Petrol £1.50 by the summer.

[upinwath]

Still 33p/L out here.

Enjoy the UK dudes.

[sandie]

We just have to get on with it, moaning about it is not going to chane anything.

What we should be doing is saying to goverment is you are cutting everything, putting up the cost of fuel and cutting services that we pay our Taxes for, So do we get a rebate, have our roads free from pot holes, people who need care to have help, look after the education of our children, leave the health service alone and much more.

 

If I have to pay increased tax on fuel I want to see that money put back to standerd services and not in MP's pockets or the banks.

[Hots on]

Still 33p/L out here.

Enjoy the UK dudes.

 

sigh go on then, Wheres "out here"

[Rand Hobart]

From what I can see there are no shortage of 4x4s or people carriers running around with one person in them, or people driving at 70-80mph using upto 1/3 more fuel, so my guess is that we have a way to go yet.

If you want to complain about the level of taxation you need to look at it from a wider perspective.

We pay almost the lowest income tax in the EU. I think only Eire pay less. This is one of the main reasons that fuel tax is set so high. Want to pay lower fuel tax? Then vote to pay higher income tax. Oh no wait...... you can't do that can you, because in the corporate media driven,Americanised tax viewpoint we now seem to operate here, it would be political suicide to even suggest it. You can't have it both ways.

[retired]

The young people of today have inherited a hard time. As kids they have been driven to school and anywhere else. You may live in Sheffield but find a job in Rotherham. Simply drive there door to door.

 

Go back 25 years. People caught buses and there was more buses on the road. You would never consider catching a bus to Town, town to Rotherham bus station then from Rotherham bus station to say Sunnyside and get there by 8am. Work until 4.30 and then do it again to get home. You found work locally. Now you can and probably drive there within half an hour. Want to go to Meadowhall? Get in the car and drive there.

 

Besides, a lot of us have small economical cars and as said above cars today do more mpg. I have a 2ltr diesel and does 39mpg knocking around and on a run 53mpg is no problem. 25 years ago is would have been unimaginable. As for tax on fuel, well I hate it like anyone else but as an income tax payer I would rather have less income tax and NI and see more of the income tax saved put on purchases instead. Why? Because there are so many people on benefits getting a good income at the taxpayer's expense. People on benefits have to spend and in return by spending they would be putting money back into the system they take out off.

[Vague_Boy]

Currently on every litre of fuel sold roughly £0.90p is TAX the motorist is simply a tax cow for the goverment

 

True, but consider the following.

 

If the government reduces the tax on fuel that will mean less income for them. As I see it, they then have three choices.

 

a. Cut services (not likely to be a terribly popular move on SF)

 

b. Raise taxes elsewhere to make up the shortfall. Again, you pay, just in a different way.

 

c. Borrow to make up the shortfall. But this will add to our annual deficit. We're already borrowing £170 billion a year just to pay our (national) bills. And aren't we supposed to re trying to reduce the deficit?

 

There is a 4th option, just print the money we need to make up the shortfall. We could give Bob Mugabe a call and he can tell us how to do that successfully. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

[chem1st]

It is predicted petrol will hit £1.50 a litre by the summer how much more expensive will it need to get before we do something about this?

Currently on every litre of fuel sold roughly £0.90p is TAX the motorist is simply a tax cow for the goverment,we are being totally ripped off.

The last strikes were 10 years ago when the cost of a litre went over £0.70p a litre amazing it has doubled in price and we all seem so happy to pay this.

 

When will it all end???????????

 

Youth are being priced out and unable to commute in order to find work paying more than the dole. Youth unemployment @ 20.3% and rising.

 

Probably going to end in violence.

[spindrift]

Youth are being priced out and unable to commute in order to find work paying more than the dole. Youth unemployment @ 20.3% and rising.

 

Probably going to end in violence.

 

Or bicycles.

[Vague_Boy]

What we should be doing is saying to goverment is you are cutting everything, putting up the cost of fuel and cutting services that we pay our Taxes for, So do we get a rebate

 

A rebate from where? The UK is broke!

 

The UK is Broke

By Prof Kevin Dowd, on 23 August 10

 

Although few people yet realise it, the UK is bankrupt: the Government cannot pay its debts.

 

This might sound a little pessimistic. After all, the UK debt to GDP ratio is still under 70%, and the debt to GDP ratio for some other countries is much higher.

 

However, for peacetime the current UK debt to GDP ratio is high and rising fast. Furthermore, observers of the UK economy have been sounding warnings for some time: one major bond investor early in the year warned his clients that UK Government debt was a “must avoid” as it was “resting on a bed of nitroglycerine”.

 

Unfortunately, the Government’s official debt is not the real problem: the Government’s ‘official’ debt is only a small percentage of its true debt exposure. The official debt is merely the tip of a very large hidden iceberg.

 

The Government’s true debt is the present value of all the commitments it has entered into, on the expectation that these commitments will be paid for by future taxpayers. Some prominent examples are the commitments implied by the public sector pension system, the state pension system, the health system and PFI. The costs of these commitments are staggering.

 

One recent Institute of Economic Affairs study by Nick Silver put this figure at 333% of GDP. Another, by Christian Hagist and his colleagues at Freiburg University, put the figure at 530% of GDP. Two different methodologies by reputable researchers, both painting a very bleak picture. The latter study also carries out an international comparison – and, relative to other countries, the UK comes out as a basket case along with the US: the US is bankrupt too.

 

Let’s take the first figure. This means that a typical UK citizen will be expected to pay well over three times’ their annual income just to cover this debt. If we go with the larger figure, then he or she will be expected to pay well over five times their annual income.

 

With an average income of about £22,000 for per person, these figures suggest a future tax bill in the range between approximately £73,000 and almost £117,000 for each man, woman and child in the country.

 

Yet even these figures are over-optimistic, in so far as they refer only to the unfunded tax burden that has already been incurred, whereas the reality is that this burden has been rising rapidly before the current crisis, and is rising even more rapidly now. So we are looking at an obligation on the future taxpayer that is not only very large, but still rising sharply.

 

The problem is made worse still because of the way the tax burden will be distributed. For some older people – such as those in retirement – there isn’t much problem at all. They benefit from the government’s commitments, but are unlikely to have to pay much towards their cost. For young people, it is the other way round: they are expected to pay large amounts into the system and get little back in return; and the younger the person, the worse the deal.

 

So we have an average, per person, tax burden of £73,000 if we are feeling optimistic and nearly £117,000 if we are feeling pessimistic – but in either case possibly much higher, and certainly rising – that is distributed very unevenly across the population: younger people paying much more, and older people less, if anything at all.

 

One recent estimate suggested that a UK citizen born in 2011 will inherit, on birth, a debt of perhaps £200,000, and it could easily be much more.

 

It is simply inconceivable that debts on this scale will be paid off in full.

 

Nor should they. These were not debts that youngsters freely took on, but obligations incurred on their behalf in many cases before they were even born.

 

The uncomfortable moral question then naturally arises: at what point does the debt become so large that our future children will be born into a new form of slavery, entering the world shackled by the debts of their forbears?

 

This highlights the underlying moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy of the system. For years, politicians yielded to the temptation to increase spending commitments and put off the costs of those decisions into the future, when it would be someone else’s problem. The political system itself encouraged them to do so – handing out goodies is so much easier to sell politically than handing out pain. Even the voters themselves were complicit, because they voted in governments committed to ‘spend now, [someone else] pay later’ policies, instead of penalising governments for long-term fiscal irresponsibility. Most of those who will pay the burden did not yet have the vote, so they didn’t count. No-one took responsibility for the long-term.

 

In so doing, our political system created a huge intergenerational Ponzi scheme, passing the buck from one generation to the next, until the whole rotten system inevitably collapses under its accumulated weight.

 

The long-term, even medium-term, outlook is therefore deeply unpleasant. Taxes will rise, sharply, but these rises will not be enough, and will leave younger people with little incentive to work or to save. Benefits across the board will be cut, massively: the government will renege big-time on many of its commitments, breaking its health, pensions and other promises on a huge scale. The social and economic consequences don’t bear thinking about. And of course there is the very real danger that even these draconian measures will not be enough: that the government will lose all control of its finances and end up printing money to pay off its debts, so leading to hyperinflation and economic collapse.

 

Make no mistake about it: the country is bankrupt.

 

LINK

 

Now some of you might say (quite reasonably), "well, if this is true, why isn't the BBC or Sky news saying something about it"?

 

Ahh yes, the BBC, you mean the same BBC that alerted you to the financial crisis before it happened? NOT!

 

But you might say, "how could they have seen it coming"?

 

Well, here's a list of ten people/organizations who did see it coming.

 

Ten people who predicted the financial crisis

 

To that list I could add Fred Harrison, Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente, Max Keiser, Marc Faber and Mike "Mish" Shedlock.

 

You will notice that the BBC/ITV/Sky News are not on that list.

 

Looking at the economy via BBC new is like watching life through a rear-view mirror.

 

Not recommended.

[chem1st]

Or bicycles.

 

Cycle rage