No joke Steve ... it will HAVE to happen eventually.. the supply of fossil fuel is after all finite
Rob,further to the unions holding us to ransom,What's the difference between that and the current situation where hauliers, unions and oil companies are all in a position to stop our fuel supplies ??
Shame really
A simple stat for you to start: there are four mentions of 'rural' in the Budget document released by the Treasury today and 13 for 'cities'.
Although there is absolutely nothing empirical to derive from that fact, it does serve to highlight that the budget George Osborne delivered today was not one for the countryside.
Sure there were a few fillips thrown to the rural economy to keep it ticking over - extending mobile coverage to 60,000 rural homes and revealing the location of the Rural Growth Networks announced at the Autumn Statement last year - but overall it's clear that the chancellor was focussed primarily on urban growth.
In some cases that focus becomes faintly ludicrous. In December 2011 the Countryside Alliance conducted research on the pace of the Government's £500 million rural broadband roll-out. Using FOI requests we established that the four pilot areas announced by George Osborne in his first pre-budget report in 2010 had barely received any cash from the Treasury for their broadband projects, and certainly hadn't started producing faster connections for residents.
Now, 18 months on from that announcement, rather than tackling the snail pace of the roll-out in the countryside, George Osborne has instead found £100 million to make the very decent speed of broadband in 10 UK cities 'ultra-fast'.
Yet again, the Chancellor decided to set new planning regulations as a tool for 'growth', rather than as a sensible simplification of a set of rules that had grown out of control. The revised 'National Planning Policy Framework' will be announced next Tuesday, but (as I wrote here last week) it seems that the much-hated and totally unnecessary 'presumption in favour of sustainable development' is here to stay.
But the most painful and ill-judged strike at the heart of the rural economy is the Chancellor's decision not to reverse the planned fuel rise in August. Countryside Alliance research in February found that drivers filling up in rural petrol stations are already paying on average 4p more than their urban counterparts for every litre, sometimes rising as high as seven or eight pence in certain areas. To not prevent that cost from rising even further basically wipes out the savings from other initiatives such as raising the personal tax allowance in one fell swoop.
The countryside is used to having its problems ignored - for 13 years a Labour Government whose MPs were almost exclusively concentrated in urban areas did just that at budget after pre-budget. But people in rural areas can legitimately have hoped for a little more from the Coalition today.
The UK’s 1,900 rural petrol stations could be “completely wiped out” in a decade by rising fuel prices, experts have warned.
The price of petrol hit record highs last week, with the cost of filling a large family car with unleaded petrol reaching almost £100. The price is set to rise even further in August when the Government increases fuel duty.
Brian Madderson, the chairman of RMI Petrol, the forecourt association, said that hundreds of rural forecourts a year could be forced to close due to the rises.
This is because while supermarket-owned petrol stations in towns and cities can afford to absorb the price rises or even offer price cuts, small independently-owned rural petrol stations can not.
Petrol in the countryside is already up to 8 pence a litre more expensive than in towns because of the high cost of having it delivered.
Mr Madderson estimated that up to 250 rural forecourts could be driven out of business by the high cost of petrol each year between now and 2022.
Visited my daughter in portsmouth today. Petrol seemed to be 7-8p a litre dearer down there than our local village filling station.
Having seen the film Animal Farm at a stag party I was very disappointed with the book.
Sarah Newton MP has set up an online petition calling on Government "to ask the Office of Fair Trading to look into the disparity between rural and urban fuel prices, to ensure that the regional fuel market is fair to rural consumers."
Mrs Newton has identified that "the price of petrol in rural parts of the UK can now be up to five pence more expensive per litre than petrol sold in urban areas. Such high prices are having a considerable impact on the finances of rural households, who are often dependent upon cars to access work, school and public services."
140.9 petrol 147.9 diesel and we live in one of the target areas.
Just goes to illustrate that pressure groups like the Countryside Alliance like to twist the facts too.
Derv prices
Rural / Urbon
Babergh 144.9 / Birmingham 139.7
Breckland 142.9 / Bolton 139.7
Chichester 144.9 / Bradford 139.7
Cornwall 143.9 / Bury 139.7
Cotswold 144.9 / Dartford 139.7
Daventry 145.9 / Dudley 139.7
Derbyshire Dales 143.9 / Enfield 141.9
East Cambridgeshire 144.9 / Gateshead 139.9
Fenland 143.9 / Gravesham 139.7
Forest Heath 143.9 / Kirklees 140.7
Forest of Dean 143.9 / Knowsley 139.7
Harborough 142.9 / Leeds 139.9
Huntingdonshire 142.9 / Liverpool 139.9
Maldon 143.9 / Manchester 139.7
Mendip 143.9 / Newcastle upon Tyne 139.9
Mid Devon 142.9 / North Tyneside 139.7
North Dorset 142.9 / Oldham 139.7
North Norfolk 143.9 / Rochdale 139.7
Purbeck 146.9 / Salford 139.7
Ribble Valley 143.9 / Sandwell 139.7
Richmondshire 143.9 / Solihull 140.9
Rutland 143.9 / Spelthorne 141.5
Todays average prices
average / min / max
Diesel / / /
If you look at the posts on the thread it is pretty obvious.
I hate having to state the obvious but a fair few petrol stations in rural areas charge premium tourist rates which also distorts the facts behind the issue.
such a shame a good debate is brought down buy such misguided rubbish
I dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
