, none of this matters to SN, it's all Gordons fault! ;)

Geezer

[*] selling gold bullion reserves when the price of gold was at its lowest

Don't forget Geezer VAT on fuel, seems to be missing from your analysis, another 5p.

LOL the tax rise quoted in the BBC article is from 3 years ago and nothing to do with the recent rises.

Your other points are interesting.

The illegal invasion of Iraq as you call it happened a long time before prices increased as they have in the last 12 months. Agree that the Iraq war was wrong etc. etc. but not a massive part of the current oil price issue.

UK gas and electricity companies were privatised under the last Tory government. Don't let that stop you blaming Brown though. ;)

I seriously doubt whether the closure of a few POs has led to an increase to record price levels for Brent Crude on the world stage, Still you know different :Whatever_

Pension fund plundering linked to oil price increases - go on I'm listening.

Look I am not in any way a fan of Brown or this tin pot government, but I do try and have a sense of balance. Even if Brown has played a part in the price increase it is a very small one compared to that played by the oil companies and it would seem speculators with the media coming in not far behind either.

Attack the government on the multitude of things they screw up (Lord knows there are enough of them), but let's not be silly and hence miss the bigger picture here as regards the oil prices.

I would start by lobbying the oil companies themselves if you feel that aggrieved, after all they have just all posted or are about to post record profits. Get the picture now?

Not my analysis my friend, I'm only retelling it.

Even so, another 5p on what he said is still insignificant.

Geezer

Your original question was

Since you specifically refer to North Sea Oil, and the then Chancellors actions and not worldwide oil price, I gave you a link concerning the UK oil market. Hope that clears up your confusion

So I left recent out of my question as it seemed obvious. Can't be too careful in here can you :D Hope that clears up yours ;)

Equates to an exta £2.75 a tank for a regular 55l tank. I guess you're not an advocate of look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves :)

Given the fact that the majority of a litre of fuel at the pump is made of duty vat etc, your position that the government is not to blame for the high price of petrol and diesel is rather weak. Have we the highest pump prices in a developed economy, possibly the world? If we haven't we must be close.

Never mind at least we have one of the cheapest and efficient public transport system in the world to compensate! Har har.

You are of course correct, but a rollover is not simply changing the letters on your screen to the next month. A rollover is essentially the sale of (for example) a Jun08 brent and then the simultaneous purchase of the Jul08 brent.

So somebody buys the Jun08 brent and takes physical delivery of it. All futures contracts that are issued culminate in the delivery of barrels of oil - if you think about it oil would be a fictitious commodity if anything other than this was made up. I'd buy some Jun oil, roll it to Jul by changing its name, and it still wouldnt actually exist anywhere. The oil companies know how much oil is produced and this is what determines the number of contracts that are available to buy on any given strike. If you want further evidence of this then look at the difference in 2 strikes back to back, they are never the same price so you could make infinate profits if you were able to turn Jun08 brent into Jul08 brent without selling/buying by just taking advantage of the price difference in the contracts.

Its not a nice thought that petrol is going to become very expensive into the foreseable future (though a global recession will bring it in check to an extent) but its the kick we need to fund ethanol in medium term and hyrdrogen long term.

I'd like to see the evidence that demand has dropped. Supply is pretty much constant, and its all getting delivered. I certainly have seen no evidence that demand for oil is dropping, and the oil market price reflects this.

If demand is dropping, and supply is constant (I think we can take that for granted) then where is all the oil ending up?

Ah, now, you're twisting what I said! My position is not that the government are not responsible for our high fuel prices overall, only that the recent hikes are little to do with them, but they seem to get the blame.

There are lots of other factors at work here, you can't just lay the blame atthe governments feet, and they have no real room for maneouvre for the reasons I stated before.

There just isn't sufficient capacity at the moment, allied to weak currencies. basically, we're stuffed ;)

Geezer

I think that warrenm2 has answered that quite nicely - serves you right for asking contrived and closed questions ;)

...and things have gradually got worse on the region since. Dubya threatening Iran (with Flash's support) isn't helping either!

There is a difference between "privatised" and "sold". So much for NuLab re-nationalising everything then.

Every little helps ;) It was just a dig at government (or is that EU) policy, but there will be an impact, however small.

Der, cost of running a company increases, thus prices go up to compensate!

mb

I'm not twisting anything :) The gov't could have chosen to pass on its own windfall to the motorist on raised VAT for example. At what point do we have to reach regarding prices will the gov't act?

The main point here is not the pedantic point of who's to blame for rises in the past year or so, but where the price is now and who is responsible overall. The reason people are blaming the gov't is the rate at which they are taxed on fuel. We all know the majority of cost on a litre of petrol is due to fuel duty and VAT, ergo the blame naturally falls on the gov't.

Nothing contrived about my question at all - no axe to grind from me. I hate all politicians with equal measure, it is those on here who seem to think it is just Gordon's mob who are self serving f**kwits that are asking the contrived questions.


Pure conjecture, lets deal in facts.


They were privatised buy the Tories, no subsequent government be they Tory or Labour could stop them being sold off without re-nationalisation - sadly not something any government has the balls or money to do.

So who was asking the contrived questions? ;) Hoisted by your own petard methinks :D

Ah so the oil companies have put the prices up to cover the shortfalls in their pension schemes. Got it now thanks :D :D Ahem ... record profits.... ahem :D :D

Do you know many MPs ? I know a few and many of them struggle when they loose their MP's salary and MASSIVE expenses. Most of them are not that bright and many can only get work by trading off the fact that they were once an MP.
Your idea of MP's as great and wise is ridiculous they are crap in the private sector. I will concede that most of them are motivated by wanting to make things better but it is a fact that the influence of the MPs who are in it for power always exceeds the influence of those who want to make a difference.
The nasty power hungry MP's end up in the most powerful positions in the cabinet and this is the flaw with our politics. Bring MP's down to national average wage and then see if the megalomaniacs still want the job.

But they were privatised with golden shares which meant they stayed British. Blair got rid of golden shares becuase EU told him to and opend up our natural resources to the world. The rest of Europe kept their golden shares as getting rid of them would have cost bill payers billions lik eit did in the UK

But the government have no room for manoeuvre, can't you see that? What will happen if they slash duty fuel? Two things. Firstly, people will be able to afford to motor around as wish for a decent price. Lovely, but, there is no pressure on the oil companies to reduce their price. One of the drivers of price is demand. High demand leads to high price, and high demand cannot be met because we are at capacity. Oil is a finite resource. The ability to extract it is finite too. OK, you can look at using other oils for fuels, but they are inherently dirtier, and to get the fuel out of them you have to use more energy. So more cost. Or you develop technology to extract the reserves that won't come up under their own pressure. But who is gonna pay for that technology do you think? Yes, the oil companies, so what do you think will happen to the price of oil and then fuel then?

Secondly, despite what you may think about how much the government has to spend or give back through tax cuts, something has to give. So, it's either services, which you all bemoan already, or they have to make the gap up elsewhere. Nothing in life is for free.

I don't like paying more fuel any more than you, but simply slashing the price is not the answer. Unless your question, of course, is "how quickly can we get into a REALLY bad crisis?".

Geezer

Well SN is home to enough of your 'ideological bummers' as you so intelligently put it, so many in fact that you could start your own 'pink pride' rally

Once again you make really bad assumption about my ideology

what a ****! like that is going to inspire all the other countries in the world to follow suit. This is a global market not UK only.

That's why he said governments not government. He wasn't advocating that GB do it alone, that governments generally should do it to force demand down and hence make OPEC reduce their price because they wouldnt be able to shift as much oil.

Geezer

My argument is not whether they have room for manouvre or not, nor do I care much if fuel goes up or down. I'm simply playing the advocate. I haven't said anywhere that prices should come down at all. I'm pointing out the difficulty is in through their policies and the general reaction to them from the public. The plain fact that fuel is high at the pumps is mostly down to the amount of tax.

Maybe there would be room for the gov't to act if they hadn't been a tax and spend gov't these past 9 years (generally followed the Tory economic plan for the first 2 years).

If you want to get to hear where I could fund lowering taxes, I could type a 10,000 word essay on the subject quite easily. But that's for another thread If you find similar threads that I have posted on you'll see that I'm in favour of higher duties on the most polluting cars in order to force us to decrease the dependency on oil. Higher even than the measures they announced at the last budget. I've already said it is a finite resource, so you're arguing with the wrong person :)

The ultimate power does lie in the individual. If everyone stopped buying petrol for a day or dare I say it a week you'd soon see the price and tax fall. The general public has to learn boycotting is the ultimate form of protest. Admittedly for some it is impossible to not buy fuel due to work and other commitments, but to sacrifice one day or one week is all it would take.

Fair enough.

I expect a 10,000 word essay on my desk in the morning. And an apple ;)

Geezer

unfortunately this would never work in this country. the days before the planned boycott would see most people heading to the pumps to fill up "just in case" and taking jerry cans along also for extra measure, leading to a self made fuel shortage resulting in more panic buying...

Maybe even buy the most fuel efficient car/use public transport/walk/cycle or is this too radical :)

Can't afford any apples, I have no spare cash after filling up today ;)

Herein lies the crux of the whole problem. The selfish 'I'm alright Jack' attitude. When it comes to the crunch people won't do it. Res non verba!