Let me just bring this back to reality!!

We were told that by privatisation - this would produce ‘competition’!!

We were told that the Natural Gas fields would be our fuel ’saviour’

Comment: How does the fuel increase affect the politicians who are already wealthy!!

How can the Government continue to levy VAT on this commodity which is totally necessary to life?

How can the Government still levy a ridiculous tax burden on the retired?

How can the Government still support - with billions of pounds’ other Countrys who are hell bent on self destruction whilst keeping the elderly and less priviledge in poverty?

We keep being told that we are a wealthy Nation.

Does this mean ‘wealthy for the favoured few’ or are we being ‘conned’ that our pensioners and lower earners in the view of these wealthy beuracrats are ‘better off’??

Hello? - does anybody really listen?

To those in Government - GET REALL - I am sure that the electorate are by now convinced what will happen at the next election.

I am!!

Stuart Fox

The price of fuel could, according to some informed colleagues, get up to $100 per barrel within the near future.

Much of the UK pump price is actually tax revenue.

LPG fuelled vehicles are not so uncommon, even though this itself is a finite resource. Electrically powered vehicles will lead to greatly increased CO2 emissions by power stations, as will production of Hydrogen. But at least electricity and hydrogen powered vehicles do not emit particulates and other pollutants. Ultimately this comes down to a case for large numbers of nuclear power stations and it may be that the Iranians (for example) have realised this.

Neither Bush nor Blair will do anything to upset their oil industry supporters. They’ll wait until public outcry is such that they are ‘forced into’ taking action. However, such action will actually be determined by the multi-national oil industries who will dictate terms to the national governments.

The problem as I see it is not so much with the existence of alternative forms of fuel. The problem is having the political will to deploy them. And we just haven’t got it. Too much of our whole economy is geared to run on oil, too many people make too much money in the oil business and they ain’t going to give that up without a fight. The way things are going, their hand may be forced in the not too distant future; the destruction of Hurricane Katrina has shown the USA how fragile the whole supply/demand balance is right now. Whilst we may not have actually arrived at Peak Oil (the Saudis have only recently admitted that they can’t, in fact, increase production like they’ve been saying for the past 5 years that they could) we must be getting very close and it’s going to become a stand-up fight for every drop that’s left in the ground.

Now that the environmental movement is slowly but surely becoming more widespread, more and more people are opening their eyes to the excesses of our modern governmental systems and more and more are starting to see that a lot of the excesses are self-supporting deceptions designed solely to support and maintain the status quo. And most of these are based on oil or its derivatives. To move away from an oil-based society would need the whole fabric of society as it currently stands to change; that just isn’t going to happen. This planet is dying (and not slowly) purely and simply because of personal greed. No-one wants to give up what they have - and so nothing will change.

I live in Perth, West Australia. Last week I saw a BUS. This bus LOOKED just like any other bus but it was VERY different. This bus ran on STEAM. Why is this no good for cars?

Mind you, given that current taxation doesn’t reflect the true cost of fuel to the environment, I’m hard pressed to rush to the defense of a bunch of fat-arsed moms in entirely impractical SUVs rushing their middle-classed brats to school.

"You are your mother’s darling child, brought up with fret and trouble;
For fear a spoon would hurt your mouth, she fed you with a shovel."

I’d love to see a huge tax on petrol-inefficient vehicles. Add 15% to the list price of anything that does less than 25MPG, and watch thousands of outraged moms, hair akimbo and Tammy Fae Baker makeup streaming from tear-filled eyes, about how they can’t possibly take their kids to school in anything less than a camper van, and how their children are too good for public transport while happily feeding them crap food from McDonalds because they can’t be arsed to cook.