Brown "confused" over oil prices
 

BBC NEWS | Politics | Brown 'confused' over oil prices

or in a nutshell/political speak interpretation

The Secretary General of OPEC calls Broon a t*sser and says he should put his own house in order and lower taxes before telling OPEC what to do

Quality :D

Riiiight.

Nothing to do with the greedy ****s at OPEC deciding they quite liked oil at $147 a barrel and would rather like it to go back up there.

Of course it would be lovely for fuel duty to come down, but its a bit rich for OPEC, who have scaled back oil production expressly to try and get the price for all those poor oil rich nations.

browns not confused hes a genius, totally manages to divert our attention to petrol taxes by throwing the country into total recession, dragging the world down with us and lowering the price of oil! its a masterstroke ;)

We are all happy petrols below a £1 even though the fires of economic doom rage around us, and the devils accountant is still taxing go juice at 70%!

Can't say fairer than that!

Les :)

I think when the price of petrol comprises of 70+% tax, the opec minister is dead right.
WTF has the government done to justify taking out such a ridiculous profit from this product?
They are just riding on the oil producers backs.

Hate Labour with a passion but I've got to say Brown was right about this and the OPEC cartel can feck off. It's not just the UK that suffers with high oil prices, the whole world economy does and OPEC are just greedy.

It wasn't that long ago that they publicly stated that their aim was to maintain oil at $25 a barrel. That would've been ok and lots of Arabs got rich on it but apparently that's not enough and now they're feeling hard done by at $43 a barrel, well tough.

And then there was the crazy comment on the BBC news website at the end of last week saying that the oil supplying nations were suffering as the price had fallen off a cliff! No, it's that their bumper payday of $147 a barrel had ended with oil returning to a more realistic level!

Simon

Yeah, but if people are prepared to pay the equivalent of $400+ a barrel at the pump, surely they are entitled to charge that amount at point of sale.
I repeat the point - how can any government justify a 70% profit for doing nothing?

Petrol tax is not a percentage. It is a duty. And their is an important difference. Does that mean that when oil was $147 a barrel and the government was getting the equivalent of around 45% tax it was ok?

THe only variable is VAT, which of course is a percentage.

Plus, of course fuel duty goes to the running of the country - Public services and what have you. Which hospitals would you clos ein order to reduce fuel duty?

Are you saying that we are not paying the equivalent of $400 a barrel at the pump?
I am not really interested in a discussion of semantic nature - we can leave that to the politicians I think.
I really don't see what your public services point has to do with anything I have said?
Or indeed why this should be the concern of OPEC.
It looks to me like you are looking to air your views on how wonderful the mediocrity on "offer" from the NHS and state education system is.
Keep it up comrade.:thumb:

Come now, there's plenty of red tape generating bureaucrats that can be sacked, government projects dropped (road charging, ID database) and QUANGOs dismantled before anybody needs to start considering affecting core services.

No, I am saying the fuel duty is fixed, not a percentage. Ther eis an important different, as I am sure you will appreciate wonce the price of oil goes up.
Because fuel duty revenue pays for public services. If the money doesn't come from there, uit has to come from soemwhere else, or , you cut services.
Because they have made comment on British tax, you can't involve yourself in it and then decide its nothing to do with you.

No I am just making a comment in the thread relevant to the discussion.


The old Mail favourite of "red tape" I don't buy at all. They are completely unquatifiable.
Road charging and ID cards are certainlyl areas where savings could be made - But how much I don't know.

If we could see the money going to items which would genuinely be an advantage for the country and the people of this country then it would be almost acceptable.

As it is, they are effectively peeing it against the wall with their wild and extravagant spending in a useless manner and also feathering their own nests of course.

Every labour government has done the same thing-it is part of their mantra to tax and spend on unecessary items, they just can't help it. They also borrow in order to be able to increase their spending ability, until the IMF says they can't have any more. Then all we have to worry about is the enormous National Debt, payable off by our descendants as well as us, and also the period of austerity which is approaching.

Les :(

:confused: as always

The $400 at the pump is entirely irrelevant. We were paying the same amount when it was $147 a barrel.

My issues was that you are stating it as a percentage - See below.

Profit??????
And the 70% only applies at this point in time As soon as the price in oil changes, so does the percentage, which is why stating it as a percentage is ridiculous.

Presumably you apply the same logic to say, income tax?
You said that you couldn't see why British public services are the concern of OPEC. As soon as they comment on tax rate, then they automaitcally become involved. The two are intrinsically linked.

Fuel duty was increased to keep the price at the pump the same, when VAT was reduced to 15%.
The reduction in VAT is only temporary, so do you think when VAT goes back up the government will reduce the fuel duty to compensate at the pumps?
I don't think so.

Almost certainly not. But it has been frozen for a few years so we are probably overdue a rise.

:)

Oh yes ......

The thing is that OPEC are basically in it to make money. They have a product for sale and will charge the price they can get for it. Basically like any large, almost-monopolistic company ...

With Brown though he is meant to be running Britain for the electorate. Us plebs if you like. So he should be doing his utmost to keep our costs (taxes and the like) to a minimum. Is he? Is he f&ck!!

Dave

Fine, knock him if you want. But do you have any suggestions that will not increase our national debt?

Ummm.??? How about NOT recruiting more to the civil service? How about getting rid of all the unelected quangos that eat up billions every year? etc etc. Search on here or the wider interweb, read the newspapers, listen to the news, just about anywhere has ideas about reducing national debt. But Nu Labia are too interested in their socialist social engineering policies to do anything FOR the electorate of this country.

Dave

No, I was responding to the 70% remark.

So all tax revenue is profit? Is that waht you're saying? Or just fuel duty? in which case, why is fuel duty "profit" and not any other form of tax?


The percentage is irelevant because Fuel duty is just that, a duty, a fixed sum, not a percentage.

You don't give road tax as a percentage do you? Why? because what you are giving as a percentage of would vary.


No, waht I am saying is that as soon as you comment on one aspect of tax, you then open youself up to question as to what the knock-on effect of reducing said tax would be.

Where is this quantified?

Exactly, more noise but no facts.

Petrol price - Emotive innit :)
At peak price high octane was 190+ yen/litre.
It is now roughly 115/litre.
Has the UK price reduced by the equivalent?
If not, why not? Is it because of the yen/dollar exchange compared to the weakness of the pound :wonder:

At its peak it was around £1.25 per litre. It's now around 87p - So I think it has dropped by the "correct" amount (although it took a damn sight longer to come down, than it did to go up. Wonder why that is ;)

When TB came out with the similar quote, he lost me ...why the feck should 50% of the population (i.e motorists) subsidise a system that 100% can use (NHS)?

Ahhh, but start taking it back out at source (PAYE) & people start wondering where it's gone/what it's used for ;)

I haven't a clue why you have gone off on this tangent - My post is pretty obviously written from the point of view of OPEC. I am sorry this is not clear to you.
Of what relevance are your posts?:confused:
If you want to go on about taxation in this country, why don't you start a thread on it:sleep:

I'd look it up if I was you. Google will probably find it as the figures have been used in the press for years.

The point is, OPEC are basically a profit making organisation. Broon is meant to govern for the good of the country. Even before the 'credit crunch' that was NOT the case.

Dave

What? I think you'll find your the one that starting bleating on about 70% tax.


...Sorry "Government profit"

:lol1:




Mail and the Telegprah by any chance? :)


Its like the UKIP claim that £56billio is spend every yea ron the EU, when the reality is that its nowhere near, and what do they do to come up with this figure? "£28billion in red tape" they say.

Its completely made up, same as the "lost" billions in bureaucracy that the Mail go on about - Why? beacuse you don't have to back up any of your figures.

:freak3: