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Petrol costs too much - what can be done? (not a spam e-mail repost)


splurge

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Originally posted by splurge

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you do forthwith reduce by half all duties payable on all forms of fuel purchased for the purposes of private transportation.

 

A little ambitious I think :)

 

I can imagine them all rolling around the floor laughing, like the aliens in the Smash advert, if you seriously expected them to reduce the duty by half.

 

While I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments, I fear that even 10% would be virtually impossible to acheive, they need the money too much.

 

 

Its the same as when they try to get everyone to give up smoking to ease the burden on the health service, if everyone actually DID give it up (I don't smoke, so I've got no axe to grind) the health service would grind to a halt due to the reduction in revenue from the tax.

 

Some sort of sliding scale would be fairer, everytime the real cost of oil goes up, and the tax income rises accordingly, they could reduce the amount of tax to keep the income the same. Unfortunately that does mean that when the price of oil falls, up goes the duty again, but at least the price of petrol would remain fairly static.

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but since the tax is a percentage of the fuel cost, a rise in fuel cost should be reflected with a reduction in tax rate without affecting the tax amount too much.

 

IYSWIM.

 

It wouldn't exactly work, but bottom line is that when the price goes up, so does the tax amount, regardless of the actual cause of the cost increase.

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Originally posted by tbourner

Would it have the same effect as 3 million little bits of paper falling into parliament saying "I won't vote for you this year!!"?

 

Quite honestly even if they made petrol free, I'd still have serious reservations about voting for them :flame Dev

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Originally posted by tbourner

Would it have the same effect as 3 million little bits of paper falling into parliament saying "I won't vote for you this year!!"?

Yes. And unlike paper pertitions if they don't repsond the first time you can just send it again! It would take some effort to get everyone to sign another petition and post it off.
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Originally posted by mawby

Yes. And unlike paper pertitions if they don't repsond the first time you can just send it again! It would take some effort to get everyone to sign another petition and post it off.

 

A good and valid point.

 

 

 

Regardless, who's gonna organise it and decide?

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I've posted on a couple of other forums I'll see what the reaction is.

 

 

 

We need someone to be a co-ordinator.

 

We need to decide if we want to print a small petition and sign it and send it to the co-ordinator (similar to the ABD one - we could use both), or if we want to have a page set up with a little script asking for your name, email address etc., read the plan and 'sign' it.

 

We then need to send the link for this online email petition/printable signed petition to every forum we know, and tell them to tell every forum they know, and tell them to tell them to tell everyone they know at work or at home etc who drives.

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I'm sure I saw somewhere that someone was trying to organise a go slow day around westminster ...

 

personally i think you could appeal to each of the areas of motorists and do several to get the point across ... one saturday HGV's / Vans ... next Saturday the caravan commnuity .. then the big cars .. then the younger ones etc etc etc

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Originally posted by paul_y3k

I'm sure I saw somewhere that someone was trying to organise a go slow day around westminster ...

 

Do you think anyone would notice the difference ;) The net result would just probably be more revenue that day in congestion charges :(

 

Now a go fast day around Westminster, that would be impressive :)

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Originally posted by geoffvalenti

A little ambitious I think :)

 

I can imagine them all rolling around the floor laughing, like the aliens in the Smash advert, if you seriously expected them to reduce the duty by half.

(snip)

 

Geoff, you are absolutely right that 50% is ridiculously ambitious. My thinking is if we asked for 10% they would give 2% - if we ask for 50% we might get 10%.

 

A sliding scale might be fairer, but it's a bit more complicated to spell out in a single sentence (at least for my poor brain).

 

My theory was that it should be a punchy, simple, and potentially headline-grabbing petition which was so ludicrously over the top in its demands that it would give the government room to make a decent reduction and still claim a victory - after all, people are always more willing to compromise if they don't lose face by doing so. What do you reckon?

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Originally posted by mawby

Yes. And unlike paper pertitions if they don't repsond the first time you can just send it again! It would take some effort to get everyone to sign another petition and post it off.

 

My view on this one is that an electronic petition is probably a lot easier to organise and get big figures for, but a lot less impressive to governments and media. It's also easier to forge and has the unpleasant side-effect of offering up everyone's e-mail address and/or home address for SPAMming.

 

Nothing looks quite so impressive (or politically scary for a government) as someone standing outside number 10 thumbing through a book of 1,000,000 signatures. Holding up a CD that says "Petrol price petition" just isn't as interesting. But, of course, it's much easier to make one.

 

Tricky one...

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1. Syed Shah

2. Splurge

3. Darren Blake

4. Supragal

5. Patrick Devlin

6. Steve Wyeth

7. Trevor Bourner

8. Tim

9. Geoff Valenti

10. Carl Farrington

11. Bryan Cullen

12. Jurgen

13. Nick

14. Simon

 

not sure that 1400 people is going to be enough to let alone 14 but its a start....I really think a demo in Parliment sq with some media coverage would work better rather than a few names on a postcard

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