Fuel prices are soaring in the West Midlands, with warnings of unleaded petrol rocketing to £1.50p a litre as oil becomes increasingly expensive.
The cost of petrol and diesel has moved relentlessly upwards on an almost daily basis for the past month, official figures revealed today.
Leaders of the fuel storage depot blockade that rocked the Government seven years ago today warned the Express & Star of more widespread unrest this autumn unless price rises are stemmed quickly.
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Nationally, unleaded petrol has risen by 4.1p over that period reaching 111.9 a litre and sending the cost crashing through the £5-a-gallon barrier.
At the same time diesel has jumped 6p a litre according to PetrolPrices.com, the fuel comparison website.
Industry experts forecast more bad news is on the way for motorists with predictions of unleaded petrol likely to reach the £1.50p-a-litre mark by September.
A survey shows that the West Midlands is suffering worse than most regions with unleaded recorded at 117.9p in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stafford, Dudley, Cannock and West Bromwich. Diesel is listed at 128.9p in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Cannock and West Bromwich.
Experts claiming that car related taxes have leapt by 50 per cent under Labour. Eighteen Labour MPs yesterday signed a parliamentary motion calling on the Government to “reconsider” vehicle excise duty changes.
Richard Haddock, one of the leaders of the fuel protests that rocked the UK in 2000, said: “We did it in September and October then and my gut reaction is we will be doing it again unless the Government does something. Otherwise they face the prospect of anarchy,” he went on to say.
38 Comments
This is absolutely disgusting, maybe the government should reduce the tax charged on fuel to compensate for rising oil prices!
Ive got no sympathy for drivers. People should drive less and sign up to their local carsharing site which would effectively halve their costs.
This is getting beyond a joke! The Gooverment need to wake up and cut thier stupid ‘green taxes’ on petrol and diesel! What a load of bull that is! Soon it won’t be worth going out to work because life is just a gloomy struggle in this rotten country to just even exist! I suggest people stand up and be counted and don’t let the Labour idiots down South screw us any more!
HOW MUTCH OF THE FUEL PRICES ARE TAX AND WHAT DO THE PETROL STATIONS EARN OF IT ?
2 Marc
I don’t have any choice but to use my car! I wish I didn’t have too! Not every one can car share and public transport is useless and not always at hand. You really don’t have a clue do you!
Why don’t people use their brains and realise that oil prices are rising because of increased demand, decreasing supply and the collapse in the property market, which makes investors (your bank, your insurers, your pension fund) buy up oil as its value is increasing?
Then once they’ve thought about that, they will realise that the cost of oil is only going to go up, give a few downward slides now and again.
Once they’ve realised that we can all adapt to the end of cheap oil by
a) moving closer to where you work
or b) working closer to where you live
c) getting rid of your car and setting up a car pool with neighbours
d) getting rid of your car and just hiring one when you need one
e) buying a bike
f) riding the bike you purchased under point e) rather than letting it rust
g) walking to the shop 200m away rather than being a lazy **** and driving.
Rebecca: you’re spot on.
Over the past 30 years, motorists have not been hard done by. They’ve enjoyed static motoring costs whilst public transport users have been ripped off by ever increasing fares well above the rate of inflation.
Motoring is still a bargain because drivers don’t pay the full costs of their journey.
If people are worried about rising costs, then they shouldn’t buy large or inefficient motors which serve no purpose other than to often make up for lack of personality.
Doom and gloom…. what joy! The next plane departing England please turn off the light!!
i have just sent off my application for a travelcard (£32 a month) how crap is it that people have to leave the car at home because of the sky rocketing price of fuel? but as for marc (comment 2) surely you dont think that people being priced out of their cars is a good thing do you? the government doesn’t hand out free cars, people have to pay for them, so why should they feel guilty for using them? there is no proof in this country that car sharing works or will ever work, but if you want to start the car sharing bandwagon then target the ‘my kids cant walk to school mob’!!
the cost of everything is on the increase and more and more people are going to suffer. perhaps the government will take note when they find a greater number of pensioners dying in the winter because they cant afford to heat their houses. the petrol problem is the tip of the iceberg!!!
Totally disgusting. to all you green fingered losers…..so when your needing an ambulance..catch public transprt because they soon wont be able to afford fuel in the motors!
Everythings on the increase and wages are decreasing!! pathetic. How do I go about jumping ship??
Blame the high oil prices for high fuel prices. Tax is a part, but only a part.
As for public transport, can’t see fares rising above inflation overall.
My bus pass has gone up less than a fiver per 4 weeks in the last 3 years. My petrol costs have gone up by over £5 a week in the same time period.
Train travel to London, occasional use, for me has gone down in the last 3 years.
I’ll soon be making some RolaCola petrol if anyones interested! 8 litres for 40p! Seriously in this day and age I think most people are driving short distances instead of walking because of all the gangs of youths they have to pass, if they walked, hanging about on every street corner!
9. Garry
Well said! Hit the nail right on the head!
this is getting ridiculous now this is. honestly, why should we have to pay more than everyone else. okay, so most of it goes to maintaining roads and what not. perhaps rather than skinting us out the government ought to use that 2 billion quid, they’ve used to bail themselves out, in order to pay for our petrol. honestly, those in whitehall are right conning gits.
I would like to briefly join you in the obvious alternative reality you live in compared with most Brits, it must be nice to live on the self elevated platform and loom down on us hardworking families. First, learn what a contradiction is, first two points in your post should clear that up. Second, Get rid of your car and place the stress of extra wear and tear on someone else’s car, what are you supposed to do, help with the petrol costs, what about other wear and tear issues, tyres and brakes are not cheap either, what happens when your kindly lift is on holiday, sick, starts late, car won’t start, the list goes on, you can’t get in your car you’ve sold it!
Public transport, Unreliable, over crowded and extremely costly, get a travel card between Worcester and Birmingham for a year and you’ll see that. Buy a bike, great idea, do that when its -2 out there and put the kids and the shopping where exactly?.
Walking to shops I agree with but as for your other bulleted agenda please try remain on planet Earth with your views, most people need transport of their own to run a family.
Another indication that its about time that all UK industry/services were removed from private ownership!
And why do we have the most expensive fuel costs in the world, eh??? Because we let them get away with it, that’s why!!
Gordon Brown was on Tv the other morning doing the normal its everybody elses fault rubbish . he sai that only a few months ago crude oil was 12.50 pound and now its 125 per barrell. If so can anyone remember the petrol only being 50p a gallon a couple of years ago well not me!!!!.
We the people of this country are treated as idiots by governments why do we stand for it!!
It really is quite simple. Oil discoveries are reducing whilst demand is growing. Unless we can come up with a viable alternative to the combustion engine then i’m afraid cars will become increasingly elitist. People should dust their cycles down, will help with the ever increasing obesity levels as well.
Frosty 4.
At current prices £1.11 per litre, the oil company get approx 34p per litre, the forecourt take approx 9p per litre and that nice Mr Brown takes the rest in Tax.
Please can Domonic 7 explain how I do not pay the full cost of my journey. I would suggest that he and Rebecca 6 get together and car pool with the car she has just suggested gets sold. Her obvious method of car pooling is for one mug to buy,maintain and run the vehicle while she gets chauffered around at no cost.
those prices from bob say it all: the policy from the government is shaft the people, then shaft them again and just when they think things cant get any worse shaft them some more. any more taxes and we might need bob geldof and midge ure to put on a charity concert for the people in this country. ALTOGETHER NOW!! ‘we wont be able to buy our fuel by xmas time’
I THINK ITS ABOUT TIME WE STOOD UPTO THESE RIPOFF MERCHANTS, WE SHOULD STOP AT HOME ALL OF US FOR A WEEK, AND SEE HOW THEY COPE WITH OUT US, TROUBLE IS THE BRITISH HAVE GONE VERY SOFT,AND STAND FOR EVERYTHING THAT THE GOVERMENT KEEP THROWING AT US!!STAND FIRM BLOCK MOTORWAYS AND A ROADS, UNTILL THEY SORT SOMETHING OUT,
I am an owner lorry driver who has to purchase £150 fuel per day. As much as I would love to carry 18 tonne on a bicycle, I don’t think it would fit!!! This time last year I it was costing me £100 for the same quantity. All of these costs have to be passed on to the public when they are buying goods. To me that equates to a 50% increase and according to Gordie inflation is only 3%?
Some comments I agree with, like walking to school or shops, but we really need to get a majority of people together because we seriously are being totally ripped off in this country - and not just with fuel!
My car was off the road for a week due to a mechanical problem so I had to get the bus to travel from my home to Walsall each morning and then Walsall to my home each evening: A journey of 12 miles each way. The experience was horrific: The bus station in my home town isn’t too bad, it’s a basic bus staion but there are toilets which are clean and useable. Walsall bus station is horrible; the toilets are dirty and there are suspicious-looking people hanging around in there. I felt unsafe standing in the bus station waiting for a bus; I witnessed several fights and the experience was quite cold and draughty. At least it gave me an opportunity to read my book. The journey cost me £4 a day and the bus was used by hyperactive Vicky Pollard-esque school children who spent the journey shrieking and swearing at each other, after I’d stopped them flicking elastic bands at me because I was “in their seat.” There was nothing pleasurable about the experience at all; it was quite nice to stetch my legs and walk 2 miles from the nearest bus stop to my home but this isn’t something I’d relish doing in the rain. Public transport quite clearly is NOT up to the mark; a journey that normally takes me 40 minutes was taking me an hour and 40 minutes by the time I’d walked either end. I arrived at work exhausted and ready to turn round and go home! I don’t live closer to work because I choose not to: I lived in Walsall for 32 years but something happened to me that made me decide to move away from the town. I’m quite happy living where I do and I’m quite happy driving to and from work. I own my car, I pay road tax, I pay VAT on servicing and MOT and I pay a vast amount of tax every time I re-fuel it. Therefore I’ve damn well paid to use it. Public transport is heavily subsidised and from what I could see during my experience, most of the people on the bus weren’t paying for their journey. I do own a bike; I use it quite frequently in my leisure time but I have no desire to become an accident statistic and cycle to work; somebody was killed about 2 weeks ago on the A5. I know these things happen and you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time but personally I’ll stick to cycling along bridle paths and canal towpaths. I do feel that the price of fuel is incredible but I can only see things getting worse as it becomes a more scarce commodity. Or will it; is this just propoganda fed to us to make us pay high prices. Hell, if we run out of oil we can just invade an oil-producing country. Now why does that sound familiar? Hmmmmmm. Rant over, cheers
reply to Rebecca and her dreamland
a. do you think people look for work miles away from home on purpose?
b. What about the your partner and their jobs
c. since when have car pools with neighbours worked? Everyone has different circumstances (families, different places/hours of work,). We all don’t work 9-5 in the same town.
d. ever seen the cost of hiring a car? If we all started doin this, it would be even more.
e. Never seen a bike that can hold 2 adults and 3 children. Its not nice getting to work sweating and smelling is it? (Obviously you must know as I presume you do all of you silly little comments).
f. I use my bike on a regular basis but not to work 20 miles away.
g. I walk to my local shops 1 mil away thanks.
I can only assume your stupid comments have not been thought about. People work longs hours, short hours, shifts, overtime, etc, etc. Discover the real world and stop thinking everyone is just using cars because they are lazy.
I suppose a great idea would to all work from home. Lets all get jobs working from the comfort of our own homes earning £2000 per week delivering catalouges - only 3 hours per week needed!!!
p.s this is a joke….
all the people who are saying “get a bike/ walk” are definately on another planet. The effect of these ridiculous prices are also part of the reason food prices have gone up. How do people think that goods are transported to the supermarkets etc. We need to get these clowns out of power. The only problem is who do we replace them with?
If everyone started using public transport then just think how many vehicles - you stupid idiots.
This morning I had to attend an appointment at City Hospital in Birmingham; by car the whole journey from my home to the hospital and then to work took under 2 hours. If I’d used public transport it would have taken the majority of the day and I’d have to take either half a day or a whole day off work, resulting in a loss of productivity. Incidentally, my time off work would have been even less if I hadn’t been stuck in traffic, the majority of which was, as far as I could ascertain, caused by the A34 been dug up to make way for a bus lane. The part of my journey whewre there are no buses (the A38) was the smoothest, most free-flowing stress-free part of the journey! That is my perception of public transport. It works if you just need to nip from A to B (and you don’t mind standing in the rain) but if you need to travel any distance or swap buses and trains forget it as we do not have an integrated system.
29 Jim, a bus can hold approx 45 people, now how many cars would you need to carry those people even if there was 4 people per car, c’mon lets talk some sense!
Adam - instead of picking the journeys which are most inconvenient to make by other means, how about identifying the journeys which can? If only 1 in 10 journeys were switched from the car, it would make hell of a difference to congestion levels.
Prasiet - Fuel costs for transporting food are a very small part of costs. Most of the rising prices are due to arable land being used for, er, growing fuel crops rather than food leading to a shortage of supply.
26 - Rob - a) the answer is yes, in many cases they do. A lot of people want higher paid jobs that are often in big cities, but desire to live in smaller towns and villages. The long-term low cost of motoring relative to long-term rising income, combined with a pro-road building transport policy, and defective planning policy has encouraged people to live further from work. c) there are examples of car clubs around the country, and they work very well. Everyone benefits because they only pay for a car when they use it. People don’t like the idea because so many desire a car for a status symbol rather than just as a means of transport. d) Hiring a car - is actually cheap if you don’t use one that much. e) No - splash out and have a bike each. And actually, cycling short distances doesn’t equal smelly and sweaty. People do use their cars for a significant proportion of journeys precisely because they are lazy, and its contributing to the nation’s poor health.
21 - Bob - Yes, its quite simple. If you add up the cost the nation bears as a result of road transport use: construction, maintenance, accidents (fire/police/ambulance/NHS treatment/lost time off work), ill health (vehicle emissions are the main cause of respiratory illness placing massive costs on the NHS), cost of congestion to the economy (£billions in the West Midlands alone through lost time, inefficient deliveries etc), then… that actually exceeds the total costs people pay in fuel duty/vehicle excise duty/VAT. Again, on car-sharing, suggest you look at car clubs which make a lot of sense except people can’t handle the thought of not having a car to dribble over and wash on a Sunday.
And to those who advocate a cut in fuel duty (which would be a very short term fix and doesn’t avoid the inevitable rising cost of oil) - what public expenditure are you going to cut to pay for it? Or what other taxes are you going to raise. Bearing in mind the state of the economy and massive public borrowing debt…
Finally - if fuel is so expensive - why do people still insist on buying large and inefficient cars they mostly don’t need? And why continue driving them in a massively efficient way at 90mph down the motorway?? Bad driving accounts for a lot of unnecessary fuel use.
PS> I have got a car, so am not anti-car, but there needs to be some realism: fuel isn’t going to get any cheaper. People need (and can) use their cars less - the alternatives for many journeys are already there.
Second to last paragraph should read “massively inefficient”… (whoops).
Yes, a bus can carry 45 people but the people have to get to the bus stop and the bus may not be going where they want to go. My nearest bus stop is nearly 2 miles away from my home and the bus service to and from my place of work is infrequent and unreliable: The route changes at the whim of the driver and the week I spent on the bus to work it missed numerous stops out. It’s not a viable alternative to the use of a car.
Rob - I agree with your comments about Rebecca, she is living in cloud cookoo land!!! Oh yes lets all move closer to where we work!!!! - I work in the city centre - I live in a house with children, why should i go and purchase an apartment when my kids need a garden. If I worked in wightwick or near tettenhall wood - yeah sure i can afford to move there!!! - yeah right!!! what about those who live in social housing - sure they can ask their landlord to move them closer to work, its dead easy!!!
Oh yeah and bike to work - in an office smelling of B.O, stale sweat and exhausted!! and all my neighbours work in the same vicinity so they can car share with me!!! I work in the City, my neighbour works in Willenhall, my other neighbour in Birmingham and another at New Cross……hwat a cost efficient way to save money, possibly a 40/50 mile all round trip!!
live in canada
60p a litre here…………………
I have read all these comments and not one of you have a clue about what is really happening here.
Marc and Rebecca, do you really believe that this is about oil shortages? If you do then you’re a bigger fool than Dominic, and he is probably a Labour Councillor / MP, with the load of rubbish he is spouting.
Just suppose Joe Public gave up his car, moved next to his place of work, and used public transport if he needed to go anywhere, what do you think would happen?
The demand for oil would reduce so the cost of fuel would plummet according to your thinking, yes????
NO, because the Government doesn’t want you to stop using your vehicles, because its not about the Fuel Supply, its about the revenue that’s being raised from the fuel we use.
The UK has the cheapest fuel in Europe, BEFORE TAX.
We all stop using fuel what happens, Gordon Brown doesn’t have the revenue from the Fuel Tax that it has raised, what’s he going to do? Raise tax’s in another way, probably put income tax up, or put more tax on gas and electric, and then probably VAT would go up, and all to replace the tax lost on fuel.
The government is always complaining about congestion on the roads, and blaming the motorist for the air pollution, if that is the case why isn’t the government putting an immediate block on Immigration into this country? it was recently estimated that the population of Britain will increase in 20 years from 60 million to 90 million, so if congestion is a problem why isn’t the government trying to reduce the number of people in the country to ease traffic flow? Because its all about the government bleeding us dry.
Has the government tried to cut taxes? No!!!!!! if they can afford to give 8.5 Billion pound to 3rd world countries for their educational needs and many of whom are fighting civil wars, and 100 million pound on Mosquito nets for 3rd world countries, he can cut the tax on fuel tax from 80% to a reasonable level.
Jim of Bearwood
Recent fuel prices are entirely due to rising oil prices on the world market. Prices are linked to supply/demand. Peak oil production is a very real issue. If we’re not at already at peak oil production, we’re very close.
If we’re serious about reducing oil consumption, then the government does need to think about taxation and transport policy. In a way Jim is right that the government do consider loss of revenue from fuel as a disbenefit: the way in which the government assesses transport schemes for whether or not they should go ahead contains a consideration of if the exchequer will lose income through fuel duty. Perversely this goes against any project that will reduce car travel. However, its not an argument to reduce fuel duty, its one to change how we look at transport. If income through fuel duty is lost it can be gained elsewhere - like taxation on aviation which is responsible for a growing proportion of our emissions and which is a massively damaging industry.
If the current price of fuel is really considered that expensive by most drivers (perhaps Jim and others could answer this), why is this not reflected in their driving behaviour? i.e. people drive round in big inefficient cars they don’t need (especially 4×4s), people persist in using cars for short journeys when they could walk, people still persist in driving significantly over the speed limit (especially on motorways) which massively increases fuel consumption. If people felt that fuel was too expensive, surely they would be modifying their behaviour accordingly? Its interesting that people seem reluctant to comment on this point.
About living closer to work: everyone appears to have taken this to mean living literally next door. What I’m talking about is massive numbers of commuters who think nothing of journeys up to 50 miles, in many cases more. If people generally lived a lot closer, less than 5 miles, less than 10 miles even, then the need to travel and use the car would be massively reduced.
Incidentally, I don’t really consider my political views relevant, but in reply to Jim, I’ve never voted Labour, and I’m probably as dis-illusioned with the main three political parties as the next person. Certainly in relation to transport policy, none of the three parties have demonstrated that they are seriously committed to taking radical action to address the transport problems that we have.