The price of fuel

There's a lot of whingeing going on at the moment about the price of fuel.

Regular readers will recognise one of my personal annoyances here (see: http://undercoveradi.blogspot.com/2007/02/road-pricing-for-driving-instructors.html for a previous rant) and feel free to switch off, log out and pretend that the subject doesn't exist and that those of us who actually agree with the tax increase on fuel must be either mad, bad or dangerous.

The fact is - no government will raise the price of driving unless they REALLY NEED TO. It loses votes - hell, IT LOSES LOTS OF VOTES.

So why are they doing it?

Because they f&*%ing NEED to!

Despite the constant whingeing - foolish fat people continue to buy bigger and greedier cars (try buying a car that does what you need it to and nothing more - the price of your fuel will drop by 15-30%) and they also continue to use them for journeys for which they are completely unnecessary (try walking you lazy t*@t - your fuel figures will drop by 100% for each of these journeys).

These guys are the same people who drive aggressively and waste fuel (try going on an eco-driving course guys - the price of fuel will drop by 10-20% for frick's sake). They also complain that speed bumps ruin their suspension while driving past schools at 25 mph (slow down you w@n&£r and you might find that not only are your maintenance bills lower, but for some reason small dead children no longer need to be removed from your wheel arches and radiator grill).

They're also the same people who feel that the delightful flourescent charity boxes they mount on poles in areas where road risk has been assessed to be higher than normal should be removed. They also feel that these same charity boxes are only designed for raising revenue ('duh - yeah!!!) and have no effect on road safety (who cares? - they really are quite simple - go past them without contributing - like you do outside the supermarket at Christmas - you've had enough practice at it haven't you?).

The simple fact is that driving can be affordable to those who need to drive and use their brains to work out what the best way of doing it is.

For those who are selfish, greedy or ignorant it's getting more expensive - hu-f*<&ing-rah!!!

Road Pricing (triple the price of fossil fuels?)

Well, it's coming. Not for another few years (2013 apparently), but it will happen.
I hear all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from all the hard working salt of the earth driving instructors worrying about how they'll put the food on the table, but I still don't care.

This was always going to be the best way of doing things - we ain't got much space, and we've got too many damn cars, something's gotta give.

The only problem from my point of view is that my titchy thingy (now now!) is only 3 metres long (hurhur!). Am I gonna be charged 66% of what a 4.5 metre Jag or Mitsubishi PretendingI'mabighardf*ck*(TM) would pay? I reckon probably not. How about by weight? My little thing weighs around a tonne. Am I gonna be charged 33% of the cost a 3 tonne Land Rover I'mscaredoftheworldbutrichsoI'llgetabigcarandturnintoabullymkIII(TM)? Again, I suspect not. My lovely dinky car does about 55 mpg, am I gonna be charged 25% of the price of a 13mpg Dodge Fatamericantw*t(TM)? You know the answer.

There's a simple way of cutting congestion and saving the world, and making fuel supplies last longer, and creating more local jobs, and ensuring that more things stay local, and stopping the loss of local shops, and making people think about the way they run their lives, and reducing the house price rises that make people who've lived in a village move away because of all the second homers, and develop new fuels, and generally MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE, AND FURNISH IT WITH LOVE... (breaks into song........!).

How?






TRIPLE FOSSIL FUEL PRICES.
Yes. You heard correctly. TRIPLE them.

I could cope, and I'm pretty sure everyone else could if they just started thinking straight about how these things work.

But why TRIPLE fossil fuel prices? Why not just add a couple more pence? Well, it hasn't stopped people over the last 30 years has it? A gradual change in prices doesn't create an aknowledgement of a problem, but it does annoy people and disillusion them. TRIPLING fossil fuel prices would make people start to think. They would have to dramatically reduce un-necessary driving (at least 15%, given that a quarter of all car journeys are less than 2 miles - WALK fatboy WALK!). They would have to start using much more economical cars (the average car in the UK does under 30mpg, the better ones do 50mpg, so another 40% reduction). They would have to drive more smoothly, and closer to the speed limit, improving the roads for everyone (and their fuel consumption by around 10%). Plastics would become economic to recycle (dunno the figures, so lets say only 1%). Supermarkets and shops would have to source much more of their stock locally (hmmm, lets say another 3%). So pretty soon we've actually improved live and reduced fuel consumption by 69%, slightly reducing the fuel bill from BEFORE WE TRIPLED THE PRICE OF FUEL.

Now I know I haven't done any of the sums in a manner that could convince a parliamentary commitee, but can you not see that this would soon reduce road use and pollution. We would be eating food from the farm 6 miles away rather than some hydroponics unit in Peru. It would really p*ss off the school run mums (yep - I always walked), which is always a big bonus, with the added plus point of sorting out the youth obesity problem at the same time.

Oh, and the UK would become a world leader in bio fuel production, economic engine management systems, and green energy systems, which the rest of the world will pay us a fortune for once America has sucked the oil wells dry. And because of this we'll all be twice as rich as we were before our wondrous government TRIPLED THE PRICE OF FOSSIL FUELS. For which we will be eternally grateful.

Please?

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/transport/index.html - have a quick scan around this site and think for a moment.

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/time_to_put_the_break_on_r_16022007.html - just to put an end to some of the stupid scaremongering about this story.