And the fact that cheap oil leads to inefficient businesses , that are unsustainable when prices inevitably rise . causing the price shock to be exagerated when companies fold .
It is therefore better to increase prices now thru tax , and INVEST the proceeds .
boredwivdrivin:
And the fact that cheap oil leads to inefficient businesses , that are unsustainable when prices inevitably rise . causing the price shock to be exagerated when companies fold .It is therefore better to increase prices now thru tax , and INVEST the proceeds .
It’s the price that’s already unviable not the consumer inefficient.Even ‘efficiency’ being a moot point regarding a product in unlimited supply.Only the economics of the mad house thinks the way to deal with the results of a product that’s inflated in price beyond viable use is to increase that price even more.The analogy is no one wants to play your game of lets leave it in the ground and charge extortionate taxes on what little gets used.Just like the road transport industry and car users they’d rather park up the economy and go no where thereby using even less resulting in less economic growth and less tax revenues not more.All to appease a load of luddites who are ideologically opposed to the use of oil as a fuel for whatever reason.Even more ironically those luddites having no electoral mandate for their psychotic ideas.
Neither has UKIP got an electoral mandate for its daft arguments .28% best ever return .
If your electoral mandate thesis is true then nothing would ever get done as last majority gov was national alliance in WW2
boredwivdrivin:
Neither has UKIP got an electoral mandate for its daft arguments .28% best ever return .If your electoral mandate thesis is true then nothing would ever get done as last majority gov was national alliance in WW2
More will obviously ‘get done’ in an environment where we don’t give a zb about what the Green luddites want and where fuel isn’t taxed to a level where it’s left in the ground.Instead of priced at a viable level which consumers are willing to pay.
Is that the policy on venus too ■■
Carryfast:
newmercman:
No it isn’t the pump price that matters, not in the big picture.
The pump price is what the consumer pays,at least in terms of road fuel,and is a massive guide to the level of crude price combined with taxation.While if you’ve got an extortionate level of taxation as in this case that is just compounded when someone like OPEC,among others,decides to inflate the cost of the product beyond viable levels.Which is why the pre 1973 benchmark is the important comparison in this case.As I said everyone needs to get away from the idea of coveting the stuff and valuing it at unviable levels.In which case it needs to go ( and stay ) a lot lower yet.Together with a serious taxation haircut to match.Then watch the economy,especially the road transport industry,take off.
Yes it does need a massive drop in the level of taxation it has added on to it, which is why pump price has nothing to do with it.
We have no choice in using oil for power, plastics etc etc etc, generally speaking there is no infrastructure for any alternatives, the oil companies have to find the oil through expensive geological research and speculative drilling, fracking etc, then they have to set up the well and pump, then a method of transportation to a massive expensive to build and operate refinery by pipeline, train, road, sea or frequently a combination of them all, then it needs to be refined into the end product, transported again to a network of retailers that also require sophisticated delivery systems.
Now compare that litre of diesel or petrol to a litre of coke, price to the end user is similar, but the Coke is made of water, sugar and plant based chemicals, it’s blended in a vat and put in a bottle that goes from source to retailer on two regular lorries, one from factory to RDC, the other from RDC to the shop, there’s no extra tax added to it, the overall cost to you and me is pretty close to petrol or diesel by volume, which makes a litre of diesel bloody good value when you think about it. That value would be even greater if the thieves in Westminster kept their noses out of the trough.
From the point of view of our industry fuel prices are a problem, but that is because the rates are structured badly, a fuel surcharge should be applied to rates, so that the base rate covers costs and profit, the fuel surcharge would take into account the fluctuations in fuel prices and keep the rate the same regardless.
Who would be in favour of replacing fuel duty with an equivalent amount on “sugar tax” - thus replacing the tax receipts otherwise lost?
Perhaps Cameron could re-consider his “not interested in Sugar Tax - ever” stance.
Would we really care if fizzy drinks prices were doubled - if it got say, 20p/litre off the fuel price? 
newmercman:
:
Yes it does need a massive drop in the level of taxation it has added on to it, which is why pump price has nothing to do with it.We have no choice in using oil for power, plastics etc etc etc, generally speaking there is no infrastructure for any alternatives, the oil companies have to find the oil through expensive geological research and speculative drilling, fracking etc, then they have to set up the well and pump, then a method of transportation to a massive expensive to build and operate refinery by pipeline, train, road, sea or frequently a combination of them all, then it needs to be refined into the end product, transported again to a network of retailers that also require sophisticated delivery systems.
Now compare that litre of diesel or petrol to a litre of coke, price to the end user is similar, but the Coke is made of water, sugar and plant based chemicals, it’s blended in a vat and put in a bottle that goes from source to retailer on two regular lorries, one from factory to RDC, the other from RDC to the shop, there’s no extra tax added to it, the overall cost to you and me is pretty close to petrol or diesel by volume, which makes a litre of diesel bloody good value when you think about it. That value would be even greater if the thieves in Westminster kept their noses out of the trough.
From the point of view of our industry fuel prices are a problem, but that is because the rates are structured badly, a fuel surcharge should be applied to rates, so that the base rate covers costs and profit, the fuel surcharge would take into account the fluctuations in fuel prices and keep the rate the same regardless.
The pump price includes the extortionate level of tax on the product.In addition to the equally extortionate level of price inflation caused by the producers artificially limiting the supply of the stuff to artificially and pointlessly inflate the unit price . 
Who cares about the relative value v a can of coke when all that matters is that it’s priced at a figure which makes it viable to use in sufficient quantities.On that note the producer gets the investment and expenses back + profit regardless of the unit price because we’re dealing with a product that can be supplied in sufficient amounts to meet any level of demand for it and in which demand increases as the price reduces.IE the more they pump to the customer the more the customer buys and the more they earn.Anything else is just counterproductive rationing of the product in this case to the point where price exceeds worth to the consumer and demand collapses.In which cases the idea of rationing it,to create a pointless increase in the unit price,benefits no one either the producer or the consumer because the consumer just cuts back on demand even more.Just as taxing the stuff to appease a load of luddites who want it left in the ground is just adding insult to injury in that regard.
As I said in an industry where returns are dependent on turnover the last thing that you want to do is tell the consumer to use less of it while rationing it to create the illusion of the highest unit price return possible.When the customer says fine shove it it isn’t worth my while to burn it in the small amounts that you’re trying to enforce on me.I’ll park up the truck or run shorter hauls or leave the car in the garage and use it less.
IE all you’re doing is telling the consumer, in the form of road transport or private car user,to inflate their price/wage to unsustainable levels to meet the unsustainable pointlessly rationed and resultingly inflated unit price of the oil.The result being that the stuff gets left in the tanks or in the ground earning sfa for no one including the producer. 
Winseer:
Who would be in favour of replacing fuel duty with an equivalent amount on “sugar tax” - thus replacing the tax receipts otherwise lost?Perhaps Cameron could re-consider his “not interested in Sugar Tax - ever” stance.
Would we really care if fizzy drinks prices were doubled - if it got say, 20p/litre off the fuel price?
Or income and equal set corporate profits taxation.So the money isn’t taxed before it’s earn’t and the taxation doesn’t hit a selective industry disproportionately.While being based on the ability to pay.Nor does it create the problem of the worst of all worlds situation of disincentive to buy the product at the point of consumption and collapse of the selected industry and resulting loss of tax revenues.
Winseer:
Who would be in favour of replacing fuel duty with an equivalent amount on “sugar tax” - thus replacing the tax receipts otherwise lost?Perhaps Cameron could re-consider his “not interested in Sugar Tax - ever” stance.
Would we really care if fizzy drinks prices were doubled - if it got say, 20p/litre off the fuel price?
I wouldn’t replace fuel duty with a sugar tax, the duty on fuel goes no where near the long term costs of the pollution it causes (£15billion per annum to the NHS just to treat the health problems it causes)
But I certainly think sugar should pay its own way, the cost of type 2 diabetes alone to the NHS comes to a staggering £12billion.
All these scourges on society should at the very minimum fund themselves, it is clearly unfair on someone who keeps themselves fit and healthy by using cycling as their mode of transport to be funding the short comings of over-fed people in over-sized cars.
Bluey Circles:
I wouldn’t replace fuel duty with a sugar tax, the duty on fuel goes no where near the long term costs of the pollution it causes (£15billion per annum to the NHS just to treat the health problems it causes)But I certainly think sugar should pay its own way, the cost of type 2 diabetes alone to the NHS comes to a staggering £12billion.
All these scourges on society should at the very minimum fund themselves, it is clearly unfair on someone who keeps themselves fit and healthy by using cycling as their mode of transport to be funding the short comings of over-fed people in over-sized cars.
I’m guessing that you won’t want to include heart and muscle/skeletal damage caused by over use involved in cycling.
While a high proportion of diabetes cases are genetic.
Are you really suggesting that the NHS would be better funded if all road fossil fuel use stopped and with it obviously all road fuel taxation.Bearing in mind a figure of £27 billion 2014/15 without VAT.In addition to which your figures are probably calculated on the basis of supposed arguable damage caused by diesel PM emissions in which case then a change to LPG would obviously change that figure.Although no doubt the luddites will then fall back on the Global Warming issue and when that doesn’t work the usual it’s all running out and must be saved ‘for the future’.
As for the NHS no surprise that the Socialists and eco nazis would want to use the broke Socialist scam as leverage to impose their preferred ideas on everyone else.
Carryfast:
Bluey Circles:
I wouldn’t replace fuel duty with a sugar tax, the duty on fuel goes no where near the long term costs of the pollution it causes (£15billion per annum to the NHS just to treat the health problems it causes)But I certainly think sugar should pay its own way, the cost of type 2 diabetes alone to the NHS comes to a staggering £12billion.
All these scourges on society should at the very minimum fund themselves, it is clearly unfair on someone who keeps themselves fit and healthy by using cycling as their mode of transport to be funding the short comings of over-fed people in over-sized cars.
I’m guessing that you won’t want to include heart and muscle/skeletal damage caused by over use involved in cycling.
While a high proportion of diabetes cases are genetic.
Are you really suggesting that the NHS would be better funded if all road fossil fuel use stopped and with it obviously all road fuel taxation.In addition to which your figures are probably calculated on the basis of supposed arguable damage caused by diesel PM emissions in which case then a change to LPG would obviously change that figure.Although no doubt the luddites will then fall back on the Global Warming issue and when that doesn’t work the usual it’s all running out and must be saved ‘for the future’.
As for the NHS no surprise that the Socialists and eco nazis would want to use the broke Socialist scam as leverage to impose their preferred ideas on everyone else.
I would suggest cycling gives longevity to musculoskeletal and cardiovascular health.
The diabetes time bomb is very much obesity related, and sugar consumption is a big player.
In the medium term LPG would be a great step forward, particularly in densely populated areas. I can’t see even the remotest possibility of anything other than fossil fuels for heavy goods vehicles in the foreseeable future, many more cars in urban areas should be electric.
Bluey Circles:
In the medium term LPG would be a great step forward, particularly in densely populated areas. I can’t see even the remotest possibility of anything other than fossil fuels for heavy goods vehicles in the foreseeable future, many more cars in urban areas should be electric.
I’d agree with the switch from diesel to LPG on the basis of combined fuel and emissions controls costs alone.Having said that the lost diesel use would then just probably make fossil fuel production economically unviable across the board.
While large scale change from fossil fuel to the only practical nuclear alternative is likely to create even worse economic and life threatening risks effects.
On that note assuming the advertised cheap and safe electricity what’s wrong with hydrogen fuelled internal combustion ?.
Hydrogen would be more viable as a fuel - if it were merely cheaper.
practically free electricity produced by an array of nuclear power stations (as the French have across their north coast) would give us Hydrogen & Oxygen (saving costs for the NHS among others) for very little outlay indeed once the start-up infrastructure is set.
It’s often said that the Oil and Gas companies around the world - have retarded any serious move to get such infrastructure in place though. This would suggest that the “anti nuclear power” lobby - has their hand in it as well of course.
Perhaps once the fossil fuel firms go under one by one from a prolonged slump in it’s price - we might see less of their interference, and “alternative renewable energy” can actually begin to take off for real at long last.
Wind turbines were never the answer. The power they make is less than the money spent maintaining them to a working standard.
If you don’t maintain them - they soon rust up, and don’t produce any power at all.
I drive past them every damned day - and they’ve not rotated even in a high wind for YEARS now.
Winseer:
Who would be in favour of replacing fuel duty with an equivalent amount on “sugar tax” - thus replacing the tax receipts otherwise lost?Perhaps Cameron could re-consider his “not interested in Sugar Tax - ever” stance.
Would we really care if fizzy drinks prices were doubled - if it got say, 20p/litre off the fuel price?
No a tax on sugar, or anything else that you buy through choice would be fine by me, but a tax on something that we cannot live without is just extortion by another name, in reality the world needs oil as much as it needs air to breathe.
My point about coke and diesel being the same price seems to have gained altitude around Leatherhead and flew way above Carryfast’s head. A litre of coke is not a difficult thing to produce, it uses water from a well, sugar, a few plant based things for flavour and acidity and a bit of gas to make it fizzy, all it takes is a few lorries to bring the ingredients and packaging to the factory that sits on top of the well, another couple of lorries to deliver it to the place that it gets sold and that is that.
By contrast the litre of diesel you get from the local garage comes from oil from the gulf which has to be piped from the well to a super tanker, shipped half way around the world, refined in a billion dollar refinery then transported to the fuel station, oil drawn from shale or the tar sands has no super tanker involved, but requires extra road or rail transport to balance the finances.
If your litre of coke had to go through the same process as a litre of diesel then it would make vintage champagne cheap in comparison.
newmercman:
My point about coke and diesel being the same price seems to have gained altitude around Leatherhead and flew way above Carryfast’s head. A litre of coke is not a difficult thing to produce, it uses water from a well, sugar, a few plant based things for flavour and acidity and a bit of gas to make it fizzy, all it takes is a few lorries to bring the ingredients and packaging to the factory that sits on top of the well, another couple of lorries to deliver it to the place that it gets sold and that is that.By contrast the litre of diesel you get from the local garage comes from oil from the gulf which has to be piped from the well to a super tanker, shipped half way around the world, refined in a billion dollar refinery then transported to the fuel station, oil drawn from shale or the tar sands has no super tanker involved, but requires extra road or rail transport to balance the finances.
If your litre of coke had to go through the same process as a litre of diesel then it would make vintage champagne cheap in comparison.
Which leaves the inconvenient fact that oil needed the same process before 1973 too.When as I said everyone was happy at around 5 ‘shillings’ a ‘gallon’ pump price.Bearing in mind our own North Sea oil wasn’t even largely if at all online at that point.On that note,by your logic,a gallon of petrol was actually around the same price as a pint of beer in the day which will now buy around 3 litres. But obviously a lot cheaper than that across the Atlantic. IE around 25 cents per US Gallon at less than 3 USD to the pound.
To put that into perspective a fair UK price would be around 65p per litre at an average,more like minimum,wage of almost £600 per week.
That was until the Arabs kicked off big time.Then the zb hit the fan and successive generations fell into the establishment propaganda trap of over valuing and coveting a product that actually needs to be and was as cheap as chips to make it worth using.I blame it on that establishment propaganda contained in the film Mad Max which like many others you seem to have believed without question. 
I know all that, but what I’m saying is that diesel is pretty cheap considering how much is involved between it coming out of the ground and going into your fuel tank.
newmercman:
I know all that, but what I’m saying is that diesel is pretty cheap considering how much is involved between it coming out of the ground and going into your fuel tank.
As I said it was coming out of the ground into our fuel tank just the same.Before the Arabs decided to ration the stuff at the point of source thereby inflating the unit price beyond a sustainable level.Not helped by all those who think it’s a good idea to leave the stuff in the ground instead of using it. 
By pre 1973 standards which is where we need to get back to the stuff is priced way higher than it’s worth.Thereby playing into the hands of all those who say leave it the ground.Because it just isn’t worth using at anything like the present unit price.The irony being that the oil producers and taxation revenue requirements would earn more by shifting more of it.Than by trying to ration and over price a product at around a pound per litre which needs to be consumed by the tens or hundreds of gallons with supply measured in cubic miles.
newmercman:
…the oil companies have to find the oil through expensive geological research and speculative drilling, fracking etc, then they have to set up the well and pump, then a method of transportation to a massive expensive to build and operate refinery by pipeline, train, road, sea or frequently a combination of them all, then it needs to be refined into the end product, transported again to a network of retailers that also require sophisticated delivery systems.Now compare that litre of diesel or petrol to a litre of coke, price to the end user is similar, but the Coke is made of water, sugar and plant based chemicals, it’s blended in a vat and put in a bottle that goes from source to retailer on two regular lorries, one from factory to RDC, the other from RDC to the shop, there’s no extra tax added to it, the overall cost to you and me is pretty close to petrol or diesel by volume, which makes a litre of diesel bloody good value when you think about it. That value would be even greater if the thieves in Westminster kept their noses out of the trough.
your analysis is quite correct . the investment involved in oil production and the cost of sales are eye wateringly huge .
and yet sugary drinks or even mineral water are so much more expensive . i have argued this many times before on here with CF in particular .
but he will not accept this because there is only 1 logical conclusion . unfortunately it is the exact opposite to your incorrect conclusion .
its not that a tin of coke is too expensive , or oil is artificially inflated by taxes .
the correct conclusion is oil is far too cheap !!
this is a terrible problem as not only is the exchequer robbed of finances to invest in sustainable energy ( tidal , wave , tidal lagoons , pumped/stored water , nuclear fusion , bio digestion , offshore wind , micro wind and rivers , biomass , green fuel incinerators and dear old solar PV / hot water energy production ) ; it makes alternatives to oil artificially more expensive and thus less attractive in comparison .
not only that all the above forms of energy are possible on our own little island and regardless of any wars russia/iran/saudi/iraq we will have our own supply .
but worst of all cheap oil encourages waste and inefficiency that means oil priced shocks are unnecessarily damaging to our economy .
typically CF dismisses this with the old ‘wot when the sun dont shine/wind dont blow’ routine .
as always the answer is to store it for when you need it . this is simply done from basic physical science . whether its a lagoon holding the tide back (cardiff bay) , pumping water up hill when you dont want it and dropping it thru a turbine when you do (electric mountain llanberis) , creating hydrogen from sea water or storing superheated steam (spain) ;
all is required is investment now .
also the introduction of smart meters in homes needs to be speeded up , and the necessity of planning permission for a simple box turbine on your roof removed . all new homes should be capable of producing their own hot water and putting some power back into the grid .
if we can become an independent country not only politically but for energy too then we have all the ingredients to become a really rich nation .
Winseer:
Perhaps once the fossil fuel firms go under one by one from a prolonged slump in it’s price - we might see less of their interference, and “alternative renewable energy” can actually begin to take off for real at long last…
this would be nice . but really you would need countries to go bankrupt , as saudi (for example) isnt going to give up producing oil just because unocal or shell is bust . and many oil producing countries own gert chunks of the shares in private firms or indeed are state owned anyway .
you cant rely our countries future on these despots
Winseer:
Wind turbines were never the answer. The power they make is less than the money spent maintaining them to a working standard.
If you don’t maintain them - they soon rust up, and don’t produce any power at all .
Who remembers the last time they passed these turbines on the M25 - and saw them actually spinning?I drive past them every damned day - and they’ve not rotated even in a high wind for YEARS now.
what we see here is underinvestment in technology . not every site is suitable for wind , and from appearances they seem the wrong turbines in the wrong place at the wrong height .
if that warehouse had been designed with ridge mounted box spinners i bet they would be working all the time .
offshore wind can be a great resource , but onshore they work best for micro generation projects .
