increasing petrol prices

[tim&fatima]

I received this e-mail the other day, not sure if it would work.
Thuoght I would share it with you guys.....

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

We are hitting 123.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying 2.00 a ltr. 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),£SSO 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 £sso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!!

Now, don't wimp 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!


Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all.(and not buy at £SSO/BP) How long would all that take? 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 69p a LITRE RANGE

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at She1l, @sd@,T£sc0, S@insburys, Morr1sons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and £sso

[Ratty]

Easier said than done, we run our car on LPG and the nearest LPG garage is a BP one. And I'm sure other people in more rural areas who run on petrol or diesel have the same issues - is it actually sensible to drive a longer distance to buy fuel at a higher/same cost?

And who says that "She1l, @sd@,T£sc0, S@insburys, Morr1sons Jet etc" are any better than other suppliers? We'd love to be able to buy our LPG at our local Sainsburys but they just don't supply it! And I for one would never buy petrol, nor anything else, from @sd@ or T£sc0!

Ratty

[contadina]

The days of cheap petrol are over - no protests nor selective shopping are going to bring prices tumbling. You'd be better off finding ways to change your lifestyle so you don't rely on it so much.

[Ratty]

The days of cheap petrol are over - no protests nor selective shopping are going to bring prices tumbling. You'd be better off finding ways to change your lifestyle so you don't rely on it so much.

*nods head in agreement* Everyone thinks OH is mad for getting the bus into town for work & leaving the car sitting outside all day?!?!?!

Ratty

[MKG]

Unfortunately, the biggest oil companies can afford to stockpile and sit on their assets for an awfully long time. How long, I wonder, would the somewhat fickle public keep up a campaign like this? A month? Two months? It's a non-starter.

Oh, and the maths is naively wrong, but that's just me being pedantic.

[Clara]

The days of cheap petrol are over - no protests nor selective shopping are going to bring prices tumbling. You'd be better off finding ways to change your lifestyle so you don't rely on it so much.

yeah that.

[andyt]

Unfortunately MKG is right. (There are many things to put right in this world,but realistically,most of 'em aren't going to happen)

[WiseBird]

Also I think you'll find that the supermarkets buy their petrol from these companies...they're not fussy who they buy from, they just get the cheapest!

...and doesn't this just remind you of a chain letter?

[KellyB]

That email has been going around for a while now I got it a couple of months ago.

Our petrol is up to £1.20 now ugh least we don't need to go far on this island lol

[DominicJ]

It wont work, because they arent price fixing.

Of that £1.20, £0.70 is tax.
Thats the single biggest componant.
That leaves £0.50 as the true cost.
If you wont pay 50p for a litre of petrol, they will ship it to the USA or China or wherever anyone else will pay 50p for it.

Even a litre of T***o value bitter costs more than 50p, admittedly that including tax.
The only people this would hurt are the independant forecourt owners.

Buyers do not control the fuel price, because there is more demand for oil than there is oil to go around.

Sorry to burst the bubble

[ENIGMA]

Isn't it good petrol is going up?

There's to many cars causing pollution and choking up the roads.Most people at the moment,don't think twice about getting in their car to pop down the shops for a pint of milk or take the kids half a mile to school.

I hope it does go up to 2 pound a litre soon,or more.It may encourage people to use their legs and become healthier and shed some of that excess weight they are carrying around.

[Annpan]

In a way it is good - petrol prices going up. But at this rate the rural communities are really starting to suffer. People who live 10 miles from the nearest shop/ library/ social centre are suffering the most and they don't get the petrol any cheaper than Fatty McFattso who lives 1 mile away from the local T£SCO and drives their overweight kids to school in their 4x4.

Where I live we don't have a bus service (we have a ring-and-ride booking service but it is more like a mini-bus taxi, you are limited to the journeys you can take) So people in the village HAVE to drive, have to drive to work, have to drive to social events (not even a pub here) have to drive to shops... I am trying to buck the trend but with little infrastructure in the rural areas it is an uphill struggle.

I am only 25 miles from Glasgow too - there are folks who are 100 miles from the nearest city (large town)

I think all cities should be pretty much car free zones- get freight back on trains, barges etc... use sail boats for cruises, ban gas guzzling 'leisure' activities.

We need to re-think the way we use oil/ petrol/ diesel and start coming up with REAL alternative solutions.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

It's a chain letter. I worked seven years for Esso, mostly as a trader. Boycotting their service stations would irritate them, but at the end they would just trade on the surplus. Probably to the supermarkets. They sell to them anyway.

Prices at this level are a great opportunity to change the game. It's not about trying to get the price down to an "acceptable" level, it is about learning to live with less use of oil.

And, if the IEA are to be belived, UK gasoline consumption has dipped by 20% in the past few months. Me, I call that a result.

EDIT: And the "buyers / sellers" analogy is just plain wrong. What we are talking about here is junky / dealer.

[contadino]

The branches of Esso and BP that sell franchises (i.e. petrol stations) is tiny compared to the production side of the business. The businesses as a whole wouldn't feel it at all as they sell their fuel to supermarkets, independents, and to other franchises.

Like Contadina says, stop moaning about it and get used to high petrol prices. They're gonna get a lot, lot higher. If you don't believe me, listen to Alexey Miller (head of Gazprom), or Ignacio Sánchez Galán (head of Iberdrola.)

[The Prehistorian]

Whatever happens someone id going to hurt.

If the price continues up then people in rural communitie or those that life miles from where the work will have to pay more and more.

If it goes down then pollution goes up, road deaths continue at the alarming rate that is now thought to be acceptable, more of the countryside dissappears under tarmac, and rural communities decay because driving to the urban supermarket is cheaper than using local stores.

Given that there is no easy answer (it took us a good thirty years of ever increasing car-dependency to get into this mess so we aren't going to get out overnight) I'd rather than prices stay high (but not so extreme that it causes food shortages, blackouts, etc) and that the car dependency decreases.

And with any luck people will want to be able to buy locally gain, the local shops will returns and communities will replace the commuter ghost towns that people now live in...but, as I said, what ever we do it's going to hurt.