As we know, petrol prices are still rising and they will get worse. You may not know that not only is the government pocketing ~50% of the money we pay but the companies themselves (Shell, BP, Esso...) are making billions of pounds of net profit annually and this is increasing. Please read folks:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1907196 ... allon.html

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,, ... 48,00.html

And petrol prices are set to hit £1.50 or thereabouts by the end of 2008. I don't think I can sustain that! Please see:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,, ... 21,00.html

So I found this idea on Yahoo Answers and have decided to join in:

It is very popular as I've copy & pasted words from the article onto search engines and returned thousands of results! I have decided to follow what the text says, I hope others will, too (if practical). Please copy and paste the following message to as many forums over the internet as possible if you agree with it. Here it is:

[message begins]

SEE WHAT YOU THINK AND PASS IT ON IF YOU AGREE.......

We are hitting 112.9p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying over £1.30 for 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 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), 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!!

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.

[message ends]

I'm in

i've posted it on all my sites, bebo myspace etc

I only buy off Sainsburys and Morrisons anyway , but i dont think they have a chance of getting it down to 69p

this has been doing the rounds since petrol WAS 69p a litre.

It will not work. It has NO CHANCE of ever working. let me explain:

Esso & BP do not own petrol stations. The branded petrol stations that you see out there are in fact franchises. A business buys a franchise, and for their displaying the company logo, they get a very sliightly preferential deal on buying fuel from Esso & BP. It's not necessarily Esso or BP fuel, though.

Esso & BP don't make any money at the pump. They make all of their money at the refinery and depot. Esso sell to Shell, supermarkets, Q8 (remember them?), Total, and independents, and they all sell to each other. By boycotting a single brand all you will do is force a (local) franchise businessperson out of business. Less choice for fuel in your local area, leaving the remainder of retailers in a lower competition state. Well done you, less competition means less reason for retailers to price competitively. Bizarre as it may seem, to get prices lower, we need more petrol stations, and we need to shop around. Use the petrol prices website, and reward the lowest cost retailer in your area with your custom. If they hike their prices, dump them without a second thought.

Here is the REAL evil of petrol prices: It is the only thing (except money, where you are taxed on what you earn AND what you spend) that is taxed twice. The government actually taxes a tax. How does that work? Well, if the price you pay at the pump is made up of (say) 40p fuel cost, and 50p fuel duty, the VAT is charged on the whole 90p at 17.5%, 15.75p. The total cost of the litre is inflated by nearly 9p a litre by the government charging VAT on the obscene amount of fuel duty they already charge. When the chancellor announces another 2p / litre in October, it will actually be 2.35p per litre, when VAT is included. .35p isn't much, until you fill your car with 50 litres a week.

Write to your MP, and ask them to ask in parliament about this double taxation. Post THAT on every forum you visit, boobee page or Myface or whatever else you do.

I've had enough, I'm buying a moped.....I'm 6ft 4 and well built so I will look quite funny but who cares

Ninos

the way that the market works, supermarket fuel is now as rigourously tested - and may even be the same batch - as "branded" fuel. There is NO reason to buy branded 95 RON. What happened with Tesco fuel could just as easily happen with any of the branded fuels.

I'd rather get cheap fuel than pay over the odds for exactly the same thing.