Metropol

Well, the fuel protest was quite a bit of a flop and nothing on the scale of the last ones. But then again, there were scenes of panic buying in some places.

I received this forwarded email just now. Don't know if it's anything like the other ones doing the rounds, but here it is.

>Seems like a good idea to be  repeated....
> We are hitting 95p a litre in some  areas now, soon we will be faced with
> paying £1 a litre. 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 marketplace 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),  ESSO 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 Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple
>to do!! Now,  don't wimp out on me at this point... keepreading 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! If it goes one level further, you
>guessed
>it...  .. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
>Again, all You have to do is send  this to 10 people. That's all.(and not
>buy at  ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends  this
>email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION
>people could  conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!  I'll bet
>you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! 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 Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys,  Morrisons Jet
>etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso.

Where do Asda/Tesco/Sainsbury's etc get their petrol from then?

Square Eyes wrote:Indeed, and how ridiculous of the police / oil companies to say there is no need to panic buy, when garages all over the place are running out of supplies and closing down.

You're getting that the only reason that happened was BECAUSE of the panic buying, right?

Well I stuck £40 of diesel in my car last Monday, I wasn't taking any chances! Had a lot of trips between home and uni to make in the last week.

I personally think that a good idea would be for the government to use tax on petrol as an incentive for people to recycle. If recycling was increased by, say, 10% in the next 3 months, they'd knock so much off petrol tax. That way everyone's happy - it encourages recycling, the environmental people are a bit happier, and petrol goes down in price.

the "we tax petrol to encourage people to use public transport" argument will never work until public transport becomes significantly cheaper. and of course increasing the cost of fuel for motorists also impacts the prices charged by bus companies.

i've always wondered why the government don't allow bus companies to use red diesel on the understanding that any savings will be plowed into reducing fares and increasing services.

i'm an avid car user, but if there was a bus going into the city every 10 minutes for 50p return then i think even i would be tempted to catch it - and i'd imagine other people would to. so the decrease in fares would encourage more people to use the bus, thus making a more frequent reliable service viable.

Chris wrote:Where do Asda/Tesco/Sainsbury's etc get their petrol from then?

As I said, in reply to Jamez, in the original thread about this e-mail, the point is to boycott BP and Esso SITES, so the companies themselves get the message.

If, to use today's example, you can buy BP petrol at a BP site for 95.9p, or buy the same BP petrol at an Asda site for 89.9p, boycott the BP site and buy the same stuff at Asda.

Further discussion of the e-mail is here.

So much for Tesco's knocking off 4p per litre. Here in Milton Keynes, all it's done is drop a measely penny. Whoppee doo.

russnet wrote:So much for Tesco's knocking off 4p per litre. Here in Milton Keynes, all it's done is drop a measely penny. Whoppee doo.

Yes, same here. And while all the supermarkets / oil companies make all this noise about phoney price wars, isn't it amazing how they've conditioned us into thinking 90 - 92p is cheap, and that we should be thankful for it.

I suppose at least Asda have the balls to have one nationwide flat rate (89.9p, which they announced in adverts in the Saturday papers) , whereas Tesco will continue to rip people off if there's no stiff competition in the local area.

Yes, same here. And while all the supermarkets / oil companies make all this noise about phoney price wars, isn't it amazing how they've conditioned us into thinking 90 - 92p is cheap, and that we should be thankful for it.

Indeed, a point I've made many times. 2 months ago petrol reaching 90p was seen as a piss take, only 8 weeks later people get excited because Asda is charging 'only' 89.9. By the same token, if any garages dropped back to 85p, that would be seen as a bargain, even though that was the price which caused the rather more succesful fuel protests in 2000, and is forgetting that average prices in January were only 76.9 - 10p cheaper.

People really do have short memories, and people also forget that the extra fuel duty announced in the budget hasn't been added yet, nor has it been cancelled - merely deferred. These protests should have taken on a much larger scale if £1 / litre is to be avoided for the foreseeable future. The way it is, these paltry 4p reductions will be swallowed up very quickly and the 96.9 which became the norm in my area this week will be back again - and quickly surpassed - by christmas.

I've mentioned dear old Mr Dean of Marlborough, as being a bit pricey, in a couple of petrol threads.

Those of you who are his fans might be interested in this.

Metropol

September 14th 2005: Fuel Protests II