I don’t like it any more than the next person but the treasury is raising approximately £25 billion from fuel duty and about another £9 billion from VAT on fuel. What fairer way is there to do this, higher income-tax?

Personally, I dread the day that satellite road-pricing is fitted to every vehicle.

The government will then not only be able to limit how much we drive (due to cost) but also where and when we can drive…

…plus they will be able to tell if we have been speeding, anywhere, and at any time.

Big Brother is watching you…..drive! 🙁

Aah, but sir, you are confusing “Raising” with need.
That money is raised for Government purposes, we’d foolishly like to think that Road tax/Fuel duty & VAT would be spent on the actual roads.
Now, through decades of neglect the roads do in fact need that much, but do not get it.
Let us boldy assume that our roads were in good condition. The maintenance bill and the occasional new bypass is the “Need”. The “Raise” will still be as much as they can fleece from a susceptible and captive market.
I’m a smoker, I’d like to think that the heavy tax on the cigs goes to the NHS. LoL!
I live in an area where it is impossible to get a NHS Dentist, I have to drive 48 miles. Do I get a Nat. Insurance rebate? LoL.
It is the Governments duty to claw as much as possible from the proletariate.
It is therefore the duty of the proletariat to attempt to pay as little tax as possible.

They do that a lot, actually, but the price of crude is established on a speculative market, the traders being mostly the oil companies themselves and a bunch of terribly paranoid and neurotic speculants. But yes oil companies do trade a lot within the company. Great Yellow Clam Pumping will sell their crude to Great Clam Transport, which will sell it’s stuff to Great Yellow Clam Refining, which will sell it on to Great Clam Petrol Stations. The profit hence isn’t just created when you fill up your fueltank, the profit is created all along the way from oilfield up to your cars cylinders.

It must be said that most non-motorway petrol stations can’t depend on selling fuels. While fuel will remain the corebusiness, the profit actually comes from icecream and cigarettes and stuff like that.

Take issue there.

OPEC and the other cartels decide the price of crude. The speculators forecast what the cartels will be doing next week.
And, profit on fuel.
I broke down at a Motorway service station last summer. I had to push my car off the Forecourt of the petrol station. So to kill time I people watched at the garage.
The only people that fill up at the motorway are Reps/Business folk spending other peoples money and a few that are too rich to care. Most ordinary folk put a tenner in to make sure they get to the next A road etc. About 25% of people don’t buy another product, the other 75% buy a single or maybe two items. Principally the fags and paper, or milk. A choc. bar, or for those with kids…they seem to be pressured into buying a 22kg bag of Maynards vomitgums for £2.99 (Whatever happened to Lions brand – real tastes!!!).

This of course was just me, one afternoon, one garage. So bored I actually made a point of such a study.

And finally, I do not object whatsoever to the profit made by the oil companies, if we were right and it’s 10p on 29p, that’s a healthy 34%. Good luck to them. I 100% object to any tax or duty being on it. OK, maybe we should add 17.5% VAT so 46p a litre would be the uppermost estimate of a price. The fact that VAT should be near 11% is another topic.

I totally believe in the Land mine theory, it’s an old trick and was used in some movie. Put small mines in the road, make troops jump into ditch where the big mines are. In this way, we have a government telling us to “Get on yer bike” for jobs. Then the buses were denationalised, giving such a poor service that people were forced into own vehicles. Now most of the adult workers are dependant on purchasing fuel, a final kick in the goolies by Dutying it to the maximum possible, and then some more.

Ahem…. I bought the wok. 😡

And a damn fine wok it is, too! 😉

Each to own.
A wok, like an oven dish, is no good until it has been seasoned by a few uses and a brown/black heat-treated hardened layer is built up.

And, as Titanium is the best heat proof metal, how does it apply to the wokking?

I know some people on here are the keenest enthusiasts imaginable, but you, and me, can only find out what is PUBLISHED about military hardware or Software for that matter.
When the maths don’t add up, it’s called propaganda.
If any body on here “actually knew” what the capabilities of the B-2 were, and blurbed about them on a non-secure WWW the Whitehouse would have his balls on a meat-hook, no matter how many ID hiding methods he’d made.
If the engines on a B-2 were 50% deficient, it could do nothing but fly in a straight line….having been dropped from a host.
We only know what we need to know, and that’s the way it should be.
There are aspects of the English Electric Lightning which are still Top Secret.
Eg, I am cleared to SC with the latest DVA checks, but I still wasn’t allowed to look in a Challenger Tank Turret. My work at that time was on the front of the hull, I didn’t need to look inside, and was refused such. That’s the way it is.

There are plenty of peeps on here in the Defence lark, and they do not break the OSA, nor do I. We are committed to report any breaches.

I am not trying to stiffle the debate, just pointing out that mis-information is published on all sides of the cold/warm/hot war.

I see a red door and I want to paint it black.

Because some of us would find ourselves being smitten about the head and shoulders with a Jean Patrique 30cm non-stick titanium wok in fairly short order if we did…… 😮

Tell her, that titanium is already non-stick, so she paid a fortune for a named product with bullpoo sciency bits added.

I’ll keep wicket to catch the wok, I’m sure you don’t want it further damaged.

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.

Angonnamo.
I’ve scrapped duty and its VAT. The fuel is 39p including the 10p profit.
So where do I jump to 93p a litre?
And, no loss is made on petrol by the oil companies. They sell the other half for oils, soaps etc. but the profit on combustable fuel is as you possibly the 10p on 29p. The cost of extraction/distribution etc. is already in the crude price.