Just to clear up the tax / duty thing here are some figures I did for another thread:

Petrol costs on average £1.049 per litre.

Fuel duty is (before the £0.02 increase in April 2008) about £0.50 per litre and VAT at 17.5% is paid on both the fuel and the duty.

So removing all VAT and duty would make petrol cost about £0.39 per litre.

A barrel (159 litres) of crude oil costs today about £46 ($91 but it has been as high as $100 recently) so that would make the ‘cost’ of the crude in petrol about £0.29 per litre.

Leaving just £0.10 per litre to cover all exploration, extraction, refining, transportation and profit for the oil company and the retailer.

So even if the oil companies and retailers made no profit and the petrol magically appeared in the pumps…

…your petrol would still cost £0.93 per litre!

Also only about 50% of the barrel of crude can be made into petrol (the rest isn’t wasted but it can’t be made into petrol) so the actual ‘cost’ of the crude in petrol is more like £0.55 per litre…

…which means that the oil companies make a loss on petrol. :confused:

The figures are a couple of months out of date but you get the idea.

The government could easily reduce the price of fuel for all motorists but the treasury would need to raise that money from us somehow. At least a duty on road fuel reflects the damage to the environment caused by cars and helps promote fuel economy in vehicle design.

Of course the government could do that but they would not need to raise the money any other way as apart from Italy we have the most expensive road fuel in the EU and are one of the few countries where the road tax is not in the price of the petrol/diesel. If you think about it that a much fairer way of doing it, as those who drive the most miles/use the most fuel pay more in road tax. Most of the hight cost is because we have to fund somany useless, underworked, overpaid politicians. Think about it this country has more politicians than the whole USA.